It would seem from the subsequent actions and words of Mary that she must have forgotten that her son was miraculously conceived of God, for we find her reproaching him for remaining in the temple of Jerusalem to argue with the rabbis with, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing" (Luke ii, 48). Again, when Simeon and Anna proclaimed the messiahship of Jesus (Luke ii, 25-32; 36-38), we are told that "Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him" (Luke ii, 33). This would hardly have been the case had they already known him as "the Son of the Highest, who shall reign over the house of Jacob forever" (Luke i, 32-33). Neither would Mary, had she realized that she was the mother of God, have considered it necessary to resort to the temple (Luke ii, 22-24) to be purified from the stains of her childbirth. Women, having borne natural children, were considered to have become defiled in the act of parturition, through the contact of the perpetually active agency of original sin, whereof they must be purified. The mere fact of her submitting to such a churching is evidence that Mary did not know that she had done anything remarkable in bearing Jesus, and was ignorant of an unusual conception.
Their neighbors, despite the dream, always recognized Jesus as Joseph's son (Matt. xii, 55; Luke iv, 22; John ii, 45; vi, 42; Nicodemus i, 2). The orthodox explain this on the supposition that Joseph and Mary kept all these things in their hearts, and did not tell the actual facts of the case, which seems unlikely. Joseph would want to explain the early birth of Jesus, and Mary would be desirous of saving her reputation, and both would naturally boast of the honor conferred by the Holy Ghost, had they known of it, for in such case Joseph's relation to his god was the same as that of the peasant to his seigneur in the days of the jus primæ noctis. The liaison was an honor, and would have been related to save Jesus from the disagreeable allusions made by his neighbors regarding his birth (John viii, 41).
Conforming to the narrations of the miraculous conception in Luke, Mary, and the Protevangelion, is an old miracle play called "Joseph's Jealousy," in which we find a very natural picture of the good old husband discovering a condition in his wife for which he is not responsible and accusing her in plain old English of adorning his brow with antlers. The following is the dialogue as given in Hone's "Ancient Mysteries Described":