Steve Ray and the Protevangelium of James

Steve Ray of CatholicConvert .com is a frequent guest on Catholic Answers Live, and he was on again recently to discuss the

Apostolic Fathers. He's put out videos about the Apostolic Fathers. He credits the

Apostolic Fathers with having converted him to the Roman Catholic faith. He puts out study guides, all sorts of things.

He speaks frequently on this particular subject. He's even written books, for example, Upon This Rock.

And by the way, if someone feels I'm being unfair to pick on Steve Ray, you should look in here. There's plenty of references to me in his writings too.

But how accurate is he in his knowledge of the Apostolic Fathers?

Well, we already documented, for example, errors in his part in regards to Jerome. I wouldn't consider, of course,

Jerome an Apostolic Father. He's an early church father, sort of. But we documented some major errors in his statements concerning the subject of the

Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books, that he went way beyond anything that any serious student of the subject would ever say.

Now we've got a call here about the Protevangelium of James. The Protevangelium of James is, according to Steve Ray in this phone call, written around the beginning of the first century.

The beginning of the first century would be before Jesus' ministry. So he probably meant the beginning of the second century, but even that's wrong.

Even that is inaccurate as far as scholars are concerned. According to Clouck in the Apocryphal Gospels, an introduction from T.

and T. Clark, 2003, the Protevangelium was composed between 150 and 200 in an unknown place.

Now 150 to 200 would be the middle of the second century, not the beginning, to the end or the beginning of the third century.

So no matter what, he is in error on that. But listen to how he answers this question regarding the

Protevangelium of James. Hi, thanks very much. Love the show.

Thank you. Can you speak just a little bit about the Protevangelium of James, which I've read recently.

It's a short work, as you know, on the early life of Mary. And I wonder, these apocryphal works like that, you have to be very careful when reading them.

And what can we take away from that? Or maybe better yet, what can you say that we should be leery of when reading that?

The Protevangelium of James is a writing that was very early on, probably the beginning of the first century.

And it tells the story of Joachim and Anna, where, by the way, that's where we get the names for Mary's parents, and the miraculous birth of Mary.

In other words, they were also old and childless and prayed and an angel came and promised them a daughter. And that's the story of the

Protevangelium. And the early church, believe it or not, many of the early church read that right along with other scripture and considered it to be one of the, they would have given it the title scripture.

But when the final canon was determined, that book was not included in there.

But the early church read it very carefully and they gave it a very devotional and strong loyalty.

So I think that we can read it probably as an interesting document that probably contains a good bit of truth in it, but because it wasn't included in scripture, we don't know exactly what is factual in it and what is not.

Okay. And you don't know, you don't have to know what the criterion was for, I'm just recently reading on newadvent .org

and some other places where they said that the author did not seem to be too familiar with Jewish customs and things. I was just curious whether you knew anything about what was it that made it rejected.

That I don't know, in that book in particular. Well, thanks very much for your love show. And I like to contrast

Steve Ray's assertions with the actual writings of Roman Catholic scholars. Here we see the

Jerome Bible Commentary, edited by Brown and Fitzmyer, two major names in Roman Catholic scholarship.

And on the subject, the Protevangelium of James, they say, we have already indicated that, like other infancy gospels, this work has no real historical value.

In the apocryphal infancy gospels, greater imagination is given play, the details, the narrative, become an object of interest in themselves, and attention is shifted to other personages like Joseph and Mary.

The Protevangelium of James, also the birth of Mary, the revelation of James, is the most famous of these infancy gospels and has had tremendous influence on popular

Christianity. Scholars have long pointed out that the author was hopelessly inaccurate in his knowledge of Jewish customs.

For instance, the whole story of Mary's stay at the temple would not have been possible. Inevitably, some will suggest that the use of the stories of the

Protevangelium in pious literature and in the liturgy has somehow made them historically reliable.

It is perhaps worth noting that Jerome was very critical of the Protevangelium. Pope Innocent I not only rejected but also condemned the

Apocryphon of James, as did the so -called Galatian Decree. In the 16th century,

Pope Pius V suppressed the Feast of St. Joachim and of the presentation of Mary in the temple, although they were later restored.

If the Protevangelium is a valuable work, it is not as a witness to what happened at the birth of Jesus, but as a witness to Christian Mary in piety in the second century.

But to help you get an even better sense of just how far from serious history the

Protevangelium of James is, and by the way, the reason that someone like a Steve Ray would have such a positive sense of this book is because this, along with the

Ascension of Isaiah and these other second century writings, are the very source of the

Marian dogmas, of the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the immaculate conception of Mary.

This is where it came from, are these second, third century type of very Gnostic -tinged type of documents.

This is the first place we see these things showing up in almost every instance. We see these things being condemned by the church today, and then a thousand years later or more, these all of a sudden become dogmas.

Amazing factuality to that. But just to give you a sense, because most people have not read this, here is a section from the

Protevangelium of James, and you'll even see here the sort of non -natural birth sequence found in the

Protevangelium of James. Read for yourself and see if this does not, just by reading the words, demonstrate how ahistorical this source really is.