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Hi, Shawn —
The New American Bible (NAB) translates
the Hebrew word Alma as young woman because that is what
the word literally means in the Hebrew.
The (NAB) New American Bible uses
the Hebrew text as the basis to translate
in to English. The Old Testament
was originally written in Hebrew
and Aramaic. So the NAB is accurate
in this instance. That doesn't mean
that Mary wasn't a virgin but there
is no word for virgin in Hebrew.
About 150 B.C., roughly 70 Jewish
Scholars gathered in Alexandria to
translate the Old Testament into
the Greek, because, at that point, most of the modern
world spoke Greek and
that included the Jews. So the scholars
all worked on it separately and when
they were done, all the translations
came out exactly the same. The rabbis
overseeing this process were amazed
and said it was a miracle. This Greek
version of the Old Testament is known
as the Septuagint; named after the
70 scholars.
Now the same text in Isaiah that
we are dealing with uses the Greek
word parthenos which is the Greek
word for virgin. Later, St.
Jerome translated the Scriptures
into Latin and he used the Septuagint
text as his basis, so we got the
Latin word Virgine which is
translated Virgin in the older English
Bibles that are based on the Latin
Vulgate.
In regards to the Old Testament,
the Old Douay Rheims or Confraternity
Bibles, are in English:
- translated
from Latin
- which is translated from
Greek
- which is translated from Hebrew.
In regards to the New Testament,
it was originally written in Greek.
My point is that these older Bibles
are not necessarily more accurate.
The original Isaiah text in Hebrew
is literally translated young
woman, but we also need to understand
that there is no Hebrew word for virgin, yet
the Jewish Greek Scholars understood
from the context that Isaiah meant
a virgin.
There is no perfect translation.
Lord knows, the Douay and Confraternity
are problematic. For my money, I
prefer the Revised Standard Version
Catholic Edition. If I'm not reading
from the Deuterocanonical books and
can use a Protestant translation, the New King James is a very good translation.
I would stay away from the New Revised
Standard Version Catholic Edition. (RSVCE)
It's a politically correct translation.
It goes out of it's way to emasculate
the text and God.
The NAB is the most commonly used
Catholic Bible in the United States.
It has it's share of errors plus
it has all poetic majesty of a small
soap dish.
Like I said, there is no perfect
translation. That's why I own several,
use them all, and compare the texts.
John
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