Virgin in Hebrew

[Sons of Issachar]

In Hebrew, there are multiple words for virgin. I did a light word study on them months ago but it became clear a deeper study was needed in order to determine the nuanced differences between the words. Has anyone done this study already? Are the words synonymous? Or were you able to learn a difference in meaning between them?

 

[Keith Martin]

Great questions, @Philip.

Here's what I know but don't have the time to hunt down all the scholarship references behind it right now: what is translated into 'virgin' in English are multiple Hebrew and Greek words, and the more accurate translation of what we read as virgin would most often be 'maiden,' which just means a young woman. This, however, opens up a whole can of worms related to the Immaculate Conception, but it doesn't take a lot of digging to discover that the rabbinical writings at the time of Christ include some that assert that Joseph's concern was not that his "bride-to-be" had lost her virginity to someone else but that she was mentally ill, because he consulted many people when she first came to him with the story about how YHWH had impregnated her. He wasn't so much worried that she had cheated on him in advance of marriage but that she was crazy, if this interpretation is to be accepted -- and given that a more literal reading of the word translated into English is 'maiden,' one can easily understand why the man would have been concerned for his woman's mental health.

It's always worth considering how profound (and, I might add, pagan) attitudes of anti-sexuality have infected our interpretations of the original scriptural manuscripts. Both the Latin Vulgate and the King James translation efforts very purposefully injected messages intended to create negative attitudes about sex and to scare people into thinking they needed the corporate 'church' to save them from their sins, real and imagined. Contemplate who would stand to gain by pushing a narrative that insists on virginity before marriage. At the time of Christ, it was predominantly the case that people would assume a couple was sexually active if they had formally announced betrothal. If they were of a mind to be very discreet about it, that didn't stop people from assuming that something was going on within a culture in which marriage was considered to be a fait accompli the minute anyone observed evidence of such sexual congress (which, of course, would sometimes be when the first 'bump' became obvious).

Organized religion has been the main beneficiary of freaking us all out into believing that God's wrath is breathing holy fire down our necks for giving in to sexual temptation.

 

[Sons of Issachar]

Interesting thoughts. But, I'm looking at it from a perspective of being owned and not being owned. A woman is a female that belongs to a man. A virgin is a woman that does not belong to a man, best I can tell. But with the 3+ Hebrew words for virgin in the Tanak, I wondered if there was a difference in age, or in headship, or in social status. For example one word for virgin might mean too young to be taken as a woman, while another word for virgin may mean an orphan with no headship who was never with a man yet. Another word may refer to a girl who failed to find a man in the expected time frame (in other words, an old virgin). Or perhaps there are simply 3 age brackets virgins fit into. Maybe one word for virgin refers to a woman who had to return to her father after losing her man. According to common dictionaries, one word is defined as "young", one as "virgin", and one as "definite virgin". The definitions seem lacking to me.

 

[Keith Martin]

This particular thread is what insisted its way into my consciousness as I was about to go to bed last night, so I brought the CLNT to bed with me and read the first couple chapters of Matthew, which reminded me more about what I referred to in my earlier post (above) -- and now I kind of wish I could wind back the clock and just refrain from going off on that tangent, because that's what it is: a tangent, and it's the wrong one.

I remember more about what I discovered in my meandering research on the matter, something that was inspired by one of the articles I was editing for Bible Students Notebook: yes, the words in Hebrew were generally taken to mean 'maiden,' but they could also mean 'virgin,' and in the case of the Immaculate Conception, that was clearly the intended meaning. And for those who consider Jesus/Christ/Yeshua to be the Messiah, this is also a fulfillment of prophecy. The point of the original question about virginity was not whether Miriam was one but that it wasn't considered the imperative that many in fundamentalist Christianity have asserted it to be. Within Judaism, this was handled by a combination of the full expectation that once a union was recognized, (a) the woman would entirely limit her sexual congress to her man, and (b) any child who was born was strictly considered to be the heir of the man in the union. People were paying attention, so if a woman who hadn't been declared betrothed showed up pregnant, the man she was hanging out with at that time would be expected to step up to the plate. Whether due to incomplete comprehension of exactly when conception occurred or the lack of genetic testing, ultrasounds or pregnancy tests from the Dollar Store -- and despite the mistaken modern belief that folks in Yeshua's day were abiding by all the rules for proper sexual behavior -- it was not at all unknown for young people to do some fooling around before settling down, and, in general, the average citizen didn't make as big a deal out of an intact hymen as we have been led to believe.

