The Gospel of Mark says nothing about the birth of Jesus, it begins with a description of baptism, just like the Judeo-Christian gospels. Since for Mark Jesus' activity as messiah begins with his baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, he mentions his earthly mother in passing.

In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Joseph's genealogies are given somewhat different from each other: his family is traced back to David, since, according to Jewish beliefs, the messiah must come from the family of Davidids. When legends about Joseph's descent from this family were formed and genealogies were constructed, Joseph was probably still considered the father of Jesus (although in the Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew, according to Epiphanius, this constructed genealogy was absent). However, the same Gospels also set forth the myth of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus by Mary from the Holy Spirit, which began to take shape at the time of their creation. In connection with this myth, designed to emphasize the single essence of God and Christ, the image of Mary begins to stand out in the Christian tradition.

The most detailed account of the Immaculate Conception is in the Gospel of Luke. Its author introduced a description of the Annunciation - the appearance of an angel to Mary, who announced to her the miracle of conception from the Holy Spirit. The Annunciation is, as it were, a duplication of the episode described in Luke earlier - the announcement by an angel to the aged Zachariah about the birth of John (the future John the Baptist). Both characters are surprised by the news, and both ask how this can be. However, then the stories diverge:

Zacharias is punished for doubting, and Mary, having believed, begins to praise God. It is possible that the episode with the Annunciation was introduced by the author of the Gospel of Luke under the influence of the stories about John the Baptist, with which he was well acquainted. He introduces into the narrative Mary's meeting with Elizabeth, the wife of Zachariah, with whom Mary lived for three months before giving birth. In the further exposition in Luke, the mother of Jesus is mentioned in the episode in the Temple in Jerusalem (this episode will be discussed in more detail in the analysis of the Gospel of childhood), but then she practically disappears from the Gospel stories (in the three canonical Gospels, Jesus renounces his mother, calling his disciples mother and brothers.- Mark 3:33-34; Matt. 12:48-50; Luke 8:19-21). The mother of Jesus is not even named among those present at the crucifixion, although Mark lists the names of the women who watched the execution from afar: Mary, the mother of James the Lesser and Josiah, Mary Magdalene and Salome (15.40); Matthew writes the same, only instead of Salome he mentions the mother of the sons of Zebedee (27.56); Luke simply says, "the women who came with Jesus out of Galilee" (23.55). Only according to the Gospel of John, Mary, the mother of Jesus, stands near the cross, and Jesus entrusts her to his beloved disciple (meaning John), in whose name the gospel is written. In the Acts of the Apostles it is mentioned that she remained in prayer after the execution of Jesus together with the apostles and his brothers (1.14). This is almost all the information about it contained in the canon.

The absence of any reliable information about the mother of Jesus in the New Testament tradition gave the opponents of Christians, primarily Orthodox Jews, the opportunity to put forward their own version of her life. This version was set forth by Celsus in the "True Word". Origen polemicized with him, citing extensive quotations from the work of Celsus. Celsus, referring to the stories of the Jews, wrote that Mary was a spinner (one of the least respected female professions in ancient times) and gave birth to an illegitimate son from the Roman soldier Panther. A similar version is contained in the Talmud, where the soldier is called Pandira. In contrast to this legend, we have no reason to see in it some kind of historical nucleus-Christians of the second century spread their stories about the Mother of God, in which there was an increase in supernatural elements in accordance with the general attraction to the miraculous and the tradition of veneration of female deities, which had its roots in deep antiquity, especially in the East.

A detailed account of Mary's childhood and marriage is contained in the so-called "Jacob's Story of the Birth of Mary," or "The Book of James," as Origen called it (Corn. in Matth. X. 17). In scientific literature, this work is usually called the Protoevangelium of James. The popularity of this work was such that, despite its apocryphal nature, in the early Middle Ages it was translated into many languages (Syrian, Coptic, Armenian); several medieval manuscripts have survived (with a long and short edition); the earliest text of the Protoevangelium of James was found on a papyrus in Egypt published in 1958 (Bodmer papyrus). It gives the title: "The Birth of Mary. The Revelation of James". The papyrus dates back to the third century, but the manuscript seems to have also undergone revisions, with some abridgements compared to the supposed original. The proto-Gospel of James, as Origen knew it, was written about 200 A.D., perhaps 150 A.D. The uncertainty of the dating is due to the fact that the author knew the canonical gospels well, therefore, he wrote after the written tradition of the New Testament had already been formed, at the same time some other sources or oral stories were used there, in particular, according to the Proto-Gospel, Jesus was born in a cave. This version of the legend was known to Justin, as well as the version of the descent of Mary herself from the line of David, but it is not clear whether Justin took this information from the Book of James or from oral stories that preceded its writing. The latter is more likely, since we have no other data on Justin's use of this book. In any case, the Protoevangelium was created in the second half to the end of the second century, probably in Egypt.

In the manuscripts of the Proto-Gospel that have come down to us, there are inserts. Thus, at the moment of Jesus' birth, Joseph suddenly begins to speak in the first person; the style of this passage differs from the rest of the text of the Gospel, it was introduced, apparently, from another work written in the name of Joseph. A relatively late insertion is also the prayer of Salome. Both of these passages are absent from the Bodmer papyrus. The Proto-Gospel is written in the name of James, the brother of Jesus and the son of Joseph from his first marriage. The creation of the Gospel, which tells of the miraculous birth of Mary and the still more miraculous birth of Jesus in the name of the eyewitness James, sanctified the legend of the Virgin Birth and was a kind of hidden polemic with those who did not recognize the birth of Jesus by the Holy Spirit; Their teachings seemed to be refuted by one of the most revered Christian figures, the leader of the Jerusalem community.

