Hi dB, sorry for the delay in replying.
Another way to say this might be, "How's that? I'm not even having sex."
I really do not think that this is the same at all, it has nothing to do with what has happened in the past it has to do with a future event, she is going to conceive, she has not already conceived, and seeing as she is betrothed to Joseph it should not have been surprising.
I see your puzzle but let me suggest an alternative understanding.
Sure, I always enjoy your posts and value your input.
It seems reasonable that a young girl might respond this way, assuming a distant wedding date and an urgency in the angel's tone and manner.
But are these two assumptions suggested by the text, or are they even plausible assumptions? I think it is more likely that the engagement period was quite short and that the marriage would happen soon as one of the most important functions for a couple at that time was to reproduce and reproduce quite a lot, so I don’t think it is a fair assumption. I also, do not see how we can assume that there was urgency in the angel’s voice, I do not see that in the text.
But, even if we grant your assumptions, I still do not think that Mary’s alleged reply is plausible at all. Say we assume a distant wedding date, wouldn’t it be more realistic for Mary to assume that Joseph would get her pregnant out of wedlock? I think it is ludicrous for a girl to say ‘I cannot get pregnant because I do not know a man’ I think it is much more likely that they would simply wonder which man it is that they are going to ‘know’.
Indeed, she apparently conceived forthwith; for she says.
Yes I agree, but I do not think that this has any relevance to her response, it wouldn’t matter if she was going to conceive that night or in ten years time, the response in the text really doesn’t make sense.
Imagine even telling a young girl today that she going to become pregnant at some time in the future, she would probably either say ‘no way’ or she would say ‘well I would like to have children some day, so I hope that I do’.
This does indeed sound like "the storyteller's art" and he is clearly telling us that Mary is already pregnant ('fruit of thy womb' - 'mother of my Lord').
Yes it is telling us that she is pregnant here, but she was not pregnant when Gabriel spoke to her, and it may well have been that she conceived by the Holy Spirit on the night of the conversation, but I still think the response is a late addition to the text, a device to support a flawed virgin birth prophecy.
By the time she and Joseph (in those days) travel to Bethlehem for the census, she is already, "great with child." 2:5 KJV
Yes and we already know that the census is a fiction and that there was no need for Mary to travel anyway.
Bottom line: I believe the "storyteller" wants us to understand that Mary got pregnant the night the "angel" came into her bedroom. Well, Duhhh!
"How can I get pregnant?" Mary asked.
"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee." The angel answered.
If only the author of Luke used your words then this fairytale would be a little more credible. But, in giving your alternative reading here, you have actually constructed a conversation that is absolutely nothing like the text that I quoted in the original post.
But I do have some ideas as to why this ‘conversation’ was added to Luke, or at least added by the author of Luke to the copy of mark that the author was copying from.
What I find interesting is that the earliest Gospel has no birth narrative at all, Mark’s Gospel starts when Jesus is around 30 years old when he is about to be baptised by John. Mark has none of the paraphernalia that can be found in Matthew and Luke’s nativity legends, so either Mark knew nothing about these legends or they were so well established that Mark felt it unimportant to mention them. I personally feel that Mark had heard nothing about these legends, probably because they hadn’t been dreamed up yet, the reason that this is the more likely of the two is because if Mark had heard of these wonderful events then he wouldn’t have written this:
Mark 3:20-21
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind.
Now if Mark had heard of a virgin birth, if he had heard of Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, the Magi, the Star and all the rest of the legendary bits and bobs then this verse would be out of place. Why would his family think that Jesus was a nut if these things had happened, Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, Gabriel visited Mary and Joseph to tell them who Jesus is, the Magi worshipped him, Simeon told them who Jesus was, all this happens and they still think Jesus is a nut, why don’t they question their own sanity, it was after all Mary and Joseph who frequently chatted to Gabriel.
Mark’s lack of knowledge of a virgin birth would not have been a problem for gentile Christians, they wouldn’t really care how Jesus was born. But among Jewish Christians there would be a need for a bloodline from King David, they were expecting the Messiah to come from David through Solomon and I think that Mark knew that Jesus wasn’t, I think this is why Mark has Jesus openly admitting that he isn’t a Son of David.
Mark 12:35-37:
While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, "How is it that the teachers of the law say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared: " 'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." David himself calls him 'Lord.' How then can he be his son?" The large crowd listened to him with delight.
The problems with Jesus genealogy kicked in when Jewish Christians insisted that Jesus had to be of David’s bloodline, and to show that he was, they essentially just made up a bloodline for Jesus that tied him to David. There obviously were at least two different fictional genealogies because Matthew and Luke each have a different one, and we both know that no matter how many Christians cry about it, these two genealogies are supposed to be Joseph’s, none of then are meant to be Mary’s at all.
The problem of course is that why did Matthew render these genealogies useless by insisting that Jesus was not Joseph’s son? I think that the genealogy in Matthew was so entrenched in his community’s faith that he had to include it, then the author of Matthew makes an error in using the Septuagint whilst combing it for anything at all that he can glue onto Jesus to make him into something he wasn’t. The error of course was the mistranslation of al’mah, the rest has been discussed many times at the forum and I am sure you are familiar with all the problems of Isaiah 7:14.
Matthew’s Gospel is awash with out-of-context references to the Old Testament, some are extremely embarrassing, but the Virgin Birth was not even a messianic prophecy, but Christians don’t let small things like this stand in the way of turning Jesus into THE messiah, which is something he most definitely wasn’t.
So, I thnk that the conversation between Mary and Gabriel just didn't happen, it is an awkward insertion that was intended to support the Virgin Birth, but all it supports is the folktale nature of the Gospels.
Brian.