'Nuff said about the Virgin Mary.  I have not yet told you of the other Four famous Virgins – for there were others in the early Church besides just the Virgin Mary and the Virgin Paul.

Jolly Philip of Bethsaida, after he fled from Ephesus and retired from the evangelistic exorcism business, settled in Antioch; where he married a sweet Jewish-Christian girl with the surprising name of Porcina; which, though she was Jewish, was apt enough.  Now Philip and "Porsi" (as she called herself) had four musically talented and spirit-filled daughters, named Priscilla, Prudence, Prunella, and Pamela.  As teenagers, the girls formed a musical group, a quartet of singing prophetesses called the "Four Virgins a Cappella" (Acts 21:9).  Their band name was written, always, with the more traditional Roman numeral, "IIII," not the new-fangled "IV," thereby to symbolise that these girls kept themselves chaste, straight, and vertical, with their legs in tight parallel formation; which was quite remarkable, given their chosen career in the Christian evangelical entertainment industry.

Christian musical stardom, as you know, can be pretty tough on a gal's virtue, videlicet, Amy Grant, Marabeth Jordan, or Sandi Patty, plus a few others whom I. personally. have known, more than once, and I do thank my lucky stars for their unconditional Christian love.  But Saint Philip's four daughters were definitely virgins, and I was never tempted to help them with that problem.  Neither was Beelzebub or Belial.  Virginity was the fate of these women as surely as that of any sisters I have ever known, or not known, or ever dreamt of knowing.  But these four gals were brainy, and they had enormous musical talent.  To say nothing of their very nice personalities.

Granted, in Old Testament days – in the Jews' conservative, theistic, Yahvistic, patriarchal, phallocentric, misogynistic biblical culture – most female prophets were laughed to scorn.  But every now and then, there appeared a female prophet whose predictions actually did come true.  And whenever that happened, no one laughed.  If her predictions came true, then the prophetess was instead burned at the stake as a witch, according to the Law of Moses.  So it was like Catch 22:  "You call yourself a prophet of Yahveh, and you're a woman?  Well, well, well, which would you prefer – ridicule for getting the future wrong? or death, for getting it right?"  For that was God's own Law.

As a result of this dilemma, most female prophets of the biblical era were self-deprecating.  They called themselves by such epithets as "weird sister" (a trick later borrowed by Shakespeare, for his Macbeth), and they spoke ambiguously.  That way, whenever one of her predictions came true, the prophetess could say: "But that's not what I meant, you took it the wrong way, I was actually mistaken!" – and she could thereby escape being burned at the stake as a witch.

"The Four Virgins," who were based in Antioch, met with unprecedented success in their chosen line of work, but that is partly because they were the first female prophets since Deborah to have had the Lord squarely in their corner.  Their audience, even those of us who were less devout, sensed something special about these four, as if the Lord were sending us the message, "Don't even think about messing with these four girls, or an angry God will mess with you."  Which is one good reason why no one ever thought about messing with them.  And the other good reason, I think we have already covered.

Sadly, the brains and talent of Philip's "Four Virgins" did not fully shield them from being laughed to scorn by the Romans, much less by secularised Jews with a liberal arts education.  And I trace that problem to The Four Virgins' hand-printed flyers, posted all over town wherever they performed, which typically bore the unfortunate misspelling, "A CAPELLA!!!" – which struck Jewish snobs as pretty ridiculous; but it strikes me as le mot juste to serve as the playbill for a Stevie Nicks concert.

Philip's daughters – and this may surprise you – actually sang a cappella quite beautifully.  As I recall, they sounded very much like America's sweethearts, the Lennon Sisters, a Fifties grrrls band whom most of you won't remember.  And they definitely had virginity, which was another plus for the Lennon Sisters, and even for Britney Spears, for a while.  But what made The Four Virgins unique, and a smash success, is not that they had perfect pitch musically, which they did; or beauty, which they didn't; but that their prophecies came true, which was pretty unusual, for a prophet.  

These four girls correctly predicted the sack of Jerusalem, in 70 CE.  The Pompeii disaster, in 79.  The sack of Origen in 203.  The sack of Rome, in 455.  If it were a matter of Church business and not personal convenience, they would even sing you an accurate, ten-day weather report, and I'm not exaggerating.  The Jews, who knew only the Old Testament (and the Christians, who knew only the epistles of Saint Paul) were gobsmacked!  

I remember one song called, "Zero," in which The Four Virgins, in rhyming lyrics with four-part harmony, prophesied that the next emperor of Rome after Claudius would "persecute Christians fine," and "butcher his Mum, in 59," and "in 62, kill Octavia, too," and "fiddle in 64, as Rome burned to the floor!"  People said: "Oh, come off it!" or "Who are they trying to kid?" or "What a load of pigeon-guano!"  But each one of those predictions actually came true, in the exact year predicted.  (Pardon my English translation, which cannot do justice to the girls' original lyrics, which were in elegant, metrical Aramaic.)

 – L.