German uses the word Jungfrau (literally young woman), there’s no separate word explicitely defining a state of not having had sex.
I’m guessing Almah is similar.
But I heard a different story about the “virgin birth” - problem is I have no idea if it’s true or not. Anyhow:
There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins (“marriable” I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.
So there’s your “Virgin” Mary who was “visited by an angel” to conceive.
edit: there is some evidence that girls used to work and live at the temples, and my story is likely an interpretation of the Gospel of James.
There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins (“marriable” I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.
This is something I would believe about a Roman temple maaaaaaaybe. I think your source heard a garbled version of the idea of the Vestal Virgins, and got really confused beyond that.
German uses the word Jungfrau (literally young woman), there’s no separate word explicitely defining a state of not having had sex.
I’m guessing Almah is similar.
But I heard a different story about the “virgin birth” - problem is I have no idea if it’s true or not. Anyhow:
There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins (“marriable” I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.
So there’s your “Virgin” Mary who was “visited by an angel” to conceive.
edit: there is some evidence that girls used to work and live at the temples, and my story is likely an interpretation of the Gospel of James.
I don’t think there’s any evidence of this.
The Bible has a story with a character pretending to be a temple prostitute to secure her inheritance. But when she becomes pregnant, she is supposed to be put to death. I don’t think temple prostitution was at all a thing by 700 BCE, much less 3 BCE, and it seems more like a holdover from extremely uncomfortable ancient at the time of writing practices - kinda like some of the remnants of child sacrifice that you can find in the OT. I think this is also something the Romans would have noted.
This is something I would believe about a Roman temple maaaaaaaybe. I think your source heard a garbled version of the idea of the Vestal Virgins, and got really confused beyond that.
From what I found, Mary supposedly lived at the temple from childhood as a consecrated virgin.
So apparently she was groomed by the priests?
This is your source.
To be honest, I was more into ancient Greek, Egyptian and Norse than Christian mythology as I was growing up, so yeah, it might be.
I am not a scholar on these things by far.