Reply to If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I haven’t read the whole thread, but what I have heard makes sense. His geographic location was in the crossroads of east and west. He most likely was exposed to eastern philosophy, think India at the time.
If he had lived in a different time perhaps he would have become a philosopher like Karl Marx or Kiergegaard.
He certainly upset the status quo by becoming a reformist like Martin Luther. 
His death was not that unusual, plenty of people were crucified and continued to be for a long time [/quote]

Jesus was also exposed to Greco-Roman philosophy because they ruled the Middle East in his time. [/quote]

No, only the most wealthy Jews were exposed to Greco Roman scholarship. It’s possible that Paul and Matthew had been exposed to such teaching, but Jesus would have received only traditional Jewish teaching. Exposure to Greco Roman mythology would explain why Matthew, and only Matthew, described a Virgin Birth. The idea of God impregnating a human woman was common in Greco Roman mythology. Such an idea would be repulsive to Jews. [/quote]

Isaiah 7:14 (Jewish) prophesied a virgin birth.  “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  If she was a virgin, the impregnation must have been supernatural. No need to fall back in Greco-Roman mythology. [/quote]

Wrong. Isaiah never said that. That’s a Christian mistranslation. The Hebrew word is “alma.”  “Alma” means young woman,” not “virgin.”[/quote]

It's actually a Jewish translation (mis or otherwise), the Greek of the Septuagint was produced by Jews, before there were Christians.[/quote]

Wrong. The Septuagint translates “alma” into “neanis” which means “ young woman,” not “virgin.”  Jews have never said that the yet to come Messiah will be born of a virgin. [/quote]

Young, unmarried women were generally virgins. Also, Matthew was writing for an audience in Antioch that was still part of the Jewish community, even if the relationship was deteriorating—yet the “virgin” language was apparently accepted.

In any case, whether or not the translation works is irrelevant. Matthew’s text relies on the fact that Isaiah was talking about a virgin, not on a Greek god that was popular in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, i.e well after the gospel of Matthew was put together towards the end of the first century. [/quote]

Wrong. Isaiah merely said that the child would be born of a young woman. Isaiah never said the woman would be impregnated before she was married. Jews have never said that the Messiah’s mother would be a virgin. Jews who believe in an individual Messiah have always said that in every generation, there is one Jew is is sufficiently righteous to become the Messiah. But the Messiah is a man, not God. He will not be born of a virgin. [/quote]

You’re still arguing this backwards. A young, unmarried women may or may not be a virgin, but she would be assumed to be a virgin.

Check out this link if you don’t want to take my word for it.  https://www.gotquestions.org/virgin-or-young-woman.html

None of these instances demands the meaning “virgin,” but neither do they deny the possible meaning of “virgin.” There is no conclusive argument for “almah” in Isaiah 7:14 being either “young woman” or “virgin.” However, it is interesting to note, that in the 3rd century B.C., when a panel of Hebrew scholars and Jewish rabbis began the process of translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, they used the specific Greek word for virgin, “parthenos,” not the more generic Greek word for “young woman.” The Septuagint translators, 200+ years before the birth of Christ, and with no inherent belief in a “virgin birth,” translated “almah” in Isaiah 7:14 as “virgin,” not “young woman.” This gives evidence that “virgin” is a possible, even likely, meaning of the term.

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You just don’t get this. Isaiah never said the child would be born of an unmarried woman. Presumably the woman would be married and impregnated by her husband. [/quote]

You don’t get this. Or you don’t want to get this.

Even Jews in the centuries before Christ translated this as “virgin” in the Greek. Early Christians were reading these Jewish translations. Apparently Jews were fine with “virgin” until Christians came along and used that Jewish translation.

You write “presumably she would be married.” That doesn’t work because she wouldn’t be a virgin after her wedding night. There’s no need to write “of a virgin” (per Jewish Septaguint) in an era when every young woman was “presumably” a virgin until (but not after) she got married, unless there was something different about this.

[/quote]
“
Wrong. The Greek speaking Jews translated “alma” into “neanis” in the Septuagint. “Neanis” means “young woman,” not virgin. Jews who believe in a personal Messiah have never believed that he would be born of a virgin. The idea of God impregnating a woman comes from Greco/Roman mythology and is abhorrent to Jews. Jews who believe in a personal Messiah believe that in every generation, there is one man sufficiently righteous to become the Messiah. Therefore, God can anoint the Messiah at anytime because there is always a candidate who qualifies. [/quote]

Um, wrong. The Jewish Septaguint uses the Greek word “parthenos” which means virgin. [/quote]

Wrong, and “almah” means young woman, it has nothing to do with virginity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah

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You keep saying this is "wrong," but I literally posted the Greek text of the Septuagint for Isaiah 7 earlier and you can clearly see which word it uses, which is parthenos. You're essentially just lying at this point.[/quote]

No, I’m not. Wikipedia is correct on this point. “Almah” means “young woman” and has nothing to do with virginity and the Septuagint translates “almah” as “neanis,” not “parthenos.” [/quote]

I'm not saying anything about what alma means or what alma is translated as in other places in the Septuagint, only what it's translated as in Isaiah 7. There it is clearly parthenos. From the Wikipedia, which you're citing:

[quote]The Septuagint translates most occurrences of almah into a generic word neanis νεᾶνις meaning 'young woman',[13][14] or to neotes νεότης meaning 'youth',[15] both words being derived from neos 'new' and unrelated to virginity.[16][17] Two occurrences, in the Genesis verse concerning Rebecca[18] and in Isaiah 7:14, are mistranslated into parthenos (παρθένος),[19] the basic word associated with virginity in Greek (it is a title of Athena 'The Virgin Goddess'[/quote]

In Isaiah, the word is translated into Greek as parthenos. Now, you can agree with the Wikipedia that parthenos is a mistranslation, if you want, but it's clearly a Jewish not Christian mistranslation, since the Septuagint was a Jewish translation, and the word is clearly not neanis in Isaiah version of the Septuagint. Your own sources agree with that.[/quote]

DP. You beat me to it. Isaiah 7 uses parthenos not almah, and parthenos meant virgin. As I posted above, Jewish readers of the Jewish translation in the Septaguint were apparently fine with that translation for a couple hundred years, until Christians came along and started using it. The very early Christians read the Septaguint. You might argue about whether or not a young, unmarried woman was generally presumed (to borrow your word) to be a virgin, but you can’t argue that Isaiah uses almah instead of parthenos. [/quote]

The Septuagint translates “almah” incorrectly in Isaiah 7:14. Read this:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003463735305000105?journalCode=raeb

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Jews were fine with the Septaguint for hundreds of years. Whether the translation is “incorrect” is therefore open to debate.[/quote]

No. Almah definitely means “young woman,” not “virgin.”  Read this:

https://outreachjudaism.org/alma-virgin/

[/quote]

Then why were Jews who knew Hebrew and the Greek of the Septaguint fine with parthenos for 400+ years?[/quote]

You must be a lot older than I am. I have no idea if Jews were “fine with parthenos” or not.  Look, before people started saying there had been a virgin birth and those who believed that felt that Christianity was the perfection of Judaism and Jews should be persecuted and killed if they didn’t become Christians, no one had any reason to give a damn. [/quote]

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