And All of Israel Loved Her: The Protoevangelium of James ch 1-7 (English Only)

In the Byzantine rite Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches, November 21 is the Great Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. Roman Catholics and other western Christians borrow this feast as the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The story of the life of Mary the mother of Jesus, including her conception by a pious but unjustly stigmatized elderly couple and her dedication and consecration in the Temple before being betrothed to Joseph, is not strictly "biblical" (in the sense of being told in the canonical Jewish-Christian Bible). However, early Christians, eager for more from the lives of Jesus and Mary than God cared to reveal (in scripture anyway) prompted a wealth of holy ghost-writing or "pseudoepigrapha" (anonymous works attributed to someone more famous) including the Proto-Evangelium (= "first gospel") of James, attributed to James (the Just of Jerusalem) the (step-)brother of Jesus. In celebration of the feast, listen to the older English translation from the 1926 collection "The Lost Books of the Bible." I'm hoping to do a Greek reading soon!