martinc

mc I understand this. I will gladly consider any other source you have about Jesus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


well you see... that is the whole problem, we don't HAVE any other sources.



mc2 so then we are supposed to disregard the gospel writers?



Me before:
one can have a high level of confidence that those things happened. However, on those points only supported by ONE bias, one can have no confidence at all....

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MC..OH CONTRAIRE... that is your fatal flaw... an assumption that the gospel writers are liars and in collusion to perpetuate a prophecy fulfilled deception on the world. I readily concede that a number of followers of Jesus MAY have some errors in their writings but I want to see proff.I have seen none and debated a guy for years on this and every time he gives me a so called contradiction I ask him to just simply tell me which two scriptures supposedly contradict each other and to date he nor anyone else has ever done that.(I don't care about silly riddles about the resurrection,just give the two scriptures that definitely contradict each other)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Well here is an example in point, you interrupted the sentence and replied to something I did not mean. This is less than honest on YOUR part!



mc12 no I am extremely honest you dont know me despite your insulting tone



As you can see in my continuation, I did not say that we should assume they are liars, I said we have no basis to trust them one way or another.



mc2 Whats the difference ?a liar is someone we have no basis in trusting as you say.



Now Dr X takes your dfinition of "followers of Jesus" to mean actual people that followed a living Jesus.... I did not think that, but if you did mean it that way, then Dr. X handled it quite well.



mc2 Of course I did not mean it that way.I am a follower of Jesus tho I have never met him.



However, if you intended later followers of the "Jesus movement" as I took it to mean,



mc2 Yes that is how it was meant to be understood

then they would not have to lie to be wrong... that is, they may well have sincerely

believed a fiction to be true.



mc2 true they may well have been decieved but then Jesus would have been a liar wouldn't he? He never disputed their claims of his messianic status did he?

So your whole basis of argument is well off the mark, we don't claim they were liars,

only that we have no basis to believe they wrote what actually happened.



mc2 not much difference dude when you say we have no basis to believe them and calling them liars.The only people I have no basis to believe are liars.
but at least you have gone fron pagan bias to a seemingly nuetral bias which is all I have intended for you all along.It is the height of arrongance to claim that the gospel writers were frauds trying to make their leader "appear" to have fulfilled prophecies



me continues:
i.e. "it may or may not have happened". In fact, in matters of religion, they CAN'T be trusted.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mc why? if that were true then we should not let any historians that also happen to be democrats publish books about the Clinton White House
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Again you interrupt the thought before I explained,



mc2 I did ?Oh excuse me

but on this case, we have republican writers to check against, and we can be sure of

things that they agree upon, and not sure about those things that are either in disagreement or not reported elsewhere, Which is my WHOLE point.



mc2 Yes I see that you are saying we have only one point of view seeing that apparently there are little if any other writings from that era which contradict the New Testament writers but that doesnt make them liars or frauds.look if you think I am making the point that the gospel writers have proven scientifically that Jesus rose from the dead etc I AM NOT SAYING THAT. I am saying that IF what they wrote is true then Jesus fulfilled numerous OT prophecies and I have no reason to believe they are liars or decieved.That is ALL I have said and all I have ever made as a main point.






me continues:
By YOUR reasoning, we have to trust ALL the religious myths... Zeus really DID live atop Mount Olympus... Joeseph Smith really did get visited by angels and did the Umum and thumum thing with the golden tablets...

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mc NOW dude that is a good point and needs to be addressed. The only thing is it ISN'T my reasoning. I never said we should "automatically" believe the gospel writers.(or Brigham Young etc) I merely pointed out and will keep pounding away at this MAIN POINT until I am not misunderstood.The point is that just because someone believes in what a person says doesnt mean he is going to lie about them. Just because the apostles were early followers of Christ does not mean they were filthy liars as you suppose. I would like to get corroborating evidence but unfortunately little if any writings from that era exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ahhh I see Dr X interpreted correctly, you are laboring under the misapprehension that the gospel writers were actual followers of a living Jesus, be assured that they were not.



mc No I never said that at all.They were foloowers in the sense that I am a follower.How did you misunderstand me I wonder? Please RE read my above actual quote.I said early followers I did not say they all knew Jesus personally.Why are you going astray and misquoting me here?

The earliest Gospel is well known to have been written no earlier than 70 CE (forty

years after the alleged crucifixion), which would most likely put it after any eyewitnesses were dead, not to mention the Geographical errors and such contained within that show to be written by someone unfamiliar with the area he was writing about.

snipped the rest of that paragraph as Dr X and others covered the problems.

me continues:
In JC's case, ALL we have are sources of the one bias. So all we have is ... "He may or may not have done this or that." (actually it even comes down to "he may or may not have existed")

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mc I agree and that is an objective statement. At least you are not making an assumption that the gospel writers were liars.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


well gee, that was my whole point all along.



mc2 It was? So you now concede that the testimony of the gospel writers is to viewed at least objectively and NOT as being Necessarily DOUBTFUL?
.That has been MY whole point all along. I am glad we seem to agree.

