Loading...Here in the lead-up to December 25, I am discussing some issues related to Jesus’ birth. As I mentioned in my previous post, in the entire New Testament, the story of the virgin birth is found only in Matthew and Luke. Luke has a pretty straightforward explanation of why Jesus had to be born of a virgin: it’s because he was (literally) the “Son of God.” That is, God is the one who got Mary pregnant, as the angel tells her at the Annunciation: read Luke 1:31-35, and notice the angels’ explanation: the Spirit of God will “come upon her … SO THAT” the child born of her will be called “The Son of God.”
Matthew, though, has a different explanation. For Matthew Jesus had to be born of a virgin because that is what was predicted in the Old Testament. This view fits in very well with Matthew’s entire birth narrative of chapters 1-2. Everything happens “to fulfill Scripture.”
- Why was Jesus’ mother a virgin? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes Isaiah 7:14: “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son”)
- Why was he born in Bethlehem? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes Micah 5:2: “And you, Bethlehem…from you shall come a ruler”
- Why did Joseph and the family escape to Egypt? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt I have called my son”)
- Why did Herod have the boys two years and under killed? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes Jeremiah 31.15 “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation”)
- Why did Joseph and his family relocate to Nazareth? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes … well what does he quote, exactly? “He will be called a Nazorean.” Huh? It’s nowhere in the OT)
These so-called “fulfillment citations” are found in Matthew and only in Matthew. It is clear that Matthew wants to see Jesus as the fulfillment of what the Old Testament prophets of had said about the messiah. Jesus’ coming into the world was all part of the divine plan. This is clear from the opening verses of the Gospel as well, where Matthew gives his genealogy of Jesus, to which I gave a few posts a few months ago. As we saw, according to Matthew, Jesus’ (well, his “father” Joseph’s) genealogy falls into a divinely inspired pattern. From the father of the Jews Abraham to the greatest king of Israel, David, there were fourteen generations; from David to the greatest disaster in Israel, the Babylonian Captivity were fourteen generations; and from the Babylonian Captivity to the messiah, Jesus was fourteen generations. Something BIG happens every fourteen generations. Jesus’ coming into the world is all according to plan.
It is not always appreciated that…
Most readers do not notice that Matthew understands Jesus’ “fulfillment” of Scripture in two different, though related, ways.
In some instances, a prophet predicts what will happen (in Matthew’s opinion), and Jesus fulfills what was predicted. And so Micah predicted that a savior would come from Bethlehem, and lo and behold, that’s where Jesus’ was born; Isaiah predicts that this one will be born of a virgin, and lo and behold, he is.
In other instances Matthew sees that Jesus fills an event mentioned by a prophet full of meaning (filling full = fulfill). And so, for example, Hosea 11:1 is referring to the nation of Israel that escaped its slavery in Egypt, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” The “son” here is Israel. But Jesus too comes out of Egypt, according to Matthew (and only Matthew), and thereby “fulfills” what had happened earlier. In the days of Moses the coming forth from Egypt was God’s act of salvation for his people. And now God has acted again, in bringing ultimate salvation to his people, not from their foreign oppressors but from sin. And so Jesus fulfills what happened earlier to Egypt.
There are numerous problems with these fulfillment citations. Of most relevance to the season we are in now is the quotation of Isaiah 7:14. As I have mentioned before, the author of Isaiah does not predict that a future messiah will be born of a virgin. Read the verse. In fact, read the whole chapter. In fact, read the one before and the one after it.
First, Isaiah is not talking about a future messiah. When you read the chapter you’ll see – the messiah is not mentioned in the passage. That is, the word “messiah” does not occur. And Isaiah is not talking about a future savior of any kind. The context is quite clear. Ahaz the king of Judea is in a bad way because the kings of Syria and Israel have ganged up upon him and laid siege to his capital city of Jerusalem. Ahaz is in a panic and doesn’t know what to do. He calls in Isaiah, who tells him. He has to do nothing. There is a young woman who has become pregnant. Before the child to be born to her is old enough to know right from wrong, he will be eating curds and honey (that is, there will be prosperity in the land) and the two kings who are now threatening will be dispersed. That’s the context of Isaiah 7:14.