I'm not sure exactly where you're headed with this thread, and I'd like to know more. Are you just curious about the etymology of 'virgin' for scholarship's sake? Or are you attempting to come to a better understanding for the purpose of guiding your steps related to either your daughter's courting choices or your own courting behavior? (Obviously, you're not required to answer something so personal -- or to elaborate even if you do.) We have had discussions in numerous threads here in the past about the whole issue of virginity, as many men here are already in middle age (30-60) when they become certain that they want to be polygynists, and many of those men carry with them the expectation that they must marry another virgin. Compound that with wanting to start being fruitful and multiplying all over again, and one starts to approach looking for a 28-guage tapestry needle in a haystack, because, these days, finding a young woman both of legal marrying age and intact virginal status is rare enough on its own, but to find among that minority subset one who has been saving herself to marry a man twice her age who is already married to another woman and has children (some of whom may be even older than the prospective bride) is a difficult task indeed.

If one's conviction is that 100% chastity is the only way to follow the law of The Word, then waiting to win the second-wife lottery when tickets aren't even for sale may appear to be the sole legitimate choice, and I know I'm still taking your original inquiry into a tangential alleyway, but I can't help but assert that learning that even the definition of 'virgin' is not fully understood is an opportunity to discover that our Father is not expecting us to hold our choices to such unrealistically strict standards.

The definitions seem lacking to me.

Amen, but I am confident that at the time these manuscripts were written and disseminated the definitions were thoroughly understood by those who read and heard them. It is only the clouds of time, language differences and purposeful mistranslation that have obscured their meanings for us.

 

[Bartato]

This particular thread is what insisted its way into my consciousness as I was about to go to bed last night, so I brought the CLNT to bed with me and read the first couple chapters of Matthew, which reminded me more about what I referred to in my earlier post (above) -- and now I kind of wish I could wind back the clock and just refrain from going off on that tangent, because that's what it is: a tangent, and it's the wrong one.

I remember more about what I discovered in my meandering research on the matter, something that was inspired by one of the articles I was editing for Bible Students Notebook: yes, the words in Hebrew were generally taken to mean 'maiden,' but they could also mean 'virgin,' and in the case of the Immaculate Conception, that was clearly the intended meaning. And for those who consider Jesus/Christ/Yeshua to be the Messiah, this is also a fulfillment of prophecy. The point of the original question about virginity was not whether Miriam was one but that it wasn't considered the imperative that many in fundamentalist Christianity have asserted it to be. Within Judaism, this was handled by a combination of the full expectation that once a union was recognized, (a) the woman would entirely limit her sexual congress to her man, and (b) any child who was born was strictly considered to be the heir of the man in the union. People were paying attention, so if a woman who hadn't been declared betrothed showed up pregnant, the man she was hanging out with at that time would be expected to step up to the plate. Whether due to incomplete comprehension of exactly when conception occurred or the lack of genetic testing, ultrasounds or pregnancy tests from the Dollar Store -- and despite the mistaken modern belief that folks in Yeshua's day were abiding by all the rules for proper sexual behavior -- it was not at all unknown for young people to do some fooling around before settling down, and, in general, the average citizen didn't make as big a deal out of an intact hymen as we have been led to believe.

I'm not sure exactly where you're headed with this thread, and I'd like to know more. Are you just curious about the etymology of 'virgin' for scholarship's sake? Or are you attempting to come to a better understanding for the purpose of guiding your steps related to either your daughter's courting choices or your own courting behavior? (Obviously, you're not required to answer something so personal -- or to elaborate even if you do.) We have had discussions in numerous threads here in the past about the whole issue of virginity, as many men here are already in middle age (30-60) when they become certain that they want to be polygynists, and many of those men carry with them the expectation that they must marry another virgin. Compound that with wanting to start being fruitful and multiplying all over again, and one starts to approach looking for a 28-guage tapestry needle in a haystack, because, these days, finding a young woman both of legal marrying age and intact virginal status is rare enough on its own, but to find among that minority subset one who has been saving herself to marry a man twice her age who is already married to another woman and has children (some of whom may be even older than the prospective bride) is a difficult task indeed.

If one's conviction is that 100% chastity is the only way to follow the law of The Word, then waiting to win the second-wife lottery when tickets aren't even for sale may appear to be the sole legitimate choice, and I know I'm still taking your original inquiry into a tangential alleyway, but I can't help but assert that learning that even the definition of 'virgin' is not fully understood is an opportunity to discover that our Father is not expecting us to hold our choices to such unrealistically strict standards.



