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Mary between Bible and Quran:Soundings into the Transmission andReception History of the

Protoevangelium of James on the Basisof Selected Literary Sources in Copticand Copto-Arabic and of Art-HistoricalEvidence Pertaining to Egypt

CORNELIA B. HORN

Department of Theological Studies, St Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, USA

ABSTRACT Taking up the question of the permeability of boundaries between early EasternChristian and Islamic communities and their literatures, this article studies the Coptic andCopto-Arabic trajectory of the transmission and reception history of the Protoevangelium ofJames, a text which offers remarkable parallels to presentations of Mary and Jesus in the Quran.

Being a second-century Christian apocryphal work, the Protoevangelium tells of Marys infancyand youth and ends shortly after the birth of Christ. The article proceeds from Emile deStryckers claim of the Protoevangeliums Egyptian provenance through an examination ofEgyptian Christian traditions concerning it, covering Coptic and Copto-Arabic literature up toand including the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria. Ongoingresearch on Christian women in Copto-Arabic sources points to traces of the usage of theProtoevangelium of James in the early stages of redaction of the History of the Patriarchs of theCoptic Church of Alexandria. Coptic and Copto-Arabic art also provides a number of pictorialrepresentations of passages in the Protoevangelium. Finally, the transmission history of the

Coptic and Arabic versions of the Protoevangelium rounds out the picture of the receptionhistory of this text in Christian Egypt into later medieval times. The article contributes towards asystematic study of the spread of the Protoevangelium of James tradition in the late antique and

Byzantine Christian East and also towards a better understanding of the oral, written, and visualmilieu in which the Quran and early Islamic exegetical traditions encountered apocryphal motifsderived from the Protoevangelium of James.

It is not a novel insight to comment on the reality of contacts, interactions, and exchanges

between early Eastern Christian and early Islamic communities, or even of their mutual

Islam and Christian Muslim Relations,

Vol. 18, No. 4, 509538, October 2007

Correspondence Address: Cornelia B. Horn, Department of Theological Studies, St Louis University, HumanitiesBuilding #124, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St Louis, MO 63108 USA; Email: [email protected]

0959 6410 P i /1469 9311 O li /07/040509 30 # 2007 CSIC d CMCU


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influences upon one another.1 Boundaries existed between these two groups, yet the defi-

nition of these boundaries was flexible. Moreover, the permeability of these boundaries

varied, at times allowing for significant exchanges of ideas and technological

and scientific achievements, as well as the transfer of literary expressions from one to

the other.2

Such permeability carried a positive valuation, since it contributed to thedevelopment of both sides.

In the course of time, one Christian character in particular, that of Mary the mother of

Jesus, was given an exceptionally favorable reception in both communities.3 Examining

the literary representation of Mary in both traditions, separately as well as with a view

towards possible influences of one traditions heritage upon that of the other, ultimately

provides a valuable test-case for elucidating the relative density or openness of said bound-

aries between the Muslim and Christian communities. While this study cannot accomplish

a full discussion of all the components and perspectives, or even all the details, of a given

aspect that would contribute to such an undertaking, it attempts to make some headway

into this process of study by focusing on how one particular literary tradition concerning

Mary, that of the Protoevangelium of James, was received in one of the religious traditions

in question, namely Coptic and Copto-Arabic Christianity. With this main task in view,

this article will present a few initial indications of selected specific points at which, in

the process of the reception of the Protoevangelium of James in this Christian tradition

in Egypt, contacts with the emerging and eventually established religious tradition of

Islam provided contexts for an encounter with, and a reception of, the Protoevangelium

of James tradition in the Islamic community. The article approaches the question of the

permeability of boundaries between Eastern Christianity and Islam from the perspective

of a limited number of examples taken from Christian literary and visual artistic traditions,

in order to demonstrate that the reception of specific Marian traditions within Christianity

in Egypt was sufficiently dense, continuous, and prominent for their presence not to escapethe notice of a Muslim audience, which in turn would have been inspired to actively

receive and reshape this tradition. It is possible to establish a line of pre-quranic interpret-

ation of Mary that unquestionably goes back to extra-biblical traditions that were estab-

lished in Egypt in late antiquity. That same line of interpretation also extends

subsequently into the Quran, thus leaving not much doubt that an active exchange

between the two traditions offers the best model of explanation for that close relationship.

The present discussion sets aside another important factor in the development of written

and, especially, pictorial images of Mary in Egypt, which is the influence of Greco-Roman

and Egyptian religions in the first century CE. One well-known example of such influence

is the image of Mary as the Nursing Mother (Greek Galaktrophousa, Latin Maria lactans),which is depicted in Coptic art from early on. The Protoevangelium of James mentions

that Mary gave Jesus her breast,4 but the popularity of this image in early Christian art

may be due to the widespread cult of Isis. Isis is often depicted feeding her little son

Horus at her breast. This is an example of a simple correspondence of one pictorial

representation to another (IsisGalaktrophousa) and of an image with a text (Isis

Protoevangelium of James). In both instances, there is little or no difference of interpret-

ation of the image itself. In this case, the permeability of boundaries between Christianity

and the Isis cult in Greco-Roman Egypt manifests itself in the context of Marian devotion

in Egypt. A further example of the susceptibility of Marian devotion to Greco-Roman

practices is the prevalence of Mary in Christian magic (see, for example, Beltz, 1998;Meyer, 1996). Here, Mary is appropriated into a new system, in which there are different

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relationships between the believer and Mary, and between Mary and Jesus. In Christian

magic, the Mary of the tradition tied to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and to

apocryphal Christian sources has been interpreted, not merely transferred. Long before

Islam, the representation of the figure of Mary, independent of the medium chosen, was

a nexus of syncretism, in which apocryphal Marian traditions were of central importance.The correspondences between the Protoevangelium of James, as well as pictorial depic-

tions of Mary in Egyptian Christianity, and characterizations of the figure of Mary in the

formative period of the Quran may also be described in terms of how the first Muslims

did not merely take a syncretistic approach to Mary, by fitting her into their own system

of religious symbols, but also interpreted what they found written about her, or the way

she was depicted in Christian iconography. Hence, this investigation is a modest attempt

to shed light on one aspect of the proto-quranic interpretation of apocryphal Christian

texts. Furthermore, it is hoped that an understanding of the nature of the interpretations

that have been transmitted in the Quran will shed light on the interpreters: their social

and cultural milieu, and their possible geographical, religious, and temporal contexts.

This methodology attempts to build, through sound historical-critical philology, what

emerges as the human face of Muhammads immediate milieu and that of other early con-

tributors and redactors of the textual basis of the growing Islamic tradition. Far from being

comprehensive and complete, the present study offers one step towards achieving this goal.

Along with the infancy narratives found in the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Luke,

the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James exerted far-reaching influence on shaping per-

ceptions of Marys character within the Christian community.5 Given the relative dearth of

information regarding Mary that can be derived from the Gospels, a growing popular curi-

osity about details of Marys life furthered the wide reception and thorough familiarity of

people with such a text, which filled precisely that lacuna. As a late-second-century Christian

apocryphal work that tells of Marys infancy and youth and ends shortly after the birth ofChrist, already before the rise of Islam the Protoevangelium of James had experienced

more than 400 years of a lively reception history within early and late ancient Christianity.

Early Islamic traditions enshrined in the Quran and Islamic exegetical treatises upon the

Quran, as well as Egyptian Christian traditions from the early Islamic centuries, witness

to the familiarity of members of their respective communities with the traditions contained

in the Protoevangelium of James. Recent research into the Marian traditions featured in

the Quran has demonstrated the great density of potential, possible, and probable parallels

between representations of Mary in the Quran and in Christian literature (see Mourad,

1999; Horn, 2007).6 The clearest and perhaps best-known parallels of Marian material are

those between surat Maryam and surat Alc

Imran, and the Protoevangelium of James. Asine qua non for the effective examination of the realm of possibilities for interaction, as

well as the direct lines of exchange between these two traditions, is the need to study the

transmission and reception history of the Protoevangelium of James carefully. In doing so,

it is understood that the evidence for the popularity of the Protoevangelium of James in

Christian circles in Egypt is only fragmentary and does not permit the reconstruction of

the full extent of where and when Christians in Egypt heard of, saw, or otherwise encountered

traditions about Mary based on the narrative of the Protoevangelium of James. This also

means that opportunities for Muslims to encounter such traditions were more frequent

than the data available for this study can document or even suggest. An approach to

MuslimChristian relations that is grounded, not in the realm of speculative dogmatic andtheological claims as to the divine inspiration of a given text, but rather in the realm of

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investigating both religious traditions as part of a larger framework of the history of relations

between religions in the Middle East in medieval times cannot proceed without tracing

in detail ideally all the possible contributions to the mapping out of encounters between

representatives of both faiths.

