A VIRGIN — and also, in ordinary usage, simply an UNMARRIED YOUNG WOMAN; which sense is live depends entirely on context. ⚠ It occurs in only 15 verses in the whole New Testament, and just two of them are about Mary: Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14, and Luke 1:27, which uses it twice. Elsewhere its core is plainly marital STATUS rather than chastity — Philip's four unmarried daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9), the marriageable daughters of 1 Corinthians 7, Anna who lived with a husband seven years 'from her parthenia', her girlhood (Luke 2:36) — and, decisively, Revelation 14:4, where parthenoi is used of MEN. ⚠ Hence the two Matthews. At 1:23 the word carries the weight of the Isaiah quotation, where the Hebrew is almah, a young woman of marriageable age, without the technical focus on virginity that betulah has; the Greek Old Testament had already chosen parthenos, and that choice is the hinge of a very old argument. At 25:1 it is a WEDDING: ten parthenoi with lamps are the bridal party, and nothing in the parable turns on chastity — the difference between the two fives is oil. So 'virgins' there (KJV/ASV/NWT, and the whole Spanish shelf) imports a sexual reference the story never uses, which is why this translation reads 'girls' at 25:1 and keeps 'virgin' at 1:23. ⚠ And worth saying for its own sake: the virgin birth does not rest on this noun. Luke puts it in Mary's own mouth — 'since I do not know a man' (1:34) — and Matthew states it in his narration (1:18, 25). It would stand unchanged if parthenos were rendered 'girl' everywhere it appears. → first discussed at Matt 1:23