In general, except for some insertions, this is a work written by the hand of one author. The paucity of tradition led to the fact that, with the exception of the motif of the birth in a cave, which expressed the idea of the light shining in the darkness, and the descent of Mary from David, the stories of which were to appear in connection with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the author of the Protoevangelium constructed his story on the basis of various sources not directly related to Mary, as well as those few pieces of information. which are contained in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (mainly Luke), and the author included verbatim passages from these Gospels in his text.

The protoevangelium begins with a description of how Mary's future parents, Joachim and Anna, grieve over their childlessness. This beginning echoes the story of Samuel in the Old Testament (1 Samuel, in the Hebrew text - 1 Samuel), according to which Elkan's wife Hannah (even the name of both women coincides) did not have children, and she grieved over this and prayed (Hannah's prayer also appears in the Protoevangelium). Hannah, Elkan's wife, vows - like Mary's mother - to dedicate her child to God. So, the general development of the plot was borrowed by the author of the story of the birth of Mary from the Old Testament. However, the author was apparently not a Jew and did not know the religious life of Judea properly, or, perhaps, deliberately ignored it: he wrote at a time when the Temple of Jerusalem no longer existed, the bulk of the Jews were scattered, he wrote for non-Jewish Christians who spoke Greek. Inconsistencies with the former historical reality did not bother him, he wrote history according to the laws of the widespread literary genre, in which fidelity to reality was not needed. And inconsistencies and inaccuracies begin from the very first lines: because of childlessness, not only Anna, but also Joachim suffers reproach. In Samuel's story, reproaches are directed only against the woman (Elkan had children by another wife). Characteristically, these reproaches coincide verbatim in both works. "The Lord has shut your womb" - this phrase was directly included by the author of the Protoevangelium in his book. In the story of Mary's parents, Joachim is actually excommunicated from the temple, not allowed to make sacrifices, which was unbelievable. But this enhances the drama of the story and contrasts Jehoiakim with the cruel Jews. Joachim and Anna separately receive a sign that they will have a child. In Samuel's story, his future mother is proclaimed by the high priest. In the Protoevangelium, the sign is given directly by God through an angel, here the above-mentioned motif from the Gospel of Luke, associated with the birth of John the Baptist, is used; from the point of view of a Christian believer in the second century, the Jewish high priest could not transmit a sign that came from God. After the birth of Mary, Anna says a prayer of thanksgiving, which also has parallels with the Book of Samuel. Finally, when Mary is three years old, she is taken to the temple in accordance with her vow. This vow is borrowed from the story of Samuel, but the initiation into the temple of a girl who lives in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple is a completely impossible story. Does this mean that the author was so ignorant of Jewish customs? After all, he knew the Old Testament quite well. Most likely, we have here a deliberate disregard for these customs, a desire to emphasize that in the story of Mary everything was exclusive - including her stay in the temple.

Mary remained in the temple until the age of twelve. It is interesting to note that Mary ate special food that an angel brought her. This mention is not just another fantastically miraculous detail, it is based on the idea of a "special" body and a "special" bodily life of the mother of Christ. The author of the Protoevangelium transferred to Mary those ideas that were developed in Christianity of the second century in relation to the image of Christ. Already in the Gospel of John, Jesus says to his disciples, refusing to eat: "... I have food that you don't know... My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work" (4:32-34). True, here the rejection of earthly food is allegorical, but the Gnostics had a teaching about a special way of feeding Jesus, associated with a different, non-human, corporeality. For example, one of the most prominent Gnostic theologians, Valentinus, according to Clement of Alexandria, asserted that Jesus ate and drank in a special way, without giving away food (that is, without processing it); the power of abstinence in him was such that the food in him did not decompose, since he himself was not subject to decomposition. Echoes of this teaching were intertwined in the story of Mary's birth with ancient pagan beliefs:

The gods of the Greeks drank a special drink - nectar and ate ambrosia. Such an interweaving of traditional mythological motifs, mysticism, and vulgarized philosophical doctrines was characteristic of "grassroots literature" and reflected certain trends in the development of Christianity.

When Mary is twelve years old, it is said in the Protoevangelium, the priests, at the behest of an angel, summon the elders to entrust Mary to one of them for a kind of guardianship. This is how the carpenter Joseph appears in the story of Mary - an old man, a widower. The image of Joseph the Elder is the creation of apocryphal literature, which sought to fill the gaps in the original Gospel narratives, in which Joseph does not appear at all after the birth of Jesus and his return from Egypt (according to the Gospel of Matthew) ("the parents" of Jesus are mentioned only once more in Luke in the story of their visit to the Jerusalem Temple together with the boy Jesus.-2.42-43). Joseph's old age made it possible to explain the absence of mention of him during the period of Jesus' activity; in the Gospel of Mark, the people of Nazareth refer to Jesus only as "the son of Mary," without mentioning the name of the father (6.3). Joseph was apparently supposed to have died by the time Jesus preached. Joseph's old age also made it possible to introduce adult sons from his first marriage 4 and thereby confirm Mary's virginity.

Joseph was chosen to be Mary's guardian husband because a dove flew out of his staff, an image that was to be associated in the minds of believers with the holy spirit that descended on Jesus in the form of a dove.

Even in the details of Mary's later life, according to the concept of the author of the Protoevangelium, her exclusivity is revealed. So, by lot, she gets to weave the most expensive fabric, a real scarlet robe, purple. How different this symbol is from the symbolism of the first Christians, for whom harlots were dressed in purple and scarlet, and the main harlot is Rome, as it is depicted in the Apocalypse of John 5. But purple also had a hidden, mystical meaning (at least this is how it was interpreted by Byzantine theologians): the spinning of purple, as it were, heralds the "spinning" of the infant's body from the mother's blood.