When attempting to reconstruct how widely and how well the Protoevanglium of Jamesand its traditions were known in Egypt, consideration must be given to several components

that contribute to the picture of the transmission and reception history of that apocryphal

text and that have to be identified and distinguished.7 What have to be collected and

analyzed are data on:

1. the history of the translation of the Protoevangelium of James into the various Eastern

Christian languages;8

2. aspects of the transmission history of the manuscripts of the text, such as the number of

extant copies, the extent of its distribution, the range of ages of the manuscripts, and the

locations and number of languages into which it has been translated, to the extent that

this information allows for insights into the geographical spread of the text;

3. direct citations of the text of the Protoevangelium of James in other early and late

ancient Christian literature;

4. allusions to distinct themes known only from the Protoevangelium of James in early

and late ancient Christian literature;

5. the usage of the Protoevangelium of James in liturgical contexts throughout the late

ancient Christian Near East;

6. representations of scenes from the Protoevangelium of James in artwork and as

decorations on other material objects, including architecture, discovered in or related

to the Christian East;

7. literary descriptions of such artwork and material objects that have perished since lateantiquity; and

8. representations and/or literary descriptions of such works in art preserved in the West,particularly in places where connections to the Christian East as the place of origin of

the work or the artist can be established.

An additional factor (9) that may aid in measuring the spread of acquaintance either with

this text or with its motives is the extent to which they were known outside Christian

circles in the centuries prior to the rise of Islam. The level of familiarity with issues

raised in the text that one encounters in Judaism, for example, could offer further insights,

given that knowledge of this text and its traditions among Jews can account at least poten-tially for a passing on of familiarity with it into the realm of Islam.9 The influential role of

Jews in offering Muhammad orientation concerning traditions of the Bible has already

been noted in Muslim sources of antiquity.10

Ordering the data gained by addressing such matters chronologically and geographi-

cally constitutes an acceptable methodology towards finding out about the relative fre-

quency of interaction with, and reference to, the Protoevangelium of James in a given

area, language tradition, and time period, both within Christianity and within the realm

of the interactions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam with one another. This examination

provides the researcher with some measure of the relative density of the spread of the story

in the Christian milieu. It also offers the methodological framework for the present article,which pursues the study of the Egyptian milieu in the first and early second millennia.

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Literary evidence establishes Egypt as a geographical area in which the Protoevangelium

of James was well known for most of the first millennium CE and beyond. Emile de Strycker,

who critically edited the Greek text of the Protoevangelium of James in 1961, rejected the

idea of a Syrian Palestinian provenance and favored late-second-century Egypt (de

Strycker, 1961, p. 423). The earliest witness for a tradition found in the Protoevangeliumof James is the declaration in Clement of Alexandrias Stromateis, book 7, that Mary

remained a virgin after parturition. In the Protoevangelium of James, a Jewish midwife

named Salome examined Mary and (the reader may safely infer) found that her hymen

was undamaged.11 Origen of Alexandria referred to the Protoevangelium of James as the

Book of James in his Commentary on Matthew (Matthew 13:5556).12 Possible parallels

between the Protoevangelium of James and Justin Martyrs works, and thus for the regions of

Palestine and Rome, have been judged to be significantly more vague and tentative than the

evidence from early Egypt (de Strycker, 1961, pp. 414417). Ongoing research on the

representation of Christian women in Copto-Arabic sources by the present author points

to traces of the usage of the Protoevangelium of James in literary sources in Egypt at

least up until the eleventh-century layer of redaction of the Copto-Arabic History of the

Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria.13 Evidence from iconography shows that

the Protoevangelium of James continues to be received in Egypt itself, as well as in

Coptic communities across the globe, well into modern times.14

In the light of such parameters, which highlight the importance of Egypt for the trans-

mission and reception history of the Protoevangelium of James in Eastern Christianity and

well beyond the earliest Islamic period, the rest of this article will study aspects of the

Coptic and Copto-Arabic trajectory of this history, specifically with a view to examining

the extent to which the reception history of this text, and traditions associated with it, could

have provided a meeting ground for a cross-fertilization of the Christian and Islamic

traditions with regard to their perceptions of Mary.The following discussion first examines aspects of the transmission history of the

Coptic, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions of the Protoevangelium of James. It then traces

important steps in the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic and

Copto-Arabic literature up to and including the redaction of the History of the Patriarchs

of the Coptic Church by Mawhub ibn Mansur Mufarrij. In this context, a consideration of

some aspects of the intersection of the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James

with Greek sources from Egypt is appropriate. This article investigates the reception

history of this apocryphal text in a selection of examples of early Christian art in

Egypt, which have been preserved as witnesses to early illustrations of scenes featured

in the text of the Protoevangelium of James, and offers preliminary suggestions abouthow the earliest contributors and redactors of the Quran might have encountered and

subsequently incorporated aspects of the traditions concerning Mary to which the

Protoevangelium of James traditions in Egypt are an ample witness.

Aspects of the Transmission History of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic,

with Some Consideration of the Versions of the Protoevangelium of James

in Ethiopic and Arabic

Emile de Strycker assumed the existence of a Sahidic version of the Protoevangelium of

James, which he considered to be among the earliest witnesses, dating to before 450 (1961,p. 49). Fragments of the Sahidic version of the Protoevangelium of James have been



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identified, but there is no complete Coptic witness.15 Fortunately there are complete Geez

and Arabic versions that may reflect a Coptic Vorlage. The following paragraphs first con-

sider the evidence for Ethiopic and Arabic translations of the Protoevangelium of James

before the discussion then focuses on the Coptic material.

While it might be reasonable to postulate a relationship between the Coptic andEthiopic traditions of the Protoevangelium of James from early on, the edited Ethiopic

version, which belongs to a group of witnesses from after 1100 CE, is about 600 years

younger than the extant Coptic fragmentary material (de Strycker, 1961, p. 50).16 Among

the oriental Christian versions, the Ethiopic text is judged to be the least faithful rendi-

tion of the text (ibid., p. 38). Whereas apocryphal texts reached Ethiopia via direct trans-

lations from Greek or through the intermediary of Syriac between the fifth and seventh

centuries, a significant period of the renaissance of Ethiopic literature occurred in the

thirteenth century, when new apocryphal texts were translated into Geez from Arabic

versions (ibid., pp. 362363).17 Thus, it is quite likely that the Ethiopic version of the

Protoevangelium of James derived from the Arabic version.

In his standard reference work on the manuscript tradition and literary history of

Arabic-speaking Christianity, Georg Graf (1944) provided an overview of manuscripts

written in Arabic or Karshuni (i.e. Arabic written in Syriac script) that contain the

Protoevangelium of James. There are several types of Arabic witnesses. Some consist

of a complete translation, corresponding to the contents in the Greek manuscripts,

others witness an expanded version and still others are a new retelling of the material

(Graf, 1944, pp. 224225). In addition, some Arabic texts preserve excerpts or short

summaries of the text or parts of the text of the Protoevangelium of James,18 and new

compositions were created around the general story line of the Protoevangelium of

James which were presented not in narrative form but rather as sermons or homilies

(maymar) (Graf, 1944, p. 225). Such homilies are evidenced in manuscripts from thefifteenth century onwards.19

If one excludes the evidence for the Protoevangelium of James that is preserved in the

palimpsest Sinaiticus arab. 588,1 from any of the statistical calculations, since it has yet

to be determined whether the text there is written in Arabic or Greek, more than one-

third, or five out of the 12 manuscripts in Arabic20 for which Graf was able to collect

references, were written in Karshuni.21 The oldest witness Graf managed to adduce

dates to the fifteenth century. About 30 years later, however, a tenth-century manuscript

of the Protoevangelium of James became available, MS Sin. arab. 436, fols. 112r121v,

which is likely to be a direct translation from a Greek Vorlage (Garitte, 1973).22 Thus

far, it seems that no further attempts have been made to establish a critical edition ofthe Arabic version of the Protoevangelium of James. Accomplishing this task is

clearly a scholarly desideratum. With Gerard Garittes edition of the tenth-century

witness, we have a possible candidate for the text upon which at least part of the Ethiopic

version may have been dependent, but Garittes manuscript is quite faithful to the Greek,

and moreover is fragmentary.23 From these considerations, it is clear that the question of

the precise dependence of the Ethiopic material cannot be resolved until the text of the

Arabic version of the Protoevangelium of James has been critically edited.24 The final

resolution to questions of the influence of the available fragmentary Coptic text upon

the Arabic material also has to await the publication of such a critical edition. This

inevitable delay, however, does not preclude one from studying other relevant aspectsof this Coptic material.

