 So, the topic we're discussing today is the Christian idea that the Messiah had to be born to a virgin. Jerry Siegel, who's been close with Jews for Judaism for many years, wrote probably a definitive book on this topic called The Myth of the Virgin Birth, The Misconception of Jesus, and he points out that really it should be called the Virginal Conception of Jesus, not the Virgin Birth of Jesus. In the event it's a topic which itself deserves an entire day of discussion, I'll just make a few introductory points before we head into the second part for today. First of all, you should know that there isn't really smooth sailing for this idea of the Virgin Birth story. The earliest Jewish Christians in all probability did not really believe that Jesus was born to a virgin. We know that in the second century the heirs to the Jewish followers of Jesus, it was originally called the Jerusalem Council of Jerusalem Church, this was Peter and James and the actual disciples of Jesus. In the next generation the Jewish followers of Jesus were called the Ebonites, and we know from the church fathers who attacked the Ebonites as heretics that the Ebonites did not believe that Jesus was born to a virgin. Also we know interestingly that the very earliest Christian sources don't mention the Virgin Birth of Jesus. So in the Christian Bible the first books that appear are not the earliest books. The first documents are the four Gospels that appear, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, written approximately between the years 70 and 110, which is quite late, but the earliest Christian sources are the letters of Paul that are being written approximately in the 50s, and Paul never mentions the Virgin Birth of Jesus. He's writing it again decades before the Gospels, and Paul actually seems to emphasize that Jesus was born in the normal manner, normal physical birth. Also the very first of the Gospels, Mark, which is written approximately in the year 70, Mark makes no mention of the Virgin Birth. It's only found in Matthew, which is the passage that we've studied, and it's also found in Luke, but John, the fourth of the Gospels, also doesn't mention the Virgin Birth. What's interesting is that even these two stories that have the Virgin Birth, Matthew and Luke, there seem to be very serious differences between these two sources. If you study the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, you'll find tremendous discrepancies. For example, where were Joseph and Mary from? What was the hometown of Joseph and Mary? In one source, it seems to be that they were from Bethlehem, but the other Gospels seems to say no, they were from Nazareth. Also, what happens immediately after the birth of Jesus? In Matthew, we're told that as soon as Jesus is born, they immediately have to run away and escape to Egypt, because of the great danger to Jesus. In Luke, they seem to be unaware of this danger, and they go right to Jerusalem. The two sources of the Virgin Birth story themselves, Matthew and Luke, again, are rife with difficulties. Interestingly, Jesus himself never mentions the Virgin Birth as a sign. There are stories in the Gospels where allegedly the Jewish people come to Jesus and they say, give us a sign, we want a sign. He says in one source, no sign will be given to this evil and adulterous generation. Now, he could have said, you want a sign? Isaiah already predicted my Virgin Birth. He could have said that. Or in another passage, he says a little bit differently, no sign shall be given to this evil and adulterous generation. He says, except for the sign of Jonah, and he says just like Jonah was buried in the earth for three days and three nights, he says to himself, I will also be buried for three days and three nights and then rise. But again, if there was such a thing as the Virgin Birth, he could have said to his people inquiring, there was already a sign given to you. It's interesting that when you read the New Testament, it seems at least from the stories that we read, his family never seems to have been aware that he had a special birth. Again, if we read Matthew and Luke seriously, so again, Mary and Joseph are told by an angel, this kid is not just another Chaim Yonkel. This is God, that he was conceived through God's Holy Spirit. So when you read the rest of the Christian Bible, it seems that his family is clueless about the fact that he's a special kid. So when the Gospels, for example, they tell that when Jesus was 12 years old, they went to Jerusalem on a family outing and, you know, like home alone, so Jesus gets lost and they can't find him. And then they find him in the temple and he's learning with the holy rabbis and they say, hey, where have you been? We've been going crazy looking for you. He says, don't you know that I have been going about my father's business? And it says they had no idea what he was talking about. And every time there's any opportunity for the New Testament to show that his family should have known that he was different, he was special. He was a child that was actually fathered by God. It drops the ball. So we have numerous stories where the Christian Bible says his own brothers, his own family thought he was nuts. They didn't understand what he was saying. They don't seem to relate to him as if he was a little baby born to God, by God and God himself. Again, again, if