And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Luke 1:34, RSV)
In this passage, Mary asks a sincere question to Gabriel about the previous message she received, namely, that she would be the mother of the Messiah. The vast majority of exegetes over the centuries have understood that this perplexity on the behalf of Mary is due to her being, at the time of the Annunciation, a virgin. Notwithstanding, a tiny number of interpreters, most notably Jane Schaberg, have argued that this verse, and the surrounding passage, instead teaches that Jesus was illegitimate, the produce of Mary either having an affair with someone other than Joseph or rape. Needless to say, even liberal-leaning NT scholars have rubbished this idea, such as Raymond Brown.
Catholic theologian Edward Sri, in his recent book on Mary, has a useful note addressing this novel (and absurd) interpretation of Luke 1:34 and its surrounding context:
Schaberg attempts to explain Mary’s question not as being about the physical impossibility of conceiving a child as a virgin. Rather, she argues that Mary’s question is about how the Messiah can be born illegitimately to a humiliated woman who had sexual relations with a man who was not her husband. Schaberg begins by asking what many commentators have pondered throughout the centuries. Why would a betrothed woman object to an announcement that she will conceive a child? She proposes that Mary as raped or seduced by a man other than Joseph. She finds initial support or this in Mary’s question itself. Schaberg translates andra (man) as referring specifically to Joseph: “How will this be since I do not have sexual relations with my husband?” Second, she argues that the language describing Mary going to visit Elizabeth “with haste” (1:39) sometimes has a tone of terror or flight, which could indicate a crisis situation in regards to Mary’s pregnancy. Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 90. Schaberg rests more on her argument on Mary’s self-description in 1:48, where the word tapeinosis is used. Schaberg argues that this word normally means “humiliation” (97) and points to Mary having been humiliated by having been raped or seduced by a man who was not her husband In the Magnificat, Mary praises God or having overcome her humiliation by making her the mother of the Messiah (102-3).
Landry critiques Schaberg’s view that 1:34 has nothing to do with the physical impossibility of Mary’s conceiving a child as a virgin. First, when 1:34 is read in the context of the scene, the reader is likely to recall how Mary was introduced as a virgin twice in 1:27. Thus, the reader is prepared to see Mary’s question as having something to do with her virginity. Second, Luke’s narrative seems to draw attention to the physical impossibility of Mary becoming pregnant as a virgin. The angel two verses later compares Mary’s situation with Elizabeth, who “in her old age” is already in her sixth month of pregnancy, and then concludes his message by saying, “With God nothing is impossible.” Just as Elizabeth’s physical situation of old age was not too big of an obstacle to be overcome by God, who desires to make her the mother of this child. Moreover, the angel’s words underscore the magnitude of the miracle of Mary conceiving this child. There is nothing impossible about a woman becoming pregnant when she is raped or seduced. Landry thus concludes that some physical miracle is expected to take place. Landry, “Narrative Logic in the Annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26-38),” JBL 114 (1995):72-73. Brown also critiques Schaberg’s interpretation, arguing that “it is very weak exegetically to content that an author expressed his central concern so incompetent that his contemporary audience would miss it.” It is also very unlikely that Luke as an author was “so incompetent that it took nineteen hundred years for someone to recognize the central message he intended in a major passage—a meaning that even after its discovery most others still cannot recognize.” Brown, Birth of the Messiah (1993 edition), 637. (Edward Sri, Rethinking Mary in the New Testament [San Francisco/Greenwood Village, Colo.: Ignatius Press/Augustine Institute, 2018], 259-60, n. 12)
