and silent—as keeping all these things and pondering them in her
Perhaps the difficulty arises in part from a too exact and mechanical interpretation of the question, for the question need be little more than the unthinking expression of the maidenly consciousness of Mary, startled as she was by the strange appearance of the angel. We may either think of the exact form of the question as due to the narrator, who, however, correctly represents the general sense of what Mary said to the angel or conveyed to him by look; or we may think of the present form of the question as given by Mary herself. In either case, there is no difficulty sufficient to justify the theory of interpolation. For the difficulty is as well explained by the natural confusion of Mary as by the clumsiness of the interpolator. An interpolator might even be expected to smooth things out. Or it is possible to take another view of the matter, and to suppose that there was something in the annunciation in its original form, or in the manner in which the words were spoken, to indicate that the conception was to be immediate or of a unique character.49
(b) This question of Mary expresses unbelief as much as does the question of Zacharias, 6"J( J\ (<fF@:"4 J@L$J@; (ver. 18); yet Mary is praised as having believed (ver. 45), whereas Zacharias is punished with dumbness as having doubted.
The two questions are not quite equivalent, however sophistical Harnack may pronounce the attempts to show a difference between them. The question of Mary may be simply the involuntary expression of surprise and perplexity; that of Zacharias must be a deliberate request for a sign. And even if we give the objection its full force, it does not prove much, for in any case the final answer of Mary was *@× º *@b80 5LD\@LA (X<@4J` :@4 6"J( JÎ Õ0$:V [email protected]
6. Mary is represented throughout the first two chapters as passive and silent—as keeping all these things and pondering them in her heart, as receiving blessing without reply. This picture is disturbed by the question of 1:34. In the first place, this argument rests upon Harnack's doubtful view that the Magnificat is to be attributed to