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submitted 1 week ago by io@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world

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[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

German uses the word Jungfrau (literally young woman), there's no separate word explicitely defining a state of not having had sex.

I'm guessing Almah is similar.

But I heard a different story about the "virgin birth" - problem is I have no idea if it's true or not. Anyhow:

There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins ("marriable" I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.

So there's your "Virgin" Mary who was "visited by an angel" to conceive.

edit: there is some evidence that girls used to work and live at the temples, and my story is likely an interpretation of the Gospel of James.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

From what I found, Mary supposedly lived at the temple from childhood as a consecrated virgin.

So apparently she was groomed by the priests?

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is your source.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

To be honest, I was more into ancient Greek, Egyptian and Norse than Christian mythology as I was growing up, so yeah, it might be.

I am not a scholar on these things by far.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins (“marriable” I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.

I don’t think there’s any evidence of this.

The Bible has a story with a character pretending to be a temple prostitute to secure her inheritance. But when she becomes pregnant, she is supposed to be put to death. I don’t think temple prostitution was at all a thing by 700 BCE, much less 3 BCE, and it seems more like a holdover from extremely uncomfortable ancient at the time of writing practices - kinda like some of the remnants of child sacrifice that you can find in the OT. I think this is also something the Romans would have noted.

This is something I would believe about a Roman temple maaaaaaaybe. I think your source heard a garbled version of the idea of the Vestal Virgins, and got really confused beyond that.