dec 7

Written by: AY Mol
7-12-2008 12:33 

" 'Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us' (Matt 1:23). The reading 'virgin' is that of the Septuagint version of the Greek Bible, and Matthew's gloss, interpreting the symbolic name Emmanuel as a pointer to the superhuman nature of the miraculous child, also implies that a non-Jewish readership was envisaged. Jews would have known that the name Emmanuel ('God with us') signified not the incarnation of God in human form, but a promise of divine help to the Jewish people.

Readers familiar with the Hebrew Isaiah would have been perplexed by Matthew's argument because the word used by the Old Testament prophet was 'young woman' (in Hebrew 'almah'), and not 'virgin' (in Hebrew betulah). A young woman becoming pregnant is not the same as a virginal conception. The misleading rendering of 'almah' as parthenos ('virgin, maid') was corrected in the later (first of second century AD) Greek translations of Isaiah; all of them substituted 'young girl' (neanis) for the Septuagint's 'virgin'(parthenos). In plain language, Matthew's genealogy and account of the birth reflect an image of Jesus born of a virgin which was exclusively designed for, and meaningful, in the Hellenistic Church.

Luke's account is entirely different and theologically more advanced. The announcement of the miraclous birth of Jesus is preceded by that of the quasi-miraculous birth of John the Baptist, son of the aged Elizabeth, a kinswoman of Mary. " [The Changing faces of Jesus by Geza Vermes, page 212]

"To see the story of the conception of Jesus in a broader context, it is necessary to set it against other birth legends current in intertestamental Judaism. The authors of the Old Testament believed that sterility in a woman was caused by God closing her womb, but he could also re-open it and so render her fertile. Many of the biblical heroes, incuding the patriarchs Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, as well as the prophet Samuel, wer eborn to women considered to be barren-and in the case of Sarah, the wife of the ninety-nine year old Abraham, after lifelong sterility. In ancient Jewish society and culture these births were considered miraculous. Next, wemust not overlook in our evaluation of the Infancy Gospels that the term 'virgin' was capable of various interpretations among Jews. Of course, the absence of sexual experience was one, but the Greek parthenos could also mean that the girl was young and/or unmarried. In fact, in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament parthenos was used to render three distinct Hebrew words, 'virgin', 'girl' and 'young woman'. Already rabbis in the Tannataitic era (first to second century AD) subsribed to further nuances, and there is no reason to think that all these invented by them. Even the word betulah, which normally means virgo intacta, when used by them could carry the lateral sense of bodily immaturity with the consequential inability to conceive. In rabbinic terminology this type of virginity in a woman ceased with the physical onset of puberty. The Mishnah, the oldest of the rabbinic codes, defines a virgin as a female who 'has never seen blood even though she is married'. The Toseefta, another early Jewish code of law, claims in the name of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyracanus (late first century AD) that such a woman would continue without prior menstruation! To understand these statements, we must remember that in the intertestamental and early rabbinic age, pre-puberty marriage was generally permitted. In fact, rabbis seriously debated whether blood-stains found after the wedding night in the nuptial bed of a minor, i. e. a 'virgin in respect of menstruation', marked her first period of the consummation of the marriage."

So the idea of conceiving on the first physical oppertunity and thus becoming a 'virgin mother' was not a mere flight of fancy of the over-imaginative rabbinic mind."[The Changing faces of Jesus by Geza Vermes, page 212-213]

To put in simple terms, the Greek word parthenos both represents the Hebrew words 'almah', young girl, and 'betulah', virgin. In Jewish terminology, a virgin was also a young woman who had given birth but had married before her first period. And these were seen as virgin mothers.

Tags: