According to a tradition Pope Gelasius 1 issued a decree in the last decade of t he fifth century which finally settled the

composition of the canon of books that made up the New Testament. At the same time the decree, known as Decretum Gelasianum, listed gospels and other writings that were deemed heretical, among them the Gospel of James. Unlike the Gnostic gospels of Peter, Thomas and Mary Magdalene and Marcion's version of Luke without the story of Christ's birth, the Gospel of James asserted the humanity and the Jewish affiliation of Jesus. The Gospel of James, which tells readers more about Mary than it does about Jesus, laid the foundation for tenets upheld by the Roman Catholic Church averring her perpetual virginity and for the dependent assertion that Jesus had stepbrothers and sisters but no siblings. Why then did the Church, possibly with the reinforcement of Gelasius himself, reject the book as heretical? Let us return to this question in due course.

In the Gospel of James no mention is made of the dedication of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, its focus being rather on Mary. Her parents Anna and Joachim regarded their child as a special gift from God and dedicated her to a life of service and devotion in the Temple in Jerusalem. where she remained until the age o f twelve when the Mosaic laws of purity required that she leave the Temple precincts. The story recalls the account of Hannas dedication of her infant Samuel to a life of service and dedication to the will of God, not least because the name Anna is derived from Hanna. In Luke the Magnificat of Mary is a rendition of the song of Hanna in the Hebrew scriptures. According to the Gospel of James It was considered appropriate that she should find a husband who could provide for her. Joseph, a widower with children, agreed to assume this responsibility. When Mary became pregnant, suspicion fell on both Joseph and Mary as it seemed that they had indulged in premarital relations They had to submit to the ordeal prescribed in the Torah in such matters but their innocence was clearly established. In Matthew's Gospel Joseph at first assumed that Mary had become pregnant in the ordinary way and as an honorable person he sought to shield her and put her away discreetly. Herod learned from wise men from the east that a holy child destined to be the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem. He ordered the mass execution of infants and young children in Bethlehem. Zacharias the father of John the Baptist was put to death in the course of this operation. Mary fled to a cave near Jerusalem and survived the massacre. We note that story told in the Gospel of James conjoins events reported in Matthew and Luke, leading mainly conservative scholars to assume that the gospel poses a deliberate fusion of elements derived from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The question as to which author owed source material to which is complicated and involves comparisons between the canonical gospels and those which were late r rejected by the Church as heretical or otherwise unacceptable. The canonical status of the four gospels of the New Testament had yet to be defined by Iranius in the second half of the first century and until this closure was reached attempts were made to harmonize the four canonical gospels in one comprehensive gospel, the most notable being the work of Tatian, written in the second half of the second century. He included the nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke. His gospel begins with a rendering of Luke's account as this disclosed events that could only have taken place within a short time after the birth of Jesus, in particular the rite of circumcision and the purification of Mary forty or so days after t he birth of a son according to the laws of Moses. Mary and Joseph left for Nazareth soon afterwards but returned to Jerusalem, establishing the pre-condition fo r

Matthew's account of the arrival of wise men from the east and all that follow ed. In its own way the gospel of James bridges nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke. we have also to consider the controversy on the issue of whether Luke's account of the Nativity was inserted into the gospel in order to counter Marcion's version of Luke that began by recounting the beginning of Christ's ministry as an adult. The Gospel of James should be set within the context of a period when various schools of thought produced gospels reflecting their ideological positions.. There are interesting parallels to be drawn between the gospels of James and Peter. Both claim the authority vested in their being written by a leading apostle. Both share elements found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The author of the Gospel of Peter reports that King Herod Antipas conducted the trial of Jesus while Pilate, on the sidelines, was effectively exonerated from any part in the execution of Jesus. The gospel also tells of the stationing of guards at the tomb of Jesus and these guards witnessed the moment of Christ's ascent to heaven much in line with Matthew's account of the Resurrection. According the main stream of scholarly opinion the gospels of Peter and James were composed in the first half of the second century, possibly during the second Jewish-Roman war and its aftermath. In their various ways they reveal a positive , or perhaps realistic, new attitude to Rome. as the dominant power in the known world. Rome could not be conquered by the sword but only by the truth and spirit of Christianity. At the same time the author of James, like Luke, did not wish to offend Jewish sensitivities, as Jews constituted a major part of the Christian population and would probably swell its number in future after being isolated and disheartened by the failure of the Jewish bid to achieve independence. In this context we may view the great stress that the author of the Gospel of James laid on the value of virginity. in the previous Jewish tradition virginity per se had no value comparable to the state of marriage, for which it provided t he preparation. This was not so in the world of ancient Rome and Greece as we ca n judge from the institution of the Vestal Virgins and the reverence paid to Diana, Queen of Heaven. Indeed, Rhea Silvia, so central to the foundation myth of Rome, was a Vestal Virgin who was waylaid by Mars and thus became the mother of Romulus and Remus. Theodosius managed to abolish the cult of the Vestal Virgins i but it took another century before Gelasius terminated the celebration of the Lupercalia . Gelasius installed a new festival in February, the Purification of the Virgin Mary, so deeply entrenched it was in the Roman psyche. This festival took place in February when devotees assembled at the reputed cave in which a s he-wolf nurtured the infants Romulus and Remus. It marked period of cleansing an d purification at the end of the Roman year, which originally began in March. Gelasius installed a new festival in February, the Purification of the Virgin Mary . Was this meant to replace the Lupercalia on the basis of both celebrations' common concern with purification? Arguably Gelasius continued a process inaugurate d by Gospel of James but did not wish to justify this by referring to a work in which a conscious amalgamation of Jewish and Roman tradition was all too transparent. According to Catholic apologetics Mary had no need to submit to Jewish la s requiring circumcision for her son and her own purification forty-one days after the birth of Jesus but did so as an act of humility and submission. Originally her submission to the Law of Moses may simply have been a gesture to consol e Jewish sentiments. Of course, one could cite other examples of correspondences between Roman, later Celtic or Germanic, celebrations and events in Christian annual cycle, between

the Saturnalia and Christmas, between Halloween and All Saints Day, and, if we return to the subject of Mary, between the festival of Diana in August and the festival of the Dormition or Mary's Assumption. Need the church be so sensitive about these possible acts of replacement? Paul referred to the Go d the Greeks ignorantly worshipped, and few religions can be so corrupt as not t o contain some element of sanctity which would come to fuller light in a future age.