Doctor X

[Stop! He did not address you!--Ed.]

Yet my name was used in vain. . . .

It is not an "either/or" issue. It is a recognition of the limitations of the sources.

Which presents a problem. Since the writers were not direct followers or witnesses to Junior, and since they contradict one another, and since they attack the presummed direct followers, how can one trust that they are actually "followers" of whatever a historical Junior taught--if he did teach.

We have no idea what Junior said or did. The gospels suggest a tradition of Junior publically denying such; however, that is not evidence one way or the other. Comparing Acts to Paul's Galatians it is "reasonable" to consider that the Jerusalem group was secular therefore Junior was. That remains speculation.

One should not condemn a historical Junior or any other figure because of what people attribute to him decades later. As Llyricist indicates, just because they wrote stories does not mean they intended to propagate a lie. History was different then.

The way the writers recast the Passion from Mk is a good example. If Junior got arrested and executed, how can he be a son of a god. Well . . . you see . . . he allowed it to happen. Allowed to happen? Okay . . . actually he planned it. This results in different versions. The individual writers think they are honest.

Actually, there is quite a difference. "Liar" requires intent.

How do you know that was not the case? Is that not arrogant to proclaim that someone who sees evidence for that is? I and other have noted that the writers did not necessarily lie. It does not mean they did not lie either.

Also, as others have demonstrated, wandering through the non-sacred texts of the OT--which was not an OT--prophecies are not "law"--to find suggesting things and then fashioning the history to reflect it is par for the course. Furthermore, religions do blend. Did a writer make a connection to a pagan story or did he learn that connection?

Except--ala the whole "virgin" thing--even if it was "all historical" it does not make it fulfill the prophecy. He may have had a "virgin mother"--breaking the laws of physics. That does not make the Isaiah passage say "virgin." It does not.

Because you are not clear. How do you know you are a follower in the same sense?

Not at all. They are clearly quite subjective given the way they contradict one another. The "message" is different for example from gospel to gospel.

--J.D.

Llyricist

Seriously martinc, do you trust people you don't know?? If not, why do you trust the writers of the gospels?

And not necessarily that they tell the truth, but that they even know what the truth is??

Jack the Bodiless

martinc:
You seem to have missed the point that, in many cases, we know they did this.

We know it because the Bible makes this clear.

Here are some examples:

1. Matthew 1:23, falsely referring to Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the "virgin birth".

2. Matthew 2:5-6, falsely referring to Micah 5:2 as a prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

3. Matthew 2:15, falsely referring to Hosea 11:1 as a prophecy of the family's time in Egypt.

4. Matthew 2:17-18, falsely referring to Jeremiah 31:15 as a prophecy of Herod's slaughter of children.

5. Matthew 2:23, falsely claiming a prophecy that Jesus would be called a Nazarene.

6. Matthew 21:4, falsely referring to Zechariah 9:9 as a prophecy of how Jesus would ride into Jerusalem.

...And so it goes. By reading the context of the OT verses, we can see that they do NOT refer to Jesus, but to OTHER people. Sometimes, those people are specifically named: sometimes they are merely described, but the description of the prophesied person doesn't match Jesus at all: and in some cases (notably Isaiah 7:14), the "prophecy" has already been fulfilled by someone else.

Doctor X

Jack_the_Incorporeal demonstrates a comment a mentor of mine once made:

"For Mt everything is a prophecy."

--J.D.

leonarde

Hmmm, this is a tangle that is going to be tough to get out of.

Sure biologically 'people back then were likely pretty much like people are now'. But what about culturally???? Degree of literacy, percentage of population of that is literate, means of writing, availability of those means, control of written media by the ruling class, existence of formal and informal censoring agencies and countless other aspects of the physical and non-physical culture are going to determine the status of the written record from a particular society. Simply saying, in effect, 'oral cultures tend to elaborate ' gets us nowhere. Indeed the rest of the post cites example from the literate world of the Internet in which things are "elaborated". And the Internet -------again a medium which depends on literacy and the availability of information in a written form------seems especially prone to 'elaboration'. For various reasons.

Cheers!

martinc

mc.. Since I can not debate twenty nonbelievers at once I have decided to post at my liesure the rebuttals to the more serious objections to my faith. Ultimately we can not prove scientifically that every word in the Bible originally was accurately portraying history and was inspired by God .In the final analysis we are told that there is a thing called faith which to a skeptic seems like foolhardy naivte. We are all in Gods hands.If anyone has a specific challenge for me (not a long copy and paste job that they expect me to then rebut point by point) then I will gladly answer their question. I have never ever seen a clear contradiction in scripture. For every supposed contradiction such as was posted below there are hundreds of scholars that have cast grave doubts upon the skeptics points and built very logical cases for the scriptures being accurate.

I can be reached at sheeple1@cs.com

Martin Chretien
below is my piece


mc.It is the height of arrongance to claim that the gospel writers were frauds trying to make their leader "appear" to have fulfilled prophecies...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


You seem to have missed the point that, in many cases, we know they did this.



mc really and your certain? How so?