you're reading it with a sensitive eye, you'd imagine that Mary and Joseph and his brothers, it would be a very, very great TV show. Imagine you're growing up in the house with God. And there's no indication that they relate it to him as special or different in any way, shape, or manner whatsoever. Another problem with this idea of the virgin birth is that it causes huge difficulties for the Yechos of Jesus, for his genealogical claims. Matthew and Luke, both of them, is interesting on the two gospels that try to trace the genealogy of Jesus going all the way back to David. So it's important, we know, we saw before that if the Messiah is anything, he has to be a descendant of David and Solomon. So it's important for Matthew in chapter one and Luke chapter three to trace the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to David. And what they do is exactly that. They show how David, and it goes on from David all the way down, they show to Joseph, who's the husband of Mary, and then Jesus, but then they shoot themselves in the foot by saying, but Joseph is not the father of Jesus. So the virgin birth presents for them tremendous difficulties. What we're going to discuss now is the second prong of this Christian proof texting dilemma. The first again we saw was the issue of context. The second is going to be the issue of translation. On page nine, should be on the top of page nine at this point. Matthew chapter one, verse 23, again quoting Isaiah seven, 14, Matthew says, behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. And the truth is, we'll be seeing in a few moments that the word in contention here is the Hebrew word Ha Alma, which Matthew renders as a virgin, at least in some translation. Sometimes the New Testament translator is properly put in the definite article, and they'll say the virgin, but at least in many older translations they have just without the definite article. And the Hebrew is very clear it's the definite article. We saw that it was a woman who both Isaiah and the king knew. So the Jewish translation would be something like behold, the young woman is with child and will bear a son and will call his name Emmanuel. In the Jewish understanding, the Hebrew understanding, if you go to Israel, I once by the way got a packet of gum from Israel. The gum was called Alma. I don't believe they would have named the gum virgin gum. It was a young girl, little girl on it. So the Hebrew here says simply Alma, which again any Jewish kid, any Hebrew speaking kid would know it means a young girl. But the Christian insistence is that she's a virgin. Now one thing I'll just say to get this out of the way just in passing, I think that I should say this. Even if we were to translate this word as virgin, don't get lost in my analysis here. It's not that complicated. But even if Isaiah did say virgin, none of us are surprised that every day of the year, young virgins conceive, they become pregnant, they have children, but they're not virgins anymore after that. I mean that even if you wanted to translate Isaiah as speaking about a virgin, there's nothing in the passage that tells you she would remain a virgin after conceiving and having a child. So again, we're going to be showing today that the Christian reading of Isaiah is entirely based upon a mistranslation. But on some level, the discussion is really academic because even if we insist on mistranslating Isaiah, even if we insist on mistranslating it, it wouldn't bear out the Christian idea that Mary somehow remained a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus. By the way, another thing I'll just say for clarification is that many people confuse the doctrine of the virgin birth with the concept of the immaculate conception. People often use those words interchangeably. The idea of the virgin birth is simply that Mary remained a virgin after conceiving. The immaculate conception is different. It doesn't deal with the birth of Jesus in the Catholic Church, only in Catholicism because they were concerned about the problem of Jesus inheriting original sin, the stain of original sin from his parents. So they wanted to make sure he had no connection either to his father or to his mother. So again, normally by eliminating Joseph from the production of Jesus, so Joseph is not a problem. They get rid of Joseph and it's the Holy Spirit that's the father. But why didn't Jesus contract original sin from his mother Mary? So the Catholic Church proposed that Mary herself had an immaculate conception meaning. She was born clean of the stain of original sin. Mary herself somehow miraculously never inherited original sin. How? But that's what they claim. Okay, but don't confuse immaculate conception with virgin birth. Now on to our show. So the real issue here is the meaning of the Hebrew word Ha Alma. Again, that's with a definite article. The Alma and the word itself is Alma. Alma is the question, the word in question. So the first thing we should know is that the word Alma is the feminine form of the Hebrew noun LM. We know that in Hebrew nouns have masculine and feminine forms. So for example, a Talmeed is a boy student and a Talmeedah is a girl student and a Yeleed is a little boy and a Yalda is a little girl. That's how the Hebrew grammar works. Their masculine feminine forms, other languages also have masculine and