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The evidence for sections of the text of the Protoevangelium of James that are preserved in

Coptic is fragmentary and does not allow one to conclude with certainty that there ever

existed a complete version of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic in antiquity. Several

fragments in Sahidic have emerged and have been published, among them two that were

edited with German translations in 1905 and 1958, and a third edited and translated intoFrench in 1905 (Revillout, 1905b). In 1905, Johannes Leipoldt identified and published

folio 89 of MS BN Paris Coptic 1305 as containing two fragments of the Protoevangelium

of James (Leipoldt, 1905).25 The folio page, on the front and back of which these two text

fragments are found, is both relatively recent, being medieval, dating to the eleventh

century, and badly damaged. Originally, the text of the folio containing the Protoevangelium

of James was written in two columns per page, but half of the page has been lost so that the

recto only retains the left column, while the verso of the page only preserves the right column

of text. On the recto, one may find a section of chapters 46 to 47 of the Protoevangelium of

James, an episode dealing with the murder of Zachariah.26 The column on the verso contains

a section of chapter 49, which constitutes a part of the authors concluding comments (de

Strycker, 1961, p. 39; Leipoldt, 1905, pp. 106 [Coptic], 107 [German]). An additional

fragment from MS BN Paris Coptic 12917, first published in 1905 by Eugene Revillout,

preserves a complementary section of the text. While more is to be said below with

regard to the witness of MS BN Paris Coptic 12917 to a Sahidic Apocryphon with Infancy

Gospel material, one may take note here that the fragment on Zachariah which it contains

bears the title Martyrdom of Zachariah, the priest, on the 8th of the month of Thot, in the

peace of the Lord (see Revillout, 1905b, p. 456; cf. Peeters, 1910a, p. 271, n. 1248;

Emmel, 2004, vol. 1, p. 378). The text itself is quite fragmentary, but one can determine

with sufficient clarity that it recounts scenes pertaining to the visit of the Magi and the

massacre of the Holy Innocents. Both in the case of the Sahidic fragments of MS BN Paris

Coptic 1305 fol. 89, and also here, one might perhaps suspect that a possible context for theusage of this fragment of a Martyrdom of Zachariah taken from the Protoevangelium of

James may have been the liturgical celebrations with readings for the feast of Zachariah

(de Strycker, 1961, p. 45, n. 2), the father of John the Baptist. Given the extent of the

fragment, perhaps one could alternatively assume that someone had selected readings for

the feast of the Holy Innocents, or one might also think of a feast related to John the

Baptist.27 Be that as it may, clearly a considerable portion of the text preserved in both of

these Coptic fragments witnesses to material contained in the Protoevangelium of James

that features the martyrdom of Zachariah, a section of the narrative which scholarship in

earlier years considered to possibly constitute the third part of a total of three originally

independent sources that had become integrated with one another to form the text of theProtoevangelium of James, as it is now known.28

About 50 years after Leipoldts publication, Walter Till published another Sahidic

fragment (Till, 1958). This evidence for a Coptic version of the Protoevangelium of

James was taken from an earlier witness, a tenth-century parchment kept in the papyrus

collection in Vienna.29 In this case too, each page was written in double columns, but

of the original 24 lines per column, between two and five lines of text were missing or

corrupted at the bottom of any given column (Till, 1958, pp. 320321; de Strycker,

1961, p. 39). The text of the Protoevangelium of James represented in this older

witness, namely portions of the text taken from chapters 43 through 46, likewise

derives from the concluding part of the Protoevangelium of James that treats themartyrdom of Zachariah. Yet another Coptic fragment of roughly the same section



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from the Protoevangelium of James is to be found in MS BN Paris Coptic 12918, published

by Enzo Lucchesi in 1988 (see Lucchesi, 1988, pp. 6972).

Given the lack of a larger context, scholars, including de Strycker, were not certain

whether one could assume that the Sahidic fragments did indeed witness to a complete

Sahidic version of the Protoevangelium of James, or whether the material that has beenpreserved merely represents selections translated specifically for, and used as, liturgical

reading on a given feast day, of either Zachariah, John the Baptist, the Holy Innocents, or

some other event. In fact, for the date of Zachariahs feast day on the 8 Toth/5 September(in the Julian calendar), the GreekMenologion also required the reading of a segment of the

text of the Protoevangelium of James that is very similar in content to the passage in

the Sahidic fragmentary evidence (see also Halkin, 1957, vol. 2, p. 318, n. 1881).30 The

Sahidic fragment taken from the Vienna parchment is similar in extent to an extract

witnessed to in a sixteenth (to seventeenth)-century manuscript from St Marks in Venice

that served as a eulogy for the Holy Innocents on the occasion of their feast day (see also

Halkin, 1957, vol. 1, p. 264, n. 823z). In support of this tradition, there is pictographic

evidence from Coptic monasteries that reflects a connection between the depiction of the

Slaughter of the Innocents and the narrative of the martyrdom of Zachariah, for which

the Protoevangelium of James seems to offer the earliest stages of development. In the

fourth- or fifth-century illustration of the scene of the Slaughter of the Innocents, as

found in the Monastery of Abu H

innis, a soldier threatens John the Baptists mother,

Elizabeth, who is holding her little son on her knees, while another soldier moves as if to

attack Johns father Zachariah, who kneels down and whose gesture of turning his back

to the gate of the Temple might suggest that he intended to defend the holy place.31

From this review of the data concerning the transmission history of the Protoevangelium

of James in the main languages relevant for the study of the history of Christian literature

in Egypt, several conclusions may be drawn. In all of the three language traditions relevanthere, evidence for the complete text, or for substantial sections of the text, of the

Protoevangelium of James comes from relatively late witnesses. The Coptic fragments

reflect a transmission history of the Protoevangelium of James that is rather close to the

Greek text and that quite markedly seems to be limited to material concerning Zachariah,

or at least to material from the latter portion of the Protoevangelium of James. The Greek

trajectory also seems to extend into the transmission history of the Arabic version, at least

as far as it is currently accessible. Since there is evidence that greater freedom was

exercised in some homiletic material that is preserved in Arabic and builds upon the

Protoevangelium of James, the need for work on the critical edition of the Arabic

version, as well as on texts witnessing to the reception history of the Protoevangeliumof James in Arabic, emerges very clearly. Given the ample evidence of manuscripts in

Karshuni, the extent to which some of the paraphrases and allusions recognizable in

parts of the Arabic tradition may depend, for example, on the Syriac tradition is another

important area of inquiry, even if it is one that does not fall within the orbit of what

this article can consider.

Aspects of the Reception History of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic

Literature

A full examination of the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James in Copticliterature is a task this study can only begin to address. The following discussion

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cannot, therefore, do more than attempt to highlight a few aspects of the issues and obser-

vations that have emerged from ongoing research.

Coptic literature preserves several texts that witness to their respective authors famili-

arity with the Protoevangelium of James, which was established either through direct

access to the text in Coptic or through these authors familiarity with details of thestory through other sources. It is worth noting individual texts in which traces of this

tradition are reflected. The following examination considers material contained in a

so-called Sahidic Apocryphon, which retells and expands upon individual aspects of the

Protoevangelium of James and aspects of the intersection of this text with a Coptic Life

of the Virgin. Next, it studies elements of: the integration of material derived from the

Protoevangelium of James with the liturgical tradition of the Coptic Church as reflected

in lectionaries; the reuse of such material in the homiletic tradition; and the acquaintance

with the Protoevangelium of James that is reflected in selected narratives of an apocryphal

nature, here one dealing with Joseph and one with John the Baptist.