And what is striking, is that in the Hebrew, the verse does NOT say “a virgin will conceive and bear a son” but instead “a young woman is with child and will bear a son.”
The key word Isaiah uses is “ALMA,” a word that means young woman without reference to whether she has ever had sex or not (as opposed to the Hebrew word “BETHULAH” which does mean a woman who has never had sex, a virgin); and he says that the woman is already pregnant, not that she will become pregnant.
Matthew, of course, did not read Isaiah in Hebrew but in Greek, and the Greek translators (of the “Septuagint” – i.e., the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures) translated ALMA with the Greek word PARTHENOS, which also meant “young maiden” but eventually took on the meaning of “young maiden who has not yet had sex” – i.e., virgin. Matthew read the passage that way, and interpreted it to refer not to something in Isaiah’s time but in the distant future, with reference to the messiah.
It’s hard to know whether Matthew is simply misinterpreting Isaiah as predicting the messiah would be virgin-born or if – to be more generous to him – he thinks that Jesus “fills the prophet’s words full of meaning” in the second sense of “fulfillment” I mentioned above. In that sense, Isaiah may have one thing in mind, but the appearance of Jesus gives that thing fuller meaning, salvation again not from one’s political enemies but from the greatest enemy of all, the sin of the world.
Let’s not forget what happens in Isaiah 8:
“Moreover the Lord said to me, “Take a large scroll, and write on it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. And I will take for Myself faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.”
“Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, “Call his name Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz; or before the child shall have knowledge to cry ‘My father’ and ‘My mother,’ the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria.”
Christian readers can be very myopic.
The longest, and best, name in the Bible!
With regard to the verses following Isaiah 7:11, where the “milestones” in the development of a newborn infant are used as an indication of how soon the events in a prophesy will occur (I.e. “For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”):
It’s worth noting that almost exactly the same “formula” is also used in verses 8:1-4 where we read that “before the [newborn] child knows how to call ‘My father’ or ‘My mother’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away by the king of Assyria.”
I suppose a virgin conceiving and bearing a son could have simply meant the sort of prodigious and ominous event the ancient world was full of– a portent, like a two-headed cow or a deluge of snakes? Tacitus mentions a lot of portents like that. So such a portent would precede the coming of the messiah, but the messiah need not be the product of a virgin birth. But if there was never any reference to a virgin birth to begin with, the NT authors REALLY got their signals scrambled! Rather remarkable that out of such confusion and fantasy a major religion arose. It would be reasonable, then, to suppose that religions never arise from anything other than confusion and fantasy. When you think about it, how could it be otherwise??
Just wondering:
Setting aside for a moment the issue of what Isaiah meant in these verses in order to focus simply on the words “PARTHENOS/ALMA”:
How certain can we be of the “semantic scope” of the word PARTHENOS as known to the translators of the Septuagint?
The (Hebrew-speaking) translators of the Septuagint presumably would have understood the distinction between ALMA and BETHULAH; and, being Jewish, they would not have had any need of twisting the words to support an interpretation that Matthew would use several centuries later. 😉
So the question remains why would they have chosen the word PARTHENOS in their translation?
Could they have understood the word, in certain contexts, to have simply meant, or to have been a synonym for, “a young woman”?
[For example, even in Shakespeare it’s not uncommon to refer to a young (probably unmarried) woman as a “virgin”. And while her literal lack of sexual experience may have been defaultly assumed, it wasn’t necessarily the key focus of the use of the term.]
Parthenos often also just meant “young woman.” It *could* mean young woman “who never had sex”– and Matthew is taking it in that way.
Wikipedia (The Source of All Earthly Knowledge) informs me that there were people called nazirite, and the word comes from a Hebrew word “nazir” meaning “consecrated” or “separated.” Could there be some connection between this and Matthew’s reference to Nazorean?