feminine nouns. So the Hebrew noun Alma, whatever it means, is simply the feminine, the female form of LM. Now, if we go to the Jewish Bible, we'll find the word LM is used. And interestingly, in all of the Christian translations, they don't define LM as a young, virginal man. LM in all of the Christian translations is simply a young man. So in 1 Samuel 17, verse 56, the king in this story who was Sha'ul, king Saul, said to Avner, you inquire about whose son this youth is, this young lad is. He was asking about David. So Sha'ul wanted to know whose son is this young boy. Again, that's how every Christian Bible translates it. A young youth, a young boy. It's not a young virgin here, a young virginal boy. 1 Samuel chapter 20, verse 22. David speaking to his friend Yehonatan. David says, but if I say to the youth, look, the arrows are beyond you, then go for the Lord has sent you away, the sign of his shooting the arrows. But again, the word there is LM. And LM again translated simply as a young person, a young boy. The word LM deals specifically with youthfulness. It has no interest in someone's sexual experience. That's not the topic of the word LM or Alma. It simply deals with someone's youthfulness, not their sexual experience. Isaiah chapter 54, verse 4. Fear not, again, we're studying the book of Isaiah here. Let's see how Isaiah uses the word. Fear not for you will not be put to shame and do not feel humiliated for you will not be disgraced, but you will forget the shame of your youth. Again, all Christian translations have the word here LM as youthfulness, not virginity. And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. Now, what Christians claim in response, you have to listen very carefully, is they'll say, well, it's possible that the word Alma means a young woman. They'll say it's possible, that's what it means, but they'll say they state this unequivocally. They say every time the word Alma is used in the Jewish Bible, it's referring to a young woman who is a virgin. That's their claim. So they say the word might mean young woman, but they're saying that especially in times of the Bible young women were often virgins. I'm not sure that's true, but that's their claim. So let's look now at the places every place the word is used in the Hebrew Bible. Don't worry, we're not going to be here for three years, just two. Genesis chapter 24 verse 43 is the first time Alma appears in the Bible. Eliezer, who is a servant of Abraham, is standing by the, he's talking about how he went about looking to find a bride for Isaac. He's now telling this to Rebekah's family. And he says to Rebekah's family that I was standing here by the spring of water and I said, let the young woman Alma, who comes out to drink to whom I will say, please give me a little water from your jar to drink. So here again, all Christian comment, all Christian translations translate this as a young woman. Now again, it's possible that when he was referring, he didn't know at this point who was going to show up. And we know the woman who showed up and fit the shoes here was Rebekah. And the Torah actually specifically tells us that Rebekah was a virgin. If you go back a few verses to 24 16, you don't have it on your sheets here. But in Genesis 24 16, it says that Rebekah was a virgin, a betulah. It uses the Hebrew word for virgin. But when Eliezer is telling the story to her family, maybe it was not delicate for him to say, and I was by the well. And I said, you know what, whichever version comes by, maybe he didn't want to tell that to her family. But what's clear is he uses the word Alma, which means a young woman. Next page, page 10, an Exodus chapter two, verse eight. It says that when Pharaoh's daughter said to her, meaning the sister of Moses, because the sister of Moses offered to find a nursemaid for the young boy. So Pharaoh's daughter said to her Miriam, yes, go and fetch a nursemaid for the child right from the Hebrews. So the girl went and called the child's mother. Again, the girl here referring to Miriam Alma, the girl. Now, was Miriam a virgin in this story? We don't know. The chances are if you had to guess, you would say maybe she was. Good chance that she was. We have no indication that she was married at this point. And it could be that she was a virgin. The problem is that her virginity is not relevant here. The story in this passage is not interested in telling you about her sexual experience. All we're interested in knowing is that this girl went to fetch a woman to nurse the baby. So the fact of her virginity is irrelevant. Third, listen carefully, even if Miriam were a virgin, even if she were, it would not change the meaning of the word Alma. Let's say, for example, you could argue that, you know what, people like Miriam back then were probably not blonde, right? She was Semitic. She was probably dark skinned or brunette. So you could say about her, well, as a young girl, she might have been a virgin and she might have been a brunette as well. But it wouldn't change the translation of Alma to a young, virginal brunette. Again, the fact that there are characteristics of a young girl doesn't change the translation of the word Alma into those characteristics. Alma simply means a young girl. The fact that she may have been a virgin, Mazeltov. But that won't change the translation of Alma into a young, virginal