The gospel is a midrash (an elaboration) on the birth narratives found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and many of its elements, notably its very physical description of Mary's pregnancy and the examination of her hymen by the midwife Salome, suggest strongly that it was attempting to deny the arguments of docetists and Marcionites, unorthodox Christians who held that Jesus was entirely supernatural. Its origin is probably Syrian, and it possibly derives from a sect called the Encratites, whose founder, Tatian, taught that sex and marriage were symptoms of original sin. Early studies assumed a Jewish milieu, largely because of its frequent use and knowledge of the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures) further investigation demonstrated that it misunderstands and/or misrepresents many Jewish practices, but Judaism at this time was highly diverse, and recent trends in scholarship do not entirely dismiss a Jewish connection. The author claims to be James the half-brother of Jesus by an earlier marriage of Joseph, but in fact his identity is unknown. The Gospel of James was well known to Origen in the early 3rd century and probably to Clement of Alexandria at the end of the 2nd, and so is assumed to have been in circulation soon after c.150 AD. Apocryphal literature of the 2nd century, of which the Gospel of James is a leading example, tended towards docetism, particularly regarding the birth and infancy of Jesus, and as a result rejected the idea that he could have had a normal human birth. What was to become the orthodox position managed to combine the human and divine natures, but at the extremes were those like the Ebionites, who believed that Jesus was entirely human, and the Marcionites, who held that he was entirely divine and that his Earthly career was purely an appearance – the latter idea is known as docetism. Sanctity of Mary, her virginity before, during and after the birth of Jesusīackground: Jesus in early Christianity Įarly Christianity was not monolithic in its teachings, and the New Testament's views on Jesus verge on the contradictory: some passages, such as the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, emphasise his Davidic descent and take his humanity for granted, while others, such as the prologue to John ("In the beginning was the Word") point to his divinity. 1.3 Manuscripts and manuscript tradition.1.1 Background: Jesus in early Christianity.
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