My priest wrong about Isaiah 7:14?

[EphelDuath]

Quoted from another website:

The myth of Isaiah 7:14.

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel.”

Jews and anti-Christians contend that this verse is supposed to be rendered “behold, a young woman shall conceive…” and that the Virgin Birth is based off of a mistranslation. In actuality, it’s probably the other way around.

The Apostles used the Septuagint (LXX) to write the New Testament; it’s a Koine Greek translation of the Old Testament produced by 72 Rabbis in 246 B.C. It was commonly used by Hellenistic Jews outside of Israel and Gentiles, simply because Hebrew and Aramaic were uncommon languages beyond Judea. We know the Apostles used the Septuagint because out of the 300 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, 2/3rds of them come from unique renderings only found in the Greek version. See: scripturecatholic.com/septuagint.html

It is not precisely known why the Apostles used the LXX over the Hebrew Bible. It is probably because (1) most of their audience spoke Greek but not Hebrew, and (2) the Greek Bible often contained the deuterocanon, seven OT books that modern Jews reject but were probably widely accepted back in the 1st century.

On the other hand, modern Jews and Protestants base their translations off of the Masoretic Text, manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible compiled in the 7th century. That makes the LXX roughly 800 years older than the MT; and these texts were compiled long after Christianity became the dominant religion in former Roman territories. Whenever the Septuagint, Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls and Samaritan Torah (the Samaritan version of the Torah; it has a couple significance differences from the Hebrew Torah, but is otherwise the same) disagree, the majority of the time, the LXX agrees with the majority of the texts.

Now, the fact that the LXX renders Isaiah 7:14 “virgin,” and it was translated by Jews over two-hundred years before the birth of Christ, should be evidence enough that Christians did not purposefully mistranslate the passage.

There’s two other arguments I have why the verse should read “virgin” instead of “young woman.”

1. The Hebrew word used in the Masoretic Text is “almah.” Although most modern Jewish translations render the phrase “behold, a young woman,” the word “almah” is also used in Genesis 24:16, Exodus 22:16-17, Leviticus 21:14, and Deuteronomy 22:13-21, where almost all Jewish translations will consistently render the word as “virgin.”

See: mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0522.htm
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tanakh/Torah/Shemot#Shemot_22
bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp?action=displaypage&book=1&chapter=24&verse=15&portion=5

1. A “young woman” who is not a virgin is prescribed to be stoned to death under Mosaic Law. Thus, it wouldn’t make sense for God to say that an unlawful woman would give birth to the Messiah. Furthermore, there is nothing miraculous about a “young woman” conceiving a child. How is it a prophecy, therefore?

 

[Verbum]

Hi Fidelis,

to which modern English translations are you referrring that rendered this passage as a result of encouragement by the Holy See to convey the original meanings?

Before anything else, it is important to get out of the way the assertion that, if this does not primarily refer to a “virgin”, then there is nothing prophetic about this passage. It is not unusual that a prophecy works on several levels. For example, we have the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem by Jesus, which applies,at another level, to the end of the world. In Revelation, the prophecy of the destruction of the Roman Empire and the triiumph of Christianity foreshadows the triumph of good over evil, of God over the devil and the final triumph of God as Christ comes back for the final judgement.

In our case, Chapter 7 begins with the invasion of Juda by Israel and Aram. The king, Achaz, the court and the people are panicked that the line of David will disappear.God promises that He will crush all of Juda’s enemies. Then He tells Achaz to ask Him for a sign. Achaz refuses to tempt God, but God insists on the giving the sign. He tells Achaz that David’s lineage will not stop, since he, Achaz, will have a son, Ezechias, to whom “no king of Juda could ever be compared” (2 Kings 18,5). The language and the solemnity of the prophecy and the verses that follow it, make it clear that it is also Messianic in character, which justifies the interpretation of the miraculous birth from a virgin, to which the Septuagint is a witness.

To answer your question on the attitude of the Holy See, it behooves us to go back to the foundation document for Bible revival in the Catholic Church, Pius XII’s encyclical *Divino Afflante Spiritu *(“Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit”). The sentences I have put in bold are the most pertinent.

1. Wherefore let him diligently apply himself so as to acquire daily a greater facility in biblical as well as in other oriental languages and to support his interpretation by the aids which all branches of philology supply. This indeed St. Jerome strove earnestly to achieve, as far as the science of his time permitted; to this also aspired with untiring zeal and no small fruit not a few of the great exegetes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although the knowledge of languages then was much less than at the present day. In like manner therefore ought we to explain the original text which, having been written by the inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern; this can be done all the more easily and fruitfully, if to the knowledge of languages be joined a real skill in literary criticism of the same text.
2. Being thoroughly prepared by the knowledge of the ancient languages and by the aids afforded by the art of criticism, let the Catholic exegete undertake the task, of all those imposed on him the greatest, that namely of discovering and expounding the genuine meaning of the Sacred Books. In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal. Aided by the context and by comparison with similar passages, let them therefore by means of their knowledge of languages search out with all diligence the literal meaning of the words; all these helps indeed are wont to be pressed into service in the explanation also of profane writers, so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear
3. What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.

Full text :

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu_en.html

Verbum

 

[richardeekw]

Today, my priest said the following about the first reading: “The original Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 says that a ‘young woman’ will conceive, not a ‘virgin’. When the Scripture was translated into Greek, they changed it to make it say ‘virgin’.”

Huh? I thought the original Hebrew word ‘almah’ was the only Hebrew word for both a ‘young woman’ and for a ‘virgin’ — there was no separate word for virgin because in ancient times it was assumed that any unmarried woman was a virgin (!). How is that a “change?” If the same word could be interpreted as either ‘young woman’ or ‘virgin’, how does the translation into Greek as “parthenos” (virgin) constitute a “change”?

I felt like asking the priest after Mass, but I do that often enough, and one has to choose one’s battles. Plus I wasn’t sure I was right.

May I recommend both you and your priest read
“The Gospel of Matthew” RSV (Ignatius Press) with commentary and notes bgy Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch… on

“Is Matthew’s Infancy Narrative historical?”

Is 7:14 is in its context is being discussed…