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"YOU WILL CONCEIVE IN YOUR WOMB..."

And where else would a girl who was going to start living with and "knowing" Joseph expect to conceive but in her womb? This adds nothing to your argument.

Knowing the Scriptures, she knew the account in Judges, where an angel appeared to Sampson's mother and announced to her that she would conceive a child (the angel repeats this "you will conceive" several times. The LXX even says that the angel told her that she would bring this child forth from her "womb." The angel never says anything to Sampson's mother about her husband -- he never once says in this encounter that she *and her husband* would conceive a child. The angel just says she will conceive.

Why wouldn't the Theotokos have taken this example from Scripture and assumed at first that the angel was making a similar announcement to her of an "ordinary" conception?

I'm afraid that unless I'm really missing something here, there is no way to categorically insist on your interpretation unless you come to this passage in St. Luke with a pre-conceived (no pun intended) notion about Mary's intentions in life.

Regarding the patristic commentaries, last night I happened to encounter something quite interesting in St. Theophylact's commentary (which is a 12th century distillation of patristic commentaries on the NT -- heavily based on St. John Chrysostom's commentaries -- very worth reading, and as close to a "standard" commentary as we have in Orthodoxy.)

In his commentary at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, St. Theophylact is writing about Christ's final words of that Gospel:

"...lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

He (a Greek speaker writing for others who read and wrote Greek) takes pains to explain that the word translated as "unto" -- the same one translated as "until" in 1:25 -- does not mean that Christ is only giving assurances to the disciples that he will only be with them to the end of the world. He clarifies that what happens beyond that is *not* unknown to us and that we can be assured of Christ being with us throughout eternity, even though that phrase of St. Matthew could be read precisely in a way that raises the question of the unknown.

He writes this, but does not mention the usage in 1:25. The significance of what I am pointing out is that the usage of this word in 28:20 is apparently such that he felt that it called for some clarification, *independent of its relationship to the usage in 1:25.* He was not saying this in order to prove anything about how 1:25 should be read.

Keep in mind that all of these commentaries were written prior to the Protestant Reformation -- at a time when there was no controversy within Christianity about the ever-virginity of the Theotokos.

And again, these Christian commentators spoke, wrote, thought, studied, debated, and preached in Biblical/liturgical Greek -- and they learned it from their teachers who learned it from their teachers... going back in continuity to the Biblical times in which those texts were written.

I'm reminded of the Watergate hearings, where someone testifying asked how this or that statement could be understood in such a way. The venerable Sam Ervin, with his inimicable Southern drawl replied, "because, son, I speak the English language -- it's mah Muther tongue."

Anyway, we don't need to beat this dead horse anymore, although I'm game (for awhile) to continue with the flogging. :-)