Virgin (בְּתוּלָה, bethulah; עַלְמָה, almah; παρθένος, parthenos). Generally, a woman of marriageable age, with or without focus on virginity; could be translated “girl.” In early Christian literature the term referred to one who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. In the Hebrew Bible, “virgin” customarily meant a female who had begun to menstruate and was therefore marriageable (Wenham, “Betûlāh”). Virginity is prized; unmarried girls living in their father’s house are expected to remain virgins until they are married to a man of their father’s choosing.

Consideration of the New Testament and Septuagint’s παρθένος (parthenos) (15 and 64 occurrences, respectively) and the roughly corresponding Hebrew בְּתוּלָה (bethulah) or עַלְמָה (almah) of the Masoretic Text (50 and 11 occurrences, respectively) has confirmed the importance of attending to the literary context in which the terms appear. Both the Hebrew and Greek terms can refer to either sexual status, age, or both, and are therefore alternatively translated as “virgin” or “young woman.”

In her survey of Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian discourse, Mary Foskett has shown that the figure of the virgin “is not a single cultural symbol, nor does she bear a single valence. Rather, she is multidimensional, connoting a spectrum of images and meanings” (Foskett, A Virgin Conceived, 72). Virginity might connote prophetic power as well as vulnerability; purity as well as erotic attraction and danger; single-mindedness as well as physical integrity.