Featured The 1952 Revised Standard Bible

No, contrary to the belief of the liberal scholars who translated the RSV, or edited lexicons such as BDB. The Hebrew word almah (עלמה) occurs seven times in the OT, several times demonstrably meaning virgin, but never demonstrably meaning only a "young woman" regardless of her virginity. Furthermore, since Matthew 1:23 translated it through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as parthenos, παρθένος, and that always means virgin.

 

So the Rsv would get that rendering mainly due to them "not reading the NT" back into the OT?

 

IMO, they got it from being liberal and not believing in the virgin birth.

 

That would be the best answer!

 

Wikipedia:

"Almah (עַלְמָה‎ ‘almāh, plural: עֲלָמוֹת‎ ‘ălāmōṯ, from a root implying the vigour of puberty) is a Hebrew word for a young woman of childbearing age; despite its importance to the account of the virgin birth of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, scholars agree that it has nothing to do with virginity. It occurs nine times in the Hebrew Bible".

"The Septuagint translates most occurrences of almah into a generic word neanis νεᾶνις meaning 'young woman',[12][13] or to neotes νεότης meaning 'youth',[14] both words being derived from neos 'new' and unrelated to virginity.[15] Two occurrences, in the Genesis verse concerning Rebecca[16] and in Isaiah 7:14, are translated into parthenos (παρθένος)".

 

Ziggy, my friend, I do not allow my students to cite Wikipedia in their research papers. Therefore, I'll ignore it and stick to my own opinion.

 

How did the renowned BDB render it as meaning?

 

They give "virgin" as the first (and thus most important) meaning.

1") virgin, young woman
1a) of marriageable age
1b) maid or newly married"

I certainly don't know where they got the "newly married" one.

 

Based upon them, should be a young virgin !

 

Mea culpa. A friend noted to me that this is not actually what BDB says. I cited this from e-Sword, but someone has doctored the entry for BDB. Here is the BDB entry from Bibleworks:

עלמה. [; n. f. young woman (ripe sexually; maid or newly married);—Œ[ Gn 24:43 (J), Ex 2:8 (E), Pr 30:19, Is 7:14; pl. tAml'[] Psalm 68:26, Ct 1:3, 6:8; tAml'[]-l[; to (the voice of) young women, either lit., or of soprano or falsetto of boys: 1 Ch 15:20, Psalm 9:1 (rd. !Bel; tAml'[]-l[; [for !Bel; tWm-l[;], ‘ voce virginea a pueris decantandum, ’ Thes), 46:1, 48:15 (rd. tAml'[]-l[; [for tWm-l[;]; tr. prob. to 49:1).

Forgive me for not getting all of the Hebrew corrected into the entry (thus the gibberish). I'm giving my students a quiz right now, and then I lecture, so I don't have time to do it right.

 

So does look like we still needed the Holy Spirit to inform us that He meant Virgin back in Isaiah, as He used Matthew
to record that down to us!
So the Rsv not that bad

 

RSV related critiques from 1946-51 relate only to the NT, since the RSV OT was not published until 1952. Criticisms after 1952 apply to OT as well as NT.

My primary criticism in the RSV OT relates to the high number of conjectures they place in the text whenever they think the Hebrew or Aramaic to be "too difficult."

 

This is not a college classroom at a school that provides access to a library. Wikipedia provides access to online information that ALL people on an online forum can access so that ALL can participate in a conversation. To exclude people from the opportunity to join a conversation by refusing to accept the only information that they have access to is ...

My community college never had access to the materials that university students have access to. And the longer I am out of school, the more access I am losing. When people set the bar above my access level, I am being forced out of more and more conversations. But maybe those are conversations that I don't belong in. I think sometimes those that exclude the masses lose out more than the masses lose by being excluded from the conversations of the minority.