The Christian Apocrypha

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Gazing in adoration at the newborn Jesus, three shepherds join Joseph and Mary in the manger in an early-15th-century painting of The Nativity, attributed to the Netherlandish artist Robert Campin. Outside the rustic shed appear two women, the midwives who attended Jesus’ birth.

Midwives! What are they doing in the picture? The Bible does not say that any women other than Mary were present at the birth.

Granted, Campin has taken some common liberties with the biblical story, transforming the Bethlehem countryside into a mountainous northern European landscape and depicting the baby in the nude, although the Gospel of Luke says he was “wrapped in bands of cloth” (Luke 2:12). Yet the artist has faithfully portrayed much of the story of the shepherds who “went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16).

Although midwives do not appear in the biblical account of Jesus’ birth, they do play an important role in two texts that belong to the Christian Apocrypha: the Proto-Gospel of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.¹

Called by some the lost, or hidden, books of the Bible because they are not included in the New Testament, the early Christian Apocrypha are actually well known in Europe and in the realm of 026Eastern Orthodoxy. They include gospels, epistles, acts of various apostles, apocalypses and homilies written in the early years of the church, from the second through the sixth centuries. They were used in the church before there was an official New Testament. The Christian Apocrypha contain narratives—many of which are not in the Bible—about Mary’s parents, the lives of the Virgin and Joseph, and the activities of virtually all the apostles.² Dating from about 150 to 200 C.E., the Proto-Gospel of James is likely the earliest of the apocryphal infancy gospels, which recount stories of Jesus’ and Mary’s parents as well as of Jesus’ childhood.³

In the Proto-Gospel of James, Joseph summons a midwife to attend Jesus’ birth, telling her, “Mary is betrothed to me; but she conceived of the Holy Spirit.” The midwife quickly embraces the situation and, as she approaches Mary, announces: “My soul is magnified today, for my eyes have seen wonderful things; for salvation is born to Israel.” But when this woman informs a second midwife, Salome, that “a virgin has brought forth,” Salome expresses doubt: “As the Lord my God lives, unless I put (forward) my finger and test her condition, I will not believe that a virgin has brought forth.” Only after performing this gynecological examination of Mary does Salome repent: “Woe for my wickedness and my unbelief; for ‘I have tempted the living God; and behold, my hand falls away from me, consumed by fire!’” But an angel encourages Salome: “Salome, God the Lord has heard your prayer. Stretch out your hand to the child and touch him (take him in your arms), so will healing and joy be yours” (Proto-Gospel of James 19:1–20:3).⁴ In Campin’s painting, Salome proffers her healed hand as evidence of Mary’s virginity. The banners above Salome and the angel record their words.

The story of Salome was well known to the early church: The philosopher and theologian Clement of Alexandria (active c. 190–215) wrote that “[Mary], after she had delivered Jesus, was examined and found to be a Virgin.”⁵ Early Christian art occasionally dispensed with Joseph and the shepherds altogether: A Nativity scene on a sixth-century ivory pyxis (a portable container for the eucharist) shows only Mary and Salome with the infant Jesus.

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Today the early church’s extra-canonical literature is often dismissed as derivative of the canonical writings, pseudonymous, heretical, legendary or marginal. But whatever the current historical or theological judgments levied on these written materials, religious art attests to the powerful role of the Christian Apocrypha in theology and worship from the first century on.

Until the invention of the printing press, most of the faithful learned about the Nativity of Jesus, the Crucifixion, the life of the Virgin Mary and the lives of Christian heroes from church and funerary decorations, not from texts. Pope Gregory (590–604) encouraged this practice: “Pictures are used in the church, in order that those who are ignorant of letters may by merely looking at the walls read there what they are unable to read in books.”⁶ Yet few of the narrative cycles in pictorial art represent stories exactly as they appear in the New Testament. Rather, manuscript illuminations, liturgical utensils, personal devotional objects (such as pectoral crosses and statuettes), altarpieces and even household utensils (lamps, drinking glasses, bowls) are decorated either with entire scenes or telling details found only in the Christian Apocrypha.

One of the most precious objects in the Vatican’s Treasury of Sancta Sanctorum, a cross-shaped reliquary fashioned of gold and decorated with enamel cloisonné, testifies to the historical importance and religious power of the Apocrypha (see cover). The cross bears the inscription “I beseech you, my sovereign, queen of the world, to accept this sign of the cross that is offered to you by Bishop Paschal”; it was likely commissioned by Pope Paschal I (817–824) to house relics of the “true cross” in its five hollow chambers.⁷ Clearly, the apocryphal events depicted on it had the sanction of the church.

