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The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew

Anonymous Latin compiler

Chapter 4

About this work

A Latin infancy gospel expanding stories about Mary, Jesus’s birth, the flight into Egypt, and Jesus’s childhood while reworking earlier apocryphal traditions under a false apostolic attribution.

Author: Anonymous Latin compiler
Traditional attribution: Matthew the Evangelist
Date: Probably 5th–6th century
Origin: Latin West
Genre: Infancy Gospel

The work is substantially later than the pre-Nicene period; its prefatory tradition also claims that Jerome translated it, a claim not treated here as authorship.

After these things, her nine months being fulfilled

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,

Anna

brought

forth

a

daughter

,

and

called

her

Mary

.

And

having

weaned

her

in

her

third

year

,

Joachim

,

and

Anna

his

wife

,

went

together

to

the

temple

of

the

Lord

to

offer

sacrifices

to

God

,

and

placed

the

infant

,

Mary

by

name

,

in

the

community

of

virgins

,

in

which

the

virgins

remained

day

and

night

praising

God

.

And

when

she

was

put

down

before

the

doors

of

the

temple

,

she

went

up

the

fifteen

steps

so

swiftly

,

that

she

did

not

look

back

at

all

;

nor

did

she

,

as

children

are

wont

to

do

,

seek

for

her

parents

.

Whereupon

her

parents

,

each

of

them

anxiously

seeking

for

the

child

,

were

both

alike

astonished

,

until

they

found

her

in

the

temple

,

and

the

priests

of

the

temple

themselves

wondered

.

Notes

1
Corresponding with the fifteen Songs of Degrees, Ps. cxx.–cxxxiv. See Smith’s Dict.—art. Songs of Degrees. Another reading is: And there were about the temple, according to the fifteen Psalms of Degrees, fifteen steps of ascent: the temple was on a mountain, and there had been there built the altar of burnt-offering, which could not be reached but by steps.