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Here is also an interesting article by Chole Breyer, an Episcopial priest and the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer:
What if Mary wasn't a virgin? - By Chloe Breyer - Slate Magazine
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Well, didn't the question of Marian chastity rest solely on the interpretation of "maiden" in Hebrew?*
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I don't think the Bible was meant to be taken literally; it is not inerrant In fact it even says it is "inspired" by God, but not the literal word of God.
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It is the case that the tradition in Christian theology does not truly embrace a foundamentalist** faith. The idea is that the spirital truths of the Bible is not,f rom a reading of its letters, readily transparent or self-evident; a certain divine illumination is required for the proper understanding of God's signs. The fable of the mustard seeds and Paul's metaphor of the looking glass come into mind. What seems to be the lesson is that, the letter of the Bible is not meant to be read literally, though the inaccessibility of the message is not to any fault of the text but the imperfection of human faculties.
It does seem to be the case that the justified souls could instantly understand the Bible because their minds had been perfected by God, according to what I read of the Christian theologians.
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* Marian Chastity is asserted because the belief that the OT presaged the coming of Christ, and that in the OT, the messiah would be concieved by a "maiden of Israel" (at least that's what my ossified-before-its-age mind remebers).
** I mean taking a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible here.