There are disagreements in interpretations of verses between various Christian sects, so yeah I’d expect there’d be a lot between Christians and Jews.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the Hebrew translation, but a non-virgin does not make sense to the story being told in the verse.
The story in Isaiah is about God challenging a man to name any miraculous sign he desires and God will do it to prove that God is real. God tells the man he is allowed to choose literally anything. The man refuses to take God’s challenge. God, in response, gives him a miraculous sign anyway.
In this context it doesn’t make much sense for God to say, “a young woman shall conceive and give birth.” Young women getting pregnant and giving birth is something which happened all the time. It’s only a miraculous sign if the young woman’s virginity is implied in the response.
It’s mostly disagreement about the interpretation, not the Hebrew translation itself. One thing in the Hebrew which Christians often miss is the meaning of names. The meaning of names often isn’t communicated well even in Bibles which include a side by side Hebrew translation.
For example, Christians get very excited when Yeshua shows up throughout the Bible in equal distance letter sequences. But Jewish people yawn at this because Yeshua also means ‘God Saves.’
If you look only at that one verse (Isaiah 7:14), then I can see why you might say that. But if you also read the verses afterward, you’ll see other predictions about the child to be born, in which case the mother’s status becomes less important.
It generally does mean young unmarried post pubescent woman, so “virgin” can be inferred, but yes virgin is not implicit. There is a word for just that.
So, translating it as “maiden” with what that implies in English is not necessarily wrong.
Unrelated to the topic of this thread, but the idea that hymen serves as a way to tell if someone has ever had sex or not is a myth. It doesn’t completely cover the vaginal opening, and it is stretchy. Sexual activity may tear it, but it doesn’t have to, and it can tear for other reasons.
Here’s just the top Google result for me on the hymen myth:
Old English pubs used to have a sign with an image rather than the words (or both) since in the Goode Olde days many were illiterate. It’s not hard to see the joke where the pub has a picture of a young woman’s head and the name is “The Maiden Head”.
Particularly interesting is the much ignored bible verse that shows that a fetus is not a human being, i.e. causing a miscarriage is a property crime, pay a fine, rather than murder (life for life).
Exodus 21:22
KJV : If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
New Revised Standard : When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine
New Living Translation : “Now suppose two men are fighting, and in the process they accidentally strike a pregnant woman so she gives birth prematurely. If no further injury results, the man who struck the woman must pay the amount of compensation the woman’s husband demands and the judges approve.
You can compare numerous editions here:
Some say “miscarry”, some say “premature birth”. The KJV cleverly replicates the ambiguity apparently buried in the original Hebrew where the word “depart” is the verb “go forth”, as used elsewhere when troops “go forth” for battle.
The argument is of course, the next verse is “23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,” suggesting if any hurt happens to the woman herself or other bystanders, that results in the appropriate punishment.
The standard logic would be - why make premature birth a special case, and not even mention what happens for a miscarriage, when in those days, 9 out of 10 times any such trauma is a miscarriage not a live birth, that probably would not be recognizable at some stages as a human being?
IANA Bible Scholar, but I have read that this is why many Jewish doctors do not have a religious objection to abortions. (Plus, as I understand it, the concept of a soul is a Greek idea, not part of the Jewish tradition - hence the idea of a soul being received at conception is not relevant. By all means correct me if I misunderstand this).
But this is precisely the problem the OP must face with their question. The Bible, in English, is a game of Post Office as it can be traced to sources translated from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, then to English. In each step, accounting for the understanding and agenda of those doing the translation.
Hence the expression “the devil can quote scripture for his purpose”. Much of what’s in the Bible can be ambiguous.
You keep using the word “miraculous”, but that word does not appear in the text. It’s not about a miraculous sign; just about a sign. Signs don’t have to be miraculous.
As Keeve points out, the sign promised by the Lord is:
- An almah is pregant.
- She will have a son
- She will name him “Immanuel”
- By the time he’s old enough to know right from wrong he will eat curds and honey because, before he has reached that age the land will have been devastated, and will have begun to be restored. [A diet of curds and honey implies that tillage has been disrupted, and grazing is being restablished.]
- Further details follow about the devastation and, possibly, future devastations.
If we insist that a sign has to involve something miraculous or not naturally explicable, rather than something merely remarkable, we can find it here in foreknowledge of future events.
You’re right, the word miraculous doesn’t appear in the text; it’s only implied. Again though, the point of the story is that God is ‘showing off’ his power to prove a point.
I’m interested in hearing more about how foretelling the future is not miraculous and instead merely remarkable. Do you mind indulging me?
Fortelling the future might be miraculous, but the future events themselves might not be. A virgin having a baby is miraculous. A boy eating curds and honey at his Bar Mitzvah is not.
One does get the feeling that there are many nuances that are being either missed or reinterpreted with a modern lens.
Is there a social mores question that would point to an illegitimate birth? That never seems to be taken as a possible meaning.
Was a bastard child specially singled out in ancient Jewish society? Is there a possible specific meaning to a prophecy about one?
Most religions seem to have evolved all manner of rules to try and avoid bastard children, but all societies have also evolved ways of coping. I can’t imagine that society at the time of the prophecy was any different.
In Jewish law the child of an unmarried woman wouldn’t be a bastard. The word that’s usually translated that way in English is reserved for children of a married woman sired by someone other than the husband. (Or children from some other forbidden at m sexual relationships, like incest.)
Normally, if an unmarried woman had a child the father would be pressured to marry her, and that would be the end of it.
One example I recall reading is where Jesus first starts preaching, and bystanders say “is this not Jesus, and is his mother not Mary?” Some Bible commentators took this to be an insult for its time, I.e. the locals were putting him down by mentioning his mother rather than his father, implying they had not forgotten she was found to be pregnant before Joseph came along and married her and Jesus was illegitimate…
And this nuance was lost on the non-Hebraic people who assembled the gospels decades and centuries later, who took it as further proof of Mary’s virtuous position in the church canon.
Most people today take the total lack of mention of Joseph during the time of Jesus’ ministry to be evidence that Joseph had died by that point. I suppose that the particular incident you reference could also be an insult, but I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that it was.
Yeah, there’s a detailed tradition built up about how Joseph was much older than Mary, and possibly a widower. Hard to tell how much of that has actual basis and how much is post-hoc retconning, but it’s at least plausible.
Certainly, while Jesus was dying, he charged one of the Apostles with caring for Mary after his death, something that wouldn’t have been necessary if she still had a husband.
I find it interesting that so much attention is paid to the word “almah” and so little to “Emmanuel”.
I assumed this was based on the fact that Judea or Galilee in biblical times was a very patriarchal society; so even long after the father died, the son would be known as "son of the father A’ not “son of the mother B”.
Speaking from mostly ignorance here, but isn’t (modern) Judaism tracked matrilineally? If your mother is Jewish, you’re Jewish.
Yes and no. Whether you’re a Jew or not is matrilineal, but membership in one of the Twelve Tribes was patrilineal, as was one’s place within the tribe.
As someone who is not up on Bible lore - are not 10 of those tribes still missing?
(Unless they are in Utah?)