girl. And the fact that she might have been short or tall won't change the translation into a tall or short girl either. In Psalm 80, Psalm 68, verse 26, the singers in front, the musicians were in the back between them, girls playing tambourines. Again, from the context, we have no way of knowing who these girls were. Were they married? Were they single? They may have been describing here, probably describing, if you read the Psalm in context, the Jewish men coming back from a victorious battle and the women coming out to play tambourines to celebrate. Probably the group of women that were playing tambourines and celebrating were a mixed group of men, of women that were younger, older, and some of them may have been married, some not married, but Psalm 68 doesn't tell you whether these almas, these young girls, were virgins or not. Now Proverbs 30 would be the coup de gras. This would be a passage where Alma clearly does not mean virgin. Solomon writes the following, Proverbs 30. He writes, three things are too wonderful for me. And four, I do not understand. He gives examples. The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with an Alma, the way of a man with an Alma. What are these things have in common? So what they have in common is that each of these things, when they take place, they leave no trace that they happened. So for example, when an eagle flies by in the sky, after 30 seconds, you can look up in the sky and there's no indication that an eagle flew there. And the way of a snake on a rock, a snake's on the rock and then it slithers away. And 30 seconds later, you can't tell that there's been a snake on that rock. The way of a ship on the high seas, so a ship passes by. And after a few minutes, when the waves died down, there's no sign that there was a ship going through the high sea. And the way of a man with an Alma. So if Alma means virgin here, it's clear that there would be a trace. He would most certainly leave a symbol, a trace behind, if there was a man who had relations with this Alma. So it's clear here that Alma, and by the way, the next verse speaks about this person being an adulterous woman. It's very clear that this is not a young girl who happens to be a virgin. In the song of Solomon, Sheer Hashirim chapter one verse three and chapter six verse eight, it makes reference to maidens, your anointing oils are fragrant in verse three, your name is perfume poured out, therefore the maidens love you. It's not clear here whether these are virgins or not. And song of Solomon, Sheer Hashirim chapter six verse eight, there are 60 queens and eight concubines and maidens without number. Here you can even argue that in all likelihood if it's describing the king's harem, these young maidens are certainly not virgins. But here you just had all of the uses of the word Alma in the Bible. And it's either not clear whether it's speaking about a virgin or not relevant or in one of the verses certainly not a virgin. So when Isaiah speaks about this Alma that's going to have a child, there's no reason in the world to translate it as a virgin. Secondly, there is a specific Hebrew word for a virgin, meaning if Isaiah wanted to tell us that this woman would be a virgin, he would have used the Hebrew word bitulah. As a matter of fact, Isaiah uses this word five times in the book of Isaiah. He knew the word wasn't that was not familiar to him. We know that in the Bible whenever the context is focusing on not just youthfulness, but when the context is focusing on the sexual history of a person, their experience, it uses the word bitulah. So for example, Leviticus 2114, when it tells us that the high priest has to marry a virgin, a widow or divorced woman or one who is profaned by heart, these he may not take, but rather he is to marry a virgin of his own people. It's not saying he's going to marry a young girl. Specifically, it's dealing there with someone who's a virgin or in Deuteronomy chapter 20 22 verses 13 to 17. It's speaking about a person who marries a young girl. He assumes that she is a virgin. And after he spends his first night with her in the morning, he sees Oh, she wasn't a virgin. And he's very upset. Now, obviously, when you read this passage, it's not speaking about someone who goes to bed with his wife for the first time and realizes in the morning, she's not a young girl. Obviously, that's not what it's talking about. It's realized he's realizing she wasn't a virgin. So if any man takes a wife and goes to her and then turns against her and charges her with shameful deeds, and publicly defames her and says I took this woman. But when I came near to her, I did not find her a virgin. Then the girl's father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. The girl's father is going to bring the bedsheets. The girl's father shall say to the elders I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but it turned he turned against her. And behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds saying I did not find your daughter to be a virgin. But this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity and they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city clearly a passage that's focusing on not her youthfulness, but her sexual experience. Judges chapter 21 verse 12. They found among the inhabitants of Yabes Gilad 400 virgin girls who had