The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord / A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge

by B. W. Randolph

NOTE ON ISAIAH VII. 14

THE word for "the Virgin" in the Hebrew text is ha-almah. It is an ambiguous word, and does not necessarily imply, though it certainly does not necessarily exclude, the idea of virginity. Etymologically it means puella nubilis—a maiden of marriageable age.

In four* out of six other places in the Old Testament where it is employed, it is used of virgins. Its use in the two other passages+ is doubtful, but does not with any certainty imply virginity.

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* Gen. xxiv. 43; Exod. ii. 8; Ps. lxviii. 25; Cant. i. 3.
+ Prov. xxx. x 9; Cant. vi. 8.
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The Septuagint translators, some two hundred years before Christ, translated the word hê parthenos.

Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, in the second century of our era (apparently in order to vitiate the Christian appeal to this passage), translated the word neanis.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord, by B. W. Randolph