I do not take issue with the occurrence of the virgin birth; it is miraculous, and scriptural, and it is therefore a matter of faith, not of logic. But I would like to comment on some of your posts on this issue.
First, the debate over almah versus bethulah in Isaiah 7:14 has been raging for more than twenty centuries, and to be realistic, both sides have occasionally engaged in a bit of understandable textual sleight of hand to push their side of the argument.
Jewish scholars on their side have clearly at times gone out of their way to frame this argument to refute any looking forward to the birth of Christ by saying that if "virgin" (parthenos) were actually intended, then bethulah would be the proper word, and that therefore the word parthenos was completely inappropriate. However, this fails rather badly with a deeper look at the connotations of the word bethulah in this context. This word generally means someone not of marriageable age, which among the ancient Hebrews meant puberty. Virtually everyone married immediately upon reaching puberty. A girl not considered of marriagable age was closeted in the home, or if allowed out only in the company of parents, and being barely pubescent, was essentially a child. Basically a child bearing a child. Translations by Jewish scholars in the first and second centuries (such as Aquila and Theodotion) were clearly tailored to attempt to refute Isaiah 7:14 as a precursor passage to the birth of Christ. Obviously, in this context, to use bethulah instead of the correct almah in Proverbs 30:19, "the way of a man with a maid," would be something atrocious. Almah seems to be a young woman of marriagable age, capable of being courted, but definitely not married yet. Any unmarried woman would certainly have been considered chaste by the ancient Hebrews, given the proscriptions against illicit sex at the time.
It is also very likely that the Septuagint translators had their good own reasons for using parthenos in Isaiah 7:14. Although some scholars claim a much later date of translation for the Septuagint, it is likely that it was done in the second century BC, probably not too terribly long after Isaiah was actually transcribed in Masoretic Hebrew.
However, on the Christian side, there has also been a fair share of "editing" to support the opposite view. First of all, the original Hebrew for Isaiah 7:14 regardless of the almah issue is in the perfect tense. That is, it clearly states that a (young woman/virgin) has conceived. There can be no question of this, yet somehow we see that by the time this passage wends its way to the KJV, it has become future tense, "a virgin shall conceive."
Those who wish to blithely state that this prophecy simply presages the birth of Christ and nothing else also neglect addressing some weighty contextual issues. Typically, they recite 7:14 by itself out of context of the entire prophecy. Having a look at a bit more of it, to set the stage, Isaiah has been attempting to bring King Ahaz of Judea to the Lord. Judea is under siege by the Kingdoms of Israel and Syria, and armies of these kingdoms are marching on Jerusalem. I have used the KJV below.
7:13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 7:15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings. (KJV)
Simple reading of the scriptures would indicate that the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 seems to have been fulfilled at the time of Ahaz, to whom Isaiah addressed it (that is, that there would be an unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem by the two armies of Israel and Syria) Verses 15 and 16 state that by the time this child reaches the age of maturity ("he knows to reject bad and choose good"), the two enemy kings Pekah and Rezin will have been removed. We subsequently see in II Kings 15-16 that this prophecy was seemingly fulfilled when these two kings were unexpectedly assassinated. Ahaz and all Jerusalem would not have taken it as a "sign," no matter how miraculous, if Isaiah were talking about something that would happen hundreds of years in the future, even if he were talking about the Messiah. Obviously, Isaiah would have held all the cards, since no one present would live to see whether he was right or not. Normally, "signs" such as these were more or less contemporaneous with their being spoken of. Jerusalem was worried about being put to the sword, seemingly a very immediate issue.
Basically, the contextual issue is a conundrum. One either has to argue that (a) Isaiah's prophecy was not fulfilled at the time of Ahaz, despite the surficial evidence, and that the prophecy only applies to the birth of Christ; or (b) that it is some kind of "dual prophecy." That is, applying both to Isaiah's time, and to the distant future. If so, then you have to wrestle with the "virgin birth" issue, because it would imply two virgin births.
Next, as to the opinions of Irenaeus regarding the Septuagint (the first translation of the, his sole source for the claim of the primacy of the Septuagint over earlier Hebrew, and such claims as that multiple translators working separately produced identical translations into Greek, thereby indicating the divine inspiration of God) is basically a myth. Its genesis is a lengthy letter, ostensibly by one Aristeas, the entire text of which is URL'd below.
wesley.nnu.edu
He presents himself as being a pagan admirer of Judaism in the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphius (285-246 BC), but due to some rather laughable historical inaccuracies as well as other overwhelming textual evidence, even the most conservative Biblical scholars both Christian and Jewish consider the letter fraudulent, and probably written around 100 to 150 years later. Its basic intent seems to be to support the use of the new Greek version of the Old Testament in preference to earlier Hebrew Masoretic versions, with the contention that the new version "corrected" various corrupted passages. In general, the Septuagint is considered a rather middling translation, ranging from relatively good work on the Pentateuch to abysmally bad on books such as Job and Proverbs. A good (and biblically very conservative) overview of the Septuagint and other texts is available online as follows:
biblebelievers.net
Finally, as to the existence of some sort of Jewish conspiracy during the early Church to undermine the virgin birth, as you imply, there simply does not seem to be too much evidence of this. Although there were obviously deep conflicts between Christians and Jewish non-believers, aside from the continual squawking over Isaiah 7:14 which has been going on for two millenia, this does not seem to have been any sort of major issue, particularly during the time of early evangelizing contemporaneous with the Apostle Paul when Christians and Jews were most strongly at loggerheads. At this time, the virgin birth does not seem to have been a key issue in terms of the spreading of the Gospel - in fact, Paul never mentions it during his letters, nor is it mentioned in the earliest Gospel, Mark. Non-Christian Jews would not have paid much attention to it; refuting the virgin birth would not have been of paramount concern to them, since there was no Messianic tradition among the Jews calling for a virgin birth. Many Jews in fact (including the noted rabbi Akiba) claimed the rebel Simon Bar Kokba as the Messiah during the disastrous Jewish revolt against Rome in 135 CE, that being a more "traditional" view of the Messiah at the time, a great warrior king, entirely mortal, who would lead his people to freedom from the oppressors.
Rather, during the early Church, the strongest assault on the doctrine of the virgin birth primarily came from non-Jewish quarters: from within the Church itself (principally doctrines such as Gnosticism, which denied the humanity of Christ, and Epionism and Adoptionism, which denied His divinity), and from the pagan philosophers such as Celsus (who was probably responsible for the martyrdom of Justin). Irenaeus in fact spent most of his time combating Gnosticism and its offshoots, a fashionable and at one point very widespread juxtaposition of Hellenistic philosophical doctrines on top of Christianity. |
