According to the Protevangelion of James, well-respected by the Orthodox Churches, Joseph and Mary meet, not in Nazareth, but in Jerusalem, where Joseph is working as a carpenter. The leaders of the Temple, where Mary has spent three fourths of her childhood, deliver the Virgin Mary for safe keeping into the custody of the elderly Joseph, who already has children from a deceased wife. Joseph and Mary then settle in Nazareth, a town to which they both have familial connections. Having lived in Nazareth for two or three years while Joseph is away building houses in another town, perhaps in Sepphoris, Mary receives the angelic visitation from Gabriel.

Why does the Church places the Nativity of Christ in the period of December/January. One reason seems to be an ancient Christian tradition mentioned by Saint Hippolytus of Rome, which states that Jesus Christ was conceived on the same date as He was crucified. Now we know Christ was crucified at the beginning of the Jewish Passover which falls in the period March/April. The Church celebrates the Annunciation to the Theotokos on March 25th. When we add the period of a nine-month pregnancy, we arrive at December 25th, the Nativity of our Lord.

The pagan prophet Balaam, when inspired by the Holy Spirit in Numbers 24:17, prophesies that "a Star shall come out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel." This parallelism of ideas between these two phrases if a common feature of Hebrew literature. In such parallelism, just as "Israel" is an expansion on the idea of "Jacob," "Scepter" would be an expansion on the idea of a "Star." It is interesting to note that, in Hebrew, a "Scepter-Star" is the word for a "comet." The miraculous manifestation of the Holy Star most certainly took the form of a comet, which, for King Herod the Edomite, would most certainly have been taken as a harbinger of ill since Balaam had gone on to say that "Edom shall be a possession...for His enemies" (vs. 18). ( )