Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Charles,

You write:

>For those who insist on insinuating the concept
>of "virgo intacta" onto the Hebrew word `almah, a stretch that then permits
>the view that Greek parthenos is an equally technical term, I have a
>contextual question.  If the word itself was so unambiguous, why did Luke
>bother to have Mary use the standard phrase "I have not known a man?"

Why not? Luke may have gotten his material straight from Mary, or from
people close to her. If Mary reported the incident in this way, why should
Luke not pass it on to his readers. It is logical that the angel would go
into a technical discussion about Mary's birth of Jesus because Mary asked
about it.

>The "virgin" part of this verse can be derived from Isaiah only by imposing
>on the Hebrew text the Christological lens of faith.  I have no problem if a
>practicing Christian wishes to believe that the virgin birth of Jesus is
>what Isaiah's words have come to mean for him.  But to presume  that
>Isaiah's words must also have meant that to Ahaz is "straining at a gnat."
>"Virginity" simply cannot be founded on either `almah or parthenos. Luke
>chose to make Isaiah's words mean something they had not meant before, and
>he did so by the addition of a standard phrase.

This statement may not be correct. The excursus on "almah" in the article I
wrote begins with this quote from ISBE:

When the Christian Church adopted the LXX as its Bible and began to cite
proof texts from it in controversies with the Jews (e.g., parthénos in Isa
7:14), the latter were considerably embarrassed and retorted that the LXX
was an inaccurate translation (s.v. "Septuagint," _The International
Standard Bible Encyclopedia_).

Soderland goes on to say that having called the LXX translation bad, the
Jews needed another Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The first
solution was the translation of Aquila, followed by those of Theodotian and
Symmachus. The LXX has PARQENOS for the Hebrew (AL:MFH in Isa 7:14, and the
sense of PARQENOS seems generally to be "virgin," even if there are cases
when it is not. So some ancient Jews apparently understood (AL:MFH that way.

If PARQENOS did not generally mean "virgin," then the Jews would have had
no reason to feel embarrassment about the LXX translation of Isa 7:14.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

 Luke
>chose to make Isaiah's words mean something they had not meant before, and
>he did so by the addition of a standard phrase.  The phrase is not in Isaiah
>because he wasn't concerned about a god-man/Dionysiun/virginal conception.
>It appears in Luke because he was.
>
>Shalom,
>Charles David Isbell
>
>
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