martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Martillo) (06/14/84)
`Almah in Isaiah 7.14 is translated into the Septuagint as parthenos which is said to mean virgin, and this translation has caused Jews immense problems for a long time. Anyway, I looked up the word parthenos in A Greek-English Lexicon compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott revised and supplemented in 1968 (Oxford at the Clarendon Press). Definition 2 is a follows: 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins, Il.2.514, Pi.P.3.34, S.Tr.1219, Ar.Nu.530. The Septuagint was translated by Jews for Jews. The concept of virgin birth would have been irrelevant to a Jewish reader, but a non-Jew reading the Septuagint might automatically use the meaning virgin because non-Jewish mythology had lots of cases of virgin births. -- Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo (An Equal Opportunity Offender)