Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Charles David Isbell" <cisbell AT home.com>]

Thanks, Harold.  Several points.  [1] I don't know whether Mary actually
said "I have not known a man" or not.  It makes no difference to me.  In the
text we have for study of Luke, the words are there to stipulate what Luke
intended.

[2] I am one Jew who is not embarrassed at all by Isaiah or Matthew or Luke.
Arguing from the LXX to ascertain THE meaning of Isaiah 7:14 does not strike
me as the correct method.  The same ISBE article you cited alleging that
Jews were embarrassed also notes that the early Christians who used the LXX
took the legend of Aristeas literally and viewed the LXX as divinely
inspired.  I think that is the nub of the discussion here too.  A Christian
who starts with the idea that the NT offers THE correct version of the Bible
[OT] ends where he starts, with a virgin birth.  My position is simply that
I don't think Isaiah envisioned a virgin birth and I don't think any of the
vocabulary words involved bear such weight alone.  I think Luke made his
position clear via the statement cited from Mary, not from parthenos.
There is no such thing in English as a word that means "virgin" most of the
time.  One either is or ain't.  The fact that so many examples of texts
where either (almah or betulah are unclear standing alone simply makes my
point.

[3] With all due respect, the God of the Bible was not born, whether of a
virgin or any other kind of woman.  If you believe that the God of the NT is
born, it makes no difference who his mother was.  I do not mean to offend,
but the idea of virginal conception was not new to the authors of the NT; it
was widely known in the Roman/Hellenistic world to which they preached and
for whom they wrote.  I am confident that such an idea was foreign to the
Hebrew Bible. The miracle of Isaac was not that God impregnated Sarah but
that a 100 year old man did.   That's miracle enough for me, and I'm only
56.  At the end, this is where the argument always leads.  You believe in a
God/Man Jesus who was born of a virgin.  I do not.  I agree that your sacred
text in Matthew and Luke presents Jesus in that way [although Mark and John
and Paul don't].  For those for whom the NT is authoritative, that should be
enough.  But that is still a long way from shoehorning such an idea back
into the Isaian text.

Shalom,
Charles