We know it because the Bible makes this clear.

Here are some examples:

1. Matthew 1:23, falsely referring to Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the "virgin birth".

mc ok lets look at that verse in context with the concordant version..
22 Now the whole of this has occurred that that may be fulfilled which is declared by the Lord through the prophet, saying:
23 "Lo! The virgin shall be pregnant And shall be bringing forth a Son, And they shall be calling His name 'Emmanuel,'" which is, being construed, "God with us."
24 Now, being roused from sleep, Joseph does as the messenger of the Lord bids him. And he accepted his wife,
25 and he knew her not till she brought forth a Son, and he calls His name Jesus.




from the concordant search site I find..this commentary 23 In Isaiah, the prophet does not use the usual word for virgin, But olme, damsel (Isa.7:14). It is not likely that it was a virgin when it first came to pass in the prophet's day. But in this, the proper fulfillment, the spirit changes the word to virgin, as it is in the Septuagint also.

mc I have no problem with this explanation and have included a more thorough study from another source below.

mc the nonbeliever further states

And so it goes. By reading the context of the OT verses, we can see that they do NOT refer to Jesus, but to OTHER people. Sometimes, those people are specifically named: sometimes they are merely described, but the description of the prophesied person doesn't match Jesus at all: and in some cases (notably Isaiah 7:14), the "prophecy" has already been fulfilled by someone else.

mc this seems preposterous to me here is Isaiah 7:14 from the KJV


14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.



mc First off Immanuel means God with us so who besides Jesus was God with us??? who or what human man fulfilled this prophecy? I understand the Hebrew word means damsel which may or may not necessarily be a virgin but this does not prove that the Holy Spirit did not inspire the correct word virgin in the New testament. In other words there is no contradiction between Isaiah and NT verses only that New Testament verses may be more specific.I readily concede that many translations have errors but the oldest manuscripots properly translated have never been shown to contradict themselves

mc Now from another source let us do an exhaustive study of the nonbelievers first supposed contradiction

from

http://www.themoorings.org/apologetics/VirginBirth/Isaiah.html




The Virgin Birth of Christ
Lesson 1: Prophecies in Genesis and Isaiah








The ProtevangeliumThe first hint in the Old Testament that the coming Christ would be born of a virgin occurs right at the beginning.And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:15
This prophecy, known as the Protevangelium, comes from the most ancient oracle known to man, from the oracle that the Lord pronounced when He found our first parents, Adam and Eve, guilty of sin. The Lord is speaking to Satan, who has enticed "the woman," Eve, into disobeying the Lord's command against eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is saying that Satan will someday be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by the seed of the woman.The seed is denominated "his" (in "his heel"). In place of "it" (in "it shall bruise"), the more accurate translation is "he" (1). Therefore, the coming conqueror must be a single man. But why is He called the seed of a woman? A child is ordinarily regarded as the seed of his father and forefathers. The striking and unnatural character of the expression "her seed" suggests that it is a uniquely fitting name for the victor over Satan. Unlike other men, He would be the seed of a woman only. He would not be a man's seed. A virgin would conceive Him without losing her virginity.
Isaiah's OracleOver seven hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah enlarged upon the Protevangelium.Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14
The name Immanuel means, "God with us." Isaiah is appending to Genesis 3:15 the information that the virgin-born conqueror of Satan would be God Himself in the flesh.Controversy has long raged over the word rendered "virgin" in the KJV of Isaiah 7:14. Translators of the RSV substituted "young woman." The contention of many critics who disbelieve prophecy is that Isaiah in this verse is referring exclusively to his own wife (2). She has already given birth to Shear-jashub, which means, "A remnant shall return" (Isa. 7:3). Later, she will give birth to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means, "Swift is the booty, speedy is the prey" (Isa. 8:3). Therefore, say these critics, Isaiah's only announcement here, in Isaiah 7:14, is that his wife will give (or has given) birth to another son with a prophetically meaningful name. After all, the prophet himself says,Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.

