Diogenes the Cynic

The author doesn't think it's amazing that a woman is pregnant and the pregnancy per se isn't the sign. The kid is just used as a marker of time. "See that woman. She's pregnant. Before that kid knows right from wrong your problems will be over." There's nothing special about the kid at all.
There are no Rabbinical explanations that the kid himself dispelled the threats to Israel. The plain text says that God did it before the kid turned seven. Again, there wasn't supoosed to be anything special about the kid. He was just a marker of time. If I say, "I'll finish writing this novel before the first snowflake falls," that's not saying there's anything amazing about snow.

Diogenes the Cynic

So you admit it refers to a specific, normal kid in that story?

Febble

I'd have thought the concept that Jesus always had moral discernment would also be theologically completely unsound. Given that small children don't, and can't. If Jesus was fully human (as the doctine of the Trinity requires) then he must have developed moral discernment in the way that human beings do. All that is required, theologically, is that once he was able to discern, morally, that he made the "right" moral choices.

No?

Diogenes the Cynic

I take exception to this as I haven't said it. I've said multiple times that it was a prophecy (within the context of the story), just not a MESSIANIC prophecy.

Apikorus

No, I don't think I've misread anything. There is no hint that Immanuel would be have an unusual ethical status. That is, the implicit expectation is that Immanuel would reach the age of moral accountability like all children. The "prophecy" and focus here is the threat to Judah and Ahaz posed by the Syro-Ephraimite alliance. The parallelism of Isa 7 and Isa 8 demands this interpretation.

I'd be more convinced of this if the masculine cognate elem connoted virginity, which it does not. It simply means "young man." At any rate, virginity is not ruled out. An almah can be a bethulah, just as a mother can be an astronaut.

The rabbinic recensions are hardly a "reaction to Christianity". The reason for the recensions was that the LXX text type differed significantly from the proto-MT text type. Differences were particularly profound in Samuel, Jeremiah (the LXX is about 12% shorter), Daniel, and elsewhere. These differences are all pre-Christian and have nothing to do with Christianity.

The case of Isa 7:14 is anomalous in that the LXX variation was useful and indeed particularly important in Christian tradition. Since the rabbinic recensions are from the second century CE, we should leave open the possibility that their substitution of neanis for parthenos is a reaction to Christian claims. But again, overwhelmingly the reason for correcting the LXX to the proto-MT had nothing to do with Christianity, so it is quite possible that this is also the case with Isa 7:14.

Phlox Pyros

Again, you are correct. I did not word my sentence well at all. My intent was to point out that some variations in the rabbinic recensions are considered by some (many?) to be a reaction to Christianity. You worded it much better:

Amaleq13

Is there evidence that pre-Christian Jews considered this passage as a messianic prophecy?

And, to continue the discussion from another thread, is there any evidence to support the belief of The Bishop and Gamera that pre-Christian Jews who considered the passage to be a messianic prophecy interpreted it to predict a messianic birth?

Diogenes the Cynic

Not that I'm aware of. As far as I know, the only argument for it comes from the tendentious inferrence that parthenos *might* have been a translation of some now lost Hebrew variant of bethulah.

Even then, it still wouldn't have made sense to read it as Messianic since there was no expectation that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. In fact, he couldn't be since the Messiah, by definition, has to be a direct patrilinear descendant of David. He has to have a father to meet the requirements.

Phlox Pyros

I still don't understand the rhetorical words such as tendentious and specious to describe this plausible scenario.

Again, parthenos is used five times (that I am aware of) in Isaiah. Four of those five times the translator used it for the Hebrew bethulah. Only one case of parthenos is not used for an underlying bethulah and that Isaiah 7:14. That is, unless there was a variant (now lost...not an unreasonable assumption with the ancient HB) that also read bethulah (ie. virgin) in Isaiah 7:14. It seems reasonable to me that the translator would have used this same word in all cases rather than four out of five of them.

Of course, it's speculation, but I don't believe it is particularly specious or tendentious. Stephen and Apikorus would probably point to the "inconsistency" of the translation of Isaiah, but it doesn't preclude the translator from having originally used the same word to translate all of these instances, does it?

What would you think if another DSS cache happened to show up one day and "bethulah" happened to turn up in a scroll of Isaiah at 7:14?

Apikorus

It's fun to think about these things. What would you think if another early 1st century ossuary were to turn up, with the inscription, "Jesus son of Joseph, anointed of Yahweh"?