The world alma has a meaning in other languages.
In the Hebrew Gospels the name Mary is designated by almah which means "young woman." The reason that Mary is held to have remained a virgin by Catholics and some Christians is because Matthew in his gospel used the Greek word parthenos, meaning "virgin," instead of almah when referring to the virgin birth of Jesus. Also almah was derived from Persian Al-Mah, the unmated Moon goddess. Another cognate of this term was the Latin alma, "living soul of the world," which is essentially identical to the Greek psyche, and the Sanskrit shakti. So the ancient Holy Virgins, or temple-harlots, were "soul-teachers" or "soul- mothers." Thus comes the term alma mater.
Also, see:
http://archnet.org/forum/view.tcl?message_id=87855Who is Alma's second husband? Is he her boss at the store. I just saw the movie for a second time, and someone pointed that out to me. I had missed that. They speculated that Alma had been fooling around with her boss at the store before the divorce.
I used search here on Alma, to see if this was already posted somewhere. Sorry if this has already been asked.