Isaiah 8:18
To defend their identification of Immanuel as a son of Isaiah, the critics assert that the prophet himself, within his human limitations, could not have intended any other meaning. Yet, the prophets of old were merely obedient mouthpieces for the Holy Spirit of God (2 Pet. 1:21). In that role, they left us intimations of the Messiah which they themselves did not fully understand (1 Pet. 1:10-12). Thus, the view that Isaiah 7:14 must refer to Isaiah's own family betrays an antisupernatural bias. At the heart of this view is an unproved and unprovable conviction either that the Holy Spirit does not exist or that He could not place in Isaiah's mouth an utterance wholly concerned with matters then hundreds of years in the future. But we should examine Isaiah's prophecy without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine its meaning solely by looking at the context and at the precise signification of each word.
The Meaning of AlmahThe word translated "virgin" in the KJV is almah. This term in either its feminine form (almah) or masculine form (elem) occurs nine times in the Old Testament (Gen. 24:43; Ex. 2:8; 1 Sam. 17:56; 20:22; Psa. 68:25; Prov. 30:19; S. of Sol. 1:3; 6:8; Isa. 7:14). So far as we can judge from the contexts, the term never refers to a married person or even to an adult. In some instances, the term obviously refers to someone young and unmarried. For example, Moses' sister Miriam was an almah when she hid him in the bulrushes (Ex. 2:8).According to Alfred Edersheim, the great Jewish scholar converted to Christianity over a century ago, the Jews recognize eight stages of growth (3). He says that the word almah pertains to the sixth stage, which is between dependent childhood and independent youth (4). By its connotation of firmness and strength, the word suggests the rapid bodily growth of early adolescence (5). Thus, an almah was a girl about twelve to fourteen years old. The closest English equivalents to almah are "maiden" and "damsel" (6). "Young woman," although passable as a translation, stretches the concept too far into adulthood.The rabbis taught that a father should betroth his daughter to his slave rather than keep her unbetrothed beyond puberty (7). A girl was normally married before she passed much beyond fourteen (8). Thus, since almah specifically denotes a girl at the stage of growth just before marriage, the term apparently came to signify "unmarried girl of marriageable age" (9). And since nearly all unmarried girls in ancient Hebrew culture were chaste, the term seems to have acquired the further meaning "virgin" (10). In some of the texts exhibiting almah, "virgin" is clearly the most appropriate translation.43 Behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass, that when the virgin [almah] cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher to drink.
44 And she say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the same be the woman whom the Lord hath appointed out for my master's son.

Genesis 24:43-44
The speaker is Abraham's servant, who has been sent to a far country to find a wife for Abraham's son Isaac. The servant would certainly have found it natural to call Isaac's prospective wife a virgin. Another instructive text is the following:There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins [plural of almah] without number.

Song of Solomon 6:8
The list comprehends all the women within the king's household. Although many queens and concubines were young women, the term almah is reserved for girls unmarried to the king—in other words, for virgins (11).The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament dating perhaps from the early second century B.C., renders almah in Isaiah 7:14 as parthenos, a word that indisputably carries the specific meaning "virgin" (12). The Jewish scholars who produced the Septuagint were certainly familiar enough with Hebrew to know what almah meant. Also, when the Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, it substitutes parthenos for almah (Matt. 1:23) (13).We conclude that although Isaiah's wife might be called a young woman, she could not by any means be called an almah, for two reasons (14).
She was too old. At the time of Isaiah 7, she had already given birth to Shear-jashub (Isa. 7:3).
She was not a virgin.
Demonstration That the Prophecy Refers to a Virgin BirthMany compelling arguments can be brought against any attempt to remove the idea of a virgin mother from Isaiah 7:14. 1. There is no record that Isaiah's wife actually bore a son named Immanuel (15). Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz are the children intended in Isaiah 8:18. The allegation that the almah of Isaiah 7:14 is merely Isaiah's wife creates the anomaly of a prophecy without a recorded fulfillment. 2. The promise of Immanuel falls at the end of a conversation between Isaiah and King Ahaz.3 Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;
4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.
5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal:
7 Thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.
8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.
10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying,
11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth

martinc

mc.. Since I can not debate twenty nonbelievers at once I have decided to post at my liesure the rebuttals to the more serious objections to my faith. Ultimately we can not prove scientifically that every word in the Bible originally was accurately portraying history and was inspired by God .In the final analysis we are told that there is a thing called faith which to a skeptic seems like foolhardy naivte. We are all in Gods hands.If anyone has a specific challenge for me (not a long copy and paste job that they expect me to then rebut point by point) then I will gladly answer their question. I have never ever seen a clear contradiction in scripture. For every supposed contradiction such as was posted below there are hundreds of scholars that have cast grave doubts upon the skeptics points and built very logical cases for the scriptures being accurate.

I can be reached at sheeple1@cs.com

Martin Chretien
below is my piece


mc.It is the height of arrongance to claim that the gospel writers were frauds trying to make their leader "appear" to have fulfilled prophecies...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


You seem to have missed the point that, in many cases, we know they did this.



mc really and your certain? How so?



We know it because the Bible makes this clear.

Here are some examples:

1. Matthew 1:23, falsely referring to Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the "virgin birth".

mc ok lets look at that verse in context with the concordant version..
22 Now the whole of this has occurred that that may be fulfilled which is declared by the Lord through the prophet, saying:
23 "Lo! The virgin shall be pregnant And shall be bringing forth a Son, And they shall be calling His name 'Emmanuel,'" which is, being construed, "God with us."
24 Now, being roused from sleep, Joseph does as the messenger of the Lord bids him. And he accepted his wife,
25 and he knew her not till she brought forth a Son, and he calls His name Jesus.




from the concordant search site I find..this commentary 23 In Isaiah, the prophet does not use the usual word for virgin, But olme, damsel (Isa.7:14). It is not likely that it was a virgin when it first came to pass in the prophet's day. But in this, the proper fulfillment, the spirit changes the word to virgin, as it is in the Septuagint also.

