The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ; Being a Record of the Acts and Sayings of Jesus of Nazareth Drawn from Uninspired Sources (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PARTI COMPRISING NARRATIVES REFERRING TO THE LIFE OF MARY, AND THE BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND BOYHOOD OF JESUS SECTION I THE PARENTS, BIRTH, CHILDHOOD OF MARY When Three Years Old, She is Brought To The Temple, Where She is Ministered To BY ANGELS TILL SHE IS FOURTEEN YEARS OF AGE AND GIVEN TO JOSEPH (Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, chs. 1-8; Hist, of the Nativity of Mary, chs. 1-8; Protevang., chs. l-io.) Mary was a daughter of Joachim and Anna, both of Davidic descent. The former lived at Nazareth; the latter passed her early years at Bethlehem. They lived piously in the sight of God, and faultlessly before man, dividing their substance into three portions, one of which they devoted to the service of the Temple, another to the poor, and the third to their own wants. So twenty years of their lives passed silently away. But at the end of this period Joachim went to Jerusalem with some others of his tribe to make his usual offering at the Feast of the Dedication. It chanced that Issachar (or Reuben, according to another reading,) was high priest.He scorned Joachim, and drove him roughly away, asking how he dared to present himself in company with those who had children, while he had none; and he refused to accept his offerings until he should have begotten a child, for the Scripture said: " Cursed is every one who does not beget a child in Israel." l Joachim was ashamed before his friends and neighbors, and retired into the wilderness and fixed his tent there, and fasted forty days and forty nights. At the end of this period an angel appeared to him, and told him that his wife should conceive and bring forth a daughter, and he should call her name Mary. Anna meantime was much distressed at her husband's absence, and being reproached by her maid Judith with her barre...