[B-Greek] Luke 2:36

Harold Holmyard hholmyard at ont.com
Thu Jan 4 10:01:30 EST 2007


Dear Tory,
>> RB:
>>  >> Hanna's 'betulim' would be her marriage,
>>  >> that is, her leaving her betulim.
>>
>> TT:
>>  > Respectfully, it cannot be her 'marriage' in the
>>  > abstract sense. For 'btwlym,' a masculine plural
>>  > cognate (lit. 'signs of virginity' visible on the $mlh > the night of consumation), never has this meaning in BH, MH, or later rabbinic idiom.
>>     
>> Of course, 'marriage' is used by RB as 'the
>> marriage night', i.e., 'the first night', 'the night
>> of the betullim', and not the continued state of marriage.
>>     
>> Betulim, which would appear on the first night,
>> becomes a metonymy for the beginning of the
>> marriage, that is, the leaving of the virginity.
>>     
>
> TT: This metonymy is a little misleading. The 'leaving
> of the virginity' may be clear enough in English, but
> 'btwlym,' used in the sense of a state or condition
> which may be contrasted with marital life, does not
> exist in BH or MH. 
>   

HH: I don't think you are right. Here is the meaning of the Hebrew 
'btwlym' in the standard scholarly hebrew lexicon (HAL): "1. state of 
virginity Lev 21:13; Ju 11:37f;  Ezk 23:3,8;  Sir 42:10; ---2. evidence 
of virginity Dt 22:14f., 17, 20." I believe Randall has things exactly 
right.

>> And yes, that information would be superfluous,
>> except that it implies that that marriage was her
>> first and presumably when young.
>>     
>
> TT: Not in the Jewish world. After kiddushin, a couple
> is legally married in many respects. They may not
> cohabit, but she is liable to the death penalty for
> adultery before the marriage takes full effect with
> the nesuin. A betrothal must be disolved the same way
> a marriage would.
>   

HH: I do not accept that Talmudic or modern Jewish interpretation always 
necessarily reflects a particular biblical usage. Randall's comment that 
you are criticizing here seems preferable. That is the obvious intent of 
the passage, it seems to me. You seem to be proposing a strange and 
unlikely idea, that someone was married seven years before having a 
period. I would say the circumstance is almost incredible or a medical 
disorder.
>   
>> While the description strikes me as Hebraic, in line
>> with much of Luke's Greek and especially ch 1-2, in Greek the 'virgin' idiom would reflect 'youth', male or
>> female.
>>     
>
> TT: If Hebraic, the description in Greek would not
> merely reflect youth. A btwlh is a female who has not
> had her first period, even if she were married
> (Mishnah Nidd. 1:4). Chastity is not implicit.
>   


HH: I don't think the idea of not having had one's first period is the 
idea stressed or even mentioned in the Bible.
 

> Young people were sometimes referred to as
> 'parthenos', without any knowledge or statement of their sexlife.
>
> TT: And a young woman everyone knew was no longer
> virgo intacta could still be referred to as
> 'parthenos' (LXX, Gen. 34:1-4).
>   


HH: However, one point of the word in this context of Gen 34:3 may be to 
indicate that Dinah had been a virgin before this rape described in the 
previous verse, and she had had no intention of being anything but a virgin.

>> As for APO THS PARQENIAS being as an idiom for
>> 'marital fidelity', I've never seen such.
>> 'a virginal marriage'? Almost sounds kinky and
>> would turn the idiom on its head.
>>     
>
> TT: The former is possibly the sense in Rev. 14:4,
> since marital life, or even sex per se, does not cause
> 'defilement' in a Jewish context.

HH: Well, the act of sex does make one unclean:

Lev 15:16 When a man has an emission of semen, he is to bathe himself 
completely with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Lev. 15:18 If a man lies down (LXX: "sleeps") with a woman and has an 
emission of semen, both of them are to bathe with water, and they will 
remain unclean until evening.

>  As for the latter,
> you are, once again, reading virgo intacta into Lk
> 2:36.

HH: That's what the text implies.

>  It might help to explain that a pregnant btwlh
> is not a contradiction or biological impossibility,
> not in the Jewish worldview (Chag. 14b-15a) where
> btwlh simply refers to a minor, i.e. a girl below
> puberty.

HH: That may be a possible idea, but it is not the idea in this verse.

>  Thus Hanna's virginity (btwlyh) can refer to
> delayed puberty, that is, she experienced seven years
> of marital life before becoming a menstruant, which
> would be noteworthy in Judaism.
>   

HH: This is not the idea in Luke 2
>   
>> You would need some good proof, like when English
>> speakers say 'bad' and mean 'good, cool'. Luke 2:36
>> makes sense as it is, so it is not your proof.
>>
>> Randall Buth
>>     
>
> TT: Of course, I would never offer Lk 2:36 as proof of
> anything. I'm only looking at it from a Jewish
> perspective. I cannot help it, being a Jew. But
> perhaps that is not what the Luke author expects.
>   

HH: Right. The word has more than one meaning, and the idea you suggest 
is not the only possible meaning for the terms involved. The idea that I 
generally hear for btwlyh is that it refers to a female of marriageable 
age and often connotes a virgin.
 
Yours,
Harold Holmyard




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