Joshua Udell wrote: (Jesus was 700 years later!!! )
DAR
What are you saying specifically refers to Jesus? Also, what can you show, verify, that Jesus did in fulfillment? I don't think you can do either of those things and you need to do both.
And Doug, if you are thinking of roasting this, don't bother. You've done it before and I kept it. See below.
First this:
"The Old Testament says nothing about Mary. Isaiah 7:14 speaks of a
young woman of the time the "a young woman shall conceive" statement was
made. In Hebrew it simply says that a young woman shall become/is
pregnant and will give birth to a child. One need not quibble over the
meaning of 'almah/bethulah in order to point out that it happens every
day. Many young women become pregnant. They are virgins before (some of
them) but not after. The OT says nothing about the young woman being a
virgin at the time of giving birth. And of course the quote was lifted
out of context and applied to Jesus. That is why Jews do not read it as
having anything to do with a "virgin birth."
As for the 'almah/bethulah question, in the Septuagint Greek translation
'almah is rendered as parthenos, which can mean virgin but does not
necessarily mean that. It is used in the OT of Dinah after she was
raped. By the time of the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew of Justin Martyr,
the meaning had apparently become more restrictive--thus the comment of
Trypho that the Christians mistranslated the Isaiah 7:14 quote, as in
fact they did.
As to whether the Mother of Jesus was a virgin or not, we really have no
evidence at all. Both birth stories in the gospels appear to be later
additions tacked onto the basic story that begins at the baptism of
Jesus. Two gospels say nothing of a virgin birth. Paul says nothing of
a virgin birth--in fact he speaks of Jesus being of the "seed of David"
according to the flesh, meaning a descendant of David. If we accept the
genealogies in the NT (which of course we should not), then Joseph is the
genetic descendant of David--and of course he is supposed not to have had
any physical part in the birth of Christ at all.
From a commonsense point of view the virgin birth is nonsense.
Christianity is not alone in believing what is essentially a "remarkable
birth" motif. In Tibetan Buddhism Padmasambhava was believed to have
taken birth in a lotus blossom. Such things are metaphors, not reality."
--David Coomler
Here is something Doug wrote about this. Joshua, read it:
***
Here are a few facts regarding modern biblical scholarship from
STANDARD sources and/or reflecting standard views on biblical scholarship.
Regarding the virgin birth:
Contemporary scholars recognize that the virgin birth is a late
addition to the Jesus legend, especially because the purported event is
supposed to be the fulfillment of a prophecy-- but there is no such
prophecy.
As I mention in my book, Isaiah 7:14 is often taken to prophecy
the virgin birth of Jesus: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a
sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel." However, scholars are well aware that the term translated
here as "virgin," the Hebrew word almah, is best translated as "young
woman," who may or may not be a virgin. The Hebrew word bethulah means
"virgin," but that is not the word used in the Isaiah verse. The gospel
writers usually used the notoriously error-filled Greek Septuagint
translation of the Hebrew when citing the Old Testament. Some modern
bibles, such as the Revised Standard version, use the correct translation
of this passage and do not use the word "virgin." Furthermore, the Hebrew
text is in the present tense; the verse states that a young woman is
pregnant, not that she will become so. Further, anyone who takes the
trouble to read the verse in context will see that the event in question
was not a prophecy about some event in the distant future. It was
intended to be a sign to King Ahaz of Judah, the king who asked Isaiah for
help. The birth of the son was supposed to be a sign to the king that an
attack by a hostile alliance, which included Israel, would be unsuccessful
against Judah. Isaiah also admits, in 8:3-4, that he "went unto the
prophetess" just to make sure that she was pregnant. The verses in
7:15-16 make it clear that the sign was supposed to be of events in
Isaiahs day, since these state that the alliance would fail before the
child was old enough to know good from evil. Clearly, none of this has
any relation to Jesus or xianity. As a prophecy about Jesus, it isnt one.
The prophecy also failed in Isaiahs time, since the attack on Judah was
successful after all (2 Chronicles 28:1-5).
The above analysis is, in its main content, identical to that
given in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford University Press,
1993). This is a standard reference work. We find on page 790: "Isaiahs
intent in discussing this child [in Isaiah 7] is clearly to set a time
frame for the destruction of Israel. There is nothing miraculous about
the mother or the conception process."
In The Unauthorized Version (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992),
Oxford historian and bible scholar Robin Lane Fox says this about the
Isaiah 7 virgin birth "prophecy": "it did not concern Jesus nor did it
concern a virgin" (pg. 339). Fox also states that "among all these
proof-texts and old prophecies, the clamour of fundamentalists and the
talk of new keys to the Old Testament, it is hard to hear the Hebrew
prophets on their own terms. What, in fact, had they predicted about
Jesus Christ or Christianity? The answer is extremely simple: they had
predicted nothing" (pg. 340).
