Mary no longer a virgin?.. and there's no more "booty" in the old testiment

[Townsend]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/02/134210352/new-bible-updates-language-booty-falls-by-wayside?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

The Old Testament will have a new look in the next edition of the New American Bible, one of the most popular English-language Bibles. And it'll also have some big changes — in many cases, words like "booty" and "virgin" are removed in the new translation.

Scholars translating from ancient Hebrew and Greek for the new Bible decided that the meaning of those words had shifted in the 40 years since the Old Testament was last updated in the New American Bible.

Here are some of the swaps included in the new Bible:

"booty" is now "spoils of war" — for presumably obvious reasons.
"virgin" becomes "young woman" — especially where the original uses the Hebrew word "almah."
"holocaust" will become "burnt offerings" - scholars say that was closer to the original meaning, before "holocaust" came to be identified with the genocide of World War II.
"cereal"— now co-opted by General Mills and Post, becomes "grain."
 
Scholars sometimes clashed as they sought to refine the Bible's language. An article from the Catholic News Service quotes Kathleen Nash, a professor who translated the book of Joel:

There were disagreements, to be sure, such as over whether the pronoun "he" should be used in all references to God, she said. Another effort was made to substitute "it" for references to the church as "she."

"That didn't fly," Nash said.

And according to Reuters, one case where "almah" will now be rendered as "young woman" instead of "virgin" in the new Bible occurs in Isiah 7:14, where the birth of Jesus Christ to a virgin mother is foretold.

"The bishops and the Bible are not signaling any sort of change in the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. None whatsoever," Mary Sperry, who oversees Bible licensing for the bishops, told Reuters.

Before publication, the changes were approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The new volume, called the New American Bible Revised Edition, will come out in a variety of paper and digital formats, including as a cellphone app

[ZYX]

I hate it how they are taking the colorful language out of the Bible. I once had an English teacher who always made us read really old translations of books, because she said the words they used in them added to the meaning of the book. Who really cares what the words like virgin, holocaust, and cereal mean now. It is what they meant then that makes the Bible so much more interesting. If the writers of the Bible wanted us to read everything as he, she, it, they would have written it that way. But, instead of that they chose to use eloquent, intelligent sounding words. And this is coming from someone who is probably younger than most others on this forum. Oh well...I guess I really don't have to buy this translation.

[heironymouspasparagus]

What we have interpreted as 'virgin' was never what the word meant in the ancient texts.  Another redefinition event.