When a Gospel Meets the Twilight Zone: As Time Stands Still in the Proto-Gospel of James

[00:00:01] When a Gospel meets the Twilight Zone as time stands still in the Proto Gospel of James written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken toutch in my previous post, I mentioned one of the most significant passages of the proto Gospel where the midwife Salome doubts that a virgin had given birth. Note she does not doubt whether a virgin could have conceived, although no doubt she would have doubted it. What she doubts is that a woman could give birth and still have her hymen intact. That obviously would be impossible and gives Mary a postpartum examination only to find that in fact she really is still a virgin that is intact. [00:00:46] Immediately before that amazing scene is another that I find at least as entrancing in it. Joseph himself describes in the first person what happened when the Son of God came into the world. This was such a cosmic event that time stopped. And Joseph describes how by explaining what he saw at that moment. [00:01:08] Every time I read this passage, I think of a Twilight Zone episode that I saw once where everything slowed down to a virtual standstill except the main character, who observes everyone and everything moving slower than a slug. But among other things, sees a little girl on a tricycle moving ever so slowly an inch an hour behind a car carelessly backing out of a driveway. The plot how can he stop it? [00:01:35] There's nothing like that kind of modern horrific imagination in the proto Gospel. But it too describes a time when time stands still. Think about it. How would you describe that event? It's easy enough to depict it on a TV show, but for people who don't even have the concept of time travel or time stoppage and so on, how would you describe it? Joseph manages to do so. Here is the passage. I'll begin a couple of sentences before to provide some context. Here mary and Joseph are on the way to Bethlehem to register for the census and Mary is going into labor so that Joseph has to find a place for her to have some privacy to give birth. He finds a cave and puts one of his grown sons in charge of her while he heads out to find a midwife to help. And then he watches as time stands still as the narration shifts from third person to first person. The following is my own translation when they were halfway there, Mary said to him joseph, take me down from the donkey. The child inside me is pressing on me to come out. He took her down from the donkey and said to her where can I take you to hide your shame? For this place is a wilderness. He found a cave there and took her into it. Then he gave his sons to her and went out to find a Hebrew midwife in the region of Bethlehem. [00:02:59] But I joseph was walking and I was not walking. I looked up to the vault of the sky, and I saw it standing still and into the air, and I saw that it was greatly disturbed and the birds of the sky were at rest. I looked down to the earth and saw a bowl laid out for some workers who were reclining to eat. Their hands were in the bowl, but those who were chewing were not chewing, and those who were taking something from the bowl were not lifting it up. And those who were bringing their hands to their mouths were not bringing them to their mouths. Everyone was looking up. I saw a flock of sheep being herded, but they were standing still. The shepherd raised his hand to strike them, but his hand remained in the air. I looked down at the torrential stream and I saw some goats whose mouths were over the water, but they were not drinking. Then suddenly everything returned to its normal course. [00:03:56] Brilliant. Time stands still when the eternal breaks in. Christ is same yesterday, today and forever. Hebrews 13 Eight he does not experience time, and neither did the world at the moment of the Incarnation.