Well sanctus, seeing as you have called into question, my knowledge of the church, specically stating that I do not know more then the Pope or other clerics. Perhaps you could challenge this with more then dismissal.
It is quite clear and to the point, containing all the facts anyone would need to prove its validity. So please prove the contrary.
"
Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (1:22-23 , KJV).
Most good Christians take this at face value, assured that the prophet Isaiah did indeed describe Jesus' miraculous conception and birth seven hundred years before. But did he? Authorities are nearly unanimous. The answer is no.
What did Isaiah really say? Turning to
Isaiah 7:14 (Masoretic text), we find his precise words:
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, ha'almah shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Matthew's interpretation of this passage has several problems, the largest hanging on the Hebrew word
'almah. Writing in Greek, the gospel author turned
almah into
parthenos , a word usually (but not always) meaning "virgin." In fact, he had a precedent for this; the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament used by Greek-speaking Jews of his day, did indeed use
parthenos in the Isaiah passage. But the Septuagint was for the most part a notoriously sloppy translation, and its version of Isaiah was generally more error-ridden than the rest. By the Middle Ages, the Jews had abandoned the Septuagint, and later Greek translations, by Aquila, Theodotion, Lucien and others, did not use the word
parthenos. (The Septuagint, commonly known as the LXX, is still favored by Eastern Orthodox churches.)
Assuredly, the Hebrew Old Testament predating the Septuagint used
'almah, so what did the word mean? While rare in the Hebrew Bible,
almah does occur here and there, notably in
Genesis 24:43 and
Exodus 2:8 , but an examination of the contexts of these passages will show nothing to suggest that the noun imputed virginity.
On the other hand, a male youth in the Old Testament was called na'ar or elem, the feminine forms of which were
na'arah and
'almah respectively. The limited usage of
elem (lad or stripling) in the Old Testament nowhere implied sexual purity; thus an
'almah was an adolescent female, virgin or not, just as an elem was an adolescent male. In fact, one verse does seem to use
'almah in reference to a nonvirgin. This is
Proverbs 30:19 , which listed four things too marvelous to understand: the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a maiden (
'almah). To say the least, "the way of a man with an
'almah" would certainly jeopardize a state of sexual purity, but more damaging than this rather obvious fact is the comparison that the writer went on to state: "Such is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats, wipes her mouth, and says, 'I have done no wrong'" (
v:20 , NAB). It seems odd writer that the author would use
'almah to denote sexual purity and then compare it to the ongoing affairs of an adulterous woman. More likely the author's point was that all these things have one element in common: they do not leave much of a trace. Aside from this, the Torah does, in fact, have an explicit word for virgin (
betulah or
bethulah), which is always used where the context requires virginity. (For confirmation, see
Genesis 24:16 ,
Leviticus 21:14 , and
Deuteronomy 22:15-19 ). Even Isaiah used it in
62:5 . Its nonuse in the "Immanuel" passage is a rather loud hint that Isaiah spoke only of a young woman, not specifically of a virgin. "
Go on I dare ya.
