Welcome back, friend, and thank you for coming.
Today we continue, mid-quote, from where we left off last time, with an angel speaking to Joseph in a dream. Recall that Joseph and Mary have just found out that she is pregnant, and, in a dream, an angel is speaking to Joseph and has informed him that Mary has become pregnant by the "holy Spirit."
We'll commence immediately with the reading today.
Matthew 1:21 through Matthew 1:23
21 She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
23“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”Today's reading presents endless possibilities for discussion, as they likely all will. To start, we are going to chase down this "behold, the virgin..." prophecy in The Old Testament, in the Book of Isaiah.
To begin to understand this Gospel text, we must look back at The Old Testament.
Remember that The Old Testament constitutes the Hebrew Bible, and is a collection of many different kinds of texts. It contains histories, songs, lists of genealogy, fantastical stories, and at least two different accounts of the beginning of the world. One section, known as The Prophetic Books, contains stories about the lives of select people in Jewish history who claimed to be informed about the future by God, and the prophecies that these people spoke.
Keep in mind also that during the Biblical era, there were many prophets among the Semitic peoples. Many of these prophets never made it into the Old Testament canon for various reasons, not the least of which is that "prophet" was actually a regular position in the king's court, and sometimes a salaried one.
As I mentioned, today's reading points us to one of these "Prophetic Books," Isaiah. The narrative of the Book of Isaiah takes place during the eighth century BC, before the Babylonian Exile.
Searching for Matthew's "behold, the virgin..." prophecy, in Isaiah 7:14, we find the following:
If Isaiah isn't about the arrival of Jesus, then what is Isaiah saying here, then?
Keep in mind also that during the Biblical era, there were many prophets among the Semitic peoples. Many of these prophets never made it into the Old Testament canon for various reasons, not the least of which is that "prophet" was actually a regular position in the king's court, and sometimes a salaried one.
As I mentioned, today's reading points us to one of these "Prophetic Books," Isaiah. The narrative of the Book of Isaiah takes place during the eighth century BC, before the Babylonian Exile.
Searching for Matthew's "behold, the virgin..." prophecy, in Isaiah 7:14, we find the following:
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.The way Matthew has interpreted it, this tradition in Isaiah points prophetically to the birth of Jesus. Upon reading the chapter in Isaiah in question, however, one will conclude that this is another example of the evangelist's attempting to shoehorn Jesus into the Jewish faith. It is another effort to make the philosophy of Christ more palatable to Jews, whom the evangelist "Matthew" hoped would convert to the new Jewish sect, Christianity. The Isaiah text clearly refers to prophecy regarding things in Judah's immediate future, not to a distant first century messiah.
If Isaiah isn't about the arrival of Jesus, then what is Isaiah saying here, then?
Well, Isaiah Chapter 7 sees God speaking to Isaiah and to Ahaz. In the narrative, Isaiah is a prophet working for Ahaz, who is the King of Judah. The text shows God advising the two men regarding political matters. Actually, it shows God threatening destruction of various people and asking that Ahaz not align himself and his state with a certain adjacent city or state. Like a lot of the Old Testament, the reading is difficult, but it is clearly not in reference to a universal messiah who would be coming some centuries later.
"Emmanuel," according to notations in the New American Bible, is Hebrew for "with us is God," which begins to explain why early Christians would have taken particular notice of this passage, since many of them came to believe that Jesus had been God incarnate.
The other data that explain early Christian interest in this Old Testament passage lie in a translation problem.
The direct translation of the Hebrew word "almah" is how the NAB arrives at "young woman" in this reading of Isaiah. However, early translations of the scripture to Greek used the word "parthenos," which means "virgin," but is not a perfect translation of "almah." This means that a person reading the Hebrew Bible in ancient Greek, as our evangelist likely was, would mistakenly read this text in Isaiah as prophesying a virgin birth. Thus the evangelist has made a mistake in his shoehorning in that the prophecy of Isaiah didn't traditionally refer to a virgin birth.
Isaiah is a long narrative which we will have to revisit together at a later date. We will be diligent, moving forward, to look over any of the old Hebrew scriptures we have to in order to satisfy our full curiosity about what is going on in the Gospel.
The second thing I'd like to discuss briefly today, especially while we are talking about translation, is the name "Jesus." The name originates in the Hebrew for Joshua, "Yeshua." Yeshua, in Greek, is "Iisoús." Iisoús translates into the Latin "Iesus," which evolved into what English speakers pronounce as "Jesus."
That means that if we translated the given name that Jesus' childhood friends called him to English today, we might call him "Joshua Christ." It is only because of the journey through different tongues the name has taken that we call him "Jesus." If you could travel back in time, and saw the man himself, and you called out to him "Jesus," he would not know you were calling to him.
This parallels the situation the author of Matthew faced with "almah" and "parthenos" in his Greek copy of the scriptures. Taken together, this all reminds us that much can be lost in translation. It clearly behooves us to always dig into multiple translations of unfamiliar or particular terms during this study.
We'll take leave of this study here and pick it up again next week. Please forgive me for missing last week. I will strive for consistency.
Love.
-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
The other data that explain early Christian interest in this Old Testament passage lie in a translation problem.
The direct translation of the Hebrew word "almah" is how the NAB arrives at "young woman" in this reading of Isaiah. However, early translations of the scripture to Greek used the word "parthenos," which means "virgin," but is not a perfect translation of "almah." This means that a person reading the Hebrew Bible in ancient Greek, as our evangelist likely was, would mistakenly read this text in Isaiah as prophesying a virgin birth. Thus the evangelist has made a mistake in his shoehorning in that the prophecy of Isaiah didn't traditionally refer to a virgin birth.
Isaiah is a long narrative which we will have to revisit together at a later date. We will be diligent, moving forward, to look over any of the old Hebrew scriptures we have to in order to satisfy our full curiosity about what is going on in the Gospel.
The second thing I'd like to discuss briefly today, especially while we are talking about translation, is the name "Jesus." The name originates in the Hebrew for Joshua, "Yeshua." Yeshua, in Greek, is "Iisoús." Iisoús translates into the Latin "Iesus," which evolved into what English speakers pronounce as "Jesus."
That means that if we translated the given name that Jesus' childhood friends called him to English today, we might call him "Joshua Christ." It is only because of the journey through different tongues the name has taken that we call him "Jesus." If you could travel back in time, and saw the man himself, and you called out to him "Jesus," he would not know you were calling to him.
This parallels the situation the author of Matthew faced with "almah" and "parthenos" in his Greek copy of the scriptures. Taken together, this all reminds us that much can be lost in translation. It clearly behooves us to always dig into multiple translations of unfamiliar or particular terms during this study.
We'll take leave of this study here and pick it up again next week. Please forgive me for missing last week. I will strive for consistency.
Love.
-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