The words certainly look alike in English, but they are not etymologically related. There are two Hebrew letters that get translated by English “Z”; one of the words has one and the other the other; so in a semitic language they do not look like the same word, the way they do in English.
1. Do you think Matthew made a mistake in thinking Micah 5 referred to the town rather than the family noted in 1st Chronicles? In Micah it actually says: “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the CLANS of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel.” Was he using the Septuagint which substitutes “land of Judah”, or is that Matthew’s own interpolation? If the Messiah was from the family of Bethlehem there is no need for Jesus to be literally born in the town of Bethlehem. 2. Is there agreement among scholars about which passages actually refer to a future messiah, outside of Daniel? I would think it’s complicated, because “anointed one” could be used in many ways in reference to different types of people.
1. Good qeustion! I never thought of it. I’d have to dig around a bit…. 2. Yeah, that’s even trickier. Depends who you ask. There are non-canonical passages that are much clearer, such as Psalms of Solomon 17.
Thank you for the post and your kind reply to my last comment! The idea of “divine plan” reminds me of the Gospel of John. In our class, you said Jesus himself knew the plan and even plan the signs himself (as it indicated through Jesus raised Lazarus from death). Since you mention Jesus’s birth is a part of the divine plan, do you think Jesus knew or plan all his miracles in Matthew or Luke?
I”d say that John is very different from the others in *what* Jesus knows, but also in the others he knows what God’s plan is. One of the most common terms in Luke is DEI (in Greek), which means, “it is necessary” — that is, he knew what had to happen. That’s very different from Mark, where he knew some of the plan but not all of it (which is why he seems so confused at the end.)
Any thoughts on how the virgin birth story got started? Why would the virgin birth of Jesus be important to the early Christian communities?
My hunch is that they wanted to show that Jesus really was a divine being from the beginning, and to elevate his unique status, they said that God was literally his father.
Question: Since the journey of Tiridates I to Nero occurred during the time that Matthew would have been written, is there any scholarly articles or books written to connect the visit of the Magi to Jesus and the visit of Tiridates I to Rome?
I haven’t heard of any. Matthew, by most datings, would have been written about 20 years after the death of Nero.
What’s your opinion of the following argument?
“Matthew found a parallel between the pregnant woman in Isaiah and Mary, but not just in pregnancy but in the lack of a named human father. Lack of a named human father, Matt surmised, implied the presence of a divine father. Searching the OT Matt could find only one instance of a pregnant woman without the father’s name being stated (Isaiah 7:14); and since Mary’s child was not from a human father, so too must Isaiah be talking about a human-divine pregnancy. Matt reflects this principle in his genealogy; every mention of a mother‘s name is paired with a father’s name, and many named fathers have no mothers named, and no mother’s name without a father’s name occurs. Naming of fathers is paramount, and any mothers without named husbands implies some divine parentage.”
Of course Matt doesn’t lay out this argument, but what level of probability do you think it has of reflecting Matt’s thinking?
Thanks
It’s an intersting theory. It may be a bit too complicated? women were normally not mentioned in genealogies at all, so it would be natural to name the husband – since it’s the man that mattered, and it’s a patrilinear genealogy. Are you sure that in the OT there’s only one woman who gives birth without the father being named?
“Jesus fulfilled prophecy” is a key argument Christians make when trying to convert nonbelievers. Jews have a much different view about prophecy in the Hebrew Bible.
Is it remotely plausible that anyone in antiquity could have kept record of family genealogy for over 14 generations? Very few people in the modern world know the names of ancestors more than a few generations back (the British House of Windsor apparently can trace back for a millenium). Do we have any historical document that mentions any of the characters named after the Babylonian exile in the genealogy, matching the timeline? I wonder how far back the Roman emperors were able to trace their genealogy, going back to Romulus and Remus, say?
No, the genealogies were almost always invented. (Julius Caesar traced his line back to the goddess Venus, e.g.!)
Interesting. I’m wondering though Bart. Wouldn’t he (Matthew), being a Jew, been familiar with Judaism and known that Jesus must be born of 1) human father descended from David, and 2) a woman,not necessarily a virgin? I thought the idea of virgin birth came from Christianity, much later, and the Jewish Messiah was not a God-man, rather a human being given special powers from God.
THere wasn’t simply one view (about anything) among Jews at the time — no standard understanding. Various Jewish teachers, e.g., had different views of who/what the messiah would be. And yes, the virgin birth is definitely a Christian view. (Matthew was certainly a Christian; he’s usually considered to have been a Jew too, but there’s not really much evidence one way or the other, in my opinion)
Lydia McGrew, the wife of Timothy McGrew whom you debated on Premier Christian Radio and author of book “Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels” which was cited by Peter Williams’ recent book on reliability of the gospels, has an article entitled “Why the Virgin Birth makes remarkable historical sense”:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unbelievable/2020/12/why-the-virgin-birth-makes-remarkable-historical-sense
I wonder if you would like to write a post about it.
Yeah, probably not. Someone who says that a virgin birth is historically likely is clearly not trained in the discipline of history.
Bart,
Regarding Isaiah 7:14: how do Christians rationalize the fact that Jesus’ name was, well, Jesus—not Immanuel?
It seems like a glaring discrepancy with the purported prophesy…
Immanuel is not meant literally, in this opinion. The name means “God is with us,” and Christians claimed that Jesus was that — God with us (i.e., immanuel). His personal name, Jesus, means something like “God is salvation,” which is equally good.
Immanuel is a completely different name to Jesus with a completely different meaning.
These names are purely symbolic and honorific.
Well, they couldn’t do much about that, since Isaiah says Immanuel but Jesus’ name was Jesus. But they didn’t think Isaiah meant his “literal” name would be Immanuel but that he would be God’s presence among them. If I say, “I’d call you a genius,” it doesn’t mean that’s your name, if you see what I mean.
Do you think that there was something “off” at all about Jesus’ parentage? Calling Jesus Son of Mary (Mark 6:3), maybe John 8:41 WE aren’t bastards, and if course Celsus 150ish years later talking about Pantera, and the Talmud parentage stories written down +100 years after that.
I recognize your thesis here is the stories were tailored for religious rather than historical reasons. I am asking if your view is that there might have been another reason due to (whatever cause) some contemporary question of Jesus’ parentage or, is it your view any questions of parentage outside the Xtns themselves came about by rationalists trying to explain the gospel virgin birth stories in a realistic manner.
Yes, my view is that there were rumors that he was born out of wedlock and these stories were meant to counter them.
The origin of the virgin birth story is explained very well in this post.
““He will be called a Nazorean.” Huh? It’s nowhere in the OT)”
Some say that this is mentioned in Isaiah 11.1 and 60.21 where the branch is Netzer in Hebrew. The branch should be a prophecy of Jesus. What are your thoughts, Bart?
I agree that this is probably what Matthew has in mind — though it’s not a slam dunk case and there are lots of otehr opinions. But in neither verse is there anything about “And he shall be called a Nazarene”
Hi Dr. Ehrman. I hope you had a nice Christmas. I’m wondering if you could give me a better understanding of Mathew’s use of Isaiah 9:6:
“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
What is the historical context of this fulfillment prophecy?
It is usually thought that it is referring to the recent birth of a son to the King of Israel. It seems that he would be called all these things, but royalty in the ancient world sometimes were referred to as divine beings and the father of all who would bring peace to the world. (I talk about that issue a bit in my book How Jesus Became God.)
Hi ,
I am a Greek Sethian Gnostic, actually I am from Kittim(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kittim -Cyprus) (a long story of how I found my origins but when I was a kid I knew Gnostic things without even reading about them, weird eh?)
Yes Jesus was born from a Virgin…
In order to enter this world you need a body even if you are an AEON to enter this materialistic world you need a body and also the soul alone cannot be seen by humans.( it was the only way to enter this realm)
Another reason why the Word of God has become a flesh(human being) was feelings/emotions.
Jesus wanted to see how the body affects the soul , he wanted to feel all the feelings , pain , sadness, love , cry,happiness,angry,hunger and finally death. Jesus wanted to teach us that even with this body prison that affects our knowledge and faith we still have the chance to enter the God’s Kingdom.
Final reason was to teach us the word of God and that our Soul does not die , either you ascent to Gods Kingdom or reborn again in this world (with memory erased) and maybe some of us will go to hell.
I don’t think that Jesus was God. I am trying to reconcile the Jesus character.It looks like many things that were written about Jesus; if not all were made up and/or altered to make him look like God. in many cases he clarifies that HE IS NOT GOD. I believe that the Bible is not the word of God . I do not know what to believe about Jesus miracles in the NT. If writers made up many of what is said about Jesus or even altered the content they could have also made up the miracles that he supposedly did to enforce the belief that he was God. I believe that if God had come here in Jesus he would have MADE SURE that everyone BELIEVED in him including the Romans and the Jews, PERIOD; including everyone that read the NT today.
Question: where can I find accurate information about what Jews say about the Miracles of Jesus; Do the Jews of the time acknowledged that Jesus did miracles? Do Jews from today acknowledge that Jesus made miracles? I read something that says that TALMUD mentions in 2 places that Jesus was a sorcerer or a magician…https://voice.dts.edu/article/did-jesus-fake-his-miracles-del-rosario-mikel/
You might look at Peter Schaeffer’s book Jesus in the Talmud.
Thank you Dr. May I ask if based on your studies and findings where these mentions of Jesus in the Talmud included on it at the time the supposed events happened during the time suposedly Jesus lived? Are there any cases of Fraud on these notes of Jesus in the Talmud? meaning that these notes about him on the Talmud where added later? I have learned that before reading anything related to the matter its very important to have some sort of context. I have heard multiple times that roman historians of the time do not mention Jesus at all and the few mentions of him appeared after they were originally written and it appears as if they were fraudulent added to the roman historian notes…
No, the Talmud was produced four or five centuries later. The only non-Christian source (Greek, Roman, or Jewish — or anything else) that mentions Jesus in teh first century was the Jewish historican Josephus, who was writing about 60 years after Jesus’ death.
Dr Bartman – What is the earliest christian source that speaks about him? Have you considered in your studies that people just made him God and made up all the stories to back up this false statement for whatever the purposes these people had? weather to give themselves, power, status quo, a voice etc. Like if they just tailored a theology many years after the events? I insist that if Jesus had been God he would have first been recognized by everyone in the time; surely he would have had the means to do so and make all his children including Romans, Jews, recognize him. Not only that but had he been resurrected he would have made this known publicly to everyone including romans and jews. Why would the all mighty fantastic creator would hide and just secretly show up with a few guys ‘disciples’. This sounds to me like an organized meticulously tailored intentional made up theology to back up a false statement .
The first source to mention Jesus is Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, written 49 or 50 CE or so.
Would you also please comment on your thoughts and finding about the passage where Jesus supposedly appears to his disciples and tells them that whatever the sins they forgive will be forgiven and whatever sins they don’t forgive won’t be forgiven? This sounds like an organized religion making up a story to empower their leaders with God’s authority. Then there must be another story they made up so after all the disciples died priests say catholic could continue ’empowered’. is there such a story in the NT where after the ‘disciples’ died’ the priests/pastors would continue to have ‘jesus’ power to forgive ‘sins’?
Yes, this passage is usually thought not to be authentic to the historical Jesus but to have been added later by story tellers who put the saying on his lips.
Thanks. When was the first gospel written? was it mark? or Paul?
Mark. Paul did not write a Gospel.
How would Matthew and Luke know that the Virgin Birth actually happened, even if it had been predicted, if there were no eyewitnesses?
I suppose the same way most Christians today “know” it. They’ve heard about it and believe it.
I’ve heard the Septuagint also refers to Dinah as a parthenos after she is raped. Is this true?
If so, why would early Christians think parthenos meant “virgin” in Isaiah 7 but not Genesis 34?