never had relations with a man. Again, every time the Bible wants to make it clear that it's speaking about a virgin that uses the Hebrew word betulah. Christians have one major objection to this. They'll say, wait a second. How could you say that? Because if you look at the book of Joel, the prophet Joel in chapter one verse eight, he says lament like a betulah girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. If this is a woman that's mourning for her husband, she's obviously not a virgin and yet the Bible calls her a betulah. So the answer to this is very simple. We learned before that in the times of the Bible, they had a two stage marriage. A woman got married and then for a year did not live with her husband and Joel here is describing the very tragic situation of a woman who's married but has not begun living with her husband yet and he dies in the interim period. What an incredible tragedy for a woman to get married and never to be with her husband. That's what Joel is speaking about. Now we could spend many, many more minutes and even hours going through more and more proof that the word Alma does not mean virgin but to show you how clear it is, it's not just clear to Jews, it's become clear to Christians as well. So the Oxford companion to the Bible, again a Christian document, says the Hebrew word used Alma means simply young woman without any implication of virginity and that's a Christian scholar scholarly book or in a book called The Apostles Creed by Stuart Briscoe. He says it is perfectly true that Alma does not necessarily mean a virgin. On page 12 what I put together for you is a list of modern Christian Bible translations that correctly render Alma in Isaiah chapter seven as young woman. Now the first one of these was the Revised Standard Version back in 1952 when the Revised Standard Version translated Isaiah 714 as behold the young woman will conceive and bear a child. Christian fundamentalists burnt copies of the Revised Standard Version on their church lawns. It was scandalous that such a translation came out but since 1952 there have been many, many Christian translations who have correctly amended and corrected their translations of Isaiah to speak not about a virgin giving birth but about a young woman giving birth and the most recent and the most amazing one was the translation by the Catholic Church, the official Catholic translation of the Bible, the New American Bible Revised Edition in 2011. This made international news when they finally changed Isaiah chapter seven verse 14 to be speaking about a young girl and not about a virgin. Now what's interesting is that there are many Christian translations of the Bible that use the word virgin for Alma in Isaiah but in their footnotes they say also should be a young girl and in the new century version I reprinted their footnote for you their footnote says the Hebrew word means young woman amazing so even though the Hebrew means young woman they translated as virgin in the in the new century version. By the way when I was in Israel last time I picked up a Hebrew New Testament and what's fascinating is I mean I was curious how are they going to translate or what are they going to have from Matthew chapter one? So in Matthew chapter one they tell the story of Joseph and Mary and it says that she gave birth to a child and she was they were going to call the child Jesus because he'll save his children from their sins and then it says all this took place to fulfill that which God spoke to the prophet and then guess what they quote here in this Hebrew baritah hadasha New Testament they quote exactly from Isaiah chapter seven he named her Alma Harah. Behold the young girl is pregnant she will let it bend she will give birth to a son the carus shemo immanuel and she will call as in the manual I don't know I would love to find out when unfortunately Jews convert in Israel to Christianity and they read this how do they ever know that Jesus was born to a virgin because all they're seeing here is the story of the birth of Jesus and the birth that's quoted doesn't say virgin it just says the Hebrew word Alma so this will my next trip to Israel I will check into this page 13 what is the Christian response to what we've discussed so far so the basic Christian response is that you should not accuse us of mistranslating the Jewish Bible the normative Christian response to what we've discussed so far is that there was a translation of the Jewish Bible that was done way before Christianity came into existence about 200 years before the birth of Jesus Christians say the Jewish sages translated the Bible into Greek it's called the Greek Septuagint translation and they say that their rabbis rendered the word Alma as Parthenos which means a virgin now don't read the page now it's in front of you before we go there I need to give you some other background information now I know that when I told you that you're going to read it but I can't help it but give you that warning so again the claim is made that when the New Testament translates Alma as virgin it wasn't any particular religious crime because the rabbis had already made that translation when they rendered Isaiah into Greek hundreds of years before Christianity came into existence so there are two basic problems with this claim problem number one is that the rabbis did not translate