Pseudo-Deity

It is of my understanding that one of the central criticisms Jews have of Christianity is that they mistranslated a prophecy, which claims that an almah (which Christians claim it means a virgin, while modern non-Christians generally interpret it as young woman) will give birth to the Moshiach (Messiah). Now, my question is, where there any pre-Christian Jewish scholars who had done commentaries on Isaiah who explicitly stated in no uncertain terms that the prophecies indicated that the Moshiach would be a Bethulah (virgin)? If there isn't, then it seems pretty clear that the idea that the Book of Isaiah predicted a virgin birth was nothing more than Christian historical revisionism.

Steven Avery

Hi P-D,

Hmmm...
And if your set of :

"pre-Christian Jewish scholars who had done commentaries on Isaiah"

has zero elements ?
Then you could disprove any interpretation by this logic.

Shalom,
Steven

Clouseau

There's no scholarship required here. Just a modicum of common sense, which seem to have deserted generations of otherwise sensible people. The text says that the future event will be an unusual occurrence, a sign, a portent. Now if 'almah' means 'a young woman', what is there unusual about a young woman giving birth? The word must mean 'virgin' or it is not worth writing.

Pseudo-Deity

Zero elements? You are not expressing your ideas very clearly, or at least I am slow-witted, because I have no idea what you are talking about.

I'm simply curious about what Jews wrote about the prophecies of the Moshiach before Christianity began. There is a 700 year gap between the Book of Isaiah and the birth of Christ, so there was plenty of time for Jewish scholars to write about what the prophecies meant.

Pseudo-Deity

I'm not a big fan of common sense. Mans intuition has a history of betraying him, even when it comes to the simplest of matters.

I'd think the part about the child being a Messiah is a tad bit unusual.

Toto

I don't think that Jewish scholars interpreted that passage as a Messianic prophecy, or that there was any indication that it would be an unusual event. The young woman there gives birth in a normal way, and this is used as a marker of time.

Christians had an idiosyncratic way of reading the Hebrew Scriptures, and would not have been persuaded by the Jewish reading, and vice versa

a thread on this subject from last year - see in particular this from Apikorus

Clouseau

Why mention his mother and his birth?

Pseudo-Deity

While I do find this post informative, it unfortunately doesn't answer my question. I have heard the deductions of the meaning of almah through circumstantial usage before. What I want to know is how the Jewish people themselves interpreted it, before they had any motivation to interpret almah as a young girl to defend themselves against Christian apologists.

Pseudo-Deity

If I could read the minds of the authors of Isaiah, I wouldn't have this problem. For all I know, it might be because it might of sounded poetic when written in Hebrew.

We are straying from the topic though. I'd really like to focus on what Pre-Christians Jews interpreted this as, instead of what you interpret it as.

Toto

Richard Carrier on the Virgin Prophecy refers to Raymond Brown's Birth of the Messiah (searchable on Amazon).

The earliest reference to the debate over this word Whether the almah was a young woman or a virgin who would later become pregnant through the normal method, there is no evidence that Jews ever read that passage as referring to a virgin birth.