mc I have no problem with this explanation and have included a more thorough study from another source below.

mc the nonbeliever further states

And so it goes. By reading the context of the OT verses, we can see that they do NOT refer to Jesus, but to OTHER people. Sometimes, those people are specifically named: sometimes they are merely described, but the description of the prophesied person doesn't match Jesus at all: and in some cases (notably Isaiah 7:14), the "prophecy" has already been fulfilled by someone else.

mc this seems preposterous to me here is Isaiah 7:14 from the KJV


14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.



mc First off Immanuel means God with us so who besides Jesus was God with us??? who or what human man fulfilled this prophecy? I understand the Hebrew word means damsel which may or may not necessarily be a virgin but this does not prove that the Holy Spirit did not inspire the correct word virgin in the New testament. In other words there is no contradiction between Isaiah and NT verses only that New Testament verses may be more specific.I readily concede that many translations have errors but the oldest manuscripots properly translated have never been shown to contradict themselves

mc Now from another source let us do an exhaustive study of the nonbelievers first supposed contradiction

from

http://www.themoorings.org/apologeti...th/Isaiah.html




The Virgin Birth of Christ
Lesson 1: Prophecies in Genesis and Isaiah








The ProtevangeliumThe first hint in the Old Testament that the coming Christ would be born of a virgin occurs right at the beginning.And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:15
This prophecy, known as the Protevangelium, comes from the most ancient oracle known to man, from the oracle that the Lord pronounced when He found our first parents, Adam and Eve, guilty of sin. The Lord is speaking to Satan, who has enticed "the woman," Eve, into disobeying the Lord's command against eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is saying that Satan will someday be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by the seed of the woman.The seed is denominated "his" (in "his heel"). In place of "it" (in "it shall bruise"), the more accurate translation is "he" (1). Therefore, the coming conqueror must be a single man. But why is He called the seed of a woman? A child is ordinarily regarded as the seed of his father and forefathers. The striking and unnatural character of the expression "her seed" suggests that it is a uniquely fitting name for the victor over Satan. Unlike other men, He would be the seed of a woman only. He would not be a man's seed. A virgin would conceive Him without losing her virginity.
Isaiah's OracleOver seven hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah enlarged upon the Protevangelium.Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14
The name Immanuel means, "God with us." Isaiah is appending to Genesis 3:15 the information that the virgin-born conqueror of Satan would be God Himself in the flesh.Controversy has long raged over the word rendered "virgin" in the KJV of Isaiah 7:14. Translators of the RSV substituted "young woman." The contention of many critics who disbelieve prophecy is that Isaiah in this verse is referring exclusively to his own wife (2). She has already given birth to Shear-jashub, which means, "A remnant shall return" (Isa. 7:3). Later, she will give birth to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means, "Swift is the booty, speedy is the prey" (Isa. 8:3). Therefore, say these critics, Isaiah's only announcement here, in Isaiah 7:14, is that his wife will give (or has given) birth to another son with a prophetically meaningful name. After all, the prophet himself says,Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.

Isaiah 8:18
To defend their identification of Immanuel as a son of Isaiah, the critics assert that the prophet himself, within his human limitations, could not have intended any other meaning. Yet, the prophets of old were merely obedient mouthpieces for the Holy Spirit of God (2 Pet. 1:21). In that role, they left us intimations of the Messiah which they themselves did not fully understand (1 Pet. 1:10-12). Thus, the view that Isaiah 7:14 must refer to Isaiah's own family betrays an antisupernatural bias. At the heart of this view is an unproved and unprovable conviction either that the Holy Spirit does not exist or that He could not place in Isaiah's mouth an utterance wholly concerned with matters then hundreds of years in the future. But we should examine Isaiah's prophecy without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine its meaning solely by looking at the context and at the precise signification of each word.
The Meaning of AlmahThe word translated "virgin" in the KJV is almah. This term in either its feminine form (almah) or masculine form (elem) occurs nine times in the Old Testament (Gen. 24:43; Ex. 2:8; 1 Sam. 17:56; 20:22; Psa. 68:25; Prov. 30:19; S. of Sol. 1:3; 6:8; Isa. 7:14). So far as we can judge from the contexts, the term never refers to a married person or even to an adult. In some instances, the term obviously refers to someone young and unmarried. For example, Moses' sister Miriam was an almah when she hid him in the bulrushes (Ex. 2:8).According to Alfred Edersheim, the great Jewish scholar converted to Christianity over a century ago, the Jews recognize eight stages of growth (3). He says that the word almah pertains to the sixth stage, which is between dependent childhood and independent youth (4). By its connotation of firmness and strength, the word suggests the rapid bodily growth of early adolescence (5). Thus, an almah was a girl about twelve to fourteen years old. The closest English equivalents to almah are "maiden" and "damsel" (6). "Young woman," although passable as a translation, stretches the concept too far into adulthood.The rabbis taught that a father should betroth his daughter to his slave rather than keep her unbetrothed beyond puberty (7). A girl was normally married before she passed much beyond fourteen (8). Thus, since almah specifically denotes a girl at the stage of growth just before marriage, the term apparently came to signify "unmarried girl of marriageable age" (9). And since nearly all unmarried girls in ancient Hebrew culture were chaste, the term seems to have acquired the further meaning "virgin" (10). In some of the texts exhibiting almah, "virgin" is clearly the most appropriate translation.43 Behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass, that when the virgin [almah] cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher to drink.
44 And she say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the same be the woman whom the Lord hath appointed out for my master's son.

