Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Lewis wrote:
> On 29 Oct 99, at 22:16, Ken Litwak wrote:
> 
> > a) almah cannot mean virgin or that no reader would have guessed that in
> > Isa 7:14 it meant that.
> 
> Even if almah did mean virgin you'd have to show that the meaning 
> of the text wasn't:
> 
> behold this [young woman who is now a] virgin will [marry and then] 
> become pregnant and give birth to a son, 
> 
> but instead was:
> 
> behold a virgin [sometime in the future] will [without having lost her 
> virginal status] become pregnant and give birth to a son.

Excuse me, but the latter appears to be the plain sense of the text 
since there is no explicit mention of marriage or sexual relations.  
Hence it seems to me the burden of proof is on the end with these 
undocumented additions.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"But what about the muffler bearings?"