And which is just your opinion, or that Rome must be correct, even though they could not recommend one particular version of the Vulgate over others, resulting in the scandal of the . But there are mere opinions, and then there is evidential warrant for "opinions."
As regards Mary being uniquely "Full of Grace," even Keating admits,
John 1:14 says that Jesus was plErEs charitos, which literally means "full of grace." (Those capital Es arepresent etas, so pronounce them like the e in "they"; the word is thus pronounced PLAY-RACE). Luke 1:28 uses kecharitomene, which literally means "one who has been graced" or "woman who has been graced" (since the gender is female). It doesn't literally mean "full of grace," though that is defensible as a free translation. Acts 6:8 refers to Stephen as plErEs charitos, so again it's literally "full of grace" and just the same as the description used of Jesus in John 1:14.
"If it is the latter, (2) does that mean there really isn’t a literal “full of grace” parallel between Luke 1:28 and John 1:14 or can I find that literal parallel somewhere else in the New Testament?" Not that I'm aware of, and I'd almost certainly be aware of it if there were. http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/10/kecharitomene_q.html(http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/10/kecharitomene_q.html)
As for Kecharitomene denoting that the state of grace began in past time, even Catholic professor of biblical languages and 11 year vet of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Joseph Fitzmeyer, S.J. writes in the Anchor Bible (v. 28, pg. 345) “Though the pf. Pass. Ptc. Kecharitomenos is found in the LXX of Sir 18:17 in the sense of ‘gracious man,’ here is rather designates Mary as the recipient of divine favor; it means ‘favored by God,’ another instance of the so-called theological passive (see ZGB § 236). She is favored by God to be the mother of the descendant of David and the Son of the Most High.”
Thus since Sirach 18:17 says , 'is not a word better than a gift? but both are with a gracious [Kecharitomenos] man," than one could also argue, consistent with Cath reasoning, that such men uniquely always were gracious.
As for other technical arguments, once again here is an extensive examination of the basic argument by one who has quite a resume of scholarship, Robert Dean Luginbill, Ph.D. Greek:http://ichthys.com/mail-Mary-full-of-grace.htm
The phrase "hapax legomenon" is applied to the unique occurrence of a word in a corpus. It is not applied to the every specific form a word may take. In Greek, any given verb can potentially have hundreds of different forms (depending upon how one counts these). Therefore in any highly inflected language – like Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and virtually all of the ancient languages – trying to carry this concept which rightly belongs to core words over to individual forms is ludicrous. The word charitoo is not a true "hapax" in the Bible because it occurs more than 'once' (which is what hapax means), and because of the wide variety of forms any verb or substantive in Greek can manifest it makes no sense to apply this term to an individual form of a word and call it a "hapax" (or, alternatively, one can say such a thing, it's just that saying such a thing is meaningless). The point behind identifying a word as a hapax legomenon" (i.e., "mentioned/said only once [in the corpus]") is generally that one has very little information about what the word might mean precisely because it only occurs "once".
If a word is a "hapax" only in a particular author or specialized corpus but appears elsewhere in the language, then the value of this "uniqueness" is greatly reduced. When one has multiple contexts to judge from, one is not in the same position as in the case of a true "hapax" where there is indeed only one single context on which to base one's decision about what a word might mean. As the matter at hand actually stands, moreover, in the case of charitoo, we have an abundance of riches: 1) it occurs elsewhere in the NT; 2) it occurs widely in the literature elsewhere; 3) it is a simple verbal formation on a very well attested noun – so much so as to make its essential meaning so crystal clear that even if this verb only occurred here in all of Greek literature there would still not be any serious doubt as to its meaning.
Your correspondent does not really quibble with the essential meaning of the verb as reflected in every dictionary and every version, namely, "to bestow grace/favor upon". Where you correspondent falls down – and where he over-reaches the Greek scholars he is consulting – is in his attempt to take a simple verb form and make it bear a meaning it cannot bear. You mention that this fellow "really didn't mean that the Greek perfect form here meant that Mary was "perfect", but that is the essence of his argument. His translation is "Having been Graced with all Possible Grace both past present and future." Further he says that the "past" part means that "Mary was saved before ever falling in to sin". Clearly, this person's argument is entirely dependent upon making the perfect tense "magical" in the sense of infusing 'perfection,' even if he is trying to couch this lunacy in grammatical-sounding expressions:
Hi Dr. Luginbill--Once again, I have a question for you about "full of grace". You pointed out that Eph. 1:6 uses the same verb and it doesn't mean "full of grace" there, and therefore, "sinless". A Catholic correspondent has found this by some scholar or other; what do you think of his argument?
This argument is silly. Tense stems in Greek (and there are really only three which matter in such things: aorist, perfect, present) reflect 'aspect', which is something we have in English too (i.e., 'I go' = simple point action akin to the Greek aorist stem, vs. 'I am going' = repetitive action akin to the Greek present stem). These are not "magic", and investing them with layers of meaning invisible to the human eye and untranslatable into English is always a huge mistake (or a deliberate attempt to deceive). The Greek perfect has a meaning very similar to the English perfect, while the Greek aorist is very similar in meaning to the English past. By very similar I mean "essentially indistinguishable in the indicative mood". The only reason this issue of aspect even comes up is because Greek uses the different tense stems in places where we are no longer able to do so in English (i.e., while English users are generally unaware they even use a subjunctive, in Greek we can choose between present and aorist subjunctives in all contingent subordinate clause situations). This person's argument seems to rest entirely upon his quotation of Smyth. However, he misquotes Smyth by leaving out a critical part of the statement.
..If the perfect tense could do all the author claims, then every time it says anything about "knowing" in scripture (for oida is perfective in all of its forms), it would mean "knowing with a perfect knowledge that was conceived in eternity past": such a convention of translation would lead only to utter nonsense (cf. Acts 16:3).
More here , by God's grace.
Akin also admitted “This [kecharitomene] is a Greek term that you could use in that exact grammatical formation for someone else who wasn’t immaculately conceived and the sentence would still make sense.” - http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/2011/05/09/jimmy-akin-the-immaculate-conception-has-to-be-read-into-luke-128/
It is also of note that when Peter said, "If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole," (Acts 4:9) the later is in the perfect passive tense.
Also,
If the perfect tense denotes completeness with a permanent result, then Paul teaches "once saved always saved" in Ephesians 2:8 since he uses the periphrastic perfect ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι ("you are having been saved"). http://forums.carm.org/vbb/printthread.php?t=219962&pp=10&page=3
And in Acts 4:31, "Were gathered together" (ησαν συνηγμενο). Periphrastic past perfect passive of συναγω.
That said, THAT GOD WOULD MAKE A CARDINAL DOCTRINE DEPENDENT UPON A DISPUTABLE RENDERINGS DUE TO THE INTRICACIES OF GREEK PARTICIPLES IS ABSURD, as is that almighty God required a immaculately conceived and sinlessly preserved vessel in order to be incarnated.
Enough said.
“For those with faith no proof is necessary, for those without faith no proof is sufficient.” - St. Thomas Aquinas