the temple, the most holy place in Israel, and entered the lowly home of Mary, which certainly was not much. In the world’s eyes Mary herself was not of much account either. She was too young to know much of the world or to have accomplished anything. According to the Apocryphal Gospel of the Birth of Mary, she was only fourteen; and the History of Joseph the Carpenter states that she was only twelve.2 No less a scholar than Raymond Brown, author of the massive and definitive The Birth of the Messiah,