The cross bears seven scenes depicting the Infancy of Jesus. This cycle of images, established early on in church art, customarily begins with the Annunciation to the Virgin (Luke 1:26–38, at the top of the Vatican cross) and includes the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth (Luke 1:39–56, second from top), the Journey to Bethlehem (Luke 2:4–5, left of center), 028the Nativity (Luke 2:6–7) and the Bathing of the Infant (center), the Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:1–2, right of center), and the Presentation of Jesus to Simeon in the Temple (Luke 2:25–35, below center).

On the Vatican cross, the Baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:16//Mark 1:9//Luke 3:21, bottom) has been added to the program. With its infancy cycle stretched to include the Baptism and the descent of the dove—that is, to include the Epiphany scene, the beginning of Christ’s ministry—and with the Nativity at its center, the cross celebrates the incarnation of the word of God.

Although each event—except the Bathing of the Infant—appears in the New Testament, several of the details have literary parallels only in the Christian Apocrypha. In the cruciform panel at the cross’s center, for example, we see Mary resting with the swaddled infant, who lies on a crib to her left. A white ox and a dark brown ass gaze down on Jesus. The animals are not mentioned in the canonical Gospels’ infancy narratives; they are derived from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew:⁸

On the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, holy Mary went out from the cave, and went into the stable and put her child in a manger, and an ox and an ass worshiped him. Then was fulfilled that which was said through the prophet Isaiah: “The ox knows his owner and the ass his master’s crib.”

Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 14:1

Almost ubiquitous in manger scenes, the ox and ass alone accompany Jesus in what may be the earliest extant Nativity scene—on a stone fragment of a fourth-century gabled sarcophagus (see gabled sarcophagus fragment). (The fragment may have originally come from Rome—such origins are hard to trace—but it was first published as being in the Church of Sant’Ambrogio, Milan, where today it remains part of the pulpit decorations.)

On the Vatican cross, red rays of light (extending from a bluish orb at upper right) illuminate the cavelike space in which the Nativity occurs. The light shines from an arc in heaven. In the arc is a divine figure (now partially damaged). This light is probably not the star the Magi followed—the adoration of the Magi is a separate scene on the cross—but rather the “great light” that shone at Jesus’ birth, described in the Proto-Gospel of James 19:2, Pseudo-Matthew 13 and the Arundel Gospel 13.

Directly below the Nativity, but in the same central panel, one midwife bathes Jesus as a second pours water into the cup-shaped basin. Joseph, dressed in white, sits at right. The postnatal bathing of an infant was treated as almost a sacramental act in the Greco-Roman world, and portrayals of the birth of great men 029(such as Alexander the Great) often included scenes of their bath. It was therefore natural for Christians to celebrate their Savior’s natal bath, and the scene features prominently in early art and writings. The midwives are part of the same tradition as the two women in the gynecological scene in the Proto-Gospel of James. But over the years, especially in the West, Salome’s disbelief and her subsequent punishment faded, so the midwives more often appeared as helpers and worshipers. On an eighth-century icon in the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Salome is even named Hagia Sïalome, that is, Saint Salome.

In at least two scenes in the Arabic Infancy Gospel (a translation of the Proto-Gospel of James into Arabic), Jesus’ bathwater displays curative powers. After the midwife washed Jesus with “sweet-smelling water,” the Arabic Infancy Gospel states, she poured some of the water “upon a girl…whose body was white with leprosy, and washed her with it. Immediately the girl was cleansed” (Arabic Infancy Gospel 17, see also 18).

In the Proto-Gospel of James the central figure is the Virgin Mary—in fact, the actual title of the work is Genesis Marias, or the Origins (Birth) of Mary. Scenes of Mary’s childhood and of the adventures of her parents, Anna and Joachim, appear frequently—in the marvelous triumphal arch mosaic of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (mid-fifth century), in stained glass windows in several medieval cathedrals and in Giotto’s frescoes covering the walls of the Capella degli Scrovegni (the Arena Chapel, c. 1304) in Padua. The scenes on the Vatican cross reflect this same fascination with Mary’s life. To the left of the Nativity panel is one such scene, which, on first glance, might appear to be the Flight into Egypt—if it weren’t for two puzzling details: Mary carries no baby in her arms, and two men, rather than just Joseph, accompany her. Once again, the Proto-Gospel of James helps us decipher the scene:

Now there went out a decree from the king Augustus that all (inhabitants) of Bethlehem in Judea should be enrolled. And Joseph said: “I shall enroll my sons, but what shall I do with this child [Mary]? How shall I enroll her? As my wife? I am ashamed to do that. Or as my daughter? But the children of Israel know that she is not my daughter. The day of the Lord itself will do as [t]he [Lord] wills.”

