Supposedly Joachim and Ann were a childless couple who had Mary later in life. They dedicated her to God and presented her at the temple at the age of three to be raised there. She stayed there until puberty at which time a guardian had to be found for her. The guardian ended up being Joseph, who was an older man.
There are a few problems with the narrative, such as that John 19:25 states that the sister of Mary (Salome, the mother of James and John) was among those present at the cross. Which means that Mary wasn't an only child. But my main objection to the narrative is that it is an example of awful parenting, and it is highly unlikely that a little girl would be raised in the temple.
From wikipedia: "Although a number of church councils condemned it as an inauthentic writing of the New Testament, this did little to diminish its popularity." For sure it has always been popular around here, I think I have listened to about 60 years of hearing it mentioned in homilies on Marian feast days, and the feast day of Joachim and Ann. This may be a regional thing, and others may not have heard of the Protoevangelium.
There are a number of non-canonical gospels, an interesting rabbit hole to go down, depending on the flavor you prefer. Some are kind of a Catholic X-files, the stories *they* don't want you to hear. Some are more pagan or gnostic than Christian, A few, such as the Gospel of Barnabas, have Islamic echoes. But none are accepted by the church as anything other than interesting stories.
The homily did end up with some good reflections on the role of grandparents. Which most of us there were. My mother had a devotion to Sts. Joachim and Ann, since she had 12 grandchildren. She had chosen Ann as her Confirmation saint, a long time before the grandchildren.
Obviously Jesus did have grandparents; whether they lived to see him is an unanswered question.
The pastor of our local Orthodox Church makes a clear distinction between what we celebrate as historical about Mary, e.g. the Annunciation and the Virgin birth which are in the gospels and other items such as the Immaculate Conception (which Orthodox do not celebrate), the Assumption (which they call the Dormition /Falling Asleep of Mary) and the Presentation of Mary in the Temple (which they do celebrate). For those things which are not in the Gospel, he calls these things the reflection of saints, theologians, and bishops about what they think "ought" to have happened. These things have a certain reasonableness but it does not mean they are to be believed as historical.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to know what the Eastern churches think about the beliefs which aren't spelled out in Scripture.
DeleteI actually don't have a problem with the ones such as the Assumption and Immaculate Conception, which I feel are theologically based. The Presentation of Mary in the temple is another story. It would make sense to me if it was understood in a similar way to the Presentation of Jesus, where the parents presented the child to God, similar to how we would do Baptism of an infant, and then took him or her home. But abandoning a three year old is heartbreaking.
The pronunciation of "protoevangelium" would put most Masses I've attended to sleep. I suppose I've heard Joachim and Ann come up from time to time, but they just bounce off, and I've never heard a homilist claim to be considering the p.-e., much less to preach on it. You are much more like the Illuminati than we are here, where even our baseball team has COVID-19, and the big fool says to push on.
ReplyDeleteYears of attendance at Catholic discussion group has sensitized me to the way Catholics (and we are not alone at this) glom onto the weird stuff and give it more attention than the business at hand. Did you know a Jesuit converted George Washington on his death bed? That makes sense, since Mary had already appeared to him at Valley Forge and told him to fight on. (I've seen a copy of the gen-you-wine painting!) As a boy Jesus made a clay model of a bird, and it flew away!! (That's in the Gospel of Thomas, I think.) And on and on like that. (GW had a Masonic funeral, btw.) And let's not start with visionaries and locutionists. Remember the best seller that decoded the Bible -- by adding the missing vowels -- so it told us more than Nostradamus? So many people can work up so much enthusiasm for such things that they can't find time to love God, much less their neighbor. It's what keeps QAnon going.
It's out there, as they used to say in The X Files. Back in the 90s when younger son was a teenager I used to bond with him watching X Files on Friday night.
DeleteAbout clay pigeons and such, I think I shared the Christmas carol where the child Jesus built the snobby neighbor kids a bridge of the beams of the sun. The Cherry Tree Carol is pretty bad too.
And of course the third secret of Fatima is always good for some mileage.
The picture of Mary appearing to George Washington is a new one on me!
Imo, these legends are important. I don't know whether children were dedicated to the temple in Mary's time, but many girls of the ruling class in the early Christian period were consecrated to the Church in thanksgiving for events like winning a war. I suppose in some ways, it was a milder form of virgin sacrifice.
ReplyDeleteThese girls were given a good education with the expectation that they would use their influence to raise the prestige of the nation or state through their monasteries/abbeys. Many became saints.
The apocryphal story of Mary would have made sense to an early medieval audience familiar with the consecration of virgins. It would make perfect sense that, raised in this environment, she would be good and humble, and chosen to be Christ's mother.
The only child of elderly parents would itself have been seen as a minor miracle. It reverbs in John the Baptist and back to Abraham and Isaac, the children being marked for holiness.
I like the Orthodox tolerance of these stories. It strikes me as rather Puritanical and joyless to try to root them out, akin to the Jesus Seminar people trying to purify Scripture.
If the stories pervert the faith, they need correction. If they deepen it, maybe leave them alone?
