this, Anna brought forth a daughter, and called her Mary. When she had 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 babe that was named Mary in the apartment of virgins, wherein virgins continued day and night in the praises of God.[1] When she had been set before the gates of the temple, she went up the fifteen steps[2] at such a rapid pace, that she did not at all look back, nor ask for her parents as is usual with infancy. Her parents, therefore, being anxious, and each of them asking for the infant, were both alike astonished, till they found her in the temple, so that even the very priests of the temple marvelled.
CHAPTER V.
Then Anna was filled with the Holy Spirit in the sight of all, and said. The Lord Almighty God of
- ↑ This tradition of young virgins being kept in the temple rests on no historical foundation, though it has been strongly defended by later writers.
- ↑ The 'fifteen steps (quindecim gradus) correspond with the fifteen Psalms of degrees (Psalms 120-134). Some believe that there were fifteen steps leading from the court of women up to that of the priests. Other explanations have been offered, but no reliance can be placed upon the author, whom one reading makes to say, after mentioning the steps: "For there were about the temple—according to the fifteen Psalms of degrees—fifteen steps to ascend: the temple was on a mount, and there was constructed there the altar of burnt offering, which could not be reached from without except by steps." Comp. the Gosp. of the Nativity of Mary, chap. vi. This last statement about the steps around the altar is perhaps correct.
