Parthenos: The Greek Word That Carries More Weight Than People Realize

Among the many words found in the Bible, few have generated as much controversy as parthenos. This word sits at the center of the debate over the virgin birth. Parthenos is the Greek term translated as ‘virgin’ in both Matthew 1:23 and Luke 1:27. Depending on whom you ask, it is either a clear affirmation of Mary’s virginity or a mistranslation that has shaped Christian belief for centuries.

As is often the case, the reality is more nuanced than either side of the debate acknowledges. Before turning to the details, it helps to examine parthenos’s meaning, origins, and use in the Gospels.

The Word and Its Range of Meaning

Parthenos is a Greek word that primarily means a young, unmarried woman. In its most common usage, it carries the connotation of virginity, a young woman who has not yet been with a man. The word does have a range, though.

In some contexts, parthenos can refer to a young woman of marriageable age without making a strict claim about sexual history. It can even be used of chaste men in some texts, though that is more rare.

Is parthenos a precise term for ‘virgin’? In most cases, yes. However, it is not the only possible meaning the word can convey. As with nearly every word in any language, the surrounding context plays a significant role in shaping its meaning.

It is important to recognize this from the outset, as popular discussions often present parthenos as either an exclusively precise term for ‘virgin’ or as a vague reference to a young woman. In reality, neither extreme is entirely accurate.

With that range in mind, the next question is how the Septuagint uses the term. The word generally leans toward the meaning of virginity, but it does allow for some flexibility, particularly in poetic or descriptive contexts.

The Septuagint Connection

Here is where the conversation gets interesting. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced by Jewish scholars beginning in the third century BC, translates almah in Isaiah 7:14 as parthenos.

Was this a mistake on the part of the translators? It is highly unlikely that the Jewish scholars who produced the Septuagint were attempting to lay the framework for a Christian doctrine centuries before Christianity emerged. Rather, they selected parthenos as a reasonable Greek equivalent for almah, which refers to a young woman of marriageable age, often though not always a virgin.

In fact, both almah and bethulah are typically translated into Greek as parthenos in the Septuagint. Na’arah is sometimes translated as parthenos, and more often as neanis or kore. The choice was about finding a Greek word that captured the broader semantic range of these Hebrew terms.

This means that when Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Septuagint and uses parthenos, he is not making a translation error. He is using the established Greek term for a Hebrew word that already had some flexibility built into it. The real question, then, is how Matthew uses that term in his narrative.

The central issue is not whether the translation itself was incorrect. Instead, we must consider how Matthew employs this translation within his narrative, beginning with the quotation itself.

Now, as a quick note, while we tend to refer to the Greek translations as a whole as the Septuagint, that isn’t quite correct. We will dive deeper into that later, but for ease, we will continue to use the term Septuagint.

How Matthew Uses Parthenos

Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Septuagint. Behold, the parthenos shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.

If we interpret parthenos in its broader sense, as simply referring to a young woman of marriageable age, then the verse itself is unremarkable. After all, a young woman conceiving and bearing a son is the ordinary course of human reproduction.

Matthew clearly does not read it that way. He frames the entire surrounding narrative around Mary being a virgin in the strict sense.

Mary is found to be with child from the Holy Spirit before she and Joseph have come together. Joseph contemplates divorcing her quietly precisely because pregnancy in a betrothed woman who has not been with her husband can only mean one thing, and the angel has to intervene to tell him otherwise. Matthew goes out of his way to specify that Joseph knew her not until she had borne a son.

The context that Matthew provides compels the reader to understand parthenos in its strictest sense, as referring to virginity. Matthew does not depend solely on the word itself; rather, he constructs a narrative framework that requires this interpretation.

This approach is characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole. Matthew consistently seeks to connect the story of Jesus to passages from Hebrew scripture. At times, these connections are persuasive; at other times, they appear more tenuous.

That broader pattern makes his use of Isaiah 7:14 easier to understand. For example, Matthew asserts that Jesus’s residence in Nazareth fulfills a prophecy that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene, although no such prophecy is found in the Hebrew Bible. In this case, Matthew does not cite a specific passage but simply makes the assertion.

Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 follows a similar pattern. He holds a tradition concerning the virgin birth and seeks a passage in Hebrew scripture that could be interpreted to support it. He identifies Isaiah 7:14, which refers to a young woman conceiving, and employs the Septuagint translation that uses the word parthenos. Matthew then presents this verse as a prophecy fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.

In doing this, Matthew is participating in a recognized Jewish interpretive practice. Second Temple Jewish writers regularly reread older texts in new ways, finding new meanings and applying old verses to new situations.

The Qumran community did this constantly. Early rabbinic literature does this. Matthew is operating within his tradition’s recognized practices.

He is also probably aware that Isaiah 7:14 in its original context was not about a virgin birth or a future Messiah. It was a sign given to King Ahaz in the eighth century BC about the imminent birth of a child whose existence would mark the timing of God’s judgment on Ahaz’s enemies.

Matthew, being well-versed in Hebrew scripture, almost certainly knew this. Within his theological framework, in which Jesus is the climactic fulfillment of Israel’s story, rereading Isaiah through the lens of the virgin birth narrative made sense.

Luke Changes the Whole Game

Here is the part of the conversation that almost never gets enough attention. Critics love to focus on Matthew, Isaiah, and the parthenos translation question. They build elaborate arguments about whether Matthew misread the Hebrew, whether the Septuagint mistranslated almah, and whether Christianity is built on a chain of linguistic errors.

However, the account found in the Gospel of Luke significantly alters the terms of this discussion. It shifts the focus away from Matthew’s use of Isaiah and toward Luke’s own account.

Luke does not quote Isaiah 7:14. Luke does not reference any prophecy about a virgin. Luke makes no attempt to ground the virgin birth in Hebrew scripture. He simply tells the story.

In Luke 1:27, Mary is described as a parthenos. Could that be read as merely a young woman? Theoretically, yes. Luke immediately removes any ambiguity, though.

Mary herself asks the angel Gabriel how this can be, since she has not known a man, using language that explicitly references her virginity. The text leaves no room for the soft reading of parthenos.

Luke’s account is independent of Matthew’s. The two narratives share the basic claim of a virgin birth while differing in almost every other detail. Different genealogies. Different events surrounding the birth. Different geographic movements. Different supporting characters. The two accounts do not appear to be drawing on each other.

This point is of considerable importance. It indicates that the tradition of the virgin birth did not originate with Matthew as an attempt to fulfill an Isaiah prophecy. Rather, the tradition appears to have existed independently within at least two strands of early Christian memory. Both Matthew and Luke inherited some version of this tradition, which is why Matthew could connect it to Isaiah while Luke did not.

Popular arguments against the virgin birth tend to focus almost exclusively on the relationship between Matthew and Isaiah. The reasoning typically proceeds as follows: Matthew based his claim of the virgin birth on a mistranslation of Isaiah, and therefore, the doctrine itself is a fiction arising from a linguistic mistake. But that line of argument cannot account for Luke’s separate account.

This argument fails at two levels.

First, it misrepresents the linguistic situation. Parthenos is a perfectly reasonable Greek translation of almah. The Septuagint translators were not making an error. Matthew is not making an error in citing the Septuagint. The flexibility of these terms allows for the readings provided.

Second, and more decisively, it ignores Luke entirely. Even if Matthew’s appeal to Isaiah were completely groundless, Luke’s independent account would still establish the existence of a virgin birth tradition in early Christianity. The argument simply does not reach Luke.

This suggests that the virgin birth tradition is older than its scriptural justifications. The tradition came first. The appeals to Isaiah came later, as Matthew tried to ground a story he had inherited within the Hebrew scriptures he was working from. Take away Matthew’s Isaiah argument, and you still have the underlying tradition that Matthew himself was trying to explain.

This presents a much more intriguing historical scenario than the simplified narrative that Christianity invented the virgin birth tradition solely because of a mistranslation. The main point is that the tradition appears to be older than its scriptural justifications, which makes the development of these traditions worth careful consideration.