In 1905, Eugene Revillout provided access to a Sahidic apocryphal text32 but did not

offer information concerning his manuscript witness(es). P. Peeters was able to identify

MS BN Paris Coptic 12917 as containing at least some of the fragments that Revillout

had published (Peeters, 1910b, 16A, number 45), but that Paris manuscript does not

seem to have been the sole source for Revillouts edition and translation. More recently,

Simon Mimouni saw in MS BN Paris Coptic 12918 an additional source for Revillouts

edition (see Mimouni, 1994, p. 213, n. 5). Emile de Strycker followed Revillouts publi-

cation and spoke of the material as a Sahidic Apocryphon that details much of the storyline

covered in the Protoevangelium of James. Mimouni reconstructed some of the fragments as

parts of a larger Coptic Life of the Virgin, to which also belong four other fragments, which

were first published by Eugene Revillout in 1876, and then republished and supplemented

with readings from additional manuscripts and translated into English by Forbes Robinsonin 1896.33 The first two of these fragments of a Life of the Virgin show close parallels to

traditions featured in the Protoevangelium of James (Robinson, 1896, pp. 221). Until a

critical edition of the fragments presented by Revillout becomes available, not much can

be said definitively about their setting, provenance, afterlife, and influence on other

accounts. The comments here must restrict themselves to a description.

Half of the fragments consist of scenes that clearly develop material found in the

Protoevangelium of James, namely the Presentation of Mary in the Temple and her

Betrothal to Joseph,34 the Annunciation and Visitation, Joseph and Salome at the grotto

of the Nativity, and finally the Martyrdom of Zachariah. Interspersed are fragments that

feature other aspects of female figures named Salome, one being Salome the prostitute,who came to repent of her former way of life and converted through the mediation of

her brother Symeon the priest, and a second Salome, the daughter of Herodias, who

danced at King Herods banquet.35 The remainder of the fragments focus on scenes

featuring Herod, Philip the Tetrarch, and John the Baptist, particularly with regard to

Johns preaching and decapitation.

Examining the fragments of the Sahidic Apocryphon on textual grounds, de Strycker

thought of the first and the last of them as being close enough to the Protoevangelium

of James to allow for some conclusions regarding their dependence on a Greek Vorlage

of it (de Strycker, 1961, p. 45). While there are clear connections to the subject matter of

the Protoevangelium of James, all in all, given the fragmentary nature of the pieces ofthe Sahidic Apocryphon, establishing direct parallels to the text of the Protoevangelium



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of James remains a tentative undertaking. Rather than assuming that the text of which they

were a part was translated directly from Greek or Syriac, Emile de Strycker argued for its

authentically Egyptian origin, as either having been composed in Sahidic or having been

translated from Arabic (ibid., p. 373). Both these options are difficult to demonstrate or

prove, since the fragments of the Sahidic Apocryphon nowhere overlap with the text ofthe Sahidic fragments of the Protoevangelium of James discussed above (ibid.). As in

the case of determining the dependence of the Ethiopic version of the Protoevangelium

of James, so also here the lack of a critical edition of the Arabic text prevents one from

discerning both the possible dependence of the fragments of the Sahidic Apocryphon

and the Arabic tradition itself.36

Of remarkable interest is the emphasis that the material pertaining to the Sahidic

Apocryphon places on the various Salome figures. Several of the Coptic homilies that

could be examined for this study also display a rather lively interest in figures named

Salome, especially that Salome who is to be identified with Philip the Tetrarchs young

daughter (Matthew 14:611 and Mark 6:2228). In the Coptic homiletic tradition, this

young girl, who is portrayed as having danced lasciviously at Herods banquet and who

then requested John the Baptists head on a platter, is readily characterized as the embodiment

of female temptation and sinfulness.37 In the Coptic tradition, the interpretation of the figure

of Salome, who is known from the Protoevangelium of James as the woman who doubted

Marys virginity but converted from her disbelief, also became colored by the

representation of Philips daughter Salome as a sinful young woman. Through this move,

the name Salome could be seen as that not only of an unbeliever but also of a female

sinner, who had to repent of a substantial sin and then converted.38 This emphasis on

Salome is also found rather frequently in Coptic art, to which the discussion will return below.

The reception of narrative elements of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic litera-

ture is prominent in material that relates to, or is part of, the liturgical tradition of theCoptic Church. This article can highlight two areas that reflect distinct realms of this

reception, namely the integration of excerpts from the Protoevangelium of James into

lectionaries, and the use of these traditions in homiletic literature. First, we shall consider

evidence of the texts reception in collections designated for liturgical reading.

Recent work in Coptic studies has been very successful in reconstructing the structure of

the library containing the literary works of Abba Shenoute of Atripe, who from c. 385 until

c. 465 served as the archimandrite of the White Monastery near Sohag, located close to

Akhmm in Upper Egypt. In the course of reconstituting the lines of transmission of

Shenoutes work, it became clear that in a few instances certain sections from Shenoutes

corpus supplied readings that also were collected in lectionaries (see Emmel, 2004, vol. 1,pp. 361379). If we refer again, for example, to MS BN Paris Coptic 1305 ff. 8990, a

section that, as seen above, witnesses to the transmission history of the Protoevangelium

of James, we note that it provides precisely such an instance of texts collected and paired

together as readings in a lectionary. Based on Enzo Lucchesis reconstruction of codex ZT

of the White Monastery library, Stephen Emmel identified this manuscript fragment as

part of a lectionary,39 possibly one prepared for celebrating feasts focusing on John the

Baptist. After a reading from the Protoevangelium of James that selected at least some

of the material dealing with the martyrdom of Zachariah, the lectionary offered an

excerpt from Abba Shenoutes Discourse Now Many Words and Things I Said, a text

that scholars previously approached as one dealing with ecclesiastical discipline.

40

Perhaps it is to be regarded as one of the ironies of history that excerpts from the teachings

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of an author such as Abba Shenoute, who had vehemently opposed the reading of certain

apocryphal and Gnostic texts by the members of his monastery,41 should be found centu-

ries after his death accompanying apocryphal readings in the guides the Church itself

offered to its faithful, even if these particular apocryphal texts might perhaps not

readily be judged to be Gnostic. While this detail is a colorful vignette that illustratesan important aspect of the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic,

one should also note that the acceptance of the Protoevangelium of James in the

context of lectionaries is not a phenomenon unique to the Coptic tradition. As seen

above, excerpts from the Protoevangelium of James also found their way into the

Greek Menologion. A fuller study of lectionaries from the early and late ancient, as

well as Byzantine, Christian period will have to examine how widespread this tradition

was. For the question of the permeability of boundaries between Muslims and Christians

in the early centuries of the rise of Islam this matter is of no small importance.

Well-established work on the history of the Quran recognized as long as 100 years ago

that the designation Quran is not a native Arabic term, but was introduced into Arabic

from Syriac (see Noldeke, 1909, pp. 3334). A recent study of the origins and structure

of the language of the Quran has argued that the very name Quran points to the

origins of the Islamic Holy Book in the context of the creation of an Arabic lectionary

derived from a Syro-Aramaic lectionary (qeryana) as model (Luxenberg, 2000, pp.

54 83). Independent of whether or not one adopts Luxenbergs proposition that the

Quran represents an Islamic version of a Christian lectionary (ibid., pp. 7983), the sug-

gestion certainly raises the question of what the study of Christian lectionaries may con-

tribute to the analysis of the relationship between Christians and Muslims at the time of

Muhammad and his early followers. In recent scholarship of Christian Muslim relations,

more suggestions have been made that not all, but certainly parts, of the Quran can be

considered to be related to the presentation of texts in the form of a lectionary. 42 Certainly,none of the examples of the use of the Protoevangelium of James in the Coptic and

the Greek tradition proves that Muhammad or his early followers would have heard

passages from it being read aloud if or when they were present at a Christian liturgical

service. Nevertheless, this evidence does show that an encounter with traditions of the

Protoevangelium of James was a possibility for anyone who witnessed relevant liturgical

celebrations. It is known, for example, that some of the members of Muhammads own

family, such as Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a cousin of his first wife Khadja, had been Christians

(see Graf, 1944, vol. 1, p. 24). That being so, ibn Nawfal also would have had some form

of Christian upbringing and education that included opportunities for becoming familiar

with the narrative of the Protoevangelium of James simply by attending the Christianliturgy, a celebration that from early on was open to Christians of all ages, including

young children.43 The acceptance of the Protoevangelium of James into the liturgy, there-

fore, and the subsequent acceptance of some of its traditions by participants at Christian

worship services provide at least one of the concrete constellations of factors that illustrate

the permeability of the boundaries between Christianity and Islam in the sense of traditions

moving from the Christian realm into that of Islam.