Amen, but I am confident that at the time these manuscripts were written and disseminated the definitions were thoroughly understood by those who read and heard them. It is only the clouds of time, language differences and purposeful mistranslation that have obscured their meanings for us.

Keith,
You have mentioned "immaculate conception" a couple times. This is the Roman Catholic dogma that Mary was not born with a sinful nature (or that Mary was sinless from the moment of conception).

The general Christian consensus is the "virgin birth" of Christ, not the "immaculate conception of Mary". Basically, we know that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (and therefore not tainted by the sin of Adam), because his mother Mary had not had sexual relations with a man prior to the birth of Christ. If Mary had relations with a man prior to the birth of Jesus then we would assume that man to have been the father. Of course Mary and Joseph later had normal relations resulting in Jesus siblings (including James and Jude).

And yes, my "Protestant" is showing.

 

[steve]

Jesus siblings (including James and Jude).

That assumption is merely an assumption.
It’s been discussed before that his brothers most likely were half-brothers from his mothers sister wives.

 

[Bartato]

This particular thread is what insisted its way into my consciousness as I was about to go to bed last night, so I brought the CLNT to bed with me and read the first couple chapters of Matthew, which reminded me more about what I referred to in my earlier post (above) -- and now I kind of wish I could wind back the clock and just refrain from going off on that tangent, because that's what it is: a tangent, and it's the wrong one.

I remember more about what I discovered in my meandering research on the matter, something that was inspired by one of the articles I was editing for Bible Students Notebook: yes, the words in Hebrew were generally taken to mean 'maiden,' but they could also mean 'virgin,' and in the case of the Immaculate Conception, that was clearly the intended meaning. And for those who consider Jesus/Christ/Yeshua to be the Messiah, this is also a fulfillment of prophecy. The point of the original question about virginity was not whether Miriam was one but that it wasn't considered the imperative that many in fundamentalist Christianity have asserted it to be. Within Judaism, this was handled by a combination of the full expectation that once a union was recognized, (a) the woman would entirely limit her sexual congress to her man, and (b) any child who was born was strictly considered to be the heir of the man in the union. People were paying attention, so if a woman who hadn't been declared betrothed showed up pregnant, the man she was hanging out with at that time would be expected to step up to the plate. Whether due to incomplete comprehension of exactly when conception occurred or the lack of genetic testing, ultrasounds or pregnancy tests from the Dollar Store -- and despite the mistaken modern belief that folks in Yeshua's day were abiding by all the rules for proper sexual behavior -- it was not at all unknown for young people to do some fooling around before settling down, and, in general, the average citizen didn't make as big a deal out of an intact hymen as we have been led to believe.

I'm not sure exactly where you're headed with this thread, and I'd like to know more. Are you just curious about the etymology of 'virgin' for scholarship's sake? Or are you attempting to come to a better understanding for the purpose of guiding your steps related to either your daughter's courting choices or your own courting behavior? (Obviously, you're not required to answer something so personal -- or to elaborate even if you do.) We have had discussions in numerous threads here in the past about the whole issue of virginity, as many men here are already in middle age (30-60) when they become certain that they want to be polygynists, and many of those men carry with them the expectation that they must marry another virgin. Compound that with wanting to start being fruitful and multiplying all over again, and one starts to approach looking for a 28-guage tapestry needle in a haystack, because, these days, finding a young woman both of legal marrying age and intact virginal status is rare enough on its own, but to find among that minority subset one who has been saving herself to marry a man twice her age who is already married to another woman and has children (some of whom may be even older than the prospective bride) is a difficult task indeed.

If one's conviction is that 100% chastity is the only way to follow the law of The Word, then waiting to win the second-wife lottery when tickets aren't even for sale may appear to be the sole legitimate choice, and I know I'm still taking your original inquiry into a tangential alleyway, but I can't help but assert that learning that even the definition of 'virgin' is not fully understood is an opportunity to discover that our Father is not expecting us to hold our choices to such unrealistically strict standards.



Amen, but I am confident that at the time these manuscripts were written and disseminated the definitions were thoroughly understood by those who read and heard them. It is only the clouds of time, language differences and purposeful mistranslation that have obscured their meanings for us.

I know some people here have studied all this stuff more thoroughly than I have, but the Torah seems pretty darn clear and straightforward on this issue to me.

Virgin means maiden or unmarried (but marriageable) young woman living in her father's household. This young woman living in her father's house has never had sexual relations with a man.

