“God lets his children tell his story.”
Peter Enns, biblical scholar
Today, people tend to believe things are true when the history, facts and science stack up.
As people of faith, Christians want to show that things about God are true, and sometimes they do this by showing how the facts stack up.
Now, this is helpful – up to a point. There is reliable historical information, outside of the Bible, to show that Jesus lived and died. There is science behind the study of ancient texts and how the earliest New Testament manuscripts date from very close to Jesus’s time.
But, trying to prove God’s existence or the factual accuracy Bible by using science has its limits. For one thing, history cannot be reproduced in a lab experiment. For another, the stories of the Bible aren’t scientific in that way.
Because of this, I don’t get too hung up on the historical accuracy of the Bible. People tell stories in different ways and they (rightly) shape their stories to speak to their current time. Every one of us tells stories imperfectly, but that doesn’t mean the stories aren’t true, even if they have minor factual errors.
Today, those who believe Jesus was born won’t give the same reasons as the gospel writers did. And that’s OK. Our reasons for believing will probably change throughout our lives. That’s OK too.
Sometimes Christians mistakenly try to tell the whole truth, the complete picture, the irrefutable case. But what matters is that we each find our own ways of describing why we believe what we believe. If we do that, the truth will point to itself.
For these reasons, it’s important to be authentic about who we are and how we understand our relationship with God. This may involve contradictions and unanswered questions. But that’s OK. It’s OK for you to tell God’s story, in your words, using your choice of images, borrowing from your experiences.
Because it’s not that our stories are a substitute for the gospel accounts. Rather, our stories will give credibility to the gospel accounts in this day and this age.
A short look at the Bible
Today’s passage is Isaiah 7:13-17.
Confused? Let’s unpack this.
It was a few hundred years after David’s reign. The kingdom had split in two. The northern kingdom was called Israel or Ephraim. (Which is confusing, because “Israel” is also often used to describe both kingdoms together.) The southern kingdom was called Judah, though it included the territory of several tribes (not just Judah).
The northern king was attacking the southern king, Ahaz. But Isaiah came to Ahaz with a message saying that the northern king wouldn’t win. God was willing to give Ahaz a sign that this prophecy was true, but Ahaz refused to ask for one.
Then Isaiah was annoyed and told Ahaz what the sign would be anyway: a child would be born.
This conversation took place where people washed clothes (7:3); probably many women were present at the scene. So, Isaiah may have been gesturing towards one of the women present. He could even have been speaking to her when he said she would name the child Immanuel. (Though goodness knows how she felt about this conversation!)
But was she a virgin? And was Isaiah predicting that she would have some kind of miraculous conception? To answer this we need to look at translations.
The Hebrew Bible was written in the Hebrew language with parts of it in Aramaic. Hebrew had various words to describe women. The word translated as ‘virgin’ here, was ‘almah’. It just meant ‘young woman.’ It was used to refer to unmarried young women, and also women who hadn’t ever had sexual relations, but it doesn’t mean ‘virgin woman.’ The Hebrew word for a woman who’d never had sexual relations was ‘bethulah’, and that word is not used here.
So, she could have been unmarried and/or a virgin at the time this prophecy was made. But it’s unlikely that Isaiah was suggesting her pregnancy would be miraculously fatherless. In that respect, the child was perfectly normal.
However, these verses are well-known in the church because they’re quoted in the New Testament. And this is where the plot thickens.
You see, there was also an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. In these verses, even though the Hebrew refers to a ‘young woman,’ the Septuagint describes her very specifically as a virgin. The Septuagint uses Greek equivalent of ‘bethulah,’ which is ‘parthenos’.
What’s more, the New Testament was written in Greek and when the New Testament authors quoted the Old Testament, they didn’t translate the Hebrew, they quoted the Septuagint translation. So when the gospel writer Matthew quoted this verse from Isaiah, he was very specifically referring to a virgin. It would seem that this was intentional.
We’ll talk some more about that tomorrow.
Meanwhile, if you want, read this passage again in the New English Translation and check out the footnotes, they’re fascinating:
Invitation to pray
We each pray in our own way; some of the best advice I had was ‘Pray as you can, not as you can’t.’ So I offer an invitation to pray – not an instruction.
Have you felt pressured to say certain things about God, or give certain explanations, even though you’re not sure they’re true or helpful to people? Tell God that you don’t want to misrepresent him, but that you also need to honest about the things you don’t understand. Ask him to release you from any undue pressures to defend his corner – whether to yourself or to other people.
All posts in the series can be found via the tag Xmas2020.