Another area in which the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James is closely

connected with the Christian liturgy is the realm of homiletic literature. To the extent that

Coptic literature selects from and reflects the influence of traditions derived from the

Protoevangelium of James, it displays a distinct preference for featuring elements ofthe narrative of the Protoevangelium of James in homilies that were geared towards



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promoting the ascetic life among believers. Two Coptic manuscripts in the Pierpont

Morgan Library (MSS Morgan 596 and 597), as well as one manuscript in the library

of the British Museum (MS Or. 7027), preserve slightly varying texts of a Coptic

Homily on the Nativity and the Virgin Mary. This homily is ascribed to Demetrius of

Antioch and is likely to have been composed in the second half of the seventh century.It features the three-year-old girl, Mary, functioning as a model of the consecrated

ascetic life.44 When her mother, Anna, brought her to the priests at the Temple, the girl

was said to have run on her own to the altar as the place of the sacrifice of the Lord.45

Once she had entered the Temple, she never turned back,46 leaving behind any thoughts

about her parents or the world.47 In her daily progress and with her pleasant temperament,

she far surpassed the behavior displayed by any of the other virgins in the Temple,48 so

that at the age of eight or ten she had even become a model for the priests, who were

afraid to meet her.49 Her body was strengthened in the fear of the Lord, which MS

Morgan 596 employs as the reason why the priests were afraid to meet the girl.50 MS

Morgan 597 understands the fear of the Lord as a force that bound and immobilized the

girls body,51 while MS BL 7027 avoids speaking of fear and says instead that the Lord

strengthened the heart of the little girl, who kept her body chaste.52 All three textual

variants emphasize the little virgins chastity, in body or in both soul and body.53

Between repetitions of the theme of chastity, the homily details what kind of behavior

characterized a virgins chastity. Thus, little Mary did not poke her head outside the

Temple gates seeking the sight of strangers,54 nor did she allow herself even to look at

a young male servant,55 or to be looked at by anyone to avoid the arousal of desires.56

As the homilist emphasized, the young girl lived in chastity and great ascesis,57 or, as

MS Morgan 597 expresses it, in chastity, in the adoration of God, and in [proper] order.58

To create a more explicit and detailed image of this young, ideal life of ascesis, meant to

be understood as a model for all, the homilist elaborated on how the little girl wore her habitin an appropriate manner. Her mantle reached up to her eyes, thus presumably covering all

her hair.59 Her tunic reached down to her heels.60 A belt tied her mantle to her tunic,61 which

was neither dirty nor worn out.62 She did not treat her hair with a comb,63 did not place dark

shadows (perhaps kohl) on her eyes, nor did she apply cosmetics made from the crocus plant

to her eyebrows or cheeks.64 She did not wear sandals for seduction, nor did she adorn her

arms with bracelets.65 Little Mary did not desire any extra food nor did she stroll across

public places in the city, in order not to be tempted by what the world had to offer.66 She

never undressed to wash or take a bath, nor did she look at her body.67 Instead, until she

was 12, she lived in this ascetic manner, being in conscious awareness of God, with a

sense of the fear of God, and being guarded by Christ, since she knew that she had beencreated to become his ark and the dwelling-place.68

Quite obviously inspired by the basic narrative of the Protoevangelium of James, the

author of this homily freely developed and integrated his own ideas about the proper

ascetic life into a basic framework provided for his purposes by the main details known

about Marys early life from the Protoevangelium of James. It remains to be investigated

to what extent such free development of an explicitly ascetic message is representative of a

wider Eastern Christian reception of the Protoevangelium of James, or typical of

and specific to the Coptic tradition. The existence of several of the Arabic homilies to

which Georg Graf refers may help in examining this question further in a separate study.

Other examples of Coptic literature that incorporate significant portions of theProtoevangelium of James include the History of Joseph the Carpenter, a text that had

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its origins of composition in Egypt sometime between the latter part of the sixth and the

seventh century.69 Scholarship assumes that the original may have been composed in

Greek, but the complete text of this work is preserved only in Bohairic, as well as sub-

sequently in Latin and Arabic translations. In support of the apparently relatively wide-

spread occurrence of this narrative, one can also point to the existence of a fragmentaryversion in Sahidic.70 The first 11 chapters of the History of Joseph the Carpenter

follow the text of the Protoevangelium of James in many details.

Yet another significant example of the reception of the Protoevangelium of James into

Coptic literature consists of texts dealing with the figure of John the Baptist. British

Museum MS Or. 3581 B, for example, contains a Sahidic fragment on the birth and earliest

childhood of John the Baptist, followed immediately by a narration of the visit of the Magi to

the child Jesus. Forbes Robinson seems to have been the first to publish this fragment

(Robinson, 1896, pp. 162165). He already observes that the life of John the Baptist and

the Visit of the Magi were themes that were rather common in Coptic sermons (ibid., p. 235).

Of particular interest also is a longer section found in Lord Crawfords Sahidic MS 36,

which contains an account of Christs birth that closely resembles . . . that of the

Protevangelium (cc. XVII XX) (ibid., p. 196), but that also features several differences.

Three main points in which they differ from one another are that the Sahidic fragment

leaves out Josephs first-person account, that it has Jesus being born in a tomb and not

in a cave,71 and that the Sahidic fragment from Lord Crawfords manuscript identifies

Salome not as the unbelieving woman whose hand withered when conducting the test

of Marys virginity, but as the midwife (ibid., p. 197). After about two pages of this

account of the birth of Christ provided in the Sahidic fragment of Lord Crawfords manu-

script there also follow an account of the Magi, of Elisabeths flight with the child John and

of the murder of Zachariah.72 The arrangement of this material, as well as many but not all

of the details, agrees with the Protoevangelium of James.Although this article can only offer an abbreviated discussion of the available material,

it may nevertheless already have become obvious that within the body of Coptic literature,

knowledge of both key and subsidiary features of the Protoevangelium of James was

widely present. Such features were willingly and readily employed and were developed

further to serve the specific goals of a given preacher. They were also incorporated

when creating new apocryphal traditions, thus highlighting parts of the life of other bib-

lical figures, such as Joseph or John the Baptist, or even seemingly unrelated characters,

such as Salome, that had previously remained unexplored.

In the context of examining the Christian literary tradition in Egypt for traces of

the influence of the Protoevangelium of James, one further body of texts that is centralto the self-identity of the Coptic Church cannot be ignored. In fact, the main church-

historical narrative of Coptic Christianity, the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic

Church, shows at least some acquaintance with traditions that ultimately are grounded

in the Protoevangelium of James. The following section highlights this connection,

which emerges via the intersection of Greek and Copto-Arabic literature.

The Reception History of the Protoevangelium of James at the Intersection

of Greek, Coptic, and Copto-Arabic Literature

The History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church is certainly among the best-known andmost widely received texts of Copto-Arabic literature in early Christian Egypt. In the



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so-called Third Preface to the text, one of the compilers and/or redactors, identified asSeverus ibn al-Muqaffa, spoke of those who assisted him in translating the histories that

[they] found written in the Coptic and Greek languages into the Arabic tongue. These his-

tories were current among the people of the present day in the region of Egypt, most of

whom are ignorant of the Coptic and the Greek. It was the authors hope that these peoplemight be satisfied with such translations when they read them (Evetts, 1907, p. 115). The

precise role of Severus in the compilation and redaction of the History of the Patriarchs of

the Coptic Church, a question that has been much debated, is not vital to the argument

here.73 Of interest rather is the comment that Greek and Coptic sources were incorporated

into the work. The sources were gathered from the monastery of Saint Macarius and the

monastery of Nahya and other monasteries . . . [as well as] from scattered fragments . . .

found in the hands of the Christians (Evetts, 1907, p. 106).74 The Coptic fragments of

church-historical material that have been identified thus far as having supplied some of

this material do not contain any evidence for the presence among them of traces of a trea-

tise, On the Priesthood of Christ, that precedes the first chapter of the History of the

Patriarchs of the Coptic Church dealing with Mark the Evangelist.75 The Greek tradition,

however, clearly witnesses to such a treatise,76 and thus it is to be assumed that this first

episode of the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church owes its origins to a Greek

Vorlage. It is precisely in this treatise, On the Priesthood of Christ, that one can grasp yet

another instance of the reception history of the Protoevangelium of James exercising its

influence in the Christian milieu in Egypt.

The treatise is framed by a dialogue between a Christian moneychanger named Philip

and a leader of the Jews by the name of Theodosius. Their conversation focuses on the

question of Christs messiahship, which Theodosius, in principle, acknowledges, yet

upon which, he insists, he does not need to act by accepting baptism. Theodosius provides

evidence that he has proper knowledge of the true identity of Christ. He tells his Christianinterlocutor of the existence of a document that was circulated among the Jews and wit-

nessed to Christs true priesthood as acknowledged by the Jews themselves. This docu-

ment relied very strongly on a narrative in which Jesus mother Mary played an

important role in witnessing to her sons supernatural origins.

It is of interest for this investigation that, in its account of Christs birth, this document,

a Christian apocryphal legend, incorporated features that can be identified as related to an

episode recounted in the Protoevangelium of James. When a deceased member of the

college of 22 priests who served in the Temple of Jerusalem needed to be replaced, it

was suggested that Jesus, the son of Joseph, ought to be selected for the position. But

among the objections raised against Jesus candidacy was one based on the rumor thatthe identity of his father was uncertain. To clarify the issue, and given that Joseph had

by then died, the priests interrogated Jesus mother Mary (Evetts, 1907, pp. 125128).

Initially, Mary was reluctant to answer any questions, assuming that no one would

believe her. As the priests continued to exert pressure upon her, however, she spoke to

them about her exceptional conception. Mary recounted the conversation that had taken

place between her and Joseph, when Joseph asked her whom she had been with, and

she swore to him that no man had ever touched her. The same exchange is found in the

Protoevangelium of James 13 (de Strycker, 1961, pp. 124127). As Mary firmly insisted

both on her virginity, despite giving birth to Christ, and on the presence of the seal of her

virginity as evidence of it (Evetts, 1907, p. 128), the priests hardened in their judgmentagainst her and were unwilling to accept her word as proof, calling her story a tale of

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wonder (ibid.). The reader of the Quran will not miss that those who saw Mary bringing

her new-born baby to her people (Q 19:27) also spoke of what had happened as an

amazing thing. In the following verse, the Quran likewise witnesses to concerns that

arose as to whether Marys conception might have been illegitimate. The focus in the

Quran is the same as it continued to be in the later Christian tradition that continued toaccept the apocryphal text of the Protoevangelium of James or variations of it, as reworked

in the treatise On the Priesthood of Christ. Since, in the History of the Patriarchs of the

Coptic Church, Mary did not resist the priests, they sent and summoned trustworthy

women from among their midwives and charged them with clear[ing] up the matter

with regard to her. As the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church expressed it

in its reworking of the apocryphal account of On the Priesthood of Christ, the midwives

examined her and they witnessed that Mary had spoken the truth and indeed was a virgin

inviolate, as she [had] said (ibid, p. 129). This detail of the story, with its explicit refer-

ence to midwives, is clearly inspired by, and is in fact a reworking of, the theme of the

disbelieving Salome testing Marys virginity that can be found in Protoevangelium of

James 20. Whereas the Protoevangelium of James features Salome testing Mary, in On

the Priesthood of Christ the task was left to the midwives, one of whom also features

in the Protoevangelium of James itself.

Scholarship on the treatise On the Priesthood of Christ has not yet definitively

resolved the question of the origins of the text. The observation noted above that some

texts in the Coptic tradition, for example, the Sahidic fragment from Lord Crawfords

manuscript, identify the figure of Salome with the midwife may perhaps indicate that

Coptic traditions of the Protoevangelium of James played a role in the development

of this apocryphal work, of which, apart from the Greek and the Arabic preserved in

the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church, only additional recensions in Georgian

and Slavonic have so far appeared.77 For the immediate purposes of the present article, itis to be noted that, through the incorporation of this apocryphal treatise On the Priesthood

of Christ, Egyptian Christians who were encountering their tradition through the medium

of Copto-Arabic literature were still in the eleventh century and beyond being presented,

and becoming familiar, with key features of the literary traditions of the Protoevangelium

of James.

Just as the priests in the Jerusalem Temple were not satisfied with just the oral testimony

of Mary to her virginity, so it is to be assumed, and can also be documented, that famili-

arity with the traditions of the Protoevangelium of James among Christians in Egypt was

not limited to encounters with elements of the story in various literary forms, whether

written or oral. In addition, features of the Protoevangelium of James appear with someregularity in Coptic artistic depictions. The concluding section of this article examines

various aspects of the reception history of this text in Egypt in pictorial form. This creation

of visual images of elements of the Protoevangelium of James is also to be regarded as a

sphere in which the permeability of boundaries between Christianity and Islam is respon-

sible for the reception of Christian ideas into the Islamic milieu.

The Reception History of the Protoevangelium of James in Early Christian Art

in Egypt

When investigating the history of the reception in Egypt of the Protoevangelium of James,a component that must not be overlooked is the contribution of material evidence of an



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artistic nature.78 One of the assumptions to be tested, at least in some important aspects, is

that one might be able to discern the likelihood for relatively early contacts between the

Christian and early Islamic traditions that were inspired by the Protoevangelium of James

through visual representations of individual scenes featured in the text. To demonstrate the

potential dimensions of contact through this influence, the concluding part of this articledirects its attention to several iconographic examples, each of which illustrates aspects

of the early Islamic traditions possible relationship with material known from the

Protoevangelium of James.79

Recent research has shown that when the Quran alludes to the scene that features

Marys mother Anna, it emphasizes Annas receiving and responding to the angels

annunciation of the birth of a child to her. I have demonstrated elsewhere that the

Qurans characterization of Marys mothers behavior contains literary parallels with

the description of Marys birth in the Protoevangelium of James (Horn, 2007). But literary

parallels are not the only ones to be taken into account. Depictions of the birth of the

Virgin Mary became popular after the Feast of her Nativity began to be celebrated in

the late sixth century.80 It is noteworthy that the chronologically earlier event of the

angels annunciation to Anna is represented in images that were already appearing prior

to the late sixth century.81 Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne was able to identify such

scenes as the oldest preserved depictions of episodes related to Marys infancy. The

annunciation of the birth of Mary is depicted on column A of the ciborium of Saint

Marks in Venice (see Lafontaine-Dosogne, 1964, p. 35 with pl. 1), which was probably

of Syrian or Egyptian provenance from the sixth century. The Crusaders looted this work

from Constantinople in 1204 CE. On that ciborium, the scene showing Anna is one of a

cycle of scenes that extends from the infancies of Mary and Jesus up to and including

Christs passion.

The angels annunciation of Marys birth to Anna is also depicted on one of two ivoryplates that likewise date to the sixth century. These two plates are now preserved in the

State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. They show scenes from the Protoevangelium

of James focusing on Anna. One of the plates illustrates the moment of the angels

annunciation of the birth of Mary to Anna (see ibid., with pl. 15, fig. 40).82 Art historians

identify either Syria or Egypt as the place of origin of these ivory plates (ibid., p. 35). Early

Christian art from Egypt also preserves an illustration that points to the fulfillment of

Annas response to the angel, namely her promise that the child be dedicated to Gods

service (Protoevangelium of James 8, de Strycker, 1961, pp. 8081). A fresco preserved

in the dome of the so-called Exodus Chapel (Chapel 30) in the Christian necropolis at the

Kharga Oasis at El Bagawat in Egypt, which dates to the fifth through seventh century,shows a group of seven virgins ( paru1voi) carrying lamps in their hands and processing

towards the gate of the Temple.83 According to the Protoevangelium of James, the

undefiled daughters of the Hebrews accompanied little Mary when she began her life as

a virgin in the Temple (Protoevangelium of James 8, de Strycker, 1961, pp. 98 99).

The existence of this pre-Islamic art in Constantinople and either Syria or Egypt, that is,

precisely and distinctly in the Christian East, constitutes evidence that points at least to the

possibility of Muslims, during the time of the early Islamic conquest of the Christian East,

encountering visually depictions of scenes unique to the Protoevangelium of Jameshere

the scene of Anna telling the angel about her plans for the child she is to bear.

One of the scenes of Marys life that occurred with great frequency in early Christian artis the Annunciation of Christs birth to Mary. It is remarkable that, rather than reflecting

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the narrative account offered in the canonical Gospel of Luke (or Matthew), this scene is

quite often depicted in forms clearly influenced by apocryphal traditions derived from the

Protoevangelium of James. Much material from the wider realm of Byzantine art could be

adduced to make this point, but this articles goal is not to rehearse all the available

evidence. Sufficient insight for the immediate purposes of the present discussion canbe gained by focusing on material derived from Egypt.

Gerard Roquet has identified six examples of the depiction of the Annunciation in

Coptic art showing the influence of apocryphal traditions. Of these six, three, that is

50%, come from the period between the fifth and the seventh centuries (see Roquet,

1991, p. 204). Research for this study has added further examples to those he identified.

