Gamera

Greek was the lingua franca of the time for disasporic and Jews in Judea. The best scholarship indicates that Jesus and the apostles and their audience all spoke Greek, and it is even possible that Jesus's teachings were not in Aramaic, but in Greek. It's pretty clear that even uneducated Jews of the first century were trilingual, speaking Hebrew for sacred text, aramaic at home, and Greek in business contexts.

For support start with the September-October 1992 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. But you can just run a google search to find references to recent scholarship on the subject.



Because it wasn't a Greek idea at all, the idea of a VIRGIN birth is purely an concept that arises out of the Septuagint. DIVINE births are common in Hellenic and other mythologies. But they are not conceptualized as VIRGIN.

Details in comparative religion are very very important.

Steven Carr

Didn't Josephus have to work as a translator, because so few of the inhabitants spoke Greek?

Why did the tribune in Acts 21 have to ask why Paul spoke the 'lingua franca' ?

Didn't he realise that even uneducated Jews were trilingual?

Joe Bloe

I'm going from distant memory here and I may be misremembering, but even what I do remember is that the "virgin" part of these stories was not all that widespread or widely thought of as important (these sorts of stories are not interesting to me, so I haven't bothered to remember them in detail; I find ancient Greek philosophy much more interesting). So I'm willing to concede its unimportance (unless someone else does the work to cite evidence otherwise, or if I get ambitious enough to look it up). But I don't see what would be bizarre about it in the context of widespread myths of godly impregnations; why not a virgin? In any case, there was certainly a strong strain in Greek philosophy that the material world in general was inherently flawed and inferior to the spiritual world. The Greeks were typically much more down on the material world than the ancient Jews, who said their god looked at the world he created and saw that it was good. As for a doctrine of sin as a consequent of birth, "original sin" is a Christian invention, a reinterpretation of ancient Hebrew scriptures. It's not a part of Judaism. And it fits better with the common Greek view of the material world as inherently flawed.

Amaleq13

Unless you have evidence that you have not yet shared, there appears to be no good reason to assume that any pre-Christian Jews understood this passage to predict that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

Please see Richard Carrier's article on the subject for more information.

The word choice does not require that interpretation and the evidence from Justin suggests it was denied by Jews.

Gamera

I think your misremembering the Greek stories. The victims are indeed virgins, but that's because Greek gods (like the patriarcal Bronz age Greek men who created them) like virgins. There is no theological import to the ravishments beyond that.

While the Greek worldview has a strain of downfall (moving from a golden age, to a silver age, etc.), it is not soteriological. No Greek myth I know of is even vaguely concerned with reconstituting or saving the fallen world, and certainly none of that is related to the ravishment myths. The Greeks simply had no palce in their worldview for a Messiah.

Clivedurdle

Umm, that Paul is discussing a Christ who he met in a vision, who he had further experiences of in a third heaven, that he wasn't a detail guy because he saw as in a glass darkly, that he had no concept of a real person recently, that his thinking has huge theological symbolism in it like "according to the flesh", that the last supper stuff - like many comments he makes "this is from the lord, this is from me' (paraphrase) - is also a visionary idea, probably related to alchemic magical milleniarist gnostic ideas that he believed bread would turn into flesh and wine into blood.

Gamera

1. No, he was a historian who wrote in Greek, even though a Jew working for a Latin-speaking empire. This is a testament to the pervasive use of Greek

2. Well, as the full quote shows, the incident makes my point. The tribune had heard he was an Egyptian, who presumably, not being a Jew, wouldn't speak Greek. Here's the quote.

May I say something to you?" And he said, "Do you know Greek? 38 Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?" 39 Paul replied, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cili'cia, a citizen of no mean city; I beg you, let me speak to the people." 40

Gamera

Doesn't "require" it, but it certainly was interpreted that way by the many Jewish Christians who predominated in the early Church. Which suggests that there were plenty of diasporic Jews who also understood it that way. There was no single concept of the messiah among 1st century Jews, but rather many differing views. The fact that the post-Christian Jews made a point of arguing that the interpretation of Isaiah was wrong suggests that this was an interpretation that was in the air among Jews.

Of course all this begs the question, why is it miraculous for a girl to have a child -- who else would have one? A boy? The fact that Isaiah remarks that it's a sign of God that a girl has a baby strongly suggests that the meaning of "girl" here was "virgin."

(I'm aware of the rabbinical interpretation of this passage to mean something like it was a sign that the child was born and staved off all the nation's threats before he was 7, but honestly that seem a bit strained given the plain text of Isaiah -- and again, it hardly seems this would be a concern of a diasporic Jew living among gentiles. You would expect such a person to less amazed at the messiah's precocious ability to stave off some threat to an occupied Israel than his virgin birth)

Amaleq13

I agree with your first sentence but it does not, in any way, require or even suggest the second. You have offered no evidence to justify your jump from a Christian interpretation to a Jewish interpretation.

This is another unsupported leap. Their opposition to the notion says nothing of the sort. The fact that the post-Christian Jews made a point of arguing that the interpretation of Isaiah was wrong suggests nothing except that they disagreed with the Christian interpretation. That Christian proponents like Justin and Jerome fail to mention that earlier Jews did accept it certainly doesn't help your case.

No, the plain meaning of the text is that this is given as a timing marker for the clearly stated prophecy. As I understand it, the original Hebrew indicates the young woman is already pregnant (that is, AFAIK, how the word is translated in every other instance) and that the threat of war is predicted to end by the time the child reaches twelve. It is the Christian interpretation that is strained and the evidence suggests that is precisely how Jews viewed it once they heard it but there is apparently no evidence that this notion predates Christianity.

I'm not entirely sure why you want to project this Christian interpretation onto pre-Christian Jews but it would appear you have no evidence whatsoever to support it. That is all I wanted to know. Feel free to carry on with the original discussion. :wave:

Odemus

What knowledge of Christ's life and ministry would have been available to Paul?