Genesis 24:43-44
The speaker is Abraham's servant, who has been sent to a far country to find a wife for Abraham's son Isaac. The servant would certainly have found it natural to call Isaac's prospective wife a virgin. Another instructive text is the following:There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins [plural of almah] without number.

Song of Solomon 6:8
The list comprehends all the women within the king's household. Although many queens and concubines were young women, the term almah is reserved for girls unmarried to the king—in other words, for virgins (11).The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament dating perhaps from the early second century B.C., renders almah in Isaiah 7:14 as parthenos, a word that indisputably carries the specific meaning "virgin" (12). The Jewish scholars who produced the Septuagint were certainly familiar enough with Hebrew to know what almah meant. Also, when the Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, it substitutes parthenos for almah (Matt. 1:23) (13).We conclude that although Isaiah's wife might be called a young woman, she could not by any means be called an almah, for two reasons (14).
She was too old. At the time of Isaiah 7, she had already given birth to Shear-jashub (Isa. 7:3).
She was not a virgin.
Demonstration That the Prophecy Refers to a Virgin BirthMany compelling arguments can be brought against any attempt to remove the idea of a virgin mother from Isaiah 7:14. 1. There is no record that Isaiah's wife actually bore a son named Immanuel (15). Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz are the children intended in Isaiah 8:18. The allegation that the almah of Isaiah 7:14 is merely Isaiah's wife creates the anomaly of a prophecy without a recorded fulfillment. 2. The promise of Immanuel falls at the end of a conversation between Isaiah and King Ahaz.3 Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;
4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.
5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal:
7 Thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.
8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.
9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.
10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying,
11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.
13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

Isaiah 7:3-16
The Lord offered to show King Ahaz any sign that he chose—even any wonder in the heights above or the depths below (v. 11). Neither was a restriction on the power that God was willing to display. Yet the king declined to ask for anything, hiding his unbelief under the pious excuse that he did not wish to tempt the Lord (v. 12). The Lord therefore responded that He would give a sign of His own choosing. This sign, announced in verse 14, is presumably no less miraculous than the sign already promised (16). We dare not trivialize Isaiah's prophecy by supposing that after the Lord had offered a sign so extraordinary that (as it were), "The sky's the limit," the best He could do was to grant another baby to the Isaiahs. 3. The sign announced in verse 14 must be understood as the Lord's remedy for His complaint in verse 13. He was growing weary of the present ruler of Israel (v. 13). So, He would give the throne of Israel to another king, to the child called Immanuel (v. 14), who would supplant all evil rulers and inaugurate a new kingdom devoted to wisdom and righteousness. 4. After declaring that the Lord Himself would give a sign, the prophet said, "Behold" (v. 14). In other words: "Look. Pay close attention. I am going to show you something strange and marvelous." The sign would be a great wonder, not just another son of Isaiah (17). 5. Why would Isaiah refer to his wife vaguely as "the young woman" instead of naming her, or calling her "the prophetess" as he does later (Isa. 8:3) (18)? The critic has Isaiah saying, "Behold, a certain young woman who will remain nameless but who is actually my wife is going to have another child." This is ludicrous. 6. In saying, "A virgin shall conceive," the KJV misses the mark. "Virgin" is preceded by a definite article. Isaiah's actual words were, "The virgin shall conceive" (19). Evidently, he was thinking of a virgin of such singular renown and importance that she was rightly called "the virgin." No doubt he was thinking of the virgin mentioned first in Genesis 3:15, the virgin who would bear the conqueror of Satan (20). 7. The child is called Immanuel, meaning, "God with us." The name shows that Isaiah was not thinking of an ordinary child, but of the child described just two chapters later, in Isaiah 9 (21).For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6
The holder of these august titles is not some obscure offspring of Isaiah, but the divine son who would become the everlasting King of all. 8. The name Immanuel recurs in chapter 8.5 The Lord spake also unto me again, saying,
6 Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son;
7 Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks:
8 And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.

