The New Testament tells us that Mary the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ had an Aunt Elizabeth who was married to a Priest of the line of Aaron, and her Uncle was Joseph of Arimathea, a respected Pharisee, wealthly and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Council in Jerusalem, so it is known that Mary was of the house of Levi, or Aaron. But people wanted to know more, in the middle of the 2nd century, an anonymous writer produced The Gospel of James. While this document claims to have been written by James, the brother of Christ it has been proven to be from the 2nd Century well after his death, so is a work of pious fiction, it provides all the elements for the later development of the theology and worship of Mary in the Roman Catholic church. The subject of the document is primarily the miraculous birth of Mary.

Mary is described as the daughter of the wealthy Joachim and his wife Anne. The author draws extensively on the birth stories of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and constructs the story of Anne very much on the model of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Even the name, Anne (or Anna), is a variant of Hannah. According to the legend Anne and Joachim are a devout and righteous couple, but childless. Then both are visited by angels and told that Anne will bear a child. After the child’s birth she is called Mary and at age 2, is taken to the Temple. Mary is then brought up in the Temple and is one of the 7 virgins who made the veil of the Temple. She was eventually betrothed to Joseph, a respected widower. The story then leads into an embellished version of the familiar account of the birth of Jesus.

The development of Anne’s cult was affected by the growing cult of the Virgin Mary in the later Middle Ages, which fostered interest in Mary’s own family.

The ‘Gospel of James’ is fiction but Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist; did share a Grand-mother of the line of either Levi or Aaron, there is no actual proof of her name but she has been called "Anne" now for centuries, so we respectfully honour her today.