The Myth of Paganism by Shorrock Robert; Taylor David ;

Author:Shorrock, Robert; Taylor, David ;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2011-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

The parthenos debate

One of the central features of the Gospel narratives is that Mary gives birth to Christ while still retaining her status as a ‘virgin’ (παρθένος).77 The paradox of the virgin mother is one that can be traced back to the Septuagint – a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. The Hebrew word almah (‘young woman’) used at Isaiah 7:14 was rendered into Greek as παρθένος: ‘the παρθένος will conceive and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel’. The words of Isaiah were subsequently reinterpreted as a prophecy that finds fulfilment in the παρθένος Mary. In Greek, the word παρθένος encompasses a range of meanings from ‘young woman’ to ‘unmarried young woman’ to ‘virgin’.78 It is the specific reading of παρθένος as ‘virgin’, however, that has dominated Biblical hermeneutics from the New Testament onwards. Mary’s surprised question to the angel Gabriel at Luke 1:34 (after he has informed her that she is to give birth to a child) – ‘How shall this be [i.e. that I will give birth to a child], seeing I know not a man?’ (πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο, ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω) – shows clearly that Mary is to be understood not simply as young, nor unmarried, but above all a virgin – lacking intimate knowledge of her betrothed.

It is certainly no understatement to say that virginity was a topic of profound concern in the period of late antiquity. As Peter Brown has shown so persuasively, the discourse of virginity was part of a wider ‘sexual’ revolution that resulted in a radical transformation of how the body was viewed.79 Where previously, for example, the élite had been happy to display their naked bodies before their slaves, suddenly the naked body became a thing of shame, something that needed to be covered up.80 Although the paradoxical notion of virgin birth is absent from Nonnus’ description of Semele and the birth of Dionysus, Semele’s status as a παρθένος is prominently foregrounded in Books 7 and 8 when she is noticed and seduced by Zeus.81

Nonnus, in fact, seems to go out of his way to draw attention to a succession of παρθένοι throughout the Dionysiaca (many of whom who are entrapped and raped either by Dionysus or his father Zeus).82 The narrative of Book 1 opens with the abduction of Europa (explicitly described as παρθένος at Dion. 1.118); at the start of Book 2, a παρθένος tree nymph (2.96), who feels anxious on account of the heavenly turmoil caused by the monster Typhon, begs to be cut down with the bronze of Athena, ‘so that I may die before I wed, and go to Hades a virgin, still a stranger to Eros’ (2.107-8). In keeping with the newly-discovered ‘propriety’ of a late antique woman, the nymph then ‘modestly (αἰδομένοη) covered the circle of her breast with her green girdle, pressing her thighs together tightly’ (2.109-11). In response to this a neighbouring nymph declares at 2.113 that ‘I feel the fear inborn in a virgin’ (παρθενίης ἔμφυλον ἔχω φόβον).

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