Isaiah into Greek we know from many sources that the rabbis were asked to translate the five books of Moses into Greek we know by the way that the rabbis were not happy about doing this they were basically compelled and the rabbis actually instituted a fast day to commemorate this catastrophe for the Jewish people they did not see it as a good thing for the Jews to have had the Bible translated into Greek but we know from the Talmud the Talmud in tractate Megillah tells the story of how these rabbis went into different rooms and they translated the five books of Moses and they each made 15 editorial adjustments to the Hebrew text in their Greek translation and miraculously each of these 15 editorial adjustments were in agreement with each other but they only translated the five books of Moses there's an ancient non-Jewish letter called the letter of Aristias the letter of Aristias also speaks about the story of the rabbis being asked to translate the five books of Moses Josephus the Jewish historian also speaks about the rabbis translating just the five books of Moses and the anchor Bible dictionary a Christian work today also tells us that the Bible that was translated by the rabbis into Greek was just the five books of Moses so where did the rest of the Bible come from in the Greek edition so the truth of the matter is we do not know who rendered the rest of the Hebrew Bible into Greek but we do know is that whoever it was was certainly not necessarily qualified and we know that there was very very poor editing and quality control over these translations meaning that whoever translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek were not the sages of the of the Jewish people whoever they were they were not necessarily qualified and who were the people that preserved these writings again we know that the Jewish people never valued this Greek translation of the Jewish Bible so they were not in our hands we did not maintain any quality control over them we did not edit them we did not preserve them we did not copy them so we know that in the early years of the Christian era there were many versions of the Septuagint translation and we know that they were very heavily edited by the church so for example i have an english translation of the Septuagint version done by Christians and the Christian editors in their introduction you don't have this in front of you but the Christian editors to this translation of Septuagint write the following they write that the variety of the translators meaning the variety of the people translating the Bible is proven by the unequal character character of the version meaning there's different quality of the translation different parts of the Bible some books of the Bible show that the translators were by no means competent to the task meaning some of the Bible translations in the Greek are horrible while others on the contrary exhibit on the whole a careful translation some of them are quite well done now listen to what he says the five books of moses is considered to be the part of the Bible best executed while the book of Isaiah seems to be the very worst so what Christians are claiming is that the Greek translation of Isaiah is what Matthew based himself upon that when Matthew translated the Hebrew or the Bible of Isaiah's prediction Matthew was using the Greek translation and we would ask the following simple questions number one why base such an important theological concept on a translation of the Bible the Bible itself was available meaning why go to a translation who says it's a good translation why is the translation better than the original and we know that Isaiah was very poorly done so admits even the Christian scholars so again the first problem with the Christian claim or counterclaim to say that there is a basis for Matthew using this Greek translation because the sages did it is not true the sages did not render Isaiah into Greek the second problem is what does the actual word mean here in the Greek again in the Septuagint the word used is Parthenas but the leading scholar of biblical Greek Spiros Zohiates writes in his commentary to the Bible about this word Parthenas he says concerning the meaning of Parthenas its etymology is uncertain at first in classical Greek he writes the word was used in the general sense of girl or young woman wow that's exactly what we learned Alma means a girl or young woman he writes long before the Septuagint was translated around the second century BCE this Greek word had no specific connotation of virginity Parthenas was a young female individual who was in the process of maturing she may or may not have been an actual virgin Parthenas was used of both virgin and non-virgin in the Septuagint and in earlier classical Greek he writes Isaiah 714 was discussing a mature young woman and was not focusing on her sexual experience in the context the translators of the Septuagint found nothing mysterious in this passage and the Parthenas was generally used for either girl or young woman in if it should be if if one maintains now this is a point I made before by the way if one maintains that Parthenas Alma only means virgin he would have a definite problem because beside the fulfillment in Matthew 1 23 of a virgin giving birth he would have to take the position that there was another virgin birth in the time of king Achaz and