I have to confess that Dr. Spong’s article this week (a copy below) bothered me mightily. It bothered me because, although I agree with the basic thrust of it (and ‘Progressive Christianity’ in general), in my opinion it very much resorts to demonizing folks by innuendo and “facts that ain’t necessarily so”. Aren’t those precisely some of the practices of Extreme Right Christianity against which we so firmly take a stand?

For example, Spong’s discussion of Matt 1:23 quoting Is.7:14 “behold a virgin shall conceive”:

>Matthew clearly misused this text, whether by design or by mistake we will never know. First, he did not quote Isaiah accurately. [bold mine]

Oops! The author of Matthew wasn’t quoting the Hebrew Scriptures, he is in fact quoting the Septuagint WORD FOR WORD. (That’s quoting Isaiah pretty darn accurately.)

The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek done about 300 BCE, in common use and generally well regarded in the 1st century. (Tradition holds that it was translated by seventy scholars, so ‘Septuagint’ is frequently abbreviated as ‘LXX’ in the literature). Many (but not all) quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures in the Greek New Testament are from the Septuagint. It is not at all clear from the historical data that every Jew—or even every devout Jew—in Palestine necessarily knew Hebrew. In Biblical Studies, the Septuagint is an essential document for anyone relating the Greek New Testament to the Hebrew Scriptures. And they’re easy to come by: I got mine on amazon.com! (check it out)

So if you want to ‘blame’ someone, it really would have to be the Septuagint translators. Are they ‘blameworthy’? Holladay ‘A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the O.T.‘ (check it out) is a current standard, it is informed by the Dead Sea scrolls and the Ugaritic discoveries of the 20th century that have so dramatically expanded our understanding of ancient Hebrew. It gives the meaning of the Hebrew word here עלם (”-aLMaH” using Israeli transliteration, pronounced roughly “all-MAH”) as: “girl (of marriageable age), young woman (until the birth of first child).” Hmm. Is ‘virgin’ such a big leap?

The Septuagint translators (300 years before Christ or Matthew, and thus with no ‘virgin birth’ doctrine to defend or deny) translated this Hebrew word “-aLMaH” (’young woman’) with the Greek word παρθενος (PARTHENOS) which also means ‘young woman’ and/or ‘virgin’ specifically. In three heavyweight Greek Lexicons we have for PARTHENOS:

“a young woman of marriageable age, w. or without focus on virginity…” (BDAG, check it out)

“a person who has not as yet married (and possibly implying virginity)—‘unmarried person’…” (Louw-Nida, 34:77, check it out)

“1. maiden, girl, … virgin, … 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins …” (Liddell-Scott, check it out)

My point is that there is STILL ambiguity here—according to scholars to have devoted their lives full-time to these questions. Perhaps ‘maiden’ is a better English gloss (’translation’) for PARTHENOS since ‘maiden’ denotes ‘young girl’ but also has the connotation of ‘virginity’. In any event, PARTHENOS was a reasonable choice on the part of the Septuagint translators.

So one might say that technically a girl would be a “PARTHENOS” until she was married, and an “-aLMaH” until her first child was born. In the culture of that day, that gap would have been as short as could be managed. How could the Septuagint translators possibly foresee that FOUR HUNDRED YEARS LATER the subtle difference between “-aLMaH” and “PARTHENOS” would turn out to be a Big Thing?

Add to this the cultural context for the author of Matthew that—of course important people like Caesar and Alexander the Great (and the Christ) were ‘virgin born’—and it’s easier to see how he might have been predisposed to see ‘virginity’ in PARTHENOS.

The author of Matthew apparently used what was an authoritative translation available to him, and reading this passage through his own Cultural Lens, read ‘virgin’ as the intent of PARTHENOS (after all, “secondary” meanings are sometimes what the author of a text really intends!), which would have been entirely natural given his cultural context.

All of this is a far cry from “Matthew clearly misused this text, whether by design or by mistake we will never know. First, he did not quote Isaiah accurately.” More like: given his cultural context and the Septuagint before him, perhaps his was not so unreasonable a reading.

Pressing on…

>The facts are that neither Paul, who wrote between 51–64, nor Mark, written in the early 70s, had ever heard of this virgin birth tradition.

How can we know for “a “fact” what Paul or Mark “had ever heard of“? Heck, I don’t even know what my own wife has ‘ever heard of‘, much less some stranger 2000 years ago! The argument that “nothing has survived in which Paul mentions Jesus’ virgin birth, therefore we know for ‘a fact’ that Paul never even heard of the concept”—hmm, call me skeptical about that logic! (Actually, this seems to me to be an example of the “argument from silence” fallacy.)

