Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

Details surrounding the virgin birth are even less satisfactory. The uncomfortable truth is that, despite its singular nature, there is no mention of it in either Mark or John, or in any of Paul’s letters. Even in Matthew and Luke, according to Geza Vermes, the Oxford biblical scholar, it is treated ‘merely as a preface to the main story, and as neither of these two, nor the rest of the New Testament, ever allude to it again, it may be safely assumed that it is a secondary accretion.’84 In any case, the word ‘virgin’ was used ‘elastically’ in both Greek and Hebrew. In one sense it was used for people in their first marriage. Greek and Latin inscriptions found in the catacombs in Rome show that the word ‘virgin’ could be applied to either a wife or husband after years of marriage. Thus ‘a virgin husband’ almost certainly meant a married man who had not been married before. Another meaning of the term was applied to women who could not conceive–i.e., had not menstruated. ‘This form of virginity ended with menstruation.’85