There are posts that I publish which “upsets the apple cart” so to speak. For example, a post where I show that St. Francis did not write the “Peace Prayer of St. Francis” or dispute various quotes attributed to St. Francis but words he never said. This might be one of those posts.Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary. It is one of those feasts that when you ask Catholics what is being celebrated  they are not quite sure, But if they do have an answer you are most likely to hear an account from a late 2nd century writing known as the apocryphal document known as the Protoevangelium of James (or sometimes as the Gospel of James.) “Apocryphal” means of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true. It is not part of the Canon of New Testament Scripture. The Protoevangelium was condemned by Pope Innocent I in 405 and rejected by the Gelasian Decree around 500. Despite this the account became a widely read document even though it was never even considered for inclusion into the Canon of Scripture.

The Protoevangelium is an infancy narrative telling of the conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, and events immediately following.  Mary is presented as an extraordinary child destined for great things from the moment of her conception. Her parents, the wealthy Joachim and his wife Anna, are distressed that they have no children, and Joachim goes into the wilderness to pray, leaving Anna to lament her childless state. God hears Anna’s prayer, angels announce the coming child, and in the seventh month of Anna’s pregnancy (underlining the exceptional nature of Mary’s future life), she is born.

Mary’s presentation in the temple draws parallels to that of the prophet Samuel, whose mother Hannah, like Anna, was also thought to be barren, and who offered her child as a gift to God at Shiloh. There is precedence for dedicating a male child to Temple service, but not a female child.

The apocryphal account then has Anna dedicating the child to God and vows that she shall be raised in the Temple. Joachim and Anna name the child Mary, and when she is three years old, they send her to the Temple, where she is fed each day by an angel.

When Mary approaches her 12th year, the priests decide that she can no longer stay in the Temple lest her menstrual blood render it unclean, and God finds a widower, Joseph, to act as her guardian: Joseph is depicted as elderly and the father of grown sons; he has no desire for sexual relations with Mary. He leaves on business, and Mary is called to the Temple to help weave the temple curtain, where one day an angel appears and tells her that she has been chosen to conceive Jesus the Saviour, but that she will not give birth as other women do. Joseph returns and finds Mary six months pregnant, and rebukes her, fearing that the priests will assume that he is the guilty party. They do, but the chastity of both is proven through the “test of bitter waters”.

The test of the bitter water was a Jewish trial by ordeal administered by a priest in the tabernacle to a wife whose husband suspected her of adultery, but the husband had no witnesses to make a formal case. It is described in the Book of Numbers (5:11–31). The account in Numbers does not have any features for testing the chastity of the man.

There are just many aspects of the account that are doubtful: the wealth and privilege of the parents who in the canonical gospels are given to live in Nazareth, not Jerusalem; living in the Temple; fed by angels; and so many other features. One might then ask, why do we celebrate it? For the Roman Catholic Church, on the day of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “we celebrate that dedication of herself which Mary made to God from her very childhood under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who filled her with grace …” In the 1974 encyclical Marialis Cultus, Pope Paul VI wrote that “despite its apocryphal content, it presents lofty and exemplary values and carries on the venerable traditions having their origins in the Eastern churches”.