A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

by Adam Rutherford

In early versions of the Book of Isaiah, written in Hebrew, there is a prophecy that uses the word almah to describe the mother of a boy named Immanuel, meaning “God is with us.” Almah has no direct translation in English, nor in ancient Greek, but broadly means “young woman,” or “woman who has not yet borne a child.” By the time of Jesus, the Jews had adopted Greek and Aramaic, and no longer spoke Hebrew. Almah became the Greek Parthenos, which has a more specific meaning as “virgin.” It’s the root of a good biological term, parthenogenesis, used to describe the generation of young in some insects and reptiles in the absence of a male: a virgin birth. But in a mutated translation of a single word, the woman becomes a virgin, and the child becomes the Messiah, and the story of Jesus has instantaneously been transformed. Matthew and Luke render it true in the New Testament, a billion Catholics hold this as gospel, and that’s what we all sing in Christmas carols.