Moses concept of "virgin"

by koot van wyk    Seoul  South Korea    8 December 2008


Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was born of a virgin. The word virgin is used in Matthew 1:28. What this word parthenos or virgin means in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is something to investigate.


1. Matthew cited from Isaiah 7:14 where in the Greek translation of Isaiah this word is rendered parthenos.


2. The original word in Isaiah 7:14 was `almah in Hebrew.


3. The word `almah has some synonyms, namely betulah which is also translated in the Greek at times as parthenos or virgin.


4. What the Christian church and what the Jew Matthew understood by the word parthenos or its original `almah, is that this word means:

a. virgin

b. young woman

c. marriageable woman

d. virgo intacta (unblemished woman, zero sexual relations ever)


5. Scholars deny this.


a. They deny that `almah should be translated as virgin.


b. They deny that either `almah or parthenos necessarily means virgo intacta.


(i) What they do is to look at Classical Greek and Hellenistic Greek references to the word parthenos by using the work of G. Sissa, Greek Virginity trans. A. Gothammer in Revealing Antiquity 3 (Cambridge: 1990).


(ii) They indicate that the word means a harlot used by a soldier temporarily.


(iii) That the Greek gods in the time of Homer and other examples indicate that they also had a parthenos birth.


c. They agree that the word `almah or betulah means "a marriageable girl" (see the article of G. J. Wenham, "Betûlãh: A Girl of Marriageable Age," VT 22 [1972]: 326-348.

Gerhard Hasel probably had this source when he said: "The Hebrew word under discussion in chapter 7:14 is `almãh, which means a 'young woman of marriageable age" who normally would be a virgin" (Gerhard Hasel, Understanding the Living Word of God [Pacific Press Association Limited, 1980], 216).


d. Some scholars denied that Jesus' mother was necessarily a virgin who was a virgo intacta. A. van der Kooij of Leiden is one of them. As is indicated by Rodrigo de Sousa, "Is the choice of ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΣ in LXX Isa. 7:14 Theologically Motivated?" JSS 53/2 Autumn 2008: 211-232 saying: "The very notion of a messiah who has an otherworldly conception in order to be untarnished by a sinful world is, as van der Kooij has aptly hold, late." Van der Kooij and J. Lust tried to link the parthenos of Isaiah 7:14 to Isaiah 37:22 παρθηνος θυγατηρ Σιων "virgin daughter of Zion" where υιος (singular) is claimed by these scholars to be a collective designation of the children of mother Zion. Van der Kooij employs Textual Criticism to point to the fact that this term was translated by the big three: Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion not as parthenos but as neanis. He feels that is more proper revision of the unusual form of the LXX Isaiah 7:14.


6. Some evidence from other cultures are also placed on the table.

Sumerian culture

Virginity in Sumerian culture was the subject of study of J. S. Cooper, "Virginity in Ancient Mesopotamia," in S. Parpola and R. Whiting eds. Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East Proceedings of the XLVII Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki (The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, 2002): 91-112.

a. Cooper indicated that the Sumerian culture viewed virginity from a social, economic and family relation perspective.

b. He also indicated that just like in the Hebrew culture, also in the Sumerian culture the moral aspect was very important. This fact is very important and may even lead to a revision of the ideas of De Sousa (2008) and Van der Kooij.


c. J. Finkelstein's study "Sex Offenses in Sumerian Law" JASOR 86 (1966): 355-372 also considers virginity but seems to lean to the idea that there is no virgo intacta evidence. Actually Cooper in many ways correct Finkelstein since if the concept was morally of value similarly as in Hebrew concept, then virgo intacta was important.


Solution

The best solution to the issue of what the word `almah meant to Isaiah and what it meant to the Jew Matthew, is to investigate on of the main sources of Isaiah's vocabulary and ideas: Moses.


1. Moses wrote Genesis in 1460 BCE while he was in Midian escaping from the anger of Thutmosis III, his rival through Hathsepsut, their common "stepmother".


2. In relating the account of the finding of Rebecca as wife, Moses in Genesis 24:14-43 used four words synonymously that shared meanings. Let us look at the words:


           A  issah                                B    n`rah

              woman                                 young girl

          Genesis 24:43                         Genesis 24:14, 16, 28, 55, 57





           C  betulah                               D   `almah

       girl of marriageable age                         marriageable

             virgo intacta                              virgo intacta

          Genesis 24:16                                Genesis 24:43


3. All of these terms are interchangeable in this context.


4. Moses must have implied a virgo intacta since he provided severe laws if a man married a girl with the understanding she is a virgin and then turn out not to be virgo intacta. See Moses in Deuteronomy 22:22-27 and Exodus 22:15-16.


5. The Hebrew culture understood `almah to be a synonym for betulah and n`rah and thus a man intending to marry a girl could expect that it would be a woman, a young girl, a virgo intacta and a marriageable girl. Cooper seems to indicate that in the Sumerian culture this expectation was also present.


6. Did the Jew Matthew understood `almah to be a parthenos which is virgo intacta, a young woman, a marraigeable girl? The answer is in the affirmative. The prooftext methodology of Matthew indicate that this was the purpose of his description here.


7. Any arguments against the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is against the descriptive method of Matthew, against the Hebrew understanding of Moses in Deuteronomy, also embedded already before that in Genesis 24 and which was freely copied from Moses by Isaiah in Isaiah 7:14 and understood to be parthenos by whoever translated it in Isaiah as parthenos.


8. Even if the word should have been translated as neani in Isaiah 7:14 as Van der Kooij is posing on the basis of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion's translations in the second century CE, post-Matthean thus, the word neani in the context of Genesis 24 will still mean the same as we pointed out with the four meanings interchangeable.


9. Gerhard Hasel is correct in his conclusion:

"It is now evident the Septuagint did not mistranslate the Hebrew word of Isaiah 7:14 but chose one of the semantic meanings contained in the Hebrew word" (Hasel 1980: 217).


10. The issue is determined by the affinity of the scholar to follow the hermeneutics of suspicion or the hermeneutics of affirmation. There are enough data available but the intention to set aside or overlook or regard as non-essential creates a barrier to proper judgement on the issue by negative scholars.

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