The oldest example consists of fragments of a fifth-century woodcut kept at the Louvre

in Paris.84 The relief shows the Virgin seated with her feet lifted off the ground. On the

edge of her lap over her knees is a basket. Her left hand holds something, probably

wool or thread, extending out of the basket, while her right hand is pointing upward, poss-

ibly greeting her angelic visitor. Of the angels figure, only the lower portion of his right

leg and his right foot is preserved. Marys face is turned straight towards the observer, a

feature that has been described as typical of Coptic figures (Badawy, 1978, p. 160). The

expression captured in Marys eyes conveys a sense of great surprise, but this startled look

is not that of the Virgin in Lukes Gospel, as Pierre Du Bourguet has interpreted the scene

(du Bourguet, c. 1968, p. 39). It is rather the look of the Virgin in the Protoevangelium of

James, which refers twice to her fear, first when she is said to have heard the voice at the

well, and second when the angel directly addressed her fear ( Protoevangelium of James

22 23, de Strycker, 1961, pp. 112 115). Whoever saw the fifth-century woodcut is

likely to have wondered what message that young woman had heard from the mouth of

her visitor. The depiction of that moment of encounter would have been unforgettable

to any onlooker.The composition displayed in this fifth-century woodcut occurred repeatedly in Coptic

art from the early centuries on. Marie-Helene Rutschowscaya provides the example of a

printed fabric from the region of Ahkmm, now preserved in the Victoria & Albert

Museum in London. The piece, dated to the fifth or sixth century, shows Mary, still spin-

ning thread, while the angel Gabriel executes a graceful backward movement

(Rutschowscaya, 1991, p. 528).

Of special interest for the topic under discussion is a further item that demonstrates the

same composition. The collections of the State Museum of Berlin, Germany, preserve a

golden medallion, or encolpion, that could be worn as a decoration around the neck. On

display in Berlins Altes Museum,85

it depicts on one side Mary seated on a throne witha thread running from her left hand down to a basket, while the angel is shown standing

in front of her.86 The inspiration for this scene clearly derives from the Protoevangelium

of James 11 (de Strycker, 1961, pp. 112117; Stolz, 2004, pp. 8587). The medallion

dates from the fifth century, while the necklace or pectoral on which it hangs comes from

the sixth or seventh century.87 On the reverse of the central coin that decorates the necklace

is a depiction of the city of Constantinople personified and an inscription stating, Lord, help

the wearer (f1roysa, fem.) (Platz-Horster, c. 2004, p. 289), the grammatical feminine

form indicating that this medallion was intended to be worn by a woman (ibid., p. 288).

Both medallion and necklace belong to the treasury associated with Antionoe or Assiut in

Egypt (Volbach, n.d., p. 361; Platz-Horster, c. 2004, p. 288). This treasury preserves analmost identical necklace, identifiable as a piece of jewelry worn by a male person (for a



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depiction and description, see Zahlhaas, c. 2004). The medallion that was the pendant on this

second necklace is no longer extant. Art historians understand the two corresponding neck-

laces as once having been in the possession of a married couple (ibid., p. 290). It is note-

worthy that scholars have also concluded that a function of such pendants was to provide

a sign of distinction for army personnel in the higher ranks of the military (Volbach, n.d.,p. 361). Indeed, this is seen as one of their primary purposes.

The piece of textile depicting the scene of the Annunciation, and the gold medallion

bearing the same scene may have functioned in quite a similar manner to convey motifs

associated with the Protoevangelium of James to onlookers whose tradition was open to

adopting narrative elements into their own discourse. One can easily imagine, for

example, how a general in the Christian army of Egypt might have worn around his

neck a medallion with some depiction of a Christian scene, perhaps even when fighting

against Muslim invaders early in the seventh century. If the generals medallion did not

depict a comparable scene from the Protoevangelium of James, then the new Muslim

rulers first sighting of this type of Christian art might have occurred when they saw

the members of the generals family, including his wife, whose medallion displayed

the scene of the Annunciation. The mistress of the house might also have worn or

had on display in her house some garment or cloth printed with that same scene of the

Annunciation. Both these material objects, clearly being pieces of art with practical

applications insofar as they were intended to be worn or displayed, depicted an identifiable

scene from the repertoire of images associated with, and even derived from, the

Protoevangelium of James, and there is some probability that they would have been

seen by Muslims in Egypt during the early Islamic period.

Coptic art, and Christian art in and from Egypt more generally, preserves many more

depictions of scenes that show details of the story told in the Protoevangelium of

James. Wall paintings in Chapel 51 at the Monastery of Bawt feature not only anadditional example of the depiction of the Annunciation,88 but also one of the birth of

Christ modeled on the Protoevangelium of James (Cledat, 1999, pp. 113114, 127 [pl.

109], 129 [pl. 113]). These wall paintings have been dated to anywhere between the

sixth and the ninth centuries CE (ibid., p. 110 with n. 63). Following the work of Jean

Cledat, Eugene Revillout noticed the congruence between the prominence given to

Salome, the midwife, featured in the Sahidic Apocryphon and the same figure of

calome tmeco (Salome, the midwife) in the Nativity scene at Bawt.89 The prominentpresence of a midwife, or Salome, or both, at the birth of Christ as noted above not only

characterizes literary accounts of the Nativity found in Egypt, but is a feature of scenes

showing the birth of Christ, or Mary with the Child Jesus, in Coptic and Copto-Arabicart. Examples can also be found in manuscript illuminations90 and ivory carvings.91 As

a supplementary scene, one also finds depictions of the bathing of the newborn Jesus,

with two midwives assisting.92 The bathing of the child Jesus cannot be traced back to

the Protoevangelium of James, but the later apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel, also

known as the Arabic Life of Jesus, that became joined with other texts, including the

Protoevangelium of James, to form a fuller account of Marys life features the motif of

miracles of the Christ Child taking place through contact with his bathwater.93

Scenes of the birth of Christ, of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, and

of the Testing with the Water of the Curse, all three of which can be shown to have

their resonance in sura 19 of the Quran, occur relatively frequently in early Christianart. In fact, the scene of the Testing with the Water of the Curse appears in cycles of

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illustrations of the Protoevangelium of James, the origins of which have been discerned as

clearly influenced by Byzantine style and have sometimes been assigned to Egypt. In the

Protoevangelium of James, the event of Mary having to drink from the water is preceded

by an oath in which Mary swears with the formula As the Lord God lives that she is

innocent of any intercourse with a man.94

This scene is to be compared with a passagein Q 19:2634. Then eat and drink and refresh [your] eye, but if you see anyone from

among [those of] flesh, say, I have dedicated to the Merciful One a fast, so that I shall

not converse [with] anyone(Q 19:26). As discussed elsewhere, the context of this

passage is that Mary has been driven out into inhospitable places and there, having

given birth, is offered nourishment (Horn, 2007, pp. 151153). Marys vow to fast reflects

her attitude of readiness to entrust her actions to Gods judgment, as described in the

Protoevangelium of James. The Quran presents the story in a somewhat different form.

While Mary speaks in her own defense in the Protoevangelium of James, in the Quran

she does not speak because she is under oath. Instead, her newborn child comes to her

defense. In effect, the presentation of Q 19:2634 may be the result of a harmonization

of this account to uphold Marys vow. The rationale for this may have been to demonstrate

that Marys defense of her sexual purity, which her pregnancy had called into question,

came from God alone. Q 19:2734 provides a lengthy tradition, which is not paralleled

and transmitted in its entirety in any one extant apocryphal infancy text, and in which

Mary avoids speaking to her family to explain what has happened. In fact, she has no

need, as her child Jesus himself explains his mission rather eloquently in Q 19:3033.

The Quran stresses Marys purity through her vow of silence even more than the

Protoevangelium of James. Yet the two texts share as a common element Marys obli-

gation to God under a vow, a detail not found in other witnesses. While a reference to

oral traditions concerning the Protoevangelium of James in the milieu that shaped early

Islamic discourse may suffice as explanation for these shared elements, which neverthelessbecome incorporated into varying story lines, the medium of material culture and artistic

depictions is at least an additional possibility to explain contact.

An exquisite example from pre-Islamic times, which, like the Quran, avoids reference

to Joseph in the scene depicting Mary as drinking water and being under a vow, is known

from the ivory throne of Archbishop Maximianus of Ravenna (545553 CE) (Volbach,

n.d., pl. 226). The connections of this city to the East in the middle of the sixth century

are well established.95 Moreover, the fact that artistic influence from Egypt is seen as

underlying the execution of the artwork on Maximianuss ivory throne at least makes it

possible that similar artwork and scenes were also known in Egypt itself.