Yes, this is very uncommon in our degenerate culture. It may have also been uncommon in Bible times. The Israelites didn't do a very good job of obeying the Law.

Still, the Law is the standard.

The Law expects and requires women to not have sexual relations with any man other than her husband. The young woman was supposed to be a virgin when she got married.

If a woman has sexual relations with more than one living man, then "sexual uncleanness/whoring/adultery" has occurred.

Deuteronomy 22 makes it clear that virginity at marriage was the expectation, and called for the stoning of the young woman who had been whoring (having relations with more than one man) in her father's house.

If a virgin was seduced by a man, then the man was required to marry her. The seduction of a virgin was not "sexual immorality" but was a violation of the father's authority.

God's standard is high, very high. Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. We all fall short. We all fail to meet the standard of the Law.

There is mercy in Christ for the fallen. Rahab was a prostitute, but she received mercy, married, had a family, which eventually led to the Savior.

 

[Bartato]

That assumption is merely an assumption.
It’s been discussed before that his brothers most likely were half-brothers from his mothers sister wives.

You are joking right?

Any siblings Christ had were half siblings, since they were born of Mary, but were fathered by Joseph rather than the Spirit of God.

A humble tradesman like Joseph wouldn't have multiple wives (they were poor enough that they offered birds for their sacrifice after Jesus was born).

 

[Keith Martin]

Keith,
You have mentioned "immaculate conception" a couple times. This is the Roman Catholic dogma that Miriam/Mary was not born with a sinful nature (or that Mary was sinless from the moment of conception).

I'm pretty sure I never said anything about Miriam/Mary being born by immaculate conception, but immaculate conception just means virgin conception, and by extension virgin birth, so therefore the Virgin Birth is by definition a reflection of Christ's Conception being Immaculate.

I do not in any way adhere to the belief that Miriam/Mary's mother was also visited by God's Holy Spirit to impregnate her. To me, this is a type of blasphemy that relegates Christ's Immaculate Conception into a second-tier status beneath Miriam's, which is something that is seen reflected in the veneration that Miriam receives in that faith above and beyond that which is directed to our Savior.

It may have also been uncommon in Bible times. The Israelites didn't do a very good job of obeying the Law.

Those are the time being discussed.

Deuteronomy 22 makes it clear that virginity at marriage was the expectation, and called for the stoning of the young woman who had been whoring (having relations with more than one man) in her father's house.

You go on to mention that we are all fallen and that God's Mercy is Tremendous. I won't at all disagree with that, but you appear to be creating a straw man argument. No one will intelligently argue either that The Rules didn't exist or that no one was following them. My only assertion is that we can't, with our modern sensibilities and all the myriad interpretations of sexual rules that have come in between then and now, properly judge what the morés were two millennia ago, and we are more likely to err on the side of whitewashing things if we accept man-made dogma promoted by organized religion. Even your examples above are misleading in that regard. First of all, great distance in time existed between Deuteronomy and Matthew, during which the infractions which had originally required or permitted execution (e.g., stoning) had become a shorter and shorter list by the time of Christ, and He preached within the context of His culture and His times.

It's also conflating to equate premarital sex with whoring and/or having relations with more than one man under a young woman's father's roof. We completely miss the boat if we don't consider the actual context of all of this. What we now call girls and boys were considered to be adults at 12 or 13 years of age, and all evidence points to onset of menstruation having occurred later back then than it does now, but the secondary attributes of puberty tended to occur around the same ages that they do now. Anyone with any degree of realism is going to realize that that would have translated in a large proportion of the young female population to start being sexually active even earlier than they could get pregnant. Looking through our Wayback Machine lenses (that necessarily have to pass through lenses that include 20th-Century fundamentalism, postmodernism, Victorianism and Puritanism, not to mention the Inquisitions of the Anglican and Catholic Churches), we unconsciously assume that what we now contemplate with horror when considering what our own 14-year-old daughters might be doing would be looked at in the same way back in 15 A.D. But we would be wrong.

 

[FollowingHim2]

You are joking right?

Any siblings Christ had were half siblings, since they were born of Mary, but were fathered by Joseph rather than the Spirit of God.

A humble tradesman like Joseph wouldn't have multiple wives (they were poor enough that they offered birds for their sacrifice after Jesus was born).

There are some writings in the Apocryphal gospels that say that Joseph had a wife who died. This means that Joseph would have been much older than Mary when they married, and explains why he would no longer be around when Jesus was older as he had died of old age.
However, those writings are not inspired writings and I wouldn't trust them to be accurate (they say some weird other stuff that isn't true), but it's an interesting thought and could well be correct.

