From: squirrel@world.std.com (Publius)
Subject: Re: Almah in Isa 7: 14
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 07:06:10 GMT

[This is the repost of an article I posted a while ago in talk.religion.misc]

In article <fWYNWMA@quack.sac.ca.us> pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey) writes:
>
> ... I'm fairly certain it comes from the translation error in
>the Septuagint and illustrates how the Septuagint was used by the NT
>writers, presumably in preference to the Hebrew if the Hebrew was used
>at all, but of course there is no such proof of such a theory, only
>evidence to be weighed. What is your theory for the famous "virgin" of
>Isaiah?

Strictly on the level of historic analysis, I don't think we have
conclusive evidence to go either way.  On the one hand, we have the
Septuagint, which is a poor translation of an older (and presumably,
more authentic) text; on the other hand, we have the Masoretic text,
which has been relatively faithfuly transmitted over the centuries,
but was based on a much later (and presumably, less authentic) text base.  

On the level of literary analysis, however, and maybe quite to your
surprise, I actually favor the use of the word 'almah' as in the
Masoretic text (and have written about this on the net in the past.)
Here is why.  There is enough literary evidence to show that Isaiah
ON PURPOSE employed this ambiguous word 'almah', which can be interpreted
either way.  The passage in question, from Isaiah 7:14 through 8:8,
obviously has twofold meanings.  At one level, it refers to an event
contemporary to Isaiah; at another level, it points to the time of
Messiah, which, from where Isaiah sat, was still in the future.
This literary style, not only common in the prophetic literature,
is also deeply rooted in the ancient Jewish tradition.  For one thing,
at least one verse (Isaiah 7:21) in this passage was messianically
applied in the rabbinical writings (Reference: Alfred Edersheim's
classic "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah" Appendix IX: List
of Old Testament Passages Messianically Applied in Rabbinic Writings.)
When the passage is applied to the event at Isaiah's time, the
"run-time" binding of the meaning of the word 'almah' is certainly
'young woman'.  When the same passage is applied to the messianic
time, the "run-time" binding of the word is 'virgin', for Isaiah 7:14
is not the only OT verse that indicates the virgin birth of the Savior.
To support this polymorphic literary style, Isaiah employed this
ambiguous word 'almah', leaving the precise binding of the meaning
to the "run-time".  An analogy is the use of virtual function in C++
to support the polymorphic/object-oriented programming style which
leaves the precise binding of the meaning to the run-time.
Unlike the rigid and inflexible Greek language, the Hebrew language/tradition
is flexible enough to support this polymorphic literary style which,
as I said before, is very common in the prophetic literature, with deep
roots in the ancient Jewish tradition.

Here I am reminded of a interesting Jewish legend, which reflects this
deep-rooted ancient Jewish tradition of the polymorphic literary
style.  This legend goes like this.  One day, God had Moses come back
to the earth and sat at the lecture of a great rabbi.  Moses was so
impressed by what the rabbi had to said that after the lecture
he came to the rabbi and asked: "Where did you get all these
knowledges?"  The rabbi humbly replied: "Well, they are all in the
books of Moses."

As far as NT's messianic application of OT verses goes, it wasn't
anything new, for the ancient rabbis did that all the time (read
Edersheim's book I mentioned a few paragraghs earlier.)  As far
as the "legitimacy" of such applications are concerned, they might
seem "convoluted" from our heavily Greek-influencied Western
prospective, but are perfectly legitimate from the ancient Jewish
prospective.  Here is an excerpt from Edersheim's book.

	"To an inspired writer, nay, to a true Jewish reader of
	 the Old Testament, the question in regard to to any
	 prophecy could not be: What did *the prophet*--but,
	 What did the *prophecy*--mean?  And this could only be
	 unfolded in the course of Israel's history.  Similarly,
	 those who ever saw in the past the prototype of the
	 future, and recognised in events, not only the principle,
	 but the very features, of that which was to come,
	 could not fail to perceive, in the bitter wail of the
	 mothers of Bethlehem over their slaughtered children,
	 the full realisation of the prophetic description of
	 the scene enacted in Jeremiah's days.  Had not the
	 prophet himself heard, in the lament of the captives
	 to Babylon, the echoes of Rachel's voice in the past?
	 In neither one nor the other case had the utterences
	 of the prophets (Hosea and Jeremiah) been *predictions*:
	 they were *prophetic*.  In neither one nor the other
	 case was the 'fulfilment' literal: it was Scriptural,
	 and that in the truest Old Testament sense."

	          - 'The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah' pp. 215-216


Regards,