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.

The episode of the Annunciation and Mary's coming to Elizabeth is a detailed and dramatized (in accordance with the genre) retelling of the Gospel of Luke with a verbatim repetition of individual phrases. The Annunciation takes place in the absence of Joseph, who goes to work as a carpenter. This was supposed to explain why Mary went to Elizabeth. In Luke's story, the story reflects the desire to unite the legends of John the Baptist and Jesus, which existed separately, to emphasize the connection between the two preachers from their very birth; Everyday authenticity did not interest the author of the Third Gospel. The Protoevangelium describes in detail the reaction of the returning husband and discovering the pregnancy of his ward (there is a hint of Joseph's reaction in the Gospel of Matthew, but there Mary marries him, already pregnant, and Joseph wants to secretly let her go.- 1.18-19).

On the denunciation of the scribe Anna (the author again introduces the motif of a Jewish enemy, as at the beginning of the story), Joseph and Mary are summoned to the temple and forced to undergo the test of "the water of jealousy". It was an ancient custom according to which a woman suspected of adultery was given water mixed with mud to drink.6 If she drank this mixture without consequences, she was declared chaste. In the story, both drink "bitter water"; Naturally, Joseph and Mary go through the test of "God's judgment" painlessly.

In all episodes after Maria's marriage, the place of action is unclear. It is implied that everything takes place in Jerusalem: it is unlikely that the informant Annas ran from Nazareth to the high priest and back. Nazareth does not appear here, not because, of course, the author did not know about Nazareth, which was written about in the New Testament gospels, but because for him this detail ran counter to the plot in which the episode with the denunciation, the trial by water, was introduced, which creates dramatic tension, showing the scribe who sought to harm the mother of Jesus... In addition, the author did not know the real Nazareth, had little idea where exactly it was located. The uncertainty of the scene allowed him to introduce pseudo-realistic details, with which he colored the narrative at his own discretion.

As in the Gospel of Luke, Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem for a census (added detail - together with their sons). An episode is inserted into the narrative that falls out of the general descriptive tone of this passage: Mary cries and laughs during the journey. When Joseph asks her what is the matter, she replies that she sees two nations before her eyes: one is weeping, the other is rejoicing and rejoicing. Here the Jews (the people who weep: at the time of the creation of the Protoevangelium the memory of the terrible defeat of the Second Jewish Revolt was fresh) and the Gentile Christians (the people who rejoice) are openly contrasted. The vision of Mary reflects the general trend of the Protoevangelium, but its description falls out of context (characteristically, the text first says that Joseph went behind Mary, and then that he turned around and saw her weeping and laughing). It seems that these phrases are taken from some other work, although this may have been done by the author of the original story of the birth of Mary himself.

What follows is a description of the birth of Jesus. Jesus, according to this gospel, is born in a cave, in a desert place; the birth of Jesus is the birth of the light that fills the entire cave. The author used a non-canonical tradition here, since it had a much stronger theological orientation than being born in a home (the Gospel of Matthew) or in a manger (the Gospel of Luke, in which the atmosphere of simplicity and poverty is emphasized, as opposed to the high destiny of the child), the cave is a symbol of darkness, of ignorance, which is illuminated by the Light of Jesus. But the author of the Protoevangelium could not ignore the legend popular among Christians about Jesus in a manger for cattle, so close to the first Christians from the lower strata of society: the manger appeared in connection with the persecution of Herod; Mary hides the baby Jesus there.

In the description of the birth of Jesus, additional characters are introduced in comparison with the canonical texts - the midwife and Salome (although in the Bodmer papyrus these episodes are abbreviated). Both of these characters were supposed to testify to the divinity and miraculous properties of Jesus from birth.

After the miracle of Salome, there follows a description of the worship of magicians. Characteristically, of the two variants in the canonical Gospels: the worship of the shepherds in Luke and the worship of the magicians in Matthew, the author chooses Matthew's version, although on the whole he follows the story of Luke (the meeting of Mary with Elizabeth, the annunciation, the census in Bethlehem): the magicians-oriental sages and soothsayers, bringing rich gifts, were closer to the author's tendency - to present Jesus from the moment of birth as a universal deity, in whom the Eastern soothsayers who came from afar believed, just as the tendencies of the Gospel of Luke were more in line with the poor shepherds who were the first to welcome the birth of the Messiah. The whole episode with the magicians and Herod is a close to the text retelling of the corresponding passage in Matthew, with slight deviations (Herod is represented as a formidable governor sitting in the praetorium and interrogating the chief priests and scribes).