Gunther Bornkamm, Emeritus Professor of New Testament Studies at
the Rupert Charles University of Heidelberg wrote the following in the
article about Jesus for the Encyclopedia Britannica (another standard
reference work): "The widely differing genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke
3 also belong in the context of the doctrine of Davidic descent of the
Messiah (Christ). They are the only New Testament evidences for
genealogical reflection about Jesus messiahship. The two texts, however,
cannot be harmonized. They show that originally a unified tradition about
Jesus ancestors did not exist and that attempts to portray his messiahship
genealogically were first undertaken in Jewish Christian circles with the
use of the Septuagint (Greek translation) text of the Old Testament. BOTH
TEXTS HAVE TO BE ELIMINATED AS HISTORICAL SOURCES. [Emphasis added.] They
are nevertheless important for the devolopment of Christology (doctrines
on the nature of Christ), because they reveal the difficulty of
reconciling the genealogical proof of Jesus Davidic descent WITH THE
RELATIVELY LATE IDEA OF HIS VIRGIN BIRTH. [Emphasis added.]" (Britannica
vol. 22, pg. 364.)
The Oxford Companion to the Bible states: "The birth stories in
Matthew and Luke are relatively late" (pg. 356).
The Britannica article continues: "According to a very old,
reliable tradition, the village of Nazareth, which lay in the Galilean
hill country, had a Jewish population, and was untouched by the influence
of Hellenistic cities, was the hometown, and then certainly the
birthplace, of the Nazarene" (Britannica vol. 22, pg. 364).
Contemporary scholars believe that the historical Jesus was born
in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, for reasons similar to the rejection of the
virgin birth. This was also stated in the PBS special From Jesus to
Christ. Paula Fredriksens book of the same name states, "Jesus was born
in Nazareth in one of the most turbulent periods of Jewish History" (From
Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, page 127). Regarding the virgin
birth, she, too, gives the analysis of the Hebrew words which I used above
and states, "Matthew chooses innummerable passages and verses that in
their original context had nothing to do with a messiah, and by applying
them to Jesus makes them seem to" (Ibid., pp. 37-38).
In his book Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus,
John Shelby Spong explains some of the contradictory and hopelessly
irreconciliable differences between the birth stories found in Matthew and
Luke and then states:
Two narrators of the same historic moment might create variations in
detail, but they would never produce diametrically different and even
contradictory versions of the events surrounding the same birth. The
minimum conclusion is that both versions cannot be historically accurate.
The maximum conclusion is that neither version is historic. THIS LATTER
CONCLUSION IS THE OVERWHELMING CONSENSUS OF BIBLICAL SCHOLARS TODAY.
INDEED, IT IS AN ALMOST UNCONTESTED CONCLUSION, and to that conclusion I
subscribe" (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus (New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.), pg. 50 [Emphasis added.])
Spong also notes that in relating the virgin birth prophecy
Matthew deviated from the Septuagint, and perhaps the Septuagint, with its
erroneous translation of Isaiah 7:14, was not Matthews source. Spong
says, "He [the author of Matthew] deviated from the Septuagint in two
interesting places: Matthew said the virgin "will be with child" (hexei)
when the Septuagint said the virgin "will conceive" (lepsetai). Matthew
said "they" (third person plural) will call his name Immanuel, while the
Septuagint said "you" (second person singular) will call his name
Immanuel. Both Matthew and the Septuagint differ from the Hebrew text,
which said "a young woman is with child and she [third person singular]
will call his name Immanuel" (pp. 74-75). And: "It would be nonsensical
to think that the birth of a child seven hundred years later could somehow
given hope to King Ahaz in that particular moment of crisis. Whatever
else the Isaiah text meant, it had literally nothing to do with Jesus"
(pg. 79).
Spong also writes: "Is there any possibility that the narratives
of our Lords birth are historical? Of course not. Even to raise that
question is to betray an ignorance about birth narratives. Origin tales
are commentaries on adult meaning...What this means is that the birth
narratives of Matthew and Luke finally said nothing factual about the
birth of Jesus..." (pg. 59).
With no prophecy to fulfill, it is unlikely that Jesus would have
been born of a virgin simply to accommodate some later xians error,
perhaps intentional, in translation and interpretation. It is also the
case that the earliest xian writings, the letters of Paul and the gospel
of Mark, do not mention the virgin birth. It was added later in the
course of the development of xianity. This is the overwhelming consensus
of biblical scholars today, as Spong noted.
Incidentally, it would not be the only time that some doctrine or
view regarding a biblical figure arose due to a mistranslation. In
Jeromes Latin Vulgate translation Jerome confused qaran (to shine) with
queren (a horn), and so mistranslated Exodus 34:29, which reads "Moses
wist [knew] not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him
[god]" in the King James version as "Moses knew not that horns had
sprouted on his head by reason of his speaking with God." Because of this
error, medieval pictures of Moses often depicted him with horns on his
head! I have some pictures of such medieval works. One little mistake
like that is all that it takes to start a new doctrine about some revered
figure. (See The Cambridge History of the Bible (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1969), vol. 2, pg. 301.)
--Doug K.
Let us as freethinkers discuss this serious issue...