 

[steve]

You are joking right?

Any siblings Christ had were half siblings, since they were born of Mary, but were fathered by Joseph rather than the Spirit of God.

A humble tradesman like Joseph wouldn't have multiple wives (they were poor enough that they offered birds for their sacrifice after Jesus was born).

The story that we have been given was a bit shy on correct details. He wasn’t the penniless woodworker that is portrayed, he was a boatbuilder that had the funds to take his family to Egypt when it was necessary. Penniless laborers could not afford donkeys.
Mary was the 4th or 5th wife, depending on where you find it.

edit: Not sure if there was a donkey, lm going by memory on the story also.

 

[Bartato]

The story that we have been given was a bit shy on correct details. He wasn’t the penniless woodworker that is portrayed, he was a boatbuilder that had the funds to take his family to Egypt when it was necessary. Penniless laborers could not afford donkeys.
Mary was the 4th or 5th wife, depending on where you find it.

edit: Not sure if there was a donkey, lm going by memory on the story also.

Thanks Steve,
I'm just going off what the Bible says. I don't put a whole lot of stock in the gnostic gospels or other external sources.

Regarding Joseph. I didn't suggest he was penniless. As a carpenter, he was presumably working class, just an average Joe. Luke 2:24 says they offered turtledoves or pigeons as a sacrifice instead of a lamb. That indicates that they were poor. Money for traveling to Egypt probably came from the gold from the gift of the magi, and doing carpentry work in Egypt.

The simplest answer is the most likely. I don't know many working class dudes with 3-5 wives. I don't think it was common in 1st century Palestine.

 

[steve]

Luke 2:24 says they offered turtledoves or pigeons as a sacrifice instead of a lamb. That indicates that they were poor.

I do need to stop derailing this thread, but if you could just point out to me where a greater sacrifice is asked for. Exodus 13 only says to sanctify (dedicate) the firstborn to Yah, for they belong to Him. Later He says to redeem them, but He doesn’t say how. Only for an ass does He require a lamb, and if you don’t want to redeem it you must break its neck. Everything else you actually sacrifice the firstborn. That wouldn’t apply to human firstborn, those would be dedicated to Yah.

 

[Keith Martin]

The simplest answer is the most likely. I don't know many working class dudes with 3-5 wives. I don't think it was common in 1st century Palestine.

How many dudes of any class do you know with 3-5 wives?

That you know personally, I mean?

Have you studied anything about the people practicing polygamy in Africa in 2021?

Earthly riches are not the only manner in which a man can have the ability to take care of more than one woman.

 

[Bartato]

I'm pretty sure I never said anything about Miriam/Mary being born by immaculate conception, but immaculate conception just means virgin conception, and by extension virgin birth, so therefore the Virgin Birth is by definition a reflection of Christ's Conception being Immaculate.

I do not in any way adhere to the belief that Miriam/Mary's mother was also visited by God's Holy Spirit to impregnate her. To me, this is a type of blasphemy that relegates Christ's Immaculate Conception into a second-tier status beneath Miriam's, which is something that is seen reflected in the veneration that Miriam receives in that faith above and beyond that which is directed to our Savior.



Those are the time being discussed.



You go on to mention that we are all fallen and that God's Mercy is Tremendous. I won't at all disagree with that, but you appear to be creating a straw man argument. No one will intelligently argue either that The Rules didn't exist or that no one was following them. My only assertion is that we can't, with our modern sensibilities and all the myriad interpretations of sexual rules that have come in between then and now, properly judge what the morés were two millennia ago, and we are more likely to err on the side of whitewashing things if we accept man-made dogma promoted by organized religion. Even your examples above are misleading in that regard. First of all, great distance in time existed between Deuteronomy and Matthew, during which the infractions which had originally required or permitted execution (e.g., stoning) had become a shorter and shorter list by the time of Christ, and He preached within the context of His culture and His times.

It's also conflating to equate premarital sex with whoring and/or having relations with more than one man under a young woman's father's roof. We completely miss the boat if we don't consider the actual context of all of this. What we now call girls and boys were considered to be adults at 12 or 13 years of age, and all evidence points to onset of menstruation having occurred later back then than it does now, but the secondary attributes of puberty tended to occur around the same ages that they do now. Anyone with any degree of realism is going to realize that that would have translated in a large proportion of the young female population to start being sexually active even earlier than they could get pregnant. Looking through our Wayback Machine lenses (that necessarily have to pass through lenses that include 20th-Century fundamentalism, postmodernism, Victorianism and Puritanism, not to mention the Inquisitions of the Anglican and Catholic Churches), we unconsciously assume that what we now contemplate with horror when considering what our own 14-year-old daughters might be doing would be looked at in the same way back in 15 A.D. But we would be wrong.

