Almah -> Parthenos

Here's an interesting debate that doesn't spark the same obnoxious internet flame wars as the creationism "controversy", probably because it's more scholarly and a bit more unreachable to the layman, and maybe because the supporters of the naturalistic side of the debate don't have unbelievable amounts of evidence and research supporting them. But I digress.

I refer specifically to the old testament passage of Isaiah 7:14 that Matthew explicitly states was fulfilled by Christ:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you [all] a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

A recent discussion on Slashdot over an article about human parthenogenesis sparked my interest again, in particular because I knew the posters were getting their facts wrong. The posters were arguing that "the Bible as originally written"* never tries to imply that Mary was a virgin**.

Now I'm not by any means a biblical scholar, but researching this in any depth at all it's clear that the Hebrew term rendered virgin in Isaiah 7:14 is "almah", a word used 6 other times in the Old Testament to describe an unmarried woman of marriageable age, and doesn't seem to carry any connotations of virginity, though contemporary social norms would undoubtedly have expected such a woman to be a virgin.

The problem lies in the fact that the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament made in the 3rd to 2nd century BC and the translation preferred by the Jewish community at the time Jesus was alive, renders the word "parthenos" (παρθενος), which, while it also described such a woman, it also carried explicit connotations of virginity.

It gets even more interesting (albeit, to be sure, circumstantial and speculative) when you consider that the epistles and the gospels of Mark and John don't refer to the virgin birth at all, but the later gospels Matthew and Luke make quite a big to-do about it. It almost makes you wonder if maybe the latter two writers inserted the story of the Virgin Birth to demonstrate that Jesus was extra special by showing that he fulfilled old testament prophecies. Hmmmmmmmmmm........

Of course, the aforementioned elaborate deposition doesn't take into account the fact that if Isaiah never meant to imply that the Messiah would be born to a virgin, then Christ's birth still fulfills that particular prophecy. If Mary wasn't a virgin, then it's admittedly less magical because any knocked-up young lady could have fit that bill.

If she was a virgin, then suddenly we've got a case of human parthenogenesis producing male offspring which, in medical terms, has an astronomically small chance of ever occurring. Or you've got God creating a perfect sperm ex nihilo and fertilizing Mary's egg. Now we're getting into the realm of the fantastic here.

Any self-respecting skeptic will point to an excursion into the fantastic as the final nail in the coffin for all of Christianity. Never mind that while scientists pretty much have evolution nailed down, they still haven't figured out what got it started. Any currently postulated theory for abiogenesis, or the origin of life from non-life, must by definition be fantastical since it's never been observed to happen in a lab under a microscope. Now, abiogenesis could be completely commonplace during an early stage of planetary development, or it may ultimately require external intervention, though I myself am pretty wary of "God of the gaps" theology. However it happened, it MUST have happened at least once or our very existence is a paradox.

Yet these same skeptics that rely on either fantastical naturalistic theories or "we just don't know" for that igniting spark that started the process of evolution will completely wave a dismissive hand at any naturalistic explanation for an immaculate conception.

Here's the most logical version of the skeptics' line of reasoning, so far as I can determine.

1. Miraculous anecdotes are probably false. (assumed)
   
2. Isaiah says "young woman".
3. The Septuagint says "virgin".
4. Matthew and Luke say "virgin".
5. By (1), (4) must be in error.
6. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that (4) copied (3) in order to give Jesus credibility.

Now, here's the most logical version of the Christian theologian's line of reasoning that I can determine:

1. Jesus was both Human and Lord. (assumed)
2. Humans are sinful by default. (observed)
   
3. By (1) and (2), Jesus could not have come about by conventional means.
4. Isaiah says "young woman".
   
5. Matthew and Luke say "virgin".
6. (5) offers a viable solution for (3).
   
7. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that Christ was immaculately conceived, as this still fulfills (4) adequately.
   

Both of these rely pretty heavily on Foundationalism, which has its roots in the industrial revolution where Science and Logic reigned supreme. I've posted before, and I'll say it here, that issues of faith are inherently alogical, in that their truth values are not governed by the rules of logic, as opposed to illogical and logical, which means that the associated truth values can be proven beyond reasonable doubt using logic. Constructs such as Foundationalism and Coherentism are not much more than rationalist attempts to fit the alogical into the confines of the logical.

When it comes to the virgin birth, either you have Christians inventing stories about Jesus to make him more magical, or you have something quite incredible happening whose veracity has become impossible to prove due to the mists of time.

Whenever I examine the traditional skeptical and Christian arguments carefully, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: that there's always enough evidence to convince the people who want to believe in something, to believe in it. Which is why I remain agnostic.

Any skeptics or Christians or anyone else may feel free to comment here. I'd love to have some input that I haven't considered yet.

*I love this one. Layskeptics (my coin) love to act like biblical scholars and point to a popular yet erroneous and unfounded belief that "the Bible as originally written" is wholly secular, unmiraculous, nonspiritual document that was immaculately preserved RIGHT UP to the 1st century A.D. and has subsequently been continuously rewritten over the centuries to include more and more sensationalist dreck by the church to manipulate and control the masses.

**I tried to post there to correct them but I just transferred my cable internet to my new apartment, and my wireless router has port 80 open on incoming connections which Slashdot took to mean I was posting over an open HTTP proxy and therefore trying to spam them. But again, I digress.