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Scholars often assume that Salome's inspection of Mary in Protevangelium of James 19-20 involves an intact hymen that proves Mary's sexual virginity. I argue that this is an anachronistic reading; notions about hymens and genital examinations to verify virginity were probably not prevalent in the Protevangelium's cultural context. Instead, Salome's examination should be understood to convey that Mary is a virgin not only sexually, but also in a "puerperal" sense, spared from the effects of ordinary childbearing. The text thus anticipates the later concept of Mary's virginity in partu in some ways but not others, while its vision of virginal birth eventually merges with other definitions of virginity in late ancient Christian discourse.
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The second-century Greek narrative known as the Protevangelium of James contains a famous episode long understood as a "virginity test." In this episode, a woman named Salome conducts a physical examination of the Virgin Mary after the birth of Jesus and confirms, against her own expectation, that Mary is a virgin. Very few details are given to help the text's audience understand what Salome expected to find, how Mary's body and surroundings look, or even what is meant by the label "virgin," according to the story.
When reading the Protevangelium or assigning it a place in discussions of early Christian thought on virginity or Mary, scholars routinely draw on common modern assumptions about what female virginity is and how it can be verified. Ancient Mediterranean authors, however, seem to have had little consensus in their definitions of female virginity. Early Christian writers not only render different verdicts on whether Mary was still a virgin after giving birth; they also use different criteria to reach their verdicts, based on different understandings of what virginity is. For some, Mary's virginity following the nativity hinges on whether she ever engaged in sexual intercourse, while for others it hinges on whether she experienced ordinary childbirth.1 The determination sometimes focuses on the spiritual purity and holiness of her person, but at other times it depends on the state of her body, such as whether she retained a hymenal2 membrane in her vagina despite giving birth.3 Many modern scholars who discuss Mary, early Christian virginity, or the Protevangelium proceed under the...