The Christmas Prophecy (Isaiah 7:14)

The Christmas Prophecy is still quoted every year by pastors to candle-clutching congregations, of whom I was once part.  I was ignorant - but ignorance is not the same as stupidity.  An ignorant person can learn.

I eventually found - through reading - that these verses are no prophecy.

Most pastors presumably studied at college. They should at least know that these verses are very controversial. They should know that most scholars are sure this is not prophecy - and that even most theologians dismiss the virgin birth as a fable. But they never mention this from the pulpit. If you were at University, a lecturer would be duty-bound to mention these facts.

Here is the verse:

Isaiah 7:14 (Isaiah talking to King Ahaz) “The Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel”.

"This has been interpreted to mean Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary. It has echoed through Christendom for 2000 years and such has been the rage of this opinion that there is scarcely a spot in it that has not been stained with blood and desolated in consequence of it. It has no more reference to Christ and his mother than to me and my mother."  (1)

The writer of the book of Matthew used this verse in his attempt to prove the divinity of Jesus:

Matthew 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet. "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel".

We'll look at this a step at a time.

Here's the story:
The kings of both Syria and Israel are making war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah.

As you might imagine, Ahaz becomes alarmed.

Isaiah assures him that the two kings won’t succeed against him. He tells Ahaz to ask for a sign, but Ahaz refuses to. Isaiah grumbles impatiently, then replies to Ahaz as in v.14 above.

Then, crucially, Isaiah adds:

Isaiah 7:16 Before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid to waste.

This verse makes it clear that Isaiah is not talking about a baby one-thousand years in the future.  This is a local prophecy and nothing to do with Jesus.

Isaiah then goes off and himself tries to make this sign come true. (He doesn’t want to appear a false prophet). So he has sex with a prophetess (it is not and never has been a difficult thing to find a girl with child, or to make one so).

Isaiah 8:3,4 Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said to me, "Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz.  Before the boy knows how to say 'My father' or 'My mother', the wealth of Damascus and Samaria will be carried off by the King of Assyria."

Here, Isaiah is promising that King Ahaz will not be troubled by the 2 nasty kings - they will be defeated by someone else, the King of Assyria!

Not only was this a local prophecy. It was also a failure. Here's why:

1. Neither Jesus nor this child were called Immanuel (other than by Christians reading this supposed prophecy later).

2. Isaiah is silent about the outcome, but in 2 Chronicles 28, Ahaz was defeated and destroyed, both by Israel and by Syria.  Jerusalem was plundered; 120,000 of his people were slaughtered, 200,000 women, sons and daughters were carried into captivity. This was a failed prophecy even at the time.

So much for this lying prophet and impostor, Isaiah, and the book that bears his name.

The really big problem
A deeper problem with this prophecy though, is the word “virgin”.
In verse 14: the Hebrew clearly says “young woman” (almah). This is the feminine of elem, which means “young man”, not “young virgin man”. The Hebrew word for virgin is bethulah, which appears often enough in the Bible as spoils of Jehovah’s holy wars.

About 300 years before Jesus, the Greek-speaking Jews translated the Old Testament into Greek - creating the "Septuagint".

In the Septuagint, this word almah, young woman, is translated as parthenos, which does indeed mean virgin.

Whoever wrote the Book of Matthew was not a Hebrew speaker; he was using the Septuagint. He just relayed the mistranslation (innocently or deliberately):

Matthew 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet. "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel".

So Matthew uses the word parthenos. Isaiah used a different word almah, with a different meaning. Whether or not this was deliberate - it means that no prophecy was fulfilled.

The writer of Matthew was a sloppy scholar, and it is pure dishonesty for him to try to force this failed prophecy to fit his own day, his own sectarian theology.

Only the NRSV bible is honest enough to print “young woman” at 7:14.

The Jews, who should know best, translate this to English as “young woman”. It is only Christians who insist it means virgin, because it suits their purpose.

Notice that the gospels of John and Mark, both written by Hebrew speakers, say nothing at all about any virgin birth. Neither does Paul, the major contributor to the doctrines of Christianity.
They probably never even looked at the Greek Septuagint so it wouldn’t have occurred to them.

Matthew’s mistake (one that many modern preachers make), was to try to force the interpretation of an ancient scripture to fit his own particular theology.

Isaiah 7:14 is not discussing a future Messiah, much less a baby named Jesus.

It applied to Isaiah’s current situation, not to some future Christian sect. If Matthew had read further, he would have seen that it was ludicrous to force the meaning to his day.  The next nine verses continue the prophecy, including a promise that “in that day” the land will become briers and thorns, which of course happened in neither Isaiah’s nor Matthew’s day.(2)

Conclusion
It was wrong of the writer of Matthew, on so many levels, to use these verses from Isaiah. It was a local prophecy, that failed even in Isaiah's time. It failed in virtually every detail, even though Isaiah did his best to make it come true himself! 
It was also wrong to use it because what Matthew had seen was a mis-translation, by Greek-speaking Jews, of the original Isaiah text which did not say "virgin" at all.

Just about the entire scholarly world - including theologians - rejects utterly the virgin birth as even a plausible doctrine. The story is a concoction added later by the writer of Matthew in order to give extra kudos to Jesus, because many great people of that time were reputed to have had virgin births, including Julius Caesar (and not forgetting Mithras, the Roman God who was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25th!)

See The Virgin Birth

Geoff Mather 2007
With extracts from "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine (1)
and "Losing Faith in Faith" by Dan Barker (2)

Back to REASONS