Among the tactics the earliest Christians used to convince others (particularly Jews) of the veracity of their beliefs, was to present Jesus as the Messiah. Their problem was that Jesus’ life, teachings, and career had pretty much nothing to do with the Messiah whom Jews had anticipated for generations. So early Christians looked for ways to “hook” the Messiah and their Jesus together.
One of the particular ways they decided to do this, was in the Virgin Birth story. We know it was a concoction, because of the nature of what Christians did and how they did it. The predicate of this trope was a brief passage from the Old Testament (Isaiah 7:14). In English this is:
“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.”
Based on this, Christians decided that Jesus' mother must have been a virgin at the time he was conceived, and hence, developed two different versions of the Virgin Birth trope (this story is found in Matthew and in Luke, and it differs a bit in each). With this tale in hand, they used it — along with a few other narratives — to justify claiming that Jewish scripture had “predicted” Jesus’ life and deeds.
The reason we know this is a concoction, is that it's not actually true to the original Hebrew text of Isaiah. The assumption that Mary must have been a virgin was due to a mistranslation.
That's right, a mistranslation!
The word translated above into English as “virgin” is, in the original Hebrew, צלמה (or ‘almā). This means “young woman,” implying of marriageable age. That’s a much wider range of meaning than English “virgin.” In fact, Hebrew has another word, בתולה (or bethulā) which is more specific and much closer in meaning to both Greek parthenos and English “virgin.” Notably, that’s not used here.
Yes, I can be. This is a clear example of a Christian doctrine woven directly from a mistranslated word. It’s undeniable, and it’s right there, in black and white.
Many early Christians didn't know this, nor did many of the people to whom they were evangelizing. That's because they didn't know Hebrew — or didn't know it very well — and read Jewish scripture in the form of the Septuagint, a 2nd century BCE translation into Greek (specifically, κοινη aka koinē or “common” Greek) spoken in the eastern Mediterranean. There, the passage in question was:
δια τουτο δωσει κυριος αυτος υμιν σημειον· ιδου η παρθενος εν γαστρι εξει, και τεξεται υιον, και καλεσεις το ονομα αυτου εμμανουηλ
Here, ‘almā is translated as παρθενος (aka parthenos), which is much closer to English “virgin” than to Hebrew ‘almā. These Greek-speaking early Christians, then, read Isaiah 7:14 as referring not to a young woman having a baby who’d be named “Immanuel,” but to a virgin girl who somehow (magically?) had a baby! They took it as a miracle predicted by Isaiah, and portrayed their Jesus as having been that baby. Hence, the virgin birth story, and this passage from the gospel according to Matthew:
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Mt 1:23)
This contains a quotation of Isaiah. In its original Greek, this gospel passage is as follows:
ιδου η παρθενος εν γαστρι εξει και τεξεται υιον και καλεσουσιν το ονομα αυτου εμμανουηλ ο εστιν μεθερμηνευομενον μεθ ημων ο θεος
Even now, many Christians use Matthew 1:23 as a “proof text” showing that their Jesus fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. But it just doesn't work! Isaiah 7:14 in its original form (i.e. Hebrew) doesn't actually predict that a virgin would conceive and give birth. Only that a “young woman” would, and that he’d be named “Immanuel.” The whole thing about virginity arose from the mistranslation of ‘almā as parthenos.
There’s another mistake at play here. In their zeal to turn the birth of a child into a miracle, early Christians forgot what was, arguably, the chief point of Is 7:14, i.e. that the child in question would be named “Immanuel.” You see, nowhere else — not in the rest of Matthew, nor in the other gospels, nor even anywhere else in the New Testament — is Jesus ever named “Immanuel” (εμμανουηλ or emmanouēl in Greek).
It’s true … no one in the Bible ever reportedly addressed Jesus as “Immanuel,” or referred to him that way. In the New Testament this name appears only in Mt 1:23, and within it, only in that quotation of Is 7:14.
Thus, it cannot be true that Jesus “fulfilled” the Isaiah prophecy, because he never went by the name specified within it. The New Testament texts themselves make that clear. It’s incontrovertible: The virgin birth trope was concocted in order to make Jesus fit a reading of Isaiah which (as it turns out) is erroneous due to a misapprehension of its contents.
It’s amazing that one short New Testament passage (i.e. Matthew 1:23) used to conjure up an entire doctrine, manages — despite its brevity — to include not just one, but two, separate and critical errors that completely invalidate what it purports to “prove.”
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible (copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation); Septuagint.Bible (courtesy of Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America & Hellenic Bible Society); and Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (copyright © 2010 by Society of Biblical Literature & Logos Bible Software).
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