(no subject)

You may recall a discussion of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth here a little while ago, some of which addressed the debate around the exact words used in the Bible which are translated today as "virgin". I'm reading a book on the Canaanite goddess Anat right now, so I thought I'd throw this into the discussion: Anat is frequently called btlt 'nt. The first word, from the Ugaritic language, is the equivalent of the Hebrew bethulah, one of the controversial words. Since Anat had a consort and a son, it's unlikely that the title means "the Virgin Anat" - more likely "the young woman Anat".

But the book also says that Ishtar was often called "the Virgin Ishtar" - in which case there is no way the word means a woman who hasn't had sexual intercourse! The question this raises in my mind is whether Akkadian texts use the word batultu, the Akkadian equivalent of betulah and btlt, to describe Ishtar.

(The book is The Violent Goddess: Anat in the Ras Shamra texts by Arvid S. Kapelrud.)