as to what was actually said, it's explicitly stated that Mary is a virgin at the time. It's doubtful she remained a virgin, especially after her marriage.
It's reasonably plausible that this whole issue is a translation issue, along with some possible embellishment. If we're going to talk about what was "actually" said, the word "virgin" never once appears in the Bible because it
wasn't written in English.
The original prophecy about a "virgin" birth was
Isaiah 7:14 In English, we have that passage rendered as:
"Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel."But the original text was written in Hebrew, and the Hebrew word being translated as "virgin" is
almah, which means "woman of child-bearing age who has nevertheless not given birth to a child." That could of course be used to describe a virgin, but not necessarily. Hebrew does have a word that means "woman who has not known a man" and that word is
bethulah, which is not the word that was used in that prophecy. Very notably, that same word 'almah' is
also used to refer to Queen Abijah, presumably not intending that the she somehow also conceived without sex being involved.
That jewish propehcy is referred to in
Mathew 1:18-25, in a situation that requires a great deal of context. First, let's remember that when Jesus was born there were no christians, that Jesus was born to a jewish family, raised as a jew, trained in synagogue, and that there are instances like
John 3:2 where Jesus is referred to as Rabbi. Unfortunately there is
some dispute over which language Matthew was originally written in. Koine Greek is the popular assumption, but there is
some evidence that it was written in Aramaic. But whichever language it was actually first written in, the relevant people before and during Jesus' time would
probably have been speaking primarily Aramaic, not Greek.
So, on to Matthew:
The Gospel of Matthew was
written by an anonymous author,
probably in the vicinity of 80-90AD, which is
roughly 50 years after the generally accepted date range for the crucifixion. In that account, an angel appears to Jospeh
in a dream and explains to him what's going to happen, basically quoting that jewish prophecy of Matthew 1:23, rendered in English here as:
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us"He's obviously referring to the Isaiah prophecy. But, in his rendering of that prophecy, in the Greek version
the word used is parthenos, which explicitly means "virgin" in the english sense. (Incidentally, this word choice is very possibly the source of the catholic deification of Mary, because
'parthenos' is used as an epithet to refer to a number of Greek goddesses, for example
Athena Parthenos. The same Greek word root giving us the
Parthenon, and probably also why catholics have nuns, despite the fact that judiasm has no similar tradition, and so far as I know neither Jesus nor the bible ever say anything about such a practice. Catholicism has a lot of pagan roots.)
Now, continuing on into Matthew, in addition to changing the word, the text then goes on to specifically clarify that:
"Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus." Then.
probably a couple decades lter the Gospel of Luke was written, which contained a "more detailed" account of the viigin birth, in
Luke 1:26-38, which speaks of an angel appearing to
Mary rather than Joseph, explains that she's going to give birth to a child and name him Jesus...prompting Mary to loudly protest that she's never had sex. To which the angel replies:
"And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
I suppose if one is christian that's all you need. But given that the Hebrew word 'bethulah' meaning 'virgin' was not used in the original Isaiah prophecy, whereas 'almah' was multiple times and not always referring to Mary, followed by the story of the virgin birth apparently growing from Matthew to Luke...again, an argument could be made that the whole christian interpretation is an embellished mistranslation.
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