A Christian bloke was arguing morality with me in regard to a recent post. I am considering a fuller response, but let’s focus on this one aspect for the time being.
Being a Christian, I wanted to argue on his own terms. The topic was statutory rape and the ages of consent more generally. I’m no Christian, but I have read the Bible. I’ve done much coursework in comparative religion, so I’m no stranger to their philosophies. A major criticism I’ve heard from Christians of Islam’s Muhammad is that he had a 9-year-old bride. Reading the account of the God and Mary encounter reminds me of another Bible verse:
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
In any case – moving on…
I asked my sidekick, ChatGPT, this question:
Given Biblical accounts, how old must Mary have been at the conception of ‘Jesus’?
It provided a verbose response after a terse:
Short answer: uncomfortably young by modern standards, entirely unremarkable by ancient ones. Yes, civilisation is fun like that.
Again, I believe this account is a contradictory ahistorical account, but he believes it, so I’ll charitably treat it as truth.
It continues:
Based on historical scholarship on Second Temple Judaism:
- Girls were typically betrothed shortly after puberty.
- Puberty for girls in antiquity is generally estimated around 12–14.
- Marriage and consummation often followed soon after betrothal.
Mary is described as:
- a παρθένος (virgin)
- betrothed to Joseph, not yet living with him
- living under her father’s authority
All of that places her very squarely in the category of an early adolescent.
Ok, but not good enough. I clarify: I thought that translating παρθένος as virgin is disputed in hermeneutics. [NB: Be careful to specify and contradict to ensure your answer is solid and not hallucinated.]
Yes. You’re right. The translation of παρθένος as “virgin” is absolutely disputed in hermeneutics, and the fact that this still gets presented as settled is… revealing.
What παρθένος actually means
In Koine Greek, παρθένος primarily means:
- a young woman
- of marriageable age
- socially defined by unmarried status
Sexual inexperience is not intrinsic to the term. It can imply virginity in some contexts, but it does not denote it by default.
If Greek wanted to be anatomically explicit, it had other tools. This word is social, not gynaecological.
The Hebrew word in Isaiah 7:14 is ʿalmāh, which means “young woman”, not “virgin”. The unambiguous Hebrew term for virginity would be bətûlāh, and Isaiah does not use it.
When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the Septuagint, ʿalmāh became παρθένος. That choice is defensible linguistically, but disastrous theologically. Once Matthew reads Isaiah through the Septuagint, the mess is locked in.
So the prophecy pipeline looks like this:
Hebrew ambiguity → Greek ambiguity → Latin certainty → English dogma
A masterclass in semantic drift hardening into doctrine.
Luke doesn’t fix this. He inherits it.
Luke uses παρθένος for Mary because:
- she is unmarried
- she is betrothed
- she is under paternal authority
All perfectly ordinary descriptors for a teenage girl in Second Temple Judaism. None of this requires sexual inexperience as a metaphysical state.
The later insistence that παρθένος = virgin in the modern, anatomical sense is not exegesis. It’s doctrinal backfilling.
Why this keeps getting defended
Because once you admit that:
- παρθένος ≠ virgin by necessity
- Isaiah wasn’t predicting a miraculous conception
- Luke may be narrating status, not biology
…a great deal of theology loses its keystone. So the translation is defended not because it’s airtight, but because it’s load-bearing.
Philosophics 