again this spiro so Hayatis is a Christian scholar furthermore we have in our press in we have in our hands today the Septuagint translation of Genesis and in the 34th chapter of Genesis it tells the tragic story of the rape of Dina the daughter of Jacob we're told in verse one now Dina the daughter of Leia went out to look over the daughters of the land and in verse two what happens to her the son of Hamor the the ruler of the land saw her and he took her and he laid with her and violated her she is clearly not a virgin but in verse three the bible tells us that that this became deeply attached to Dina the daughter of Jacob and he loved the maiden and appealed to the maidens emotions and the greek word there is Parthenas so it's quite clear that Parthenas here at least is not referring to a virgin by the way one more point to bear in mind we know for certainty that the Septuagint translation that we have today is not the one that was done by the rabbis of the five books of Moses how do we know this because the Talmud tells us the 15 editorial changes that the sages made and if you check a greek translation today of the five books of Moses they only have two of those 15 editorial twists so 13 of them don't appear as the rabbis originally made it page 14 this is the second response the second counterclaim that missionaries make to our presentation today they say wait one second rabbis go back you're telling us that in chapter seven of Isaiah that Matthew is quoting that it's not a virgin birth you're telling us that we should understand that somehow it was just a regular birth a normal birth nothing special so they ask then how would it be a sign they say that the prophet is telling Achas the Lord himself will give you a sign and they're saying if it's a normal birth not a supernatural birth what kind of sign would that be so this is obviously based on a total misunderstanding of what the word sign means in Hebrew the Hebrew word for sign that Isaiah use is oat the word oat by the way the word oat appears in the Hebrew word lear oat lear oat means to see the one thing that is absolutely critical for any sign is that a sign has to be visible you have to be able to see a sign otherwise it's not a sign clearly the virgin birth of a person would not be a sign when Mary was rocking or rolling Jesus in his crib because it is baby carriage when he was a kid in Nazareth or Bethlehem wherever he was living and he she was rolling him down the street no one would be able to walk over to him and say oh what a lovely little baby and of course I can tell he must be the Messiah because I can see he's born of a virgin I mean that no one was able to look at Mary and tell whether she was a virgin or not she wasn't wearing on her clothing a board certified gynecological examination sticker saying that we examined her she's a virgin so it's absurd to say that a virgin birth would be a sign because it's not visible when Joseph himself came home and he saw that she was pregnant he didn't automatically assume that all broke a shem she's the girl that is a spoke about so many years ago he assumed that she was cheating on him because again a virgin birth is not visible so the idea of a sign is a sign has to be visible but a sign does not have to be supernatural now as far as i'm aware i did a little bit of research on this the only signs in the bible that were both visible and supernatural are when the bible speaks about the signs that were done in Egypt so when moses for example in this week's parasha is sent to Egypt with these signs of turning the rod into a snake or putting his hand into his garment and it coming out leprous and then going back to being a normal hand or the water turning into blood or all the other signs that took place in Egypt there the bible does refer to them as signs because they were both supernatural and they were visible but on the page here i show you that most of the signs in the bible while being visible are not supernatural so for example genesis one tells us that the sun and the moon of stars serve as signs that determine the days and the seasons of the year it's not supernatural this is nature and it's best or in genesis four god gave cana sign he put a letter on his forehead that's certainly not supernatural but it's very visible and when people see that sign they won't kill cane or in genesis nine god puts a rainbow in the sky as a sign certainly visible definitely not supernatural genesis 17 the circumcision well it's not visible to everybody but to some people it's it's visible and it's certainly not supernatural when moses asked god a very interesting passage moses says to god god how will i know or how will i be able to convince the people that you sent me so god says to moses the sign will be when you bring them to this mountain in the future and you worship me on this mountain so again god is saying that the bringing of the jewish people to mount sinai will be the sign that moses was sent by god but that wasn't supernatural it was just visible the phylacteries it's filling on our arms are called a sign when the jews put blood on the doorpost in egypt as a sign for that god is protecting them that was not supernatural but certainly visible again i'm not going to go through the whole list with you but in the bible normally a sign is not supernatural but it's always visible so to sum