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  • From: Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] virginity
  • Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:35:55 -0400

On Jul 18, 2007, at 8:49 PM, dwashbur AT nyx.net wrote:

In addition, Judges 21:12 piles up 3 terms, NA(AR, B:TUWLFH, and "who did not know to
lie with a man," a rather unusual expression, methinks. The previous verse says to kill ever
woman "who knows lying-down with a male" (my own literal rendering). All this suggests
that the language being used here is very intensive and hardly normative for regular
narrative, much less poetry. I doubt we can infer anything at all about Isaiah from this
verse.

This feature also appears in Genesis and has already been discussed by Gordon: "In Ugarit, the Betulah Anath is not a virgin... In an Aramaic incantation a woman having difficulty in bearing her (presumably first) child is nonetheless called betulta ( = Heb. betulah). Dr. E. J. Young calls my attention to the fact that the betulah of Joel 1:8 must have been married for she mourns 'the husband of her youth.' Dr. H. S. Gehman informs me that parthenos as early as Homer (e.g., Iliad 2:514) may refer to a woman who is no longer a virgin. All this may explain why Rebecca, who is called an 'almah in Gen. 24:43, and a betulah in 24:16, is (to make matters unequivocally clear) additionally described as a girl that 'no man had known' (24:16). Neither 'almah nor betulah nor parthenos means necessarily what 'virgin' means in English" ("The Patriarchal Age," JBR 21 [1953], pp. 240-1).

Tory Thorpe




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