The tradition that Mary’s parents were called Anne and Joaquin is derived from the pseudepigrapha writing called the Gospel of James. The book presents Mary as being brought up as a ward of the Temple. The text is thought to have been written in the second century and not by James, the brother of Jesus.
The text asserts that Joseph was a widower with children when he married Mary. James, the supposed writer of this book was Joseph’s eldest son. He asserts that Mary was not his mother. Joseph was much older than Mary, and James his son was older than Jesus.
The aim of this writing is to say that Mary remained a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus. It is the oldest source to assert the perpetual virginity of Mary and her purity.
I think it is plausible that Mary’s father was a priest in the Temple because there are two different genealogies of Jesus, and one is the genealogy of Mary. The genealogy given in Matthew chapter 1 is the genealogy of Joseph husband of Mary, and the genealogy in Luke chapter 3 could be a list of priests that led from Mary’s father.
If Mary’s father had died and Mary’s mother also, she could have been taken as an orphan to be protected by the Temple. I see the prophetess Anna as Mary’s grandmother on her mother’s side and Simeon as her uncle on her father’s side – but I plan to write about Mary’s family in another article later on.
I think that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were the children of Joseph from a previous marriage, so Joseph would be much older than Mary. Joseph died while Jesus was in Capernaum. I wrote about this in a previous article about Mary.
Mystery Plays
The Gospel of James reads like a mystery play script. It is not anything like the Letter of James included in the New Testament.
Mystery plays about Biblical characters were very popular in Europe during the Middle Ages. There are well-known written plays dating from the 15th century, but their history goes back to the 5th century. At this time living tableaux with actors and locals taking part were introduced into sacred services to bring to life the Bible stories for the faithful. At first liturgical dramas were written by monks and put on by priests.
The popularity of these Biblical plays grew enormously with troops of actors going from place to place with a cart containing the relevant scenery and props. Miracle plays about the lives of saints and their miracles joined the Mystery plays. Many Miracle plays involved St. Mary, although apart from the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene’s life was a common theme.
When the Pope finally banned these dramas as part of religious liturgy in 1210, the craft guilds took over their organization. Each guild did a play connected to their profession, for example, the builders’ play was about building Noah’s Ark, the goldsmiths did the Visit of the Magi and the bakers did the Miracle of the Five Loaves and Fishes.
Eventually these plays became more and more secular with entertainment, rather than faith as their focus, and comic scenes were added in. The Protestant Reformation and establishment of the Church of England in 1534 put an end to these plays in Engand, which were by then often irreligious.
I feel convinced that pseudepigrapha writings of the 1st to 3rd century AD were the forerunners of Mystery Plays. I’ve had a go myself at turning a set of historical facts into a drama by converting the facts into dialogue between characters. What happens is that, while the bare bones of the story are real historical facts, all of the dialogue is fictious.
Pseudepigrapha works always contain a strong story line, dialogue between the main protagonists, and an amazing miracle. Most of them have a moral too for the audience to take away.
Playwrights make their dramas entertaining by employing artistic licence. This is not aimed at deceiving, but of enthralling the audience. However, you would not rely on the content of the story as being true.
Pseudepigrapha works are not ‘non-canonical books of the Bible’, or books that missed inclusion in the Bible nor are they anything like most books of the Apocrypha included in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles. Pseudepigrapha works are dramas about known characters of the Bible which were never intended for any inclusion in the Bible itself.
Merry and True 