spin

What would ever make you think that the writer(s) of Luke would have been "already familiar with the Matthew story"? As I have pointed out, except for very few basic similarities there is almost nothing shared between the two accounts. The dissimilarity argues against one knowing the other.


spin

light years

the word they misstranslated, is alma it meens yong maiden, betula means virgin, and they dont use that word.

gstafleu

How important was it to early Christianity that Mary was a virgin?

It was clearly important that Jesus' conception was divine, not human-made. But does it, for early Christianity, matter if Mary was a virgin or not as long as the conception was divine? Is the bit about no marital relations with Joseph, and hence the culturally implied virginity, perhaps mainly added to show that it couldn't have been Joseph and that hence the divine fertilization should be believed?

Gerard Stafleu

Chris Weimer

I'd hazard a guess that it wasn't all that important to early Christianity, since we see an Adoptionist text (Mark) and many other heretical groups flourishing alongside the orthodoxy. Obviously it grew in importance, but so did many other things (such as the Officium Mariae Beatae).

However, virginity was highly regarded in that culture, and obviously the little note from Isaiah had a large enough impact to steer the course to divine origins.

S.C.Carlson

My point was about how the quoted portions of Matthew did not support the argument. Saying that it is in the context instead is consistent with it.

Stephen

Chris Weimer

I merely assumed more on his part. :blush:

Casper

That is my take on it. Either he is dancing around her impregnation carefully to avoid telling an outright lie or he is emphasizing her virginity as proof of divine intervention. I have to assume the latter, because this seems to be one of Matthew's driving ambitions; to tell the story that Mark told, but emphasizing important points and even correcting mistakes.

Chili

Only a virgin birth is divine and therefore conceived from above as opposed from conceived from below, which is also possible of the word virgin would be redundant.

The difference between these two is that a virgin birth leads to a divine comedy while a non-virgin birth leads to a Senecan tragedy. The qualifying condition here is the resurrection of the faculty of reason after the death of the ego consciousness so that reason can prevail.

Jayhawker Soule

Virgins got married (had sex) and bore children all the time, and I seem to recall that a first-born son was deemed important in that culture. I very much suspect that the author of 7:14 had a virgin in mind irrespective of which word was originally employed, and I very much doubt that the omen had anything whatsoever to do with parthenogenesis.

spin

The young woman is already pregnant. The pregnancy isn't part of the prophecy. The birth isn't what's important, but the time until the child can discern good and evil. Samaria will be wept away and be deserted by then.

Concentrating on the notion of virginity in the verse is simply irrelevant to Isaiah. While I also "doubt that the omen had anything whatsoever to do with parthenogenesis", I can see no evidence to suggest that "the author of 7:14 had a virgin in mind". In a rather similar birth prophecy dealing with the same issue, was the priestess in 8:3 a virgin or did the author have a virgin in mind? Hopefully, one will see that virginity is, in both instances, irrelevant to the prophecy and unsupported by the text.


spin