In Isaiah 7:14 we read, “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” In Hebrew it reads, “Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o Immanuel.” In Hebrew the word almah simply means ‘young woman’ NOT virgin.

The proper term for virgin is bethulah. “As early as the second century B.C.,” says the distinguished Hebrew scholar and critic, Salomon Reinach, “the Jews perceived the error and pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries has clung to her error.” (Orpheus, p. 197.) Then, when St. Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin, known as the Vulgate version which includes the N.T. where the same passage appears again in Matthew 1:23, he intentionally “clung to the error” even though Jerome knew full well that it was an error and false. Hebrew scholars were outraged!!

So insistent was the criticism, that Jerome was driven to write a book on the subject, in which he makes a very notable confession of the inherent incredibility of the Holy Ghost paternity-story. He wrote, “For who at that time would have believed the Virgin’s word that she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, and that the angel Gabriel had come and announced the purpose of God? And would not all have given their opinion against her as an adulteress, like Susanna? For at the present day, now that the whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue, that when Isaiah says, ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,’ the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, not a virgin,

that is to say, the word is ALMAH not BETHULAH’!! (Jerome, the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, N&PNF, vi, 336.)

And to this very day this blatant, deliberate LIE continues to be taught to unsuspecting sincere people.