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).

With the persecution of Herod and the attempt to save Jesus from them, the story of Mary itself ends. What follows is a completely different story related to John the Baptist and the death of his father Zechariah. This story is taken from the legends of John the Baptist and has nothing to do with the story of Mary. In all likelihood, it was not in the original, since Origen does not know the version given in the Protoevangelium about the murder of Zechariah in the temple, although he refers to the Book of James when speaking about the brothers of Jesus. It was added to the original text in late antiquity (legends about the rescue of Elizabeth in grief and the death of Zachariah were widespread in the Middle Ages). In this story, a miraculous, fairy-tale element is intensified: the mountain partes in front of Elizabeth and hides her with the baby. The death of Zechariah has no basis in canonical texts. Perhaps it was constructed by the author in connection with the words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (23.35), where he calls upon the heads of the scribes and Pharisees all the blood of righteousness, "from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar"7. The author of the story of the death of Zechariah connected this death with the persecution of Herod, who demanded the extradition of little John 8. By order of Herod, Zechariah, who had been brought out as high priest (although, according to canonical tradition, he was a priest who performed his duties in line with others, "from the Abian line"), was killed for refusing to say where his son was; His blood was miraculously petrified to testify to the crime. The story of Zechariah is connected at the end with the story of Jesus by the introduction of the high priest Simeon, who is chosen to replace the murdered Zechariah. In the Protoevangelium it is said that this Simeon was prophesied that he would not die until he saw Christ. Here again the narrative uses the Gospel of Luke, which speaks of a man named Simeon who was given such a prophecy (the author of the Proto-Gospel artificially makes him the high priest chosen after the death of Zechariah in order to link the two parts of the narrative and be able to return to Jesus).

The apocrypha ends with the words of James, who declares himself the author of the story, he returned to Jerusalem after the death of Herod, and until then he had been hiding in the desert. It is not clear why he had to go into hiding: after all, Herod was looking for infants in order to destroy the future king of the Jews, and not adults. Perhaps this refers to Herod Antipas, or perhaps the name of James is associated with the legend of his stay in the desert (perhaps the real James was related to the Ebionite Essenes?), and the author of the Protoevangelium introduced this detail for reliability.

On the whole, the Protoevangelium of James is a mixture of various Christian legends, as well as ideas about ancient ancient deities introduced into Christianity. In the Protoevangelium of James, the narrative element prevails over the theological, but even there, under everyday details (or, more precisely, supposedly everyday) and fairy-tale miracles, there is a doctrinal tendency associated with the idea of Jesus as a deity, whose miraculous properties were inherent in his mother. In this work, one can feel the peculiarly processed influence of the Gnostics. It was not just an entertaining read, it met the religious needs of the majority of Christians, for whom the dogmatic disputes between the supporters of Gnosticism and the orthodox trend were incomprehensible: they adapted teachings, sometimes hostile to each other, to their perception of Christianity.

The Protoevangelium of James was created in an environment in which the New Testament Gospels were known and revered, but they were not yet perceived as "canonical": their text could be freely handled, supplemented, and the order of the narrative could be changed. The episode of Christ's birth in the cave shows that along with the New Testament, another tradition was revered.

The story of Mary's birth was extremely popular among Christians in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Church could not recognize the Proto-Gospel as canonical: it was created too late, the fabulous details, although reinterpreted by theologians, contrasted with the narrative of the Gospels of the New Testament. Jerome sharply opposed this work; in the fifth century it was included in the list of forbidden books. Opposition to him was especially strong in the Western Church until the sixteenth century, when Pius V excluded the service of Joachim from the Latin Trebnik, but then it was restored. The Proto-Gospel was especially popular in the East: it was read, interpreted, and provided the basis for a number of feasts of the Mother of God, in particular, the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Entry into the Temple. But even in the East it is sometimes mentioned in the lists of "detached books". The "Tale of Jacob" came to Russia in the twelfth century; as early as the fourteenth century, this story is found in the lists of forbidden books 9. The formation of the cult of the Mother of God contributed to the popularity of this apocrypha. The veneration of Mary absorbed elements of the mystery cult of the Great Mother - a deity that united the images of various pagan goddesses (Isis, Cybele, Astarte, Artemis, etc.), perceived as her hypostases. In the eyes of his worshippers, this deity was not only the ruler of all living things, but also the bearer of supreme justice, the protector of people. This last feature was then especially clearly manifested in the cult of the Mother of God-Intercessor.

The Protoevangelium of James laid the foundation for the creation of various legends about Mary: at the end of the fourth century, an anonymous apocrypha "On the Assumption of Mary" appeared, written in the same vein as the Protoevangelium. It told about the Dormition (not death) and her ascension to heaven. The apocrypha contains a description of many miracles: Jesus himself descended on a cloud with angels to receive her soul. But the soul only temporarily left the body of the Mother of God (hence the concept of "dormition"), then its soul was reunited with the body, and Mary ascended to heaven, acquiring a new, transfigured essence. As in the Protoevangelium of James, in the legend of the Dormition of Mary certain realistic details (for example, it was said that the Apostle Thomas was late for Mary's funeral and wanted to say goodbye to her) are combined with religious symbolism that used the images of the New Testament. Thus, the impending dormition of Mary is announced by the Archangel Gabriel - the one who announced the birth of Jesus to her.

In this way, the news of death becomes the news of the miracle of the new birth that is to happen to her... The apostles learn about the resurrection of Mary in the same way as the disciples of Christ learned about his resurrection in the Gospels - they open the tomb of Mary at the request of Thomas and find it empty. Such a repetition was due to the fact that the author did not have at his disposal the tradition of the last years of Mary's life and created his fairy-tale theological work, using the story of Jesus and filling it with symbolism that emphasized the divinity of Mary in contrast to the rest, even the most righteous, saints and martyrs. Despite such a late appearance of the apocrypha about the Dormition of Mary, from the end of the fifth century the church celebrates the Dormition of the Mother of God.