ylop said:
So what of the woman who is not a virgin, and is also not divorced or widowed?
It is actually simply a translation issue, ylop.
We use Miss or Mrs. to distinguish a woman's marital state. (Or used to. Now, we conceal it via Ms.) The ancients used 4 words in Hebrew, 3 in Greek.
The Hebrew words meant, "Never married", "Married", "Divorced", and "Widowed".
The Greek words meant "Never married", "Married", and "Single again due to either divorce or death". In other words, Greek made no distinction between widows and divorcees.
When the translators came to translate these into English, the first was translated as "Virgins". The expectation is, of course, that a woman who has never married
should be a virgin, and there were fraud related implications to passing oneself off as one when one was not, but the actual meaning in most cases is simply, "One who has never married."
Sidebar: There is argument that the act of having had sex with someone means that she IS married, and thus would have had to be divorced. But there is some disagreement on that score, as the Bible says that the man in question must marry her (future tense), which implies that he has not yet done so. Furthermore, her father (or, presumably, stand-in guardian) has the right to refuse the marriage. This he would not have a right to do if the marriage had occurred, as his authority would have already been transferred. Put another way, if you found that some older guy had forced himself on your young daughter and then announced that they were married and there was nothing you or she could do about it, would you simply accept his pronouncement or cause him to disappear? One way or another?
In Greek, the other two words were translated as "Woman" and "Widow". These help us better understand what Jesus meant when He said that to look on a woman with lust to possess her sexually constitutes adultery in our own hearts. A "woman", i.e. a married female. In the case of a "virgin" or a "widow", it would be a logical and appropriate first step towards courtship and marriage. Similarly, when James said we oughta do something about the husbandless state of widows, he was not leaving divorcees in limbo, but instead referring to those who have lost their husbands due to death or divorce.
