From Fr. Angelo
This Christmas let’s get to know a bit better each of the participants of the event of Jesus’ birth. For Orthodox, the best place to start is with our icons. The beauty of iconography is that unlike a painting which depicts a singular event, an Orthodox icon can depict several events that do not even occur during the same timeframe, thus offering to us a more complete understanding of the significant events of Christianity.
In the Nativity icon we see the events associated with the birth of Christ, some of which are referenced in Scripture while other details have come down to us from extra-Biblical sources such as the Protoevangelium of James.
This 2nd century apocryphal document contains some of the oldest non-Biblical traditions of the Church and records details leading up to the birth of the Theotokos, her presentation in the Temple, her betrothal to Joseph and the Nativity in Bethlehem…