hgr

интересно. это один начинающий специалист по Септуагинте (думаю, что он именно начинает быть специалистом) возражает Хаиму Маккоби, которого я цитировал недавно под тем же сабж.

Hyam Maccoby wrote:

> The word PARTHENOS in the Septuagint does not necessarily mean 'virgin', as
> can be proved from the Septuagint of Gen. 34:3-4, where Dinah is called
> PARTHENOS after she has been raped by Shechem. The basic meaning of
> PARTHENOS is 'a young woman who has never had a child'. Frequently,
> however, it does denote 'virgin', and this is the meaning preferred in the
> Gospels in order to represent the miraculous birth of Jesus as having been
> prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. This is a translation that would not have

> arisen from the original Hebrew, which uses the word 'ALMAH, which simply
> means 'young woman' (whether virgin or not).

This statement mystifies me, since the OG does translate the Hebrew with a word
which often does mean "virgin." While we cannot say for sure what the OG
translator had in mind in this case, but if we look at other uses of PARQENOS
in Isaiah (LXX), PARQENOS probably means "virgins" in 23:4, certainly means
"virgin" in 37:22; 47:1 and almost certainly 62:5.

очень правильное, кстати, соображение: Септуагинта переведена не в один момент и не в одной школе, так что Быт. и Ис. почти наверняка переводились разными не только людьми, но и школами перевода.

It matters comparatively
little what the semantic domain of PARQENOS might include elsewhere if it used
regularly to mean virgin by Isaiah's translator. Clearly, the translation
"virgin" would have occurred to someone who read Hebrew. One can critique the
practices of the translator of Isaiah but one cannot say that the translation
"virgin" would not have occurred to a Jew in pre-Christian times.

> If the Hebrew had intended to
> prophesy a miracle, it would have used the unambiguous word BETULAH, which
> always means 'virgin'.

I find this problematic. How can we possibly say what the author of Isa 7:14
would have done if he had meant "virgin"? We simply cannot, indeed, must not,
say this because we cannot be positive of this at all.

Furthermore, when this discussion annually comes up, I always want to ask,
and so I will this time, what kind of sign it would be that a young woman would
have child? That's like me saying to you "Such-and-such an event will take
place and the proof that I'm speaking for my deity is that the Sun will come up
tomorrow by 8 AM." Duh, that's not a sign. I find the understanding of both
the Hebrew and Greek as "virgin" compelling because the alternative is
obviously not a "sign," but a hum-drum everyday event. The Hebrew may be
ambiguous but I find no difficulty in the NT authors understanding the Greek,
as one could the Hebrew, in the only way that makes the prophecy a "sign"
rather than business as usual.

Now, of course the words of Isaiah would have had meaning for the original
audience but I still contend that describing a young woman having a baby is
hardly a sign of anything, to say nothing of it having theological import for
anyone. I'm not attempting to make a theological statement but to make a
common-sense observation about the text. If )almah only means a young woman,
what kind of sign is this? For that reason, I think it completely reasonable,
almost necessary, for NT authors to understand it as PARQENOS, specifically, a
"virgin." All translations are, after all, based upon not just semantic
domain, but reason plus knowledge of both target and source languages and
worldviews.

Ken Litwak