[The following is an adaptation from the book The Cities That Built the Bible (HarperOne, 2016) by Robert R. Cargill, pages 147–153, reprinted with permission.]
One of the most famous examples of a new biblical tradition that may have been created by a (mis)translation in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) is the story of the virgin birth of Jesus by his mother, Mary. Most Christians are familiar with the story of the virgin birth—how Jesus was said in the Gospels of Matthew (1:23) and Luke (1:27, 34) to have been born to Mary, a “virgin” (Greek: παρθένος). But many scholars point out that the entire story of the virgin birth may have been the result of the Septuagint’s mistranslation of a single word in Isaiah 7. Regardless of whether that is true, we can say for certain that the citation of the Isaiah 7 prophecy in Matthew 1:23 is the result of the Septuagint’s peculiar translation of Isaiah 7:14.
Recall first that the Gospel of Mark does not mention the birth of Jesus at all, and that the Gospel of John begins not with Jesus’s physical birth, but with a beautiful philosophical introduction stating that Jesus existed as the logos (Greek: λόγος), or “word,” which Greek philosophers like the Stoics traditionally used to describe “divine reason.” Matthew and Luke desired to remedy the problem of Jesus’s absent childhood by including birth narratives that would demonstrate Jesus’s divine origin and support claims that he was the Jewish messiah and the Son of God.
Matthew 1:22–23 appeals specifically to a prophecy from Isaiah 7 to portray Jesus as a fulfillment of prophecy. However, because both Matthew and Luke tell stories of the divinely facilitated impregnation of Jesus’s mother, Mary, it is evident that both relied on the Septuagint’s version of Isaiah 7 and not on the original Hebrew version. This is because both authors not only describe Mary as the “young woman” Mary (as in the Hebrew version), but also use a word that specifically describes a woman who has not yet had sex (as in the Greek version) and who therefore must have been miraculously impregnated by God, making the birth of Jesus all the more auspicious. However, the tradition of the virgin birth is the result of not only a questionable translation on the part of the Septuagint, but also the recycling of an expired prophecy that initially involved another king of the Jews: Hezekiah.
Context is important. The context of the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14–16 is actually the threats against Jerusalem coming from the north in the late eighth century BCE. King Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father, feared Jerusalem would be lost to an alliance between King Peqah of Israel and King Resin of Aram-Damascus around 732 BCE (2 Kings 16:5). Although Jerusalem was ultimately spared during the time of Hezekiah’s father, Jerusalem again came under threat around 701 BCE during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, who had rebelled against Assyria. Not liking that Hezekiah broke the terms of their deal, the Assyrian king Sennacherib laid siege to Jerusalem. When things looked bad, Isaiah was called in to advise.[1]
This is the original context of the prophecies in Isaiah 7:14–16 and 37:30–32. They deal specifically with threats against Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE. These prophecies offer reassurance to the residents of Jerusalem that the city would survive, as it would be of little consolation for Isaiah to have prophesied, “I know that we are under threat of annihilation by our enemies and you are scared, but fear not, in 730 years it will all be made better.” Isaiah’s prophecy wasn’t about something that would happen seven centuries later; it was made as reassurance that Israel would survive the immediate threat of destruction.
First, the prophet Isaiah goes to speak to King Ahaz (7:1–6) and delivers the following words (7:14–16) on behalf of God regarding the threat from the alliance between the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and Aram-Damascus:
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman (Hebrew: עלמה, ʿalmah) is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (Hebrew: עמנו אל, ʿImmanu ʾEl). He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”
This prophecy is explicit, as it provides the unmistakable context and interpretation of the comment about the young woman. In response to the threat from the northern coalition and questions about whether YHWH will deliver the people from annihilation, Isaiah says that a young woman is pregnant with a son who will be named “Immanuel,” or “God is with us,” answering the question about whether God would be handing Judah over to Israel and Aram-Damascus or saving it. Isaiah continues by essentially saying, “A young woman is with child now, and by the time he knows good from evil (i.e., reaches adulthood), life will be good for him, and he will be eating curds and honey from our own land.”
Isaiah’s prophecy is a poetic way to communicate to the king that Judah will survive this present threat and that a child born this year will soon enjoy not just the fruits of his homeland, but an agricultural bounty, as honey requires bees, which require established orchards full of flowering plants, while curds require dairy animals, which require pasturelands. Milk and honey are symbols of long-term agricultural prosperity. The prophecy is explicit: Isaiah is claiming that Jerusalem will not be conquered and will be prosperous in about twelve years (the period between birth and adulthood for Jewish males).
And if that is not explicit enough, Isaiah explains his own prophecy in verses 16 and 17: “Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.” The prophecy explicitly mentions the two kings—King Resin of Aram-Damascus and Peqah son of Remaliah in Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom (cf. 7:4–9)—who had joined forces to assail Judah. Isaiah’s prophecy was not about some event that would take place seven centuries later; it was about the very present threat from Israel and Aram-Damascus—Isaiah says so himself!
Some scholars have even suggested that the child referred to in the prophecy is none other than the messianic king from the line of David who would deliver his people from a later threat—that’s right, Hezekiah! This is because Isaiah uses another agricultural metaphor in a prophecy to Hezekiah when the Assyrian army besieged Jerusalem around 701 BCE, essentially saying that Judah will eat the produce of its own lands because Assyria would not defeat it (37:30–32). Of course, both predictions came to pass, and Jerusalem was spared from both threats in the late eighth century BCE.
