Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/117

XLI. They moved from Bethlehem to Capernaum (perhaps it should be vice versa). Joseph sent his eldest son James into the garden to gather herbs for pottage. Story of the viper as in Thomas.

XLII is a conclusion, not in Thomas.

When Joseph came to a feast with his sons James, Joseph, Juda, and Simeon, and his two daughters, Jesus and Mary came with her sister Mary of Cleophas, whom the Lord gave to her father Cleophas and her mother Anna because they had offered Mary the mother of Jesus to the Lord, and this other was give for their consolation and called by the same name. When they were together Jesus blessed and sanctified them, and was the first to eat and drink, for no one ventured even to sit down until he had done so, and all waited for him if he was not there. And his brethren watched him ever and feared him. And when he slept by day or by night the light of God shone always over him.

To whom be all praise and glory, world without end. Amen.

The real importance of Pseudo-Matthew lies not so much in the stories which it preserves, as in the fact that it was the principal vehicle by which they were known to the Middle Ages and the principal source of inspiration to the artists and poets of the centuries from the twelfth to the fifteenth. It is upon this text that the many vernacular versions for the most part depend; and by this that the pictures of the Rejection of Joachim's offering, his meeting with Anne at the Golden Gate, the Presentation of the Virgin, the Repose in Egypt, and the few that we have of the Infancy Miracles, are inspired.

as it was called by Hone, demands but a short notice. It is attributed to St. Jerome and finds a place in the editions among the spurious works that bear his name. It has passed almost bodily into the Golden Legend of James de Voragine, and so has exercised an influence on art and literature. But in itself it is, compared even with Pseudo-Matthew, a very poor production; being no more than an amplification of the earlier chapters of that work in more elegant Latin, and with all the detail blurred and smoothed down. No source has been employed by the writer but Pseudo-Matthew and the canonical Gospels. A brief analysis may be given.

I. Mary was born at Nazareth. Her parents. Ioachim's charity.

II. At the dedication feast his offering is rejected by Isachar. He retires to his flocks.

III. The angel appears to him and bids him return to Anne;

IV. And to Anne and bids her meet him at the Golden Gate.

V. They meet. Mary is born.

VI. Her presentation in the Temple at three years old.

VII. Her life there. At 14 years old it is agreed to summon the single men.