In traditional cultures, females usually marry at a young age and live under their father's roof up until that point.. In a culture where girls get married at 14 or 15, it isn't unreasonable at all to expect them to be virgins at marriage. Throughout history it has probably been more common than not.

That is part of the problem with modern society. People (particularly females) marry way too late. A fifteen year old should be a virgin (not saying they should marry at that age in our society). A nineteen or twenty year old might reasonably stay chaste (and should be getting married about that time). Waiting until thirty or later is not reasonable at all.

I also think you might be reading the loose sexual mores of mid to late twentieth century America back onto the first century. Girls didn't go off to college hundreds of miles from home. Girls didn't stay out after midnight after the high school prom. They didn't have boyfriend's. They didn't have your boomer youth, or my genX youth.

Traditional societies are much more segregated by sex. Young women wouldn't generally hang out with males that weren't family members.

Here is the main thing that is bugging me. I think your sexual standard is lower than what God has established. I think you consider sexual sin to not be very serious.

Moreover, the sexual standard that God established at creation applies to all people and all times. God does not change, and neither does the moral law. God is holy and requires that we be holy.

I'm not saying men can't marry women that aren't virgins. Obviously they can. Rahab and Gomer are examples.

 

[Bartato]

In Hebrew, there are multiple words for virgin. I did a light word study on them months ago but it became clear a deeper study was needed in order to determine the nuanced differences between the words. Has anyone done this study already? Are the words synonymous? Or were you able to learn a difference in meaning between them?

We are all kinda off track from your original question.

 

[Sons of Issachar]

There is mercy in Christ for the fallen. Rahab was a prostitute, but she received mercy, married, had a family, which eventually led to the Savior.

She was also legally allowed to be taken by a new husband because every man who had ever entered her, died in Jericho.

 

[Sons of Issachar]

I'm not sure exactly where you're headed with this thread, and I'd like to know more. Are you just curious about the etymology of 'virgin' for scholarship's sake?

Yup, just want to reverse engineer the lost definitions, just for the sake of wanting to restore anything that was lost. I'm not hoping or expecting to learn anything super interesting as a result. Though that would be a nice bonus.

 

[Bartato]

How many dudes of any class do you know with 3-5 wives?

That you know personally, I mean?

Have you studied anything about the people practicing polygamy in Africa in 2021?

Earthly riches are not the only manner in which a man can have the ability to take care of more than one woman.

Good point. I don't personally know men with 3-5 wives. I did speak with a man by phone once who had three. We had a nice visit for an hour or so, but I wouldn't really say I know him personally.

One of my coworkers is from Uganda. I know his father had multiple wives. I'll try to talk with him about it more sometime. He is Christian and he knows I am, but I haven't told him that I believe polygyny to be acceptable for Christians. I don't generally talk about that sort of thing at work, but would feel more comfortable discussing it with him.

 

[FollowingHim]

I also think you might be reading the loose sexual mores of mid to late twentieth century America back onto the first century.

This is the impression I gained also @Keith Martin.

I agree that in every age there are promiscuous people. Promiscuity in its various forms is spoken against so frequently in scripture that it is obviously a real problem that did exist and needed to be addressed. However, it was addressed, and condemned. So it is not something that God was overlooking. The fact that it occurred is only evidence that people in all ages are sinners, not that it is something we can overlook based on precedent.

I disagree that promiscuity would have been as rife as it is today, for the reasons @Bartato has outlined. Early marriage, and arranged marriage, both act as protections against promiscuity. By the time a person begins to be interested in sex, in such a culture, they can be told "well that's the man/woman you're betrothed to, go ahead and seal the deal". No promiscuity involved. Well, some might still be promiscuous anyway - but the 'need' for promiscuity is greatly reduced, as the legitimate outlet for sexual desire is available.

In our society we have rampant teenage promiscuity specifically because marriage is discouraged and delayed. Our culture thinks marriage of 14-year-olds is the most evil thing imaginable - but turns a blind eye to them having casual sex, even when it's illegal. Often they'll even get handed free condoms in school on the expectation that they'll be having sex. We live in a screwed-up culture that calls evil good and good evil, and specifically encourages early promiscuity. We shouldn't presume that the levels of promiscuity we see in such a culture are normal.