Conception Deception : Part Two
The Young Woman
The ante-Nicene Fathers of the Church were conditioned by their cultural and philosophical environment to value women who retained their virginal state so, as noted in Part One, it was no real surprise to find Fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, and Tertullian asserting a Virgin Conception/Birth for Jesus in the Second Century AD. For men such as these, and countless more yet to come, Jesus must have been conceived while Mary was still a virgin because a virginal womb was the only appropriate place to carry a Messiah, to carry a King, to carry God’s son. And, most importantly, only a virginal conception could explain away the “embarrassing” New Testament statements that Jesus was the son of a man other than the man to whom his mother was betrothed. The alternative scenario was unthinkable because God would certainly never choose for such exalted positions an ordinary mortal whose birth would even today be described by some as “illegitimate”.
Nevertheless, it was recognized that some would dare to think the unthinkable and suggest alternative explanations for these statements so a compelling body of evidence must always be on hand to ward off any challenges.
Regardless of culture and context, and with confirmation bias, the major player on the stage, passages from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament were chosen to form this compelling body of evidence in the hope that it would prove sufficient to silence all critics. And silence them it did, and still does, because these chosen “proof-texts” have hardly been questioned at all by ecclesiastics, scholars, popes, theologians, and countless millions of true believers who have continued to repeat them for well over 1800 years.
Perhaps the most notorious of these “proof-texts” is Isaiah 7:14 so let’s take a closer look at this all-time favorite.
The context of Chapter 7 was the threatened destruction of the House of David (Judah) by the armies of Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, King of Israel. Isaiah the prophet gave King Ahaz a sign of deliverance from these enemies. Here are verses 14–16 according to a modern English version of the Hebrew Scriptures (Jewish Publication Society. 1985. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures):
“Assuredly, my Lord will give you a sign of His own accord! Look, the young woman (almah) is with child (harah) and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel. (By the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good, people will be feeding on curds and honey.) For before the lad knows to reject the bad and choose the good, the ground whose two kings you dread shall be abandoned”.
This sign had absolutely nothing to do with the manner of the child’s conception or birth. It was a sign of deliverance. The child soon to be born would function as a living clock, as a growing reminder to the King that by the time the child reached the age of reason, the House of David (Judah) would be delivered from its enemies. Even the child’s name, Immanuel (with-us-God), would serve as another reminder of their deliverance.
The context is clear and the meaning and form of the Hebrew words almah and hara are clear (see Lexical entries in Notes). Although these facts are indisputable, many apologists have tried to bury them in endless layers of theological twists and turns which are so transparently designed to shore up the teaching of the Virgin Birth that they lack all independence and therefore any credibility.
Although there are a couple of exceptions, the most widely read English versions of the Bible available today still render Isaiah 7:14 according to doctrinal subservience despite all evidence to the contrary:
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (NIV)
Isaiah’s young woman was an ancient victim of cultural appropriation when she was transformed into the Virgin Mary by the ante-Nicene Fathers. Countless millions continue to be deceived and misled by their teachings. Future articles will address the “proof-texts” commandeered from the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke.
In the meantime, consider this — if the Hebrew word almah does mean virgin and Isaiah was predicting a Virgin Birth for Jesus, then the context demands that he was also predicting a Virgin Birth for the child born in his own time. So, now we have two alleged Virgin Births! The foolishness of ripping verses out of linguistic and cultural context has created a nightmare for those who preach and repeat this teaching, a predicament that should be greeted with howls of derision since they appear to remain blissfully unaware of it.
𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀
We have the following example of disgust for human procreation to thank for so much twisted teaching:
“You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king”. (Letter from Pope Siricius I to Bishop Anysius, c. 392 A.D, in which he defends the teaching of Mary’s perpetual virginity).
According to Brown, Driver and Briggs, the authoritative Hebrew-English Lexicon, the word almah(עַלְמָה) means “young woman (ripe sexually, maid or newly married)”. If the authors of the Book of Isaiah had wished to specify virginity, they would have used the Hebrew word bethulah(בְּתוּלָה), as they did five times elsewhere (23:4, 23:12, 37:22, 47:1, 62:5). The word harah (הָרָה) is an adjective describing the young woman’s pregnant state.
