Isaiah 7:14 – The Jewish Translators Didn’t Mean Virgin!
In this video, we return to Isaiah 7:14 to examine the widespread Christian claim that the Septuagint proves Jewish translators understood the Hebrew word almah to mean “virgin” centuries before Christianity.
Is that historically accurate?
We analyze:
- The semantic range of the Greek word parthenos in classical and Hellenistic literature
- Its use in Homer and Pindar
- The independent Jewish translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion
- Origen’s Hexapla and its textual significance
- The manuscript evidence (or lack thereof) prior to the 4th century
The historical and linguistic evidence tells a very different story. The claim that the Septuagint proves a pre-Christian Jewish understanding of almah as “virgin” does not withstand scrutiny.
This is a source-based, text-critical examination of one of the central arguments in the Isaiah 7:14 debate.
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