And he saddled his ass and sat her on it; his son led it; and [Joseph] followed…And Joseph turned round and saw her sad, and said within himself: “Perhaps that which is within her is paining her.”

Proto-Gospel of James 17:1–2; Pseudo-Matthew 13

The biblical account does not mention Joseph’s son by a previous marriage: “Joseph also went…to the city of David called Bethlehem…to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child” (Luke 2:4–5). Only the apocryphal story allows us to identify the figures on the cross as the pregnant Mary journeying to Bethlehem with Joseph and his son from an earlier marriage. A splendid mosaic, dating to about 1320, from Kariye Djami (or the Church of Christ in Chora) in Istanbul (Constantinople) attests to the continuing popularity of this apocryphal account of the Journey to Bethlehem, which became a standard depiction in medieval church art (see mosaic from Kariye Djami).

The Bible never tells us what Jesus looked like. 030The Christian Apocrypha are the only literature of the early church to describe Jesus physically. Virtually all of these texts describe Jesus as appearing to the faithful in many forms; a principal form is Jesus as a “beautiful youth.”⁹ The earliest depictions of Jesus present the same image. In catacomb paintings, mosaics, frescoes and sculpted reliefs, Jesus consistently appears as a beardless young man, often with long, wavy hair. Greco-Roman art, in which Heracles, Apollo, the divine Caesars and other saviors and savior-gods were portrayed as young and beautiful, likely influenced the portrayal of Jesus in the texts and pictures of the Apocrypha. Only in the late fourth and early fifth centuries do images of an older, bearded Christ begin to emerge.

Although the gender of Jesus in some early Christian art is much debated, newly discovered Christian Apocrypha from Nag Hammadi clearly describe Jesus as both male and female. In the Apocryphon of John (2:9–14), the Trinity is “I am the Father; I am the Mother; I am the Son.” The so-called Trimorphic Protennoia (4:4–26) has “I am the Voice…in the likeness of a female…in the thought of the likeness of my masculinity…I am androgynous…” It is not only in the Nag Hammadi writings that Jesus appears to the faithful as a female. A Christian 031prophetess, Priscilla, reported that “appearing in the form of a woman, radiantly robed, Christ came to me and implanted wisdom in me…”¹⁰ One of the most famous early statuettes of Jesus, now in the Museo Nazionale della Terme, Rome, was first catalogued as a “seated poetess” because of its obvious feminine characteristics (see Jesus statue). To some degree, every culture sees itself reflected in Christ. As art historian Thomas Mathews puts it, “If a youth might see Christ as young and an old man as aged, why should not a woman see Christ as feminine?”¹¹

The stories of the Christian Apocrypha are not confined to the life of Mary or Jesus, and neither is the art. The apocryphal Acts of Paul, Thomas, John the Evangelist, Peter, Andrew and Matthew, Bartholomew, and Philip have all contributed to the pictorial tradition.

One of the most intriguing apostolic figures to emerge from the early church is a companion of Paul, the virgin Thecla. Although the Bible never mentions this famous martyr, Thecla is a central character in the apocryphal Acts of Paul—the chapters involving her have even come to be known as the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Like the canonical Acts of the Apostles, this apocryphon relates activities of the apostle Paul after the Crucifixion. It dates to the mid-second through the third centuries.

The story of Paul and Thecla begins in Iconium, Turkey, where Paul’s speeches so inspire the young virgin that she abandons her fiancé and family to follow him. Dating to about 430 C.E., an ivory plaque on one side of a small ivory box from Rome (see Roman ivory plaque), depicts the steadfast Thecla gazing at the apostle as she listens “night and day to the word of the virgin life as it was spoken by Paul” (Acts of Paul 3:7). Thecla’s fiancé and the townsmen accuse Paul of corrupting their wives, and Paul is thrown in jail. When Thecla is found in Paul’s jail cell, Paul is beaten, and Thecla’s mother recommends that she be burned to death. But, though “a great fire blazed up the fire did not touch her…and Thecla was saved” (3:22)—the first of many remarkable martyrdoms for Thecla. Thecla then follows Paul to Antioch, where a prominent citizen named Alexander tries to buy her. When Thecla refuses and humiliates him by knocking off his crown, Alexander has her thrown into an arena with lions, bears and bulls. Thecla polarizes the citizens of Antioch during her trials, setting female against male. A lioness defends Thecla to the death against the lions. Then the women in the audience, using a kind of chemical warfare, throw into the arena flowers and perfumes that put the fierce beasts to sleep. When Alexander sends in bulls to draw and quarter Thecla, the ropes attaching her to the bulls miraculously snap. Thecla’s martyrdoms were very popular in early Christian art. On ampullae (small flasks for holy oil carried by pilgrims), on altarpieces and in church decorations, Thecla appears standing in prayer, flanked by beasts or surrounded by flames.

