- Original scriptures didn’t say virgin …they said young woman
This, like everything, must go back to the Resurrection. If the Resurrection is true, then any argument like this is irrelevant. The author’s of the New Testament used the Greek word for Virgin, and if they were the followers of a man who rose from the dead, then they get far more than the benefit of the doubt. Your atheistic friend has to debunk the reality of the Resurrection before any other argument he can possibly make will have any merit.
Burn him a copy of any of the William Lane Craig debates here:
bringyou.to/apologetics/audio.htm#WilliamLaneCraig. Dr. Craig debated some of the world’s most important atheists and makes them look silly. I’ve seen many debates, but I’ve never seen anyone simply humiliate an opponent like I’ve seen Dr. Craig.
Now, regarding the specific issue of the use of the Hebrew word
almah in Isaiah:
The fact is that it’s
not clear that the word necessarily means young woman. There are good reasons to think it does not. First, the word that skeptics and atheists assert really meant “virgin,”
betulah, is used in many places in Scripture in cases where it clearly seems not to be referring to a virgin. Second, the word
almah is not simply said to refer to a young woman, but you a young
maiden, an umarried woman. In Jewish culture, such a person is supposed to be a virgin.
Most importantly, the 70 Jewish scholars who translated Isaiah into Greek sometime around 150 BC used the Greek word
parthenos, which means precisely “virgin.” These people had no possible Christian agenda, and they understood the language far better than even the greatest scholar of Hebrew can today. If they chose to translate it as
virgin when plenty of Greek words for “young woman,” or “maiden,” or some other such thing existed, then there’s no grounds whatsoever for questioning the translation.
If you want more information than you could ever use on this issue, see here:
christian-thinktank.com/fabprof2.html
- Constantine only made Christianity the state religion so that more people would fight.
- If he did, so what? It wouldn’t disprove the teachings of the faith. Plenty of folks have made atheism the state religion for political reasons. That doesn’t disprove atheism.
2)Constantine didn’t make it the state religion. He made it a legal religion, one that was permissible to be practiced.
- That ultimately whatever sacrifice, suffering, or martyrdom that happens…the ultimate belief that one is going Heaven makes it the one reason(He used this to refute my argument that why would the disciples choose to believe in a crucified God, be poor, be persecuted, and suffer horrible deaths, except John, for something that was not true…He said because they believe they are going to Heaven.
This only helps the Christian point. This is actually usually used to argue in favor of Christianity. These men did all this stuff and suffered martyrdom because they thought they’d be going to Heaven, and more precisely they thought they’d go to Heaven for dying for a
man. If some person came up to you and told you that you’d go to Heaven if you died for him, would you believe him? Of course not. Even if you did, there’d be doubt which would make dying for him extremely difficult.
These men didn’t die merely for God, as modern Muslim extremists do. Anybody can die go ahead and die for God. Jews did it, Muslims do it, folks of all sorts of religions have died, and still die, for God. We can’t see God, but if a person believes in God, the big Spirit who made everything, then dying for Him makes sense.
These men died for a
man. They died for a poor man who walked around and, according to every Jewish standard in the book - the religion these men were, after all - blasphemed God. They died for a guy who according to many of the teachings of their religion was an enemy of God, and so dying for him oughtn’t to have been a way to get to Heaven.
This shows that these fellows saw
something which made them think that dying for this man would get them to Heaven. They saw His
Resurrection. Apart from that, going to death for a man makes no sense at all, for all the reasons I’ve explained. Furthermore, they
refused to die for this man before the Resurrection. It’s only after it that they in fact
do die for Him.
- The whole telephone argument from oral translation and biblical translations over the years…although I think we did a pretty good job at refuting that one…
As you may have told him, anthropological research in places that have tribal cultures and whatnot show that the oral traditions passed down in these tribes are far more accurate than even our modern day methods. For example, the research done on the Bedouin tribes. It’s astounding.
For example, the tribe will gather around the story teller each day. He will tell them the stories. If he makes even the
slightest mistake, they stop him and won’t let him continue until he corrects it. They all know the stories, he knows the stories, and they hear them day after day, without even the slightest error, as the whole group of them - people that have been hearing the story for years and years - censor
any errors.
Peace and God bless