Thus, not only are Isaiah’s prophecies about Jerusalem’s immediate salvation from the immediate threats from foreign kingdoms to the north, but the child, whose name means “God is with us,” appears to be Hezekiah, the king of Judah, to whom God listened when the king prayed, delivering Jerusalem from King Sennacherib of Assyria (Isa. 37:21). However, during the first centuries BCE and CE, many Jews were living in a Jerusalem that was now occupied by oppressive Greek, and later, Roman forces. They began to look back to the books of the prophets to see if any word of consolation or deliverance could be found regarding their present situation. They reread some of their prophets’ expired prophecies, that is, prophecies that had predicted an outcome in the past that had already been fulfilled (like the deliverance of Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE), and began to reinterpret them as speaking to their present time and struggle.
This is precisely what happened to Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 7. Isaiah 7:14–16 began to be read not as something that foretold Jerusalem’s deliverance seven hundred years earlier, but as an ancient prediction that another messianic deliverer from the line of David would come again to deliver the Jews. And because at this time Jews and Christians were reading the Septuagint, a new tradition would be made possible by Isaiah 7:14–16.
Once again, the Hebrew version of Isaiah 7:14 reads: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman (Hebrew: עלמה, ʿalmah) is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (Hebrew: עמנו אל, ʿImmanu ʾEl).” However, in the Septuagint, the Hebrew word ʿalmah (עלמה), meaning “young woman” or “marriageable girl,” was translated as the Greek word parthénos (παρθένος), which means “young woman” or “maiden,” but also a woman who has not yet had sex, that is, a “virgin.”
The choice of the word parthénos in Isaiah 7:14 was peculiar to say the least. Had the Hebrew word been betulah (בתולה), meaning explicitly “virgin,”[2] then parthénos would have been the correct and expected translation. However, since the Hebrew word was ʿalmah, which is simply one synonym for “young woman of marriageable age,” parthénos is unexpected, especially since the Septuagint translates other instances of the word ʿalmah with a different synonym for “young woman” like neάnis (Gk. νεᾶνις) in Exodus 2:8 or neótēti (Gk. νεότητι) in Proverbs 30:19.[3]
However, since parthénos can mean “virgin,” and is translated as such by the Septuagint in Isaiah 7:14, Matthew interpreted the text in that fashion, understanding and implying a miraculous conception without conventional sex—an interpretation only made possible by the Septuagint’s translation. Thus, the author of Matthew used the verse from the Septuagint’s version of Isaiah 7:14 to describe Mary, whom he believed had miraculously conceived and was giving birth to “Immanuel”—“God is with us,” or the incarnation of God.
It should be noted that I am by no means the first to point this out. In fact, objections to the virgin birth appear and pointing out the fact that the prophecy actually refers to Hezekiah appear in literature relatively early on in Christian history. In his Dialogue with Trypho, the second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr records a supposed conversation with a Jew named Trypho, who objects to the Christian story of the virgin birth:
And Trypho answered, “The Scripture has not, ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,’ but, ‘Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son,’ and so on, as you quoted. But the whole prophecy refers to Hezekiah, and it is proved that it was fulfilled in him, according to the terms of this prophecy. Moreover, in the fables of those who are called Greeks, it is written that Perseus was begotten of Danae, who was a virgin; he who was called among them Zeus having descended on her in the form of a golden shower. And you ought to feel ashamed when you make assertions similar to theirs, and rather [should] say that this Jesus was born man of men. And if you prove from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, and that on account of having led a life conformed to the law, and perfect, He deserved the honor of being elected to be Christ, [it is well]; but do not venture to tell monstrous phenomena, lest you be convicted of talking foolishly like the Greeks.”[4]
Despite the fact that Justin rejects Trypho’s skepticism concerning the virgin birth, the fact that Justin’s Dialogue appears in the middle of the second century CE demonstrates that the objection to the Christian reinterpretation of Isaiah’s prophecies, which were used to support the Christian claim of Jesus’s virgin birth, was well known in early Christianity.[5]
This is but one example of how an unconventional translation made by the Septuagint led to some major changes in the way the Hebrew Scriptures were interpreted, including some doctrines that became central to both Christianity (like the virgin birth being predicted by Isaiah) and Judaism. There are literally hundreds of differences between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, including additions, omissions, theological alterations, and poor translations—all of which affected the way the Hellenistic Jews and Christians interpreted the Bible. This one in particular demonstrates how texts, translations, and traditions are important as we enter the holiday season.
[1] Cf. Isa. 36–39 and its parallel in 2 Kings 18–20.
[2] The definition of betulah as “one who has not yet had sex” is evident in the story of the punishment for men caught raping a woman in Deut. 22:28–29, as the woman is described as a “virgin” (בתולה, betulah) prior to the rape, but as a “young woman” (נערה, naʿarah) after the rape. Gen. 24:16 even defines betulah specifically as one who has not had sex: “The girl (נער, naʿar) was very fair to look upon, a virgin (בתולה, betulah), whom no man had known (ידע, yadaʿ ).”
[3] Gen. 24:43 is the only other time, out of nine total instances, that ʿalmah is translated in the LXX using the term parthénos.
[4] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 67.
[5] It is worth noting that beginning in Dialogue with Trypho 71, the “proof ” that Justin Martyr offers Trypho that his apology of Jesus’s virgin birth is correct lies in his claim that the Septuagint is a perfect translation of the Hebrew text! He claims the differences between the two versions are the result of Jews removing portions of the text from the Hebrew version, and not because the Septuagint may be flawed in portions of its translation. Of course, Justin Martyr bases his reasoning on the assumption that the story of the Septuagint’s perfect translation as told in the apocryphal Letter of Aristeas (written around 125 BCE) is true. Still, the fact that Justin Martyr is pitting the text of the Septuagint against the Hebrew once again demonstrates that there were acknowledged differences between the two versions, and that many of the Christian claims about Jesus were only made possible by quoting the Septuagint’s translation.