It is not difficult to see these Thecla stories—in which a sort of female element takes her side and saves her—as an end run around a growing patriarchy in the early church. In the Acts of Paul 34, Thecla baptizes herself and begins to preach throughout Seleucia (c. 43). In his treatise On Baptism, Tertullian (c. 160–220) expresses his disapproval of the Acts of Paul because the elder (presbyter) who reportedly wrote the book gave “license to women to preach” by his treatment of Thecla.¹²

We do not know whether the Thecla legends are 056whole-cloth fiction or legendary narratives about a historical figure. In any event, Thecla remained an important apostolic figure throughout the history of the church, and her story has resonance even today, especially in the Orthodox Church and in art from Barcelona (Catalonia) and northern Italy. The high altar in the Cathedral of Tarragona, Spain, is decorated entirely with scenes of her adventures; El Greco painted her in about 1600 with the Virgin and Saint Ines; a painting by Tiepolo from 1758/9 depicts Thecla saving a city from the plague (see Saint Thecla sketch); a recently decorated Greek Orthodox church in Wichita, Kansas, contains a portrait of the saint; and a contemporary painting by the American artist Warrington Colescott shows three wolves attacking Thecla, who is nailed to a cross. A pale winged angel hovers above the scene. Colescott’s painting is a classical example of what art historians call a “corruption” of the iconography. That is, the more well-known martyrdom of apostles—crucifixion—takes the place of Thecla fighting the beasts and surviving the fire. Further, the lions, bears and man-eating sea lions of the Acts of Paul have become wolves (Colescott is from Wisconsin).

Certain apocryphal legends may have appeared in art long before they were written down. For example, an ivory carving of Peter striking the wall of his prison cell appears on one side of the early-fifth-century ivory box discussed earlier. As Peter’s staff hits the rock wall, water gushes onto his guards, thereby fulfilling their desire to be baptized into the faith. One of the most frequently depicted scenes in the late third and early fourth centuries, the story of Peter striking the rock is not included in the New Testament. In fact, the earliest extant manuscript to mention Peter striking the rock is the Martyrium beati Petri apostoli a Lino episcopo conscriptum (The Martyrdom of the Blessed Apostle Peter Written by Bishop Linus). This text is ascribed to Linus, who supposedly followed Peter as bishop of Rome; there is no English translation. This sixth- or seventh-century text is one of several adaptations of texts that, according to several scholars, may derive from a late-second- or third-century version of the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Peter. Thus, the earliest extant text to contain this scene occurs some two centuries after the scene appears in art.

This legend about Peter is clearly derivative of the account of Moses striking the rock in Exodus 17:7. Peter, the story implies, inherited not only the keys to the Kingdom but also authority over church law; he is the direct heir of Moses. The popularity of the scene is likely related to the Church of Rome’s desire to promote itself as center of the Christian world by firmly establishing Peter—the “rock” on whom the church was founded (Matthew 16:18)—as the head of the first Christian community. After the fourth century, as the Petrine primacy became firmly established, Peter striking the rock became a rare image.

Interest in the Christian Apocrypha is growing. The discovery at Nag Hammadi of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (a hitherto unknown Christian apocryphon) and several other unknown gospels has demonstrated that the historian cannot really know what was going on in the early church if his or her research is confined to the canonical writings. Early Christian art provides decisive evidence that the church did not banish the Apocrypha to the shelves of students of esoterica, but encouraged all worshipers to treasure these stories.

Gazing in adoration at the newborn Jesus, three shepherds join Joseph and Mary in the manger in an early-15th-century painting of The Nativity, attributed to the Netherlandish artist Robert Campin. Outside the rustic shed appear two women, the midwives who attended Jesus’ birth. Midwives! What are they doing in the picture? The Bible does not say that any women other than Mary were present at the birth. Granted, Campin has taken some common liberties with the biblical story, transforming the Bethlehem countryside into a mountainous northern European landscape and depicting the baby in the nude, although the Gospel of […]