Mishnah Ketubot
5.2 reads as follows:
One gives a virgin twelve months from
the time the husband asked to marry her after having betrothed
her, in order to prepare herself with clothes and jewelry for the
marriage. And just as one gives a woman this amount of time, so
too does one give a man an equivalent period of time to prepare
himself, as he too needs time to prepare for the marriage. However, in
the case of a widow, who already has items available from her previous
marriage, she is given only thirty days to prepare. If the
appointed time for the wedding arrived and they did not get married
due to some delay on the part of the husband, then the woman may partake of
his food. And if her husband is a priest, she may partake of teruma,
even if she is an Israelite woman. The tanna’im disagree about the
permission granted to a priest to sustain his betrothed with teruma
before she is married to him. Rabbi Tarfon says: He may give her all of
her required sustenance from teruma. During her periods of
impurity, e.g., menstruation, when she cannot partake of teruma, she may
sell the teruma to a priest and use the proceeds to buy non-sacred food.
Rabbi Akiva says: He must give her half of her needs from non-sacred
food and half may be from teruma, so that she can eat from
the non-sacred food when she is ritually impure.
In this text,
a virgin is
given a year from betrothal to prepare herself for marriage, during which time
she remains under her father’s roof. Gabrial’s visit was early in [Mary’s]
betrothal, and yet he came bearing imminent news: “behold (ιδου) thou
shalt conceive in thy womb” (Luke 1:31). Such a greeting, “behold,” or
literally, “Look!” “is an attention grabber appropriate to the context, [and]
often introduces something new or unusual, or something that requires special attention.”
Something very significant was about to happen. Just as Gabriel’s “behold (ιδου)” as
spoken to Zacharias a few verses earlier indicated that he would become immediately
mute, just so the “behold (ιδου)” to Mary
indicated that she would become immediately pregnant, and so she interprets
it: “Behold the handmaid of the Ord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Lk
1:38). Mary forthwith departed “with haste” (Luke 1:39) to visit her cousin
Elizabeth, announcing that she “hath rejoiced” at what the Lord “hath done”
(Luke 1:49), spending “about three months” with her, and then “returned to her
own house” (Luke 1:56). Although she was betrothed, none of her behavior
suggests that the marriage was imminent at the time of Gabriel’s visit.
Matthew relates that Mary “was found with child” (Matthew 1:18), indicating
that Joseph was not told of the pregnancy, but rather discovered it on his own,
something that could have happened no earlier than Mary’s return from her visit
with Elizabeth, at the beginning of the second trimester (Luke 1:56), when a
woman begins to show visibly. Thus, while Mary did not act as if her marriage
was imminent, her pregnancy certainly was. Her question to Gabriel,
therefore, rather than revealing a vow of perpetual virginity, more naturally
expresses puzzlement about the proper order of events—to wit, how a pregnancy
could take place immediately when marriage was still a distant event.
(Timothy F. Kauffman, “The Blessed Virgin Mary,” in A Gospel Contrary! A
Study of Roman Catholic Abuse of History and Scripture to Propagate Error [2023],
203)