When considering such evidence, some caveats are necessary. One cannot assume thatthe remaining evidence from the early and late ancient Christian world represents more

than a smattering of the texts and material expressions of Christianity that existed in the

ancient world. Suppression of Christian artistic expressions by rival Christian groups

and destruction of artwork by non-Christian belligerents in Egypt have effaced textual,

material, architectural, and pictorial evidence. Thus if one simply attempts to draw con-

clusions straight from the evidence, at times even the chance evidence that survives,

one runs the risk of misrepresenting the overall picture too easily. There may once have

existed considerably more material evidence that would have facilitated the contact of

non-Christians with ideas and images reflecting Christian apocryphal traditions.

An additional difficulty consists in the need to establish a method that allows one tomove from the positive evidence for a written and materially manifested tradition to



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justifiable assumptions about an underlying or accompanying oral tradition that has to be

reckoned with. After all, comments in the Quran and the traditions of the Hadith clearly

point to oral contact between Christians and Muh

ammad and his early followers.96

As one considers the potential for material evidence to have acted as a bridge between

Christian and Muslim conceptions of the narrative in question, it becomes clear thatseveral of the objects or iconic representations that have come down to modern times

may not have been readily accessible to the eyes of the new Muslim rulers or believers

in ancient times, given that some of them were to be found in places not easily accessible

to the wider public. One might argue, for example, that the wall paintings at Baw t were

hidden away behind monastery walls. But it is not easy to determine exactly how restricted

access to them was. In the case of the depictions of the scenes of the Annunciation and the

birth of Christ that show influences from the Protoevangelium of James, one might take

into account not only that these two scenes framed two additional scenes (Marys visit

to Elizabeth and the flight into Egypt), and together with them covered the whole northern

wall of the room in which they were found, but that this series of illustrations decorated not

a simple, locked, monastic cell, but a sizable oratory in the monastery (Cledat, 1999,

p. 109). To the extent that outsiders gained access to the monastery, the likelihood that

they would have entered that oratory, being one of the larger buildings in the monastic

complex, and noticed the wall paintings there, is somewhat greater than that such visitors

or intruders, whatever the case may be, would have seen depictions of religious scenes in

small monastic cells.

The reception history of the Protoevangelium of James in Coptic art is not limited to

motifs that in some shape or form came to be part of the realm of ideas that Christians

and Muslims have in common. Certain motifs, such as Mary nursing the baby Jesus,97

are quite well represented in Coptic Christian art without having had any noticeable influ-

ence on Muslim observers. While Coptic Christians shared their iconographical focus onthe image of Mary breast-feeding her son with adherents of the Isis cult, in which the

goddess is depicted nursing her offspring, the Christian depiction might in fact have

had an additional or alternative source of inspiration. The text of the Protoevangelium

of James speaks of the newborn child taking his mothers breast in order to nurse

(Protoevangelium of James 39, de Strycker, 1961, pp. 156 157). Immediately following,

the text also speaks of how the midwife cried out in admiration and joy for having been

allowed to see such a miracle. The reference point of the midwifes attestation to the

miracle is the wondrous birth of the child, but there is no reason why a Christian audience

could not also have considered the sight of a child nursing on his mothers breast as a pars

pro toto referencing the whole of the scene of the miraculous birth. For them, therefore, theimage of Mary nursing her child could function as image par excellence of the Incarnation.

That a mother would nurse her newborn child right after birth certainly is not a detail that

would require any outside or additional explanation. In the ancient world, one might

expect such a detail to be common knowledge. Mentioning it explicitly would therefore

probably serve a more specific purpose. Perhaps one might argue for a dependence of

text upon image here. In a setting in which the audience was familiar with the iconography

of a female deity like Isis nursing her son, the author of the Protoevangelium of James may

have been inspired by that religious iconography to refer to the child breastfeeding in the

text he (or she) composed, as a response to, or in order consciously to relate and contrast

the Christian event with, what was celebrated in the cult of Isis. Perhaps one might alsoconclude that the very presence of that literary detail in the description of the birth of

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Christ in the Protoevangelium of James even functions to confirm the Egyptian prove-

nance of that text. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of the motif in the text as well

as in images, both Christian and non-Christian, in Egypt, Islam does not seem to have

shared this tradition of describing or depicting Mary as nursing her child. Thus, the

nursing-mother motif is clearly a feature that played a role in the reception history ofthe Protoevangelium of James in Egypt, but is one that did not become part of the

Islamic discourse.

The development of an Islamic reworking of notions and ideas that relate to the

reception history of the apocryphal traditions of the Protoevangelium of James, and the

Christian reception history of that same text, are not two congruous movements. The

permeability of boundaries between Christianity and Islam was such that not all material

came to be used or re-used on both sides. Some material either never passed through from

one side to the other, or was perhaps consciously not selected for use. The examination of

more specific criteria that guided this selection process probably went beyond matters of

mere availability. It is the hope of this author that future research might contribute further

towards clarifying not only which ideas and images may have been shared between

Christians and Muslims in the early centuries of their common history, and howa

matter treated in this articlebut also why certain elements were shared and why

others were never selected.

Notes

1. Recent studies include, for example, the articles published in Grypeou et al., 2006; Thomas, 2003; 2001.

2. For comments on the reception of the classical traditions, including science and philosophy, in the

Syriac-speaking realm, which offered an important medium for transmission of this literature to

Muslims, see also Phenix and Horn, forthcoming.

3. Here is not the place to offer comprehensive details regarding the literature on Christian Mariology. For a

still helpful introduction to the development of Christian thought regarding Mary throughout history, see

Graef, 1964. Given the relevance of Egypt for the present study, reference ought to be made here to a

valuable work dedicated to the development of Mariology in Egypt. See Gabriele Giamberardini, Il

culto mariano in Egitto, 3 vols., Pubblicazioni dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Analecta 6-8

(Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1975, 1974, and 1978 respectively). For Islamic perspectives on

Mary see, forexample, Freyer Stowasser, 1994, pp. 67 82, 155165; Smith& Haddad, 1989; McCarthy,

1982; and McAuliffe, 1981. Reading the Quran from a perspective strongly concerned with gender

equity, the comments in Wadud, 1999, pp. 3940, reveal how the text of the Quran on the event of

Marys giving birth can be read as revealing Allahs empathy for the experience a woman undergoes

when delivering a child. Comparative work has been provided in, for example, Ashkar, 1996.

4. For further discussion of the place of this image in the reception history of the Protoevangelium of

James, see below.5. The Protoevangelium of James continues to excite the imagination and curiosity of scholars. Of the size-

able body of secondary literature on this text one may here perhaps refer selectively only to Horner,

2004; Ehlen, 2004, pp. 16 179; Zervos, 2004; 2005.

6. For a discussion of the possibilities of the influence of Greek mythology on birth narratives in apocryphal

Christian texts and the Quran, see, for example, Mourad (2002), who argues for a considerable impact of

the myth of the birth of Apollo on the formation of the story of Marys giving birth under a palm-tree that

is presented in the Quran. He also assumes influence of that myth on the account of the Holy Family

resting under a palm-tree as presented in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The argument of the article

is considerably weakened by the authors failure to consider alternative early sources containing the

palm-tree motif that may have offered inspiration to both the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the

Quran, such as the narrative offered in the Ethiopic Liber Requiei. See also Horn, 2007. Klameth

(1925, p. 137) locates the origins of the motif of the palm-tree in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew inthe ancient Egyptian notion of the descent of the soul into the netherworld, where it is strengthened



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and nourished by a female deity (Hathor, Nut, or Mat) who dwells in a sycamore or palm-tree and offers

the soul food and drink for the journey.

7. This identification of a necessary program of study resumes and lightly expands upon one presented in

Horn, 2007.

8. See the material gathered and discussed in de Strycker (1961), pp. 353 373; and Amann (1910, pp.

109137), who offers a discussion of the reception history of the text among Greek-speaking Christians.9. For a helpful discussion of the relationship of the Protoevangelium of James to a Jewish milieu, see for

instance Horner, 2004.

10. For some consideration of the matter of Jews and Christians among those who informed Muhammad,

see for example Gilliot, 1996, pp. 1925; 1998.

11. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7.16.9

protoevangelho tiago islam

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