Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ken Litwak <kdlitwak AT concentric.net>]

Joseph Crea wrote:
> 
> Hello Ken!
> 
> At 04:56 PM 10/29/99 -0700, kdlitwak wrote:
> >There are two large methodological problems with the following:
> >
> >1.  Don't we all know that arguments from silence are completely invalid?
> 
> CREA
>     Are you arguing for the INvalidity of Modus Tollendus Ponens or that
> "denying the consequent" carries no weight?  If I were to claim to have had
> an appendectomy and can produce no evidence whatsoever of abdominal
> scarring consistent with customary surgical procededures, such lack
> definitely falls into the category of an "argument from silence", but is is
> hardly invalid or non-evidential.

I am arguin taht a statement like" Paul did not know of the virgin
birth" is not a meaningful argukent for naything.  All that can be said
is that thre is no text that conclusively says Jesus was born of a
virgin in Paul's extant letters (though more than one commentator has
suggested htat Paul's wording in Gal 4:4:  4 But when the fullness of
the time came, God sent 
forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,

points in this direction (why pont out the obvious -- that he was born
of a woman).  Nevertheless, even apart from this, what possible
relevance does Paul's non-explicit statement about this have to do with
what aolmah might have signififed to an LXX translator?  Nothing. 
Whether or not Paul knew of he teaching or ever mentioend orally or in
writing is something no amount of historical research can uncover.  The
most you can accuratley say is that we know of no explicit reference in
Paul.  That proves nothing aout what early Christians believed in
general.  

I want to return to the Hebrew text and its early translation.  I am
still looking for analysis that shows that 
a) almah cannot mean virgin or that no reader would have guessed that in
Isa 7:14 it meant that.
b) That thre could not have een a Greek translation before Matthew's
Gospel that renderd almah as parthnos anywhree, not just in Isaiah.
c)  Tha tMatthew is actually guilty of violating the semantic domain of
almah by using parthenos.  
These threee issus are not theological and seem to me to be legitimate,
scholarly questions.  While it's not possible for anyone to ever say
anything that is free of their world view, I think these three things,
especially the satisical question, isrelatively more objective and more
related to the subject of this list, as opposed to speculation that
Matthew deceivd is readers with a clearly incorrect rndering.  The
evidence in TOv's book on textual criticism, among others, is convincing
I think that both the Hebrew text and the LXX were still in a state of
flux in the first century AD.  

Ken Litwak