The New Testament says nothing about the early life of Jesus’ Mother. But in the Church’s tradition, Mary, like other significant people in the history of Israel, was born by the direct intervention of God. According to the second-century Protevangelium of James, her parents, Joachim and Anna, were righteous but childless. Once when Joachim, a rich man, went to the temple to offer his gifts to the Lord, he was not allowed to do so, because he had not raised up offspring in Israel. Saddened by this rejection, he researched to see whether all the righteous in Israel had had…