The word parthenos originally meant something like “young woman” but eventually in some contexts to mean “young woman who has never had sex.” The Septuagint meant the former in Isaiah 7:14 and the Christians interpreted it to mean the latter. There were, as you can imagine, debates about the very issue in ancient Jewish and Christian discussions (or rather, vehement debates) about the verse.
I’ve done some googling about this topic, could you reply on what I found?
First: In joel 1:8 and Jeremia 18:13; 31:4,21 the word “betulah” is also used but there it does not mean a virgin.
Second: in my opinion it is not the question if a virgin gets pregnant but if she is still a virgin when being pregnant. If there was said: “a virgin will give birth”, then it was an issue. I think the debate is in Luke not in Matthew.
1. Yes, those are unusual passages, but not easy to interpretation. If a virgin is weeping for “the husband of her youth” — does that mean that they consummated the marriage and then he died? Or that they were bound to be married but he died prior to the ceremony? I don’t really know. Calling Israel a virgin, though, is not necessarily contradictory for the metaphor to work. In any event, the issue with Isaiah 7:14 isn’t about bethulah (which almost always does mean virgin whenever the context is clear) but about almah/parthenos. 2. The issue is that the “virgin” conceives. It’s not that the “virgin” has sex. The point is that virgins can’t conceive. That’s what creates teh problem for Matthew.
PART 1
So the crux of the discussion here is about whether or not the characters Matthew, Isaiah, Micah, etc. involved in the situations mentioned above really meant a “virgin” (though it not specified how and at what point in time exactly the state of virginity is defined – and Dr Ehrman has elaborated on this in several posts).
At this point in the discussion, all we have are fragments of information about the virginity of a woman identified in some gospels as the mother of Jesus in the NT, but not necessarily so in the OT.
However I have ALWAYS thought of this story from a very different point of view, and my perspective on that story comes from a book I found totally inadvertently at my public library when I was a teenager. The book in question is Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud (1939). It is a book very easy to read in a couple of hours.
Part 2
In the first part of the book, Freud comments on the extraordinary birth of Moses, and credits Otto Rank for saying in “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Birth_of_the_Hero , https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/mbh/index.htm , ] …Quote: “that almost all important civilized peoples have early on woven myths around and glorified in poetry their heroes, mythical kings and princes, founders of religions, of dynasties, empires and cities in short their national heroes.
Especially the history of their birth and of their early years is furnished with phantastic traits; the amazing
similarity, nay, literal identity, of those tales, even if they refer to different, completely independent peoples, sometimes geographically far removed from one another, is well known and has struck many an
investigator.” End of Quote.
Yes, Freud and Rank were writing at a time when European (esp. German) scholarship was arguing that Jesus’ story is very closely replicated in Greek and Roman mythology. I’m afraid they often overstated the case. Many of the parallels are indeed very illuminating, but there are no instances of Greek and Roman humans or gods being born of a woman who had never had sex (our definition of a virgin).
Part 3
Though Freud’s book is about Moses, I immediately applied Freud’s analysis to Jesus.
Undeniably Jesus is the HERO of the Gospels, and the prophets ( Isaiah, Micah, etc.) as well announce the coming of some one who will have to be considered a HERO. Such a hero cannot be born like a vulgar commoner, and the event of his birth must be unheard, extraordinary, etc. blah!
I am not denying that in the mind of the authors of the NT, there might have been the absolute need to show that Jesus was born totally out of sin (though I think that there are passages in the synoptic gospels that show that Jesus was NOT a 100% Mr Nice Guy, and I can post about these passages in a separate post …. though I do not know where they would fit in the blog), but I am also considering that it was convenient for the above mentioned authors to assign an “unheard birth mode” to their hero because this was compliant with their unconscious psychological pattern of a hero.
Very interesting. Thanks.
Part 4/4
These authors needed to assign an exceptional “birth mode”, and they concocted the “virgin birth” story that shows the absence of sin in the “procreation of the hero”.
Note that it was considered that a woman was committing some sort of impurity during the procreation act, but that was not the case for the male partner …. Ah well, that is another story!