[Faith Presses On]

-—Mary is ENGAGED to Joseph when Gabriel tells her, “You will bear a child...”
Mary doesn’t reply, “well, I AM getting married, after all.”
No. She asks, “How can this be?”-—

Except that Gabriel says to Mary in 1:31 that “you will conceive IN THE WOMB.” Women don’t conceive in the womb, and what Gabriel says is a Greek construction only used that one time as far as I can see, and I have looked. I’d be happy to post more of what I found out about it, if you’d like. If what is meant then is conceiving without sexual relations, then Mary would phrase her question in the terms for that which God’s Word uses, asking how she would conceive without knowing a man.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

It is always better to read the Bible than to read into the Bible.

What Mary means in this passage: How can I be with child? I have never shared physical intimacy with a man? She was betrothed to Joseph at this time. But not yet married. That’s all this means. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that Mary and Joseph did not eventually consummate their marriage. The Marian doctrines were developed much later and have little basis in scripture.

[ronnietherocket3]

Women don’t conceive in the womb,

• Where did 1st cent. Romans or Greeks (or Jews) believe a child was conceived?
• How was womb defined in the 1st cent? Was it defined in a manner that would include it? This would mean that the definition of womb has changed slightly over the course of a few centuries.
• Is it possible for a woman to conceive in the uterus? This could just be an possible but unlikely scenario?

I am fairly certain the statement that women do not conceive in the womb is a statement that is only possible due scientific discoveries made in the 19th/20th century.