Isaiah 8:5-8
In the expression "thy land," the substitution of "thy" for the expected "the" implies that the land of Israel was Immanuel's possession in a special sense, as a land belongs to its king (22). 9. The critics take Isaiah's concluding pronouncement to the king as proof that he expected the whole oracle to be fulfilled within a few years. The prophet stated that before the child could tell right from wrong, "the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" (v. 16). A better translation is, "The land that you hate will be forsaken before both her kings" (23). In other words, both Israel and Syria would be forsaken before the child reached the age of moral responsibility. Among the Jews, that age was thirteen (24). But who is the child? He cannot be Immanuel, if Immanuel would be born hundreds of years later. The child intended here must be Shear-jashub (25). If the Lord did not mean to use him for illustration, why else did He send him along with his father to see the king? If Shear-jashub served no purpose in that encounter, why does Scripture bother to mention him at all? Notice that the child's name, which means, "A remnant shall return," brings his father's oracle to a hopeful conclusion, answering and balancing the dire prophecy that the land of the northern tribes would soon be forsaken.

Footnotes

Jay P. Green, Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew/English, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983), 1:7.
Other critics allege that the mysterious child of Isaiah 7:14 is Hezekiah, son of Ahaz. The prophet is supposedly offering the birth of a crown prince as a sign of hope to the beleaguered house of David. Yet, besides incurring many of the objections that we state against identifying the child as Isaiah's son, the view that he is Ahaz's son has Isaiah prophecy a fact already accomplished, for when he went out to confront Ahaz, Hezekiah was already at least six years old. See John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 1-39 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 212.
Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ (repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982), 103-104.
Ibid., 104.
Ibid. ; E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, trans. Theod. Meyer and James Martin, 4 vols. (n.p., 1872-1878; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1956), 2:44-45; Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic (n.p., 1906; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), 761.
J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (n.p.: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1930; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1965), 289; Edward J. Young, The Book of Isaiah: The English Text, with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965), 1:287.
Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 113a.
William L. Coleman, Today's Handbook of Bible Times and Customs (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1984), 87.
Hengstenberg, 2:45; Joseph Addison Alexander, Commentary on Isaiah, ed. John Eadie, 2 vols. in one (n.p., 1875; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1992), 1:168; H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Isaiah, 2 vols. in one (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1968, 1971), 1:156; Young, 1:287-289; Oswalt, 210.
Hengstenberg, 2:45; Alexander, 1:168; Leupold, 1:156; Oswalt, 210.
Leupold, 1:156.
Charles Lee Brenton, ed. and trans., The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament and Apocrypha with an English Translation; and with Various Readings and Critical Notes (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1851; repr., n.p.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978), 842; William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 632.
George Ricker Berry, Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (n.p., 1897; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), 3.
Hengstenberg, 2:64.
F. C. Jennings, Studies in Isaiah (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux Bros., 1935), 85-86.
Hengstenberg, 2:65; Alexander, 1:167.
Ibid.; Young, 1:284-286.
Hengstenberg, 2:53, 64-65; Machen, 290; Young, 1:293.
Green, 3:1626.
Henry Morris, Many Infallible Proofs (San Diego, Calif.: CLP Publishers, 1974), 57.
Hengstenberg, 2:48-50, 53-54; Alexander, 1:167-168; Machen, 291-292; Leupold, 1:158-159; Young, 1:289-291.
Hengstenberg, 2:49-50, 65.
Green, 3:1626.
Ralph Gower, The New Manners and Customs of Bible Times (Chicago: Moody Press, 1987), 63.
Robert Govett, Govett on Isaiah, originally, Isaiah Unfulfilled: Being an Exposition of the Prophet, with New Version and Critical Notes, 2d ed. (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1841; repr., Miami Springs, Fla.: Conley & Schoettle Publishing Co., 1984), 151; Harry Bultema, Commentary on Isaiah, trans. Cornelius Lambregtse (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1981), 108.


mc i will address the remaining below suppsed contradictions as I have time.


2. Matthew 2:5-6, falsely referring to Micah 5:2 as a prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

3. Matthew 2:15, falsely referring to Hosea 11:1 as a prophecy of the family's time in Egypt.

4. Matthew 2:17-18, falsely referring to Jeremiah 31:15 as a prophecy of Herod's slaughter of children.

5. Matthew 2:23, falsely claiming a prophecy that Jesus would be called a Nazarene.

6. Matthew 21:4, falsely referring to Zechariah 9:9 as a prophecy of how Jesus would ride into Jerusalem.

Doctor X

I suppose I must since I was originally challenged on this. However, other posters seem to have better understanding of the OT--certainly the language!--than I so I am sure they will further this.

Moderator for the sake of bandwidth you may wish to remove martin's first version of his post.

Right. . . .

Argumentum ad veritatem obfuscandam. No strawmen have objected to anyone's faith. Also, the use of "nonbeliever" is a matter of opinion used to Poison the Well.

Certainly, because we can prove they did not.

We are interested in scholarshp, not belief.

He should clean them, they are quite gory. I will now dispense with parsing the "Confession of Faith" and move on to the "meat" of the post. This, however, is trenchant:

He has been given the contradictory birth narratives and death of Judas. We have yet to receive his relevation that harmonizes them. If his version of "rebuttal" is to simply ignore everyone and spout confession then he is merely wasting our time.

Ipse dixit and incorrect. I would love him to identify ONE major recognized scholar--since we are playing the "name my expert strawman" game.

He does not identify the writers he quotes and I am not going to bother to do his homework for him.

Incidents of Mt and Lk rewritting Mk have been given to him. He can start with the opening of Mk, incidentally.

He shoots . . . he . . . awwwww . . . sorry, defensive rebound. . . .

As note by others, "virgin" is a mistranslation of "young woman" or alma. THAT is what the Isaiah text says. It was rendered incorrectly in the LXX as parthenos and the mistake lead to a mythic birth.

He then conceeds this point an promises to deal with it later. I prefer to "bury Caesar" right now:

The passage refers to a promise to a king to reassure him about something that will happen at the present--kings coming to kick his ass.

Funny what one finds when they check the "context."

To quote another non-skeptical scholar:

Now to quote one he may consider "skeptical" [Boo. Hiss.--Ed.]:

[quote]Matthew has made a number of errors in trying to make this into a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. . . . Since both Israel and Syria had been tributary to Assyria and were now i revolt, there is no point in Isaiah's mind for Ahaz to give tribute to Tiglath-pilser to do what he intends to do anyway. He tells the king that by the time a child to be born shortly can tell good from evil, which most likely would be at the age of 12, the Assyrians will have destroyed both Syria and Israel. So in the context of Isaiah, the Immanuel sign cannot possibly refer to Jesus.

Matthew makes two more errors regarding the Immanuel sign, both of which would appear to be the result of the author's ignorance of Hebrew and a reliance on the Greek of the LXX. . . . the original Hebrew word used, which was almah, meaning a young woman but not necessarily a virgin. There is a word in Hebrew, bethula, which does specifically mean a virgin. Had Isaiah meant "virgin" he would have used bethula. In the Greek of the LXX almah was translated as parthenos, a word that means both "young woman" and "virgin" depending on the context. . . . Matthew's third and final error is to interpret the name Immauel as meaning "God with us" implying that Jesus was God incarnate. In Hebrew, . . when the verb "to be" takes an object, it is not written, but merely understood. Thus, "He is a lion among men," would be written "He lion among men." As such, Immanuel means, "God is with us," which is the way it is written in English translations of the MT [Massoretic Text.--Ed.]

Quod erat demonstrandum

Argumentum ad hominem et Poisoning the Well. Neither are legitimate tactics in a formal debate. He then tries to requote the passage in the KJV as if that will prove the TEXT says something different. That the translators of the KJV perpetuated the error. Indeed, the rather apologetic RSV conceeds "young woman" and puts a footnote of "or virgin" to save it. Other modern translations agree.

A number of theoporics exist through the OT and, indeed, history. Perchance some have heard of Benjamin Netanyahu? Also "Immanuel" as a name existed as well. However, Mt's understanding of "Immanuel" was wrong. See above.

Virgins do not get pregnant . . . unless they are not virgins. "Tommy doesn't count!" counts.

Apologies if I have destroyed a youthful delusion. Coke also does not work.

or that Star Fleet Command sent Adm. Kirk back in time to confuse Mt. . . .

If this is the level of "evidence" offered then I refer young martin to the decimation of another poster who tried to assert that his belief equaled evidence. It does not.

See above. This is apology to make the text say something it never said and cover a mistake.

However, this IS unfortunate:

The properly translated manuscripts demonstrate that the Isaiah passage is not a prophecy as Mt claimed. Quod erat demonstrandum. However, I will note, en passant that the "oldest manuscripts properly translated" reveal that Mt linked the birth of Junior to 4 BCE and Lk linked it to 6 CE.

Quod erat demonstrandum times two. . . .

He then goes on about more "unbelievers" but since he has not demonstrated that Isaiah is a prophecy of Junior, it proves superfluous argumentum ad veritatem obfuscandam et non sequitur.

Had he taken advantage of the references offered to him, he could have avoided all of this. Most unfortunate.

--J.D.

Reference:

Callahan T. Secret Orgins of the Bible. Altadena: Millenium Press, 2002.

Lüdemann G. The Unholy in Holy Scriptures: The Dark Side of the Bible. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Reimarus HS. Apologie oder Schützchrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, edited on behalf of the Joachim-Jungius-Gesellshaft der Wissenschafen Hamburg by Gerhard Alexander, I, 1972.

spin

You're a braver soul than I am, Dr X. Therefore you are the One.

Unthinking regurgitators are beyond communication in my book.

Was there any attempt to understand the linguistic problem behind the virgin translation? No, regurgitate.

I do think my idea of supplying a questionnaire for xians (I supplied a prototype earlier in this thread) who feel they must post here is not so bad, so you know what they are prepared to say and how much they are prepared to think. Oh, and there should be a better system of referring them to past threads so as not to have to reinvent the wheel every time a new proselytizer arrives. Get them to read what's already been said, so you don't have to repeat things umpteen times. You know, respond, "RTF" or, with expletive, "RTFF".


spin

* Read The FAQ