The chapter
The story begins a generation early, with a grandmother's vow: the wife of Imran dedicated the child in her womb to the sanctuary, and delivered a girl. "And I have named her Maryam, and I seek Your protection for her and her descendants from Shaytan the accursed." Allah "accepted her with a gracious acceptance and made her grow with a gracious growth," placed her under Zakariya's care, and fed her from where no door opened: whenever he entered the chamber he found provision. "It is from Allah; indeed Allah provides for whom He wills without account."
To this secluded worshipper the angels announced a rank no other woman in scripture holds so explicitly: "O Maryam, Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds." Then Jibril came in the form of a well-proportioned man, and her first response was the reflex of the pure: "I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, if you are God-fearing." He said: "I am only a messenger of your Lord, to give you a pure boy." Her question was biology; the answer was theology: "Thus, Allah creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it Be, and it is." The Qur'an sets the miracle in explicit parallel: "The likeness of Isa with Allah is the likeness of Adam, He created him from dust, then said to him Be, and he was."
She withdrew; the pangs drove her to the trunk of a palm; and her cry: "Would that I had died before this and been a thing forgotten", is the Qur'an's permission for the righteous to feel crushed. The answer was practical mercy: a stream at her feet, ripe dates shaken from the palm, and a fast of silence. When she carried the child to her people and they accused her, she pointed at the infant, and the infant spoke the creed of his whole mission from the cradle: "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet, and made me blessed wherever I am, and enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive." First recorded words: I am the servant of Allah, a preemptive refutation of every deification to come.
He would heal the blind and the leper and raise the dead, each time by the permission of Allah, the Qur'an's constant refrain, and he was neither killed nor crucified: "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to resemble to them… rather, Allah raised him to Himself." The Prophet ﷺ said: "I am the nearest of people to Isa ibn Maryam in this world and the Hereafter; the prophets are brothers… and there is no prophet between me and him." The Codex leaves his story open; it closes at the white minaret.