Isaiah 7:14, virgin, or young woman?
Isaiah 7:14 says young woman in Hebrew and virgin in the ancient Greek Septuagint. The Hebrew wording is not in dispute; the question concerns the Greek translation's choice and the word Matthew quotes.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
The APB translation committee prints young woman in Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, the young woman is pregnant and is bearing a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.” The printed text uses the Hebrew reading's description of the woman and describes her as pregnant and bearing a son.
The argument for each reading
If “virgin”
The Septuagint reads ἡ παρθένος, the virgin, and its phrase describes the virgin conceiving. This wording gives reading A a direct basis in the ancient Greek translation. The translation is pre-Christian, and Matthew 1:23 quotes its word παρθένος. The case for this reading therefore concerns both the Greek rendering of Isaiah and the wording Matthew quotes. Translating with virgin preserves that explicit feature of the Greek. The question remains why the Greek translation chose a word that specifies more than the Hebrew term for a young woman of marriageable age.
If “young woman”
The Masoretic Text and the Great Isaiah Scroll both read העלמה, the young woman. The Great Isaiah Scroll is the oldest complete Hebrew Isaiah, and it agrees with the Masoretic Text at this word. The Hebrew term denotes a young woman of marriageable age; Hebrew has a separate word, בתולה, when virginity itself is asserted. Young woman therefore expresses the age description without making virginity explicit. This reading has a direct basis in the Hebrew wording shared by both witnesses. Their agreement places the dispute in the Greek translation and its interpretation of the Hebrew word.
The Hebrew witnesses agree on the disputed word. The remaining question concerns why the Septuagint chose virgin and how that choice relates to Matthew's quotation. Young woman does not itself settle whether the woman is a virgin. The difference in wording alone cannot settle a doctrine of virgin birth.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.