It is common for people to innocently (though incorrectly) use the phrase “immaculate conception” to refer to the virginal conception of Jesus (they are two different things). While not the same, a scholar used “immaculate conception” to refer to the virginal conception of Mary in some manuscripts of the Protoevangelium of James:
ii. Immaculate Conception
Another aspect of Mary’s
birth gave rise to the doctrine known as the Immaculate Conception. This may be
seen most vividly in PJ. The angel
tells Anna she will conceive but at
4.4 when an angel speaks to the long-absent Joachim he tells him that his wife is already pregnant, implying a
miraculous conception. At 4.9 too the perfect tense (indicating a present
reality) is found, although some manuscripts, conscious of the difficulty, both
here and at 4.4 have substituted a future tense. Defenders of the future tense,
improbably, read Joachim’s ‘resting’ at home after his return as a euphemism
that is intended to say that that is when the conception occurred. However, the
perfect tense is probably to be preferred in both verses and may be used to
support the teaching that Anna’s conception of Mary was indeed without macula. That Anna conceived without
sexual intercourse is implied when Joachim sees in the priest’s frontlet that
he has not sinned (PJ 5.1). (J. K.
Elliot, “Christian Apocrypha and the Developing Role of Mary,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, ed. Andrew Gregory and Christopher
Tuckett [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 285)
Further
Reading:
Lily
C. Vyong on the Miraculous Conception of Mary in Chapter 4 of the
Protoevangelium of James
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