So that you will decide to stop distorting the image of Judaism before the world by using a religious Jew to insert Hellenistic innovations into it.
I lifted this off the web. The original references to “virgin” or “almah” come through your own Jewish Hebrew Scriptures, not Greek mythology.
In any case, all Christ’s first disciples were Jews to a man.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The Protevangelium
The first hint in the Old Testament that the coming Christ would be born of a virgin occurs right at the beginning.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Genesis 3:15
This prophecy, known as the Protevangelium, comes from the most ancient oracle known to man, from the oracle that the Lord pronounced when He found our first parents, Adam and Eve, guilty of sin. The Lord is speaking to Satan, who has enticed “the woman,” Eve, into disobeying the Lord’s command against eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is saying that Satan will someday be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by the seed of the woman.
The pronoun used to designate the seed is “his” (in “his heel”). In place of “it” (in “it shall bruise”), the more accurate translation is “he” (1). Therefore, the coming conqueror must be a single man. But why is He called the seed of a woman? A child is ordinarily regarded as the seed of his father and forefathers. The striking and unnatural character of the expression “her seed” suggests that it is a uniquely fitting name for the victor over Satan. Unlike other men, He would be the seed of a woman only. He would not be a man’s seed. A virgin would conceive Him without losing her virginity.
Isaiah’s Oracle
Over seven hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah enlarged upon the Protevangelium.
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
The name Immanuel means, “God with us.” Isaiah is appending to Genesis 3:15 the information that the virgin-born conqueror of Satan would be God Himself in the flesh.
Controversy has long raged over the word rendered “virgin” in the KJV of Isaiah 7:14.
The Meaning of Almah
The word translated “virgin” in the KJV is almah. This term in either its feminine form (almah) or masculine form (elem) occurs nine times in the Old Testament (Gen. 24:43; Ex. 2:8; 1 Sam. 17:56; 20:22; Psa. 68:25; Prov. 30:19; S. of Sol. 1:3; 6:8; Isa. 7:14). So far as we can judge from the contexts, the term never refers to a married person or even to an adult. In some instances, the term obviously refers to someone young and unmarried. For example, Moses’ sister Miriam was an almah when she hid him in the bulrushes (Ex. 2:8).
According to Alfred Edersheim, the great Jewish scholar converted to Christianity over a century ago, the Jews recognize eight stages of growth (3). He says that the word almah pertains to the sixth stage, which is between dependent childhood and independent youth (4). By its connotation of firmness and strength, the word suggests the rapid bodily growth of early adolescence (5). Thus, an almah was a girl about twelve to fourteen years old. The closest English equivalents to almah are “maiden” and “damsel” (6). “Young woman,” although passable as a translation, stretches the concept too far into adulthood.
The rabbis taught that a father should betroth his daughter to his slave rather than keep her unbetrothed beyond puberty (7). A girl was normally married before she passed much beyond fourteen (8). Thus, since almah specifically denotes a girl at the stage of growth just before marriage, the term apparently came to signify “unmarried girl of marriageable age” (9). And since nearly all unmarried girls in ancient Hebrew culture were chaste, the term seems to have acquired the further meaning “virgin” (10). In some of the texts exhibiting almah, “virgin” is clearly the most appropriate translation.
