HH: There's no biblical reference which indicates that "almah" describes
a married woman.
The Jews who translated the Septuagint in 200 B.C.E. or so evidently
felt that the word implied a
virgin.
False. The "Jews" who created the LXX did not restrict the meaning of
PARQENOS to physical virgins (cf. Gen. xxxiv 3). So you cannot say it
implies physical virginity in Isa. vii 14 even in the Greek version.
HH: Yes, there are exceptional cases with PARQENOS, but the word
generally means virgin...
In addition, the law of Moses required that women be virgins
before they were married. This word seems to describe young women, women
before they were married. So one assumes that they were virgins.
What word are you talking about?
HH: 'almah.
HH: The culture required virginity of the young women who weren't
married. This word does not describe married women in biblical times as
far as we know.
"All modern scholars, however, agree that the Heb
[almah] merely denotes a young woman of marriageable age, whether
married or unmarried, whether a virgin or not."
HH: True, but quite a number of scholars believe that the word, while
not strictly requiring virginity, would have been associated with it in
Israel.
The word almah simply connotes youth, as does the masculine form, in
the TaNaK. But saying that youth is associated with virginity, while
true in almost every culture, is not a given in one where pre-teen and
teenage marriages are the norm. A female or male Israelite is no
longer considered an elem/almah after a certain age, not necessarily
after marriage or after they have had sex (cf. BDB s.v. elem, "young
man," almah, "maid or newly married").
HH: It is a given where death can be the penalty for a violation of a
norm commanded by God. Israel was special in this regard.
This sense is already in archaic BH where we see that the plural of
almah may denote a
separate category of young wives in the royal harem among queens and
concubines (Song of Sol. vi 8; cf. BDB s.v. almah, "maid or newly
married").
HH: Nowhere does the Song of Solomon indicate that the women dubbed
"almah" were part of a royal harem. The young women in Israel could have
swooned at Solomon the way that young women nowadays swoon at Hollywood
hunks or star athletes.
Then you would make the sixty queens and eighty concubines whose wives
in Israel?
HH: Queens and concubines have a different position in society than
'almahs. So just because Solomon had queens and concubines in his harem
did not mean that he had "almahs" in his harem.
All of these women in Song of Sol. vi 8, i.e. "sixty queens, eighty
concubines, and alamot without number," were part of the royal harem;
HH: You haven't supplied any evidence for that.
Since having two wives simultaneously was not God's ideal
(Genesis 2), I do not want to saddle Isaiah with the assumption of his
being bigamous.
This is a problem for you the christian, not the preexilic
Torah-observant Israelite.
HH: God allowed Israelistes to have more than one marriage, but it was
not his ideal. God ordained the man and woman to unite in marriage. A
woman does not want to unite with her husband's other wife.
HH: Some translations agree with you: NRSV and CEV. I don't think the
case is uncontestable that the verbs show that the woman was already
pregnant.
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