Excursus on κόρη in the Greek hymns.

Throughout the hymns of the church we find references to the Mother of God as maiden.  Why is that?

Let’s examine the evidence of the lexicographers.

Great Scott lists girl, maiden (“with respect to virginity”), bride, daughter. 

Schrevelius lists virgin, handsome woman.

Donnegan reports virgin.

Giles reports virgin, daughter, bride.

Which of these several definitions should we understand in our hymns? 

Let’s take a randomly chosen line from the menaion for the conception of the Forerunner—χαῖρε, ἀκήρατε Κόρη—and apply each of the several definitions in turn:

(1)  Hail, pure girl. 

We can strike this one out, as the Mother of God is not a girl in the NT. 

(2)  Hail, pure handsome-woman.

We can strike this one out without further comment. 

(3)  Hail, pure bride.

We need to provide more evidence on bride before we dismiss it.  Montie reports that it means married or wooed daughter.  Clearly this sense does not fit any context in which this word is used in or texts.  Option (4) is dismissed together with (3).

(5)  Hail, pure maiden.

This is the option of most translators.

(6)  Hail, pure virgin.

No one seems to use this one.

 

Let’s take a closer look at (5).  COED defines maiden as “girl, young (unmarried) woman, virgin, spinster.”  Returning to χαῖρε ἀκήρατε Κόρη, we get the following possibilities.

(7)  Hail, pure girl.

(8)  Hail, pure young (unmarried) woman.

(9)  Hail, pure virgin.

(10)  Hail, pure spinster.

We can dismiss (7) and (10) immediately.  It takes a moment of thought to realize that since the Mother of God appears in the Gospel as already betrothed, she cannot be counted as a young (unmarried) woman.  This leaves us with virgin.

Another fact to consider is that if we translate κόρη as virgin in any hymn of the church, we will always get a true statement.  If we translate it as maiden in any hymn of the church, we will never get a statement consistent with the facts which we accept, for she is not a girl, an unmarried young woman or a spinster. 

Two questions remain:  why is the word used at all in our hymns and what does our conclusion mean for translating our hymns?

As to the former, our hymnographers rely on synonymia heavily.  This word allows the hymnographer to invoke the saint twice in a troparion—as always—without using the same  name or title. However, this device translates badly into English—it really breaks up the flow of thought and creates syntactical nightmares.  I propose to simply omit the κόρη if both appear, as metrical convenience is not something we worry about in English and double invocations are a mere artifice.  Arguably the doubled and tripled invocations heighten the emotional intensity—at least in Greek, though no one has ever mentioned it—but such an expedient to intensify one’s emotions is not even on the map of an Anglophone hymnographer.  There is in the translations from the Slavonic a tendency to avoid this device—among others.  When κόρη appears alone, I translate it as virgin.