Mary’s status as a virgin is found in two gospels.

Matthew and Luke say Mary was a virgin when she conceived her first child. Mary later had other children. Gospels and St. Paul state that Jesus had brothers and sisters.

The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was a virgin her entire life, which is a jump from what Luke and Matthew say about Mary being a virgin at the time Jesus was conceived. But was she a virgin even then?

Luke 1:34: “How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

Matthew 1:22-23: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means, “God with us”).

But the prophet says nothing about a virgin. Isaiah 7:14 has “young woman,” using the

Hebrew word “almah.” The Hebrew word for virgin--“betulah”--is not used.

That word “almah,” meaning young woman, was changed to “virgin” (“parthenos”) when Hebrew scripture was translated into Greek. “Almah” was mistranslated around 200 years before Jesus was born.

The gospel writers Matthew and Luke wrote in Greek.

When writing about Mary, they were influenced by a famous Greek translation of scripture (the Septuagint), not the original Hebrew text.

Matthew and Luke speak of a virgin because a careless scribe (identity unknown) wrote “virgin” when looking at a Hebrew word for “young woman.”

Matthew and Luke provide stories to fulfill what they viewed as prophecy. In a Greek translation of scripture they saw Isaiah predicting a virgin, so Matthew and Luke provided stories about a virgin--or early Christians provided the stories to the writers.

This error involving “almah” is the most famous mistranslation in history.

But the problem goes beyond a mistranslation.

Instead of predicting anything about a future messiah, Isaiah spoke of a child being born to King Ahaz of Judah.


Was Mary a Virgin? Isaiah 7:14 "almah" is "young woman" Matthew & Luke & translation error

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