Does the Gospel of Matthew Proclaim Mary’s Virginity?

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In a recent BAR article, Père Benoit’s explanation of Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23 was quoted without comment and apparently accepted at face value.^a Dr. Dwight Young and I have recently completed an extensive study of the concept of virginity in the world of the Bible.^b Since some of our conclusions bear upon this passage cited from Benoit, I would like to present a different aspect of the issue.

First, there is simply no single word in the languages of the ancient Near East which carries in and of itself the idea of virgo intacta. This means that the distinction which Benoit is drawing between Hebrew bethulah and ’almah and also between Greek parthenos and neanis is invalid. Only a few illustrations will suffice to demonstrate this.

In the second chapter of Esther, women who lived in the harem of King Ahasuerus, who had spent at least one night in the palace with him (Esther 2:14), and who were officially labelled as his “concubines” (Esther 2:8, Esther 2:14), could also be called bethulot (the plural of bethulah), as verses 17 and 19 clearly show. In Joel 1:8, a women who had lost her husband is termed a bethulah. According to Deuteronomy 22:13–21, a woman whose marriage had already been consummated in sexual intercourse with her husband might in certain cases need to go to court and have herself declared officially a bethulah of Israel. In short, then, Hebrew bethulah did not, when used alone, denote virginity.^c

The case is similar with respect to Greek parthenos. Normally, to be sure, a 019parthenos was also a “virgin.” But Genesis 34:1–4 proves that such was not always the case. Shechem, having raped Dinah (Genesis 34:2), subsequently told his father Hamor that he wished to marry the girl. The Revised Standard Version translates his request, “Get me this maiden for my wife” (Genesis 34:4), a perfectly good rendition of the Hebrew text, which uses the word yaldah for what RSV translates as “maiden.” The point is that this maiden, the just-raped Dinah, is twice called a parthenos in the Septuagint (Genesis 34:3, Genesis 34:4)! Now if Matthew knew the Septuagint as well as we may assume, in what sense could he believe that the word parthenos used by the Septuagint translators in Isaiah 7:14 “fully justifies his line of argument”^d concerning Mary’s virginity? Did he forget that the same word could also be used to describe a rape victim in Genesis 34:3 and 4? I think not. It is clear that Benoit has drawn a distinction here on the basis of vocabulary alone which cannot be sustained.

It is appropriate at this juncture to introduce a second factor which must be taken into consideration whenever one wishes to speak of Biblical virginity. Biblical writers did not have at their disposal any single vocabulary word which conveys the idea of a virgin, so they used standard, pointed, and very specific phrases to describe a woman whose sexual status they wished to leave in no doubt whatsoever. For example, the narrator in Genesis 24 wished to describe Rebeccah as a virgin. And so he clearly stated the fact that “no man had known her” (Genesis 24:16). He could refer to Rebeccah as a bethulah (Genesis 24:16), as an ’almah (Genesis 24:43), or as a na’arah (Genesis 24:14, Genesis 24:28 etc.). But her virginity could not be certified by any one of these terms; that is why he pointedly declared that “no man had known her.” Such a phrase, unlike bethulah or any other vocabulary word in Hebrew, was totally unambiguous. A similar phrase is consistently used throughout Biblical literature whenever the author wished to stipulate clearly that a certain woman was a “virgin,”^e and the use of such phrases can be traced back at least as early as the Code of Hammurapi.^f

The significance of all this should be quite clear. If one wants to learn whether the Gospel writers thought Mary to be a “virgin,” the question to ask is not which word but which phrase(s) they chose to describe her sexual status. And once again, Biblical usage follows a remarkably consistent pattern. For example, Matthew states pointedly that Jesus was not sired by Joseph before the marriage to Mary (Matthew 1:18–19) and further states that Joseph had no sexual intercourse with Mary even after he married her until Jesus had already been born (Matthew 1:25). But unless one chooses to argue that Matthew interpreted Isaiah’s statement to be describing an eighth century B.C. virgin birth, a citation of Isaiah at this point in his description of the birth of Jesus cannot be taken as evidence that he wished to depict an A.D. first century virgin birth. Matthew wished to portray the birth of Jesus as evidence of divine saving presence in the world. Accordingly, both his name (Greek Yeµsous = Hebrew yehoµshua‘ = “Ya[hweh] is salvation”) and his function (cf. soµsei, “he will save,” in Matthew 1:21) contribute to this picture of Jesus as Savior. The citation of Isaiah is included not because of the significance of the word parthenos but because of the word Emmanoueµl which specifically indicates divine presence.

And once it is acknowledged that the vocabulary item parthenos alone is insufficient grounds upon which to base a virgin birth idea, it becomes clear that Matthew simply does not address the question of Mary’s virginity except to say, as we have noted, that she was sexually celibate between the time of her marriage to Joseph and the time of the birth of her son.^g Rather, it is the Book of Luke which, employing precisely the traditional terminology one would expect in the description of a “virgin,” provides the basis for the early Church doctrine of the virgin birth. Noting 052Mary’s amazement at the thought that she should soon become pregnant, a logical question is placed upon her lips by the narrator: “How can this be, since I have not known a man” (Luke 1:34)? The translation of this question offered by The New English Bible is most appropriate: “How can this be? said Mary; I am still a virgin.” In other words, the Biblical phrase “[one who has] not known a man” is the exact semantic equivalent of our English word “virgin.” So it is not incidental that Luke 1:34, the one New Testament verse which states the virginity of Mary explicitly, finds it necessary to state about her what the Genesis narrator had said about Rebeccah, that she had not known a man, even though Mary had earlier been called a parthenos (as Rebeccah had been a bethulah) not once but twice (see Luke 1:27)! It is also of great significance that the virgin birth idea expressed in Luke is in no way connected to or dependent upon the Isaian Immanuel passage.

What has been said so far should make it clear that a new view of the virgin birth is in order. It should be clear, first of all, that neither the Massoretic Text nor the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14 have anything to do with the idea of a virginal conception. And it is further clear that neither Matthew nor Luke interpreted Isaiah 7:14 incorrectly. Matthew does cite Isaiah, as we have seen, for the purpose of tying into the prophet’s teaching of hope concerning the presence of God among his people who are in need of divine saving activity. On the other hand, Luke is at pains to present a virgin birth doctrine, and yet he nowhere attempts to base this doctrine upon Isaiah, as he most certainly would have done if Isaiah 7:14 had lent itself to such a purpose. Since it does not, Luke relies upon specific, technical legal terminology which no one could misunderstand and which writers in the ancient world had been using in the same way for hundreds of years before his time.

Père Benoit’s studies of the Septuagint have served to underscore its value once again and the scholarly world remains in his debt for a job well done. However, this particular matter of the virginity of Mary and the entire question of the virgin birth doctrine in the New Testament must be understood correctly. These remarks are offered in the hope that they may be helpful in defining in some measure that correct way.