To begin, I just want to mention that I’m more familiar with Koine Greek than classical Greek. While I minored in Greek in college, my focus has been New Testament studies, so koine Greek reigns there. It won’t make much of a difference, but I wanted to be upfront with that.
The word we are talking about here is the Greek word parthenos (παρθένος). If we look up the term in Walter Bauer’s “A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,” there are two definitions that are given. The first is simply virgin, in particular a female who is a virgin. The second definition is an explanation that the term can also be applied to men who are also virgins, but it is a lot less common. So that would seem as if the case would be settled there. But it gets a bit more complicated.
Bauer’s work is looking specifically at Christian texts, so right around the first century is the time period we are dealing with. Generally speaking, when we see the term parthenos, it is in reference to the story in Matthew that is quoting Isaiah 7:14.
Just a bit of an aside, as it helps clear up some of the confusion here. In Isaiah 7:14, which Matthew is quoting, there is a prophecy of sorts that states that an almah will bear a son who will be called Immanuel.
Bart Ehrman has a nice treatment of this in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millennium. But the word in question here is the Hebrew word almah. It can refer to a virgin, if there is a qualifier there. But the actual meaning of the term is more along the lines of maiden, or young woman. In order for almah to refer to a virgin, you have to have a qualifier, such as that she didn’t know a man. In that case, a Hebrew writer will probably use the word bethulah instead, as it more directly means virgin, but not always.
The confusion comes in the Greek translation of the Hebrew book of Isaiah. The term almah is translated to parthenos, that is, at least for the early Christians, refers to a virgin. So within early Christian writing, the vast majority of the time in which the term parthenos is used, it means a virgin. So the idea among some is that the term always means virgin in ancient Greek.
That’s not the case though. So jumping back to Bauer, when he states that the term parthenos, in the early Christian literature, means virgin, he also shows a few exceptions. He mentions that the base, parth, can mean simply girl, or that parthenos can refer to something like a sweetheart. It can also just refer to daughters. A lot of this has to do with the context involved and the qualifiers applied.
Going back to the story in Matthew, in the preceding verses, we are told that Mary was engaged to Joseph, and they had not come together. But she was pregnant anyway by the holy spirit. This is then followed up with the passage in Isaiah that states that, in Greek, a parthenos will give birth.
While parthenos here can simply mean maiden, the qualifier has already been listed, in that Mary bore a child through the Holy Spirit. There’s actually a bit of debate even on that. There are some scholars who argue that Matthew didn’t even mean that Mary was a virgin at all, and when using the term parthenos, simply meant a maiden.
Tying this all together. Bauer shows that parthenos could mean something other than maiden, even in the first century. While it was generally meant as a virgin in Christian texts, there were exceptions. The qualifiers are what make the term go from maiden to virgin. We can expand that by looking at the Liddell-Scott Greek English Lexicon, which is the go-to lexicon for ancient Greek.
The first definition in the Liddell Scott lexicon is maiden or girl. Liddell and Scott also recognized that the term could refer to a virgin, either male or female, but it was dependent on the qualifiers in the context of the passage.
So that is a very long way to say yes, parthenos could refer to a maiden, or an unmarried woman. That wasn’t ever the only definition though, and at the same time, based on context could mean virgin. As we see, the definition really doesn’t change, but its use in the Christian era was more in regard to the passage in Matthew, and the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin, so more often than not, when the term parthenos was being used, it was being used in that context, and thus meant virgin.