Toto

Fresh translation

Toto

There is also a new evangelical translation, that retains "virgin."

mountainman

List of Complete Bibles [WIKI]

Stats on
Complete English Translation
New Bibles per Century


14th century = 2
15th century = 0
16th century = 7
17th century = 2
18th century = 2
19th century = 8
20th century = 53
21st century = 15 *


*nb: first decade only

Business is taking off.

avi

"Almah" has nothing to do with sexual experience, or lack thereof. It simply relates to youthfulness, implying a full set of dental equipment, unlike scholars from long ago, who had lost their teeth two decades prior to creating imposing tomes.

The real question here, is simple: Did the original scholars who created Septuagint translate "almah" as "parthenos" (== virgin in English), or, as I believe is the case when reading any extant copy of the Greek Septuagint, were all extant documents changed on orders from Constantine, purging Septuagint in particular, of misleading terminology, and changing "young woman" to "virgin", to accommodate Matthew's use of "parthenos".
The error, which I believe is omnipresent, particularly on this forum, is to assume that the Jewish scholars who created Septuagint, wrote a document, which conveniently supports the gospels, and which is incorporated into our oldest extant copies of the complete canon, including Isaiah 7:14: Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

1. What is the Hebrew word for "virgin"?
2. How does the text of Isaiah 7:14 from DSS read?

I cannot accept the idea that the Jewish scholars of Alexandria, two centuries before the common era, who created the Septuagint, would have confounded "almah" with "bathulah".....

I can believe that the Christians altered the Septuagint, destroying every alternate text in the process.....

avi

Jaybees

I can't believe it. The Septuagint was written, widely read and distributed in intellectual Gentile as well as Jewish circles long before Jesus was so much as a gleam in the Father's eye.

To have so completely expunged that reference in so many texts and in so many references to that text is much more difficult for me to believe than that the translators just screwed up.

show_no_mercy

This seems like a rather pointless distinction to make. Whether Isaiah 7:14 says young woman or virgin has no bearing on anything Christian related, since the entire context of Isaiah 7 shows that it has nothing to do with Jesus.

semiopen

Almah is a term of respect and the meaning in English seems closest to maiden or damsel.

"Young woman" is totally neutral, this term could also be applied to a slut, skank, etc.

Cege

Does the new translation change "virgin" in Matthew 1:22-23 (22 So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” - New King James Version) ?

And in Luke 1:27 ( 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. -New King James Version)?

Is the Catholic Bible translation the 'official' translation of the Roman Catholic faith?

DCHindley

I don't know. However, Isaiah is translating a Hebrew word Almah that has a semantic range that generally covers young women in general, whether married or not. The NT uses the Greek word Parthenos which generally means an unmarried young woman, but on occasion is used of a married woman.

When translating into English the Hebrew word Almah from the OT, one might use the usual meaning in biblical Hebrew (young woman), while in translating into English the Greek translation of the OT passage in the NT one uses the usual meaning Parthenos has in Greek (virgin).

DCH

Joan of Bark

+1

The point of Jesus being born of a virgin also creates a problem in that the Messiah was supposed to be of the House of David, which means a direct blood descendant of that king (as I point out in another thread). If he was born of a virgin, Jesus was not of any house!