up at this point what we've seen is that the christian assertion that isaia the prophet predicted that the messiah would be born to a virgin fails on two primary grounds number one isaia's passage is not a messianic prophecy that's telling us anything special about the person of the messiah isaia's prophecy is limited to the political crisis that was facing the kingdom of juda 700 bce and secondly the christian assertion is entirely based upon a mistranslation of isaia's prophecy now i want to share with you with concluding my remarks two passages that i found in christian sources that when i saw each of these i danced for a long time these are quite amazing to me walter riggins wrote a book it was basically a missionary training book called yoshua ben david and he writes the following and i found this to be an incredibly honest uh admission by a christian missionary he says let me repeat this point he says there is no self-evident blueprint in the hebrew bible which can be said to unambiguously point to jesus that's a big admission that he's making he says it's only after one has come to believe that jesus is the messiah and more specifically the kind of messiah that he is does it all begin to make sense and hang together what he's basically saying is that if you engage in some very creative circular reasoning and you read backwards into the bible with jesus glasses then you may be able to find some passages that sound like jesus because you've already started your exploration of the bible by believing in jesus and now you've gone back and you've found things that sound like jesus but he's saying if you read the bible the other way around not from revelation back to genesis but reading the bible from genesis straight he's saying there's nothing there that's self-evident or clear about jesus that is one big admission and then michael weidelnik who today is a professor at the moody bible college training jew training christians how to missionize jews he teaches in the jewish studies department at the christian seminary in chicago the moody bible college and he himself is from a jewish background weidelnik writes in an article that i found in the messianic times he says there is bad news for the messianic movement some scholarly followers of yashua now what's interesting here is that he's not referring to a christians often dismissed as quote unquote liberal bible scholars who are basically not real believers there are plenty of people who are from a christian background and they may either be ultra-liberal christians or even secular christians that have commentaries that often debunk christian beliefs but here weidelnik is speaking about real believers in yashua he wouldn't call them this if they were not real believers he says some scholarly followers of yashua are taking messiah out of the hebrew bible he writes i was shocked when i first encountered it but i'm convinced that an interpretive approach that negates messianic prophecy is becoming prevalent among many scholars who believe in yashua these believers adopt views that find it hard to see messiah in the hebrew bible i would say that if you simply apply the approach that we took today which is to examine both the context of a passage and the literal simple meaning of its words it will not be hard to see why jesus is not in the jewish bible it is only by ignoring the actual translation and ignoring the actual context that you're able to shoehorn jesus back into the jewish bible but i think that weidelnik sees here harkens all the way back to andrew of st vincent this monk who lived so many years ago who was able to somehow miraculously in his very ignorant time the time of the crusades he was able to thank god through the help of knowing people probably like the rajabam one of the grandchildren of rashi to be able to approach the bible honestly and without jesus glasses on and trying to understand what does the prophet really speak about and for him to make the incredible admission and realization back in the 12th century the isaia chapter seven was not a prophecy forecasting the idea that jesus would be born to a virgin but the isaia chapter seven as we saw today is simply a wonderful reassurance by god through the prophet isaia to the kingdom of juda and his wicked king that they were not going to be imminently destroyed but they're two great enemies they had both the northern kingdom of israel led by peckach and the syrian kingdom led led by ritzine these two great powers would be destroyed which we saw was fulfilled shortly thereafter with the birth of this child and i i think that for all of us as jews we should feel that if we were able to have a clear knowledge of our own scriptures if we as jews were able we just studied a few verses in isaia today but we were called for so many years the people of the book and that wasn't the new york times and it wasn't any other book the people of the book for us was always the bible so for us if we were able to gain this kind of clear understanding of what our bible actually teaches none of us would ever god forbid be prey to the lures of missionaries unless again as ira said last night our emotions took us over but if we were thinking straight and reading for ourselves and really trying to understand what does the scripture say it would most certainly not point us to conversion to christianity