Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.34

But the prophets also spoke beforehand: he would be born from a virgin. In fulfillment of a promised sign, the one who gives birth to the one named after the reality he embodies shows that God will be with human beings at his birth. (Isaiah 7:10-14) It seems fitting to me to set forth the prophecy of Isaiah in response to the Jew's personification, which declares that Emmanuel will be born from a virgin. Celsus did not expound this passage—whether because he did not know it, despite his claim to know everything, or because he read it but deliberately kept silent, so as not to appear to be building against his will the argument that opposes his own preference. The text runs as follows: 'And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, "Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God, either in the depths or in the heights." And Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." Then he said, "Hear now, house of David: is it too little for you to weary people, that you also weary my Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, the virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel," which is interpreted "God with us." (Isaiah 7:10-14) That Celsus, acting wickedly, passed over this prophecy is clear to me from the fact that he omitted many things from the Gospel according to Matthew—for instance, the star that rose at the birth of Jesus and other remarkable events—and did not even mention the beginning of that Gospel. If a Jew, making a clever objection, says that "behold, the virgin" is not written but rather "behold, the young woman," we will answer him that the Hebrew word almah, which the Seventy translators rendered as parthenos (virgin) and others as neanis (young woman), also occurs in Deuteronomy with reference to a virgin, in the following wording: "If a virgin betrothed to a man is found, and a man finds her in a city and lies with her, you shall bring both of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death with stones; the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife." (Deuteronomy 22:23-24) And next: "If a man finds the betrothed young woman in the open country and seizes her and lies with her, you shall kill only the man who lay with her, but you shall do nothing to the young woman; there is no capital offense for the young woman." (Deuteronomy 22:25-27)