medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Hi, Rosemary. Your question is not dumb. And calling Joachim and Anne fictional _is_ a matter of judgment.
In the posting to which you refer ("saints of the day 26. July"), I said:
> 1) Joachim and Anne (d. 1st cent.). J. and A., the fictional parents
> of Mary the mother of Jesus, are first attested in the later
> second-century infancy gospel generally known as the _Protevangelium
> Jacobi_. One may read about them in English-language translation here:
> http://www.gospels.net/translations/infancyjamestranslation.html
If you've read the translation to which I pointed you will already know that the _Protevangelium Jacobi_ does not acknowledge itself as "simply a collection of made up stories". Since fictions often do not acknowledge themselves in this fashion, the absence of such an acknowledgment (passing over the word "simply", with which both the author and many readers would probably take issue) is not probative as to the fictional nature of the figures in question.
The widely held view that the biblically unnamed J. and A. of this text are wholly fictional characters proceeds from the standard scholarly assessment of the derivative nature of the work as a whole as well as from aspects of it that make it unlikely that its author was familiar either with Palestine or with Jewish custom. There are a number of surveys that may be consulted on this point; for convenience, see the discussion here by Wilhelm Schneemelcher and R. M. Wilson in their _New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels And Related Writings_ (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2003), esp. at pp. 423ff.:
http://tinyurl.com/66a6s2
The _Protevangelium Jacobi_ purports to be a work of the early first-century Christian community in Palestine. The few discussions I have read that attempt to show that this could actually be true have failed to convince.
Best,
John Dillon
On Monday, August 4, 2008, at 7:14 am, Rosemary Hayes wrote:
> I don't want to set off another argument by entering late into this
> fray but wondered whether I might ask John Dillon a question the
> dumbness of which may point to my brain having been addled by the heat
> of Corsica (44 there and 14 here in Edinburgh).
>
> Why is it that in your original post you described Joachim and Anne as
> 'fictional' rather than 'traditional'? A second-century source seems
> (from my perspective of working on the fifteenth century) rather
> early. So does the source somehow acknowledge that it is simply a
> collection of made up stories or has the received wisdom of the
> subsequent 18 centuries of scholarship judged unanimously on the
> matter? And I really am interested in the answer not trying to
> question your judgement John!
>
> I did take some photos of 12th-century Pisan churches in Corsica but
> they are not terribly good. I will send them to MG and leave it to
> her judgement.
>
> best wishes to all
> Rosemary
>
> Dr RCE Hayes
> Honorary Treasurer
> Canterbury and York Society
> 18 Murrayfield Drive
> Edinburgh
> EH12 6EB
>
> 0131 337 1385
> [log in to unmask]
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