I'm fine with leaving them alone, after all they've been around for centuries. And I can't get with the Jesus Seminar, at all. What grates on my nerves in some of these stories is the way the child has no agency. I'm sure that being dedicated to God and given an education would be better than being married off to some lout at the age of twelve or thirteen.
DeleteI've always liked the Kahlil Gibran quote, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you." But that would definitely not be early medieval thought.
This is somewhat off subject, but every year the story goes around about how Catholic in England, unable to teach religion, devised The Twelve Days of Christmas as a catechism --1 God (golden ring); two natures in Christ (doves); 3 members of the Trinity (swans) up to 12 apostles (Lords leaping). The immediately obvious problem with the theory is that there is no number to account for "popes ruling," and the Anglicans taught everything else. Yet every year I get excited emails about this.
ReplyDeleteHave you heard the one about the origins of candy canes being made in a J shape standing for Jesus, and the red stripes are for his blood? Don't know if that has any basis in fact.
DeleteIf you trust Wikipedia it does:
DeleteIn 1670, in Cologne, Germany, the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral, wishing to remedy the noise caused by children in his church during the Living Crèche tradition of Christmas Eve, asked a local candy maker for some "sugar sticks" for them. In order to justify the practice of giving candy to children during worship services, he asked the candy maker to add a crook to the top of each stick, which would help children remember the shepherds who visited the infant Jesus. In addition, he used the white color of the converted sticks to teach children about the Christian belief in the sinless life of Jesus.
Himmel! Who knew?
My son's Catholic kindergarten did a Christmas program highlighting the Twelve Days as a hidden catechism to keep the True Faith alive during the establishment of false beliefs under bad King Henry 8. It was slightly awkward given that Raber was still an Episcopalian at the time.
DeleteWell, I have to disagree. As a former Catholic who learned as an adult that a whole lot of stuff I was taught turns out not to be true, I tend to lean towards telling the truth. Even to kids. One of the off-putting things for me for years was the perpetuation of stories based on "tradition". I once looked up every reference to Mary in the NT. There are very few. Of course her parents aren't mentioned at all, much less any of the other stories based on "tradition". Even the NT stories aren't really reliable, as they were written decades after Jesus died and by people who only wrote down the way the community had come to understand Jesus' life and teachings. We have no idea who they were, or if he ever said even a single word attributed to him in the gospels. But at least they convey as sense of what he taught. But the teachings based exclusively on "tradition" are worse - such as the Assumption. We did let our kids believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny, but they were over that by age 7 or so. Why foist stuff on children such as the Twelve Days of Christmas or Candy Cane myths? They are demonstrably false, and can eventually cause older kids to become cynical along with a whole lot of official teachings.
DeleteSo the12 days of Christmas myth is still out there. My niece posted it on FB last Christmas. Snopes has the true story.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/twelve-days-christmas/
And the Smithsonian weighs in on the candy cane myths.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/we-dont-know-the-origins-of-the-candy-cane-but-they-almost-certainly-were-not-christian-157380385/
Was ist? Next they'll find out Franz Gruber's organ wasn't broken. He didn't even have an organ. He just picked up this tune on Tin Pan Alley and learned to play it with three chords on his guitar.
DeleteTom, LOL about Franz Gruber and his guitar picking. We already know that a few beloved hymn tunes started out as drinking songs.
DeleteBut I guess there's the whole art thing, that part of it is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. The meaning that it holds for the person isn't wrong, even if they understand it differently than the author or composer. So the Twelve Days of Christmas or a candy cane as a catechism lesson isn't so far off the mark if it gets kids to consider a deeper meaning.
BTW, I just read that your favorite congressperson, Louie Gohmert, tested positive for Covid. I dont wish it on anybody, but it is a little bit of karmic justice since he has been out and about ostentatiously not wearing a mask.
DeleteTed Yoho was closing in on him, so he had to do something stupid. Which is absolutely no problem for him
DeleteLouie is going to be taking hydrochloroquine. And the stupid just keeps on coming.
DeleteHe's probably been listening to that wacky doctor who believes a lot of health problems can be traced to demon sperm.
DeleteYeah, having unprotected sex with demons is never a good idea.
DeleteUnrelated, I just read a primo social media discussion insult, "Don't be epistemologically obtuse." Kind of hard to think of a comeback, if you can even figure out what it means.
ReplyDeleteLike Tom, I've been spared homilies on the Protoevangelium of James, no doubt because I don't attend daily mass and so never hear anything preached about Ann and Joachim. I don't think I've heard this tale before about Mary being given as a girl to the temple to be raised. It sounds a lot like Samuel's story. Manry giving birth to the savior is somehow the new Samuel anointing the new David? Could be something that an ancient writer with a passing knowledge of Judaism might have come up with. But on the whole, for a scriptural parallel (although not without its problems), I'll stick with Elizabeth, Zechariah and John, another tale which, if I'm not mistaken, never is heard by those who only attend Sunday mass.
ReplyDeleteJim, you likely missed out on hearing another interesting homily, on the dirty rotten underwear of Jeremiah 13:1-11 a couple of days ago.
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