>the Christian Church has known of this mistake since the middle years of the second century, when Trypho the Jew pointed it out to Justin Martyr

Once again, remember their historical context! Communication and travel weren’t easy. And just because Trypho the Jew discussed something with Justin Martyr hardly means that “The Christian Church” everywhere and for all the ages knew about it. And Justin Martyr’s “books” would have been hand-copied and distributed on donkey back—hardly a situation guaranteeing universal distribution throughout Christendom. Justyn Martyr (100–165) was Just Another Church Father—not the Pope or über-Church-person at all! In fact, a far larger debate about the Septuagint was going on between Jews and Christians by this point:

“The Christians justifiably maintained that this rendering [PARTHENOS in Matt 1:23] originated from the old Jewish translators themselves, whereas the Jews with equal justification rejected it as being inaccurate. The points at issue were, however, in part, a mere matter of Christian additions, introduced into the LXX [the Septuagint] merely by the naive lack of discrimination shown by the early Christians, as was, for instance, the case with regard to Ps. XCV:10, in which hO KURIOS EBASILEUSEN ['the Lord reigns'] was supplemented by APO XULOU ['from the cross']. These words “From the Cross” were regarded by Justin Martyr as so evidently belonging to the original text of the Bible, that he was able, in all sincerity, to accuse the Jews of having maliciously expunged them.” (Septuaginta, Rahlfs, I:xxiii ff.)

WE have the benefit of thousands of ancient manuscripts and papyri nicely collated by august boards of scholars now armed with computers, beautifully published en masse and distributed around the world economically. NOW we have the data to sort out textual questions. And what was available to Justin Martyr? Wouldn’t he be comparing a hand-copied Septuagint, a hand-copied Matthew and a hand-copied Hebrew Bible? Is it so unreasonable that Justin Martyr might doubt Trypho the Jew with so little to go on?

I’m not concerned about nit-picking details (except when it seems to me someone is trying to use ’so-called facts’ to belittle someone else); mostly I am concerned about the TONE OF DISCOURSE. Whatever the origins of the Virgin Birth narrative, it is also true that Matthew preserves numerous sayings of Jesus that are not found in the other Gospels—like THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT! We owe the author of Matthew a tremendous debt of gratitude!

So the author of Matthew read Isaiah 7:14 through his own Cultural Lens. And we don’t?!?

Why are ad hominem attacks necessary at all? Why dismiss the author of Matthew with the innuendo that he was careless or deliberately misleading? Why ‘demonize’ him at all? Or Justin Martyr? Or anyone else?

Isn’t this precisely one of the practices we abhor in Extreme Right Christianity?

Instead, isn’t it better to understand the author of Matthew in his cultural context? (Like we too aren’t constrained by our own?) Or at least keep in mind that we’ll never know all that informed his choices? Isn’t it better to understand how WE might have made the same choices had we been in his sandals? Doesn’t that make it easier to have compassion and respect for him? (And for ALL our ‘neighbors’?) To RESPECTFULLY disagree with him with some SYMPATHY for his views? (And with ALL our ‘neighbors’?) And to be grateful for the Great Gift which he bequeathed to us—warts and all? (And to honor and be grateful for ALL the blessings which our ‘neighbors’ bring to our lives?)

Isn’t this what “Progressive Christianity” is supposed to be about?

“I desired compassion and not religious observances.” (Matthew 9:13, quoting Jesus, quoting Hosea.)

william zeitler

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September 25, 2008

Bernard Baruch, a Jewish American from Camden, South Carolina, was well known in the first half of the 20th century as the unofficial advisor to Presidents. He played key roles in the think tanks of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. As the son of a surgeon who served on the staff of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, dealing with power seemed to come naturally to him. David Gergen, a native of Durham, North Carolina, played a similar role in American history in the last half of the 20th century as an advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Clinton. Baruch and Gergen are representatives of that rare ability to ride a long political tide and to provide objective analysis in the midst of partisan conflict and thus to guide the ship of state through choppy waters.

The biblical figure we call “I Isaiah” played a similar role in the ancient world. His writings are found in Isaiah, chapters 1-39. His life spanned the reigns of four monarchs who ruled in Jerusalem. Kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, according to Old Testament scholar William F. Albright, ruled between 783-687 BCE, a total of 96 years. Isaiah was center stage for more than 50 of them, a tribute to his longevity. He emerged into public view, he says, “In the year that King Uzziah died” and he lived through one of the most difficult periods of Jewish history.

The great power abroad in those days was Assyria. This warlike nation had succeeded in conquering or reducing to vassalage status most of the nations in the Middle East. It was the Assyrians who in 721 BCE destroyed the Northern Kingdom of the Jews, known as Israel, and deported its people from their land for resettlement in the Assyrian Empire, from whence they never returned. They became known as the ten lost tribes of Israel and, despite the mythology that developed over the years with people claiming to be descendants of these “Lost Tribes,” the fact is that these Jews simply disappeared into the DNA of the Middle East. It was the same fate that had befallen the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Amalekites and the Edomites before them.

The Prophet Isaiah may himself have been a member of the royal family, all of whom were descendants of King David. He certainly shared their life style, educational background, values and perspectives. Perhaps it was this “blood relative” connection that provided the doorway through which he walked into his prophetic and perhaps priestly career in the upper echelons of political power in Jerusalem.

A number of passages in Isaiah have entered the consciousness of the western world sufficiently to be familiar to many people. Among them is his oracle about whether or not God was moved by ritualistic activity and sacrifices. In chapter 1, Isaiah writes: