Apikorus

So the first example you find is 2000 years after the writing of proto-Isaiah? This confirms that the name Immanuel is astoundingly rare. The unusual sign was thus the naming of the child.

But he probably knew less about the Hebrew Bible. At any rate, Hebrews vis-a-vis Isaiah is late and highly tendentious. It is worthless for our purposes.

In other words, you don't understand the text.

[i]Ah, yes. Perhaps Dinah's hymen was divinely restored within the space of two verses in Gen 34. Or perhaps those LXX translators didn't always work with such fidelity. And of course we should just throw out spin's evidence from the Greek authors.

And also irrelevant to my analysis.

The prophecy is not messianic because the child Immanuel doesn't act as a messiah. Only in Christian tradition, where Jesus is absurdly retrojected into the Hebrew Bible, as Muslims retroject Mohammed into the New Testament, is Immanuel a messianic figure, and only via identification with Jesus. In the Hebrew Bible, Immanuel does nothing, aside for serving as a marker of time, exactly as the author of Isa 7:10-16 intended.

What Judaism believed is irrelevant. Muslims would say that a divinely inspired author wrote about Mohammed in the New Testament. Christians don't like this idea very much. They insist that their retrojections of Jesus into the Hebrew Bible are true, while retrojectios of Mohammed into the New Testament are absurd.

Vivisector

Pardon the intrusion, but ...

By what method does one determine - a priori - whether a prophecy applies to the near future? The distant future? Both? By the same token, how does one determine whether a prophecy has local, secondary and/or tertiary signification? How can one say - again, ahead of the fact - that a prophecy will be fulfilled literally, metaphorically, or both?

The issue isn't that many of us are unaware of your hermeneutical position. It's that, in every single case (as far as I can tell), principles of near/distant future, secondary/tertiary signification and literal/metaphorical fulfillment are applied in a completely ad hoc manner. Although this approach is definitely "win-win" for its adherents, there's no useful method involved. Judged by the same standards as Biblical prophecies, those of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce would probably be assessed as clearly superior to Biblical prophecies.

V.

spin

That doesn't relate to what was said to you. The giving of the sign happens with the speaking, so it can't have already been given at the start of the speaking.

Not given.

You don't make a point with this. HNH points to something one should note. You will find HNH used to note past, present and future indication. It in itself is no help to you.

Followed? In the flow of grammatical necessity. Nothing more. You have from the Hebrew: behold a pregnant young woman, before the child she gives birth to reaches the age of discernment, Assyria will have done its thing.

At the beginning of the chapter, we find that Aram and Samaria have ganged up on Judea and Ahaz is afraid. The sign relates to the political status quo in which Ahaz, to whom the sign is given, finds himself. The pregnancy is in itself no sign dealing with Ahaz's predicament. The sign relates to the time involved in the events taking place. What events? What is about to come relating to Samaria and Judea at the hands of Assyria. What exactly is the sign? that before the child reaches the age of discernment the prophecy will be fulfilled.

There is no future tense in Hebrew as I've said, so one cannot use such a notion to force a future onto the pregnancy. Behold doesn't point to a future so it's no help. The pregnancy itself is not the sign and the text does not dwell on the pregnancy, being much more interested in the notion of the child's ability to choose between good and evil and that the child will not have reached that age before the events happen, just as with the next child prophecy involving Maher-shalal-hash-baz, he will not have reached the age of being able to say "father" or "mother" before Aram and Samaria get done in by Assyria.

There is a small series of child name indications in this text related to the current, or soon to be current, politics in the region. First there is Isaiah's son, Shear-jashub ("a remnant will turn back"), then (MNW-)L ("god is with us"), and MHR-$LL-X$-BZ ("pillage hastens, looting speeds"). Why treat Isa 7:14 as though it didn't fit its context?

You haven't succeeded in indicating why the Hebrew should support the notion that the pregnancy is in the future by arguing from grammatical notions of English. The onus is on you to show how the Hebrew supports your reading, for in my eyes it patently doesn't and you are making special pleas about the text.


spin

Gamera

Rebutted in one sentence: then why mention the pregnancy and not just a kid named Immanual. Get back with me on this.

gregor

Ooh, Ooh, let me answer -
Because, maybe, the kid hadn't been born yet?

Gamera

Which begs the question, then why mention the pregnancy? Get back to me on that.

Yep, and I admit it. Since prophesies tend to be obscure and are intended to be obscure, generally being related to riddle literature, for you to claim that you have solved the riddle is, well, a bit much. Indeed, the whole point of most prophesies is ambiguity, generally allowing multiple (often misleading) meanings, so that the prophesy tells us as much about the interpretor as the prophesy itself. This is a common trope in classic literature and in the bible itself. But you've overcome all that.

The structure is messianic. A special child, a disaster, a salvation. For you to deny that Judaism -- which INVENTED the notion of soteriology and a messiah -- wouldn't be sensitive to such structures suggests a tin ear or an agenda.

Being a Focauldian, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that Islam would colonize the OT text and use it for its own purposes; that's totally legitimate, indeed, it's inevitable. That what Christianity did. And I hate to tell you this, that's what you're doing as a 21st century person reading a 7th century text. I'm afraid once you go down that road texts become tabula rasas for present agendas.

Being a Christian, however, the issue is not correct semiotics but a truth that transcends the text and can make itself known even through colonization. I don't pretend that's defensible with historical argumentation, but then, I don't think any significant aspect of Christianity is.

Gamera

So again, why mention the PREGNANCY, as opposed to saying, a kid will be born and he'll be called Immanuel. The author seems to have gone out of his way to mention the PREGNANCY.

Amaleq13

Persistent confusion rebuts nothing. How else would one identify an unborn child and provide at least a rough indication of how long it will take for him to reach the appointed age except by mentioning his pregnant mother?

spin

"Rebuttal" is not the same as "evasion". If you don't want to answer, don't answer.

Why does Isaiah mention the fact that the mother of Maher-shalal-hash-baz was a prophetess? I don't see why you should get hung up on small details when you don't seem to take any notice of the sign or its historical context. This is called missing the forest because of the trees.

And it is not "Immanual". This form and spelling is not correct. (Besides, none of these children's names are in fact given as names, but as descriptions and written that way with appropriate spaces between words. The best you could come up with for "Immanuel" as a part of any onomasticon is a figure from the 13th century, so you must say that you have no reason to insist that it is a name per se.)

Please try a substantial rebuttal, if rebut you must. I can see no textually-based reason for your claims about what the text says and I can see no reason for you apparent disregard of the majority of the text.


spin

Apikorus

The pregnancy itself, which is not the focus of either the sign or the prophecy, is simply given as context. You might as well ask this sort of question about 99% of the Hebrew Bible. It strikes me as an obfuscatory remark when you have no substantial rubuttal to the overwhelmingly strong philological and exegetical analysis spin and I have put forth.

The definite article (ha-) attached to almah suggests that the young woman in Isa 7:14 was known to either Isaiah, to Ahaz, or to both. Perhaps Isaiah brought along his wife to serve as a prop during his harangue of Ahaz. One can imagine Isaiah pointing to her in Ahaz's presence, saying, "You dithering fool! The Lord (Yahweh) himself will give you a sign. You see this pregnant woman? She will bear a son and name him immanu el (a bizarre and unique name, unattested in the Israelite onomasticon). Before that boy reaches the age of moral discernment, the threat from Rezin and Pekah will have dissipated, for Damascus and Ephraim will be in ruins." Of course I wouldn't presume this scene historical, since a closer reading of Isa 7-8 suggests Isa 7:10-16 is redactional.

The rabbis had a wise dictum: ein miqra yotsei miydei peshuto = "no scripture may be denied its plain sense" (B. Yev. 11b). The notion that Ahaz would be impressed or motivated by the prediction of a childbirth 730 years in the future is ludicrous. So clearly the plain sense of the text is something very different. Your responsibility as an exegete is first to uncover that plain sense. Once you've found a plausible representation of it, you can go about looking for or inventing other meanings. From very early on, Jews reinterpreted the text of the Hebrew Bible to derive meaning for their own times. This practice is reflected in the biblical text itself -- in Daniel 9, for example, which reinterprets the 70 year prophecy of Jeremiah 25 in the context of contemporary Maccabean era history. The Qumranians, in their pesharim, reinterpreted Habakkuk and other biblical texts so as to bear on the Teacher of Righteousness and other elements of their own history. Similarly, Christianity and Rabbinic Judiasm engage in the same practice, reinterpreting the Hebrew Bible to make it more relevant to their own faith traditions.

I find that while Jews generally respect the wise dictum of ein miqra, Christians often obsess on their artificially derived "christological" meaning to the extent that it displaces all interest in the plain sense of the text. Your participation in this thread exemplifies this practice. You have been unwilling or unable to even discuss the plain sense of the text in any rational way. Your goal has, and likely continues to be, to justify the identification of the almah with a virgin, and to insist the birth is miraculous, despite the fact that this is neither philologically nor contextually tenable.