Lexicon

G3933 - parthenos

Strong's: G3933 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: par-then'-os Part of speech: feminine noun (occasionally adjectival) Hebrew equivalents (LXX): H1330 - bethulah, בְּתוּלָה, "virgin"; H5959 - almah, עַלְמָה, "young woman / virgin". NT occurrences: 15 (across 14 verses)

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

A maiden, virgin, a woman who has never had sexual intercourse with a man; sexually inviolate.
A young woman of marriageable age, a parthenos by social position rather than strict biological state, though the cultural assumption of pre-marital chastity made the two senses largely overlap in NT usage.
(Adjectivally / metaphorically) Pure, chaste, undefiled, applied to males in Revelation 14:4 ("these are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they are parthenoi"), where the term cannot mean biological virginity in the female sense and is used metaphorically of spiritual purity.

The Greek word, in classical and biblical usage, technically and unambiguously means "virgin", a sexually inviolate young woman. Unlike Hebrew almah (which has more semantic latitude), parthenos is the precise Greek term for sexual virginity.

Theological force, the LXX rendering of Isaiah 7:14

The word's theological weight rests almost entirely on its deliberate use by the pre-Christian Jewish translators of the LXX to render Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14:

Idou hē parthenos en gastri lēpsetai kai texetai huion, "Behold, the parthenos shall conceive and bear a son" (LXX, c. 250 BC)

The translators had a choice. Almah in Hebrew is sometimes rendered into Greek as neanis (young woman), and in fact later Jewish revisions (Theodotion, Aquila, Symmachus) all changed Isaiah 7:14 to neanis precisely because parthenos had become a Christian-apologetic tool. But the original LXX translators, Jewish, ~250 BC, with no Christian agenda, chose parthenos. This is the strongest single argument for the virgin reading of Isaiah 7:14: the pre-Christian Jewish translators understood the verse to require a virgin.

Matthew 1:23 then cites the LXX directly:

"BEHOLD, THE PARTHENOS SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL"

The virgin-birth doctrine

The virgin birth (more precisely the virginal conception) is grounded primarily in:

Matthew 1:18-25, Mary "found with child by the Holy Spirit" before "they came together"; cites Isaiah 7:14 in parthenos.
Luke 1:26-38, Annunciation; Mary's question "how can this be, since I am a parthenos?"; angel's answer "the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you."

The doctrine asserts that:

Mary conceived Jesus while a virgin, by the Holy Spirit's miraculous action, without male agency.
This miraculous conception is a fulfillment of OT messianic prophecy.
The virgin conception is connected (in classical Christian theology) to:

The sinlessness of Christ (sometimes, though the connection is theological, not lexical-textual).
The unique Sonship of Christ, the Father is His "Father" without Joseph's biological agency.
The full deity AND full humanity of Christ, divine origin (no human father) + true human flesh (true human mother).

The virgin birth is one of the four credal essentials in the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, denied only by liberal-critical Christianity (Bultmann, etc.). All historic Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, Lutheran, evangelical) affirm it.

Notable verses

Of Mary specifically

Matthew 1:23, citing Isaiah 7:14: hē parthenos
Luke 1:27 (twice), "to a parthenos engaged to a man whose name was Joseph… and the parthenos's name was Mary"

Other female parthenoi

Acts 21:9, Philip's four daughters, parthenoi, who prophesied
Matthew 25:1-13, the parable of the ten parthenoi (wise and foolish virgins)
1 Corinthians 7:25-38, Paul's counsel to parthenoi concerning marriage / celibacy
2 Corinthians 11:2, Paul presents the church as a "pure parthenos to Christ"

Metaphorical / male application

Revelation 14:4, "these are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they have kept themselves parthenoi; these are the ones who follow the Lamb"

Patristic / scholarly note

The patristic tradition was unanimous on the virgin birth from the earliest extant texts. Ignatius of Antioch (Ephesians 19, c. AD 110), the earliest extra-canonical witness, treats Mary's virginity as one of the "three mysteries shouted in silence." Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 43, 67-68, 84, c. AD 160) and Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ 17-23, c. AD 210) develop the virgin-birth defense extensively against early heretical denials (Cerinthus, Marcion, the Ebionites all denied it).

The patristic apologetic against later Jewish counter-translation (Symmachus, etc., shifting parthenos to neanis) is robust: the original LXX choice, pre-Christian, made by Jewish translators with no apologetic motive, established parthenos as the Greek understanding of almah in Isaiah 7:14. The later shift to neanis is documented as polemically motivated.

The Reformation preserved the doctrine universally. Luther (The Magnificat, 1521; the Large Catechism, 1529) and Calvin (Institutes II.13-14; Harmony of the Gospels commentary) both defend the virginal conception with vigor. The Westminster Confession 8.2 affirms it.

Modern conservative scholarship, J. Gresham Machen's The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930) is the foundational 20th-century treatment, defending the doctrine against Bultmann-style demythologization. More recent: D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo (An Introduction to the New Testament, 2005); Andreas Köstenberger and Alexander Stewart (The First Days of Jesus, 2015); Stephen Davis et al. (The Incarnation, 2002).

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here.