Francesca Stavrakopoulou was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 live about a variety of things related to the Christmas story: “Hebrew expert: ‘Virgin Birth a Mistranslation’”. One of those things is Matthew 1:23′s use of Isaiah 7:14 to argue that Jesus’ “virgin birth” was foretold by the prophet. She argues that since the Hebrew עלמה means “young woman”, unlike the LXX’s παρθένος, which means “virgin”, that the whole concept is based on a “mistranslation”.
T. Michael Law contest this claim, arguing that παρθένος is used in the LXX of Genesis to describe “young woman”, not necessarily “virgin”, and therefore it is an acceptable translation. You can read his response here: “Was the Virgin Birth a ‘mistranslation’?”
In my recent entry “Three hermeneutical paradigms to use when studying the doctrine of the virgin birth” I referred to the use of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23 as “awkward”. I was questioned about this, and I tried to provide my rational in response, but I think I may have found a more articulate way of saying what I was aiming to say. In Craig A. Evans’ Matthew (NCBC) he represents the view I hold and he frames things quite well. I have decided to reproduce it here.
As Evans completes his commentary on the infancy narrative he writes:
“At this point, we may inquire more closely into the question of historicity. Some commentators have suggested that the various components of the infancy narrative were produced through theological and typological interpretation of the scriptures of Israel. According to this line of thought, early Christian interpreters and apologist combed through the scriptures looking for clarification of the significance pf the life, ministry, and death of Jesus. Various texts, or ‘prophecies,’ were identified, which in turn created narratives. Understood this way, the infancy stories of the miraculous conception (Matt 1:18-25), the birth in Bethlehem and the inquiry of the magi (Matt 2:1-12), the flight to Egypt (Matt 2:13-15), and the murder of the infant (Matt 2:16-18) are not actual events in history but theological and midrashic creations.”
I should pause here to comment that Evans is not denying that the church studied the Scriptures to understand the meaning of Jesus. What he is denying is that in doing this there were a variety of obscure passages plucked from the text for no apparent reasons and applied to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. When it comes to these aspects of the infancy narrative of Matthew it seems quite odd that these passages would be chosen. Evans explains:
“All of this is possible, of course, but the evidence for it and the logic behind it are not as compelling as some think. It is not at all clear that the prophecy of Isa 7:14 would have given rise to a story about a virginal conception. There is no history of interpretation that anticipates either a miraculous conception or a messianic identity of the child in Isaiah 7. Neither was there an expectation that the Messiah was to be born of a virgin. Indeed, had the conception and birth of Jesus been conventional, one wonders why anyone would have introduced a story involving a divine conception. Such a story would have created difficulties, for in Jewish circles it could have been viewed in terms of pagan mythology, in which a god produces a child through intercourse with a mortal woman. It is more likely that Mary’s conception was indeed unexpected and unusual, and given the outcome– the amazing power of Jesus demonstrated in his public ministry and his astounding resurrection following his passion– the claim of his conception bu an act of the Holy Spirit of God becomes plausible.”
In other words, there was a tradition about the uniqueness of Jesus’ birth that informed Matthew’s exegesis of Isaiah rather than the text of Isaiah inspiring Matthew’s tradition about the uniqueness of Jesus’ birth. There is no need for a divine messiah, and even if someone thought messiah to be divine, there is no evidence that anyone thought this was possible through a virgin birth alone. Of course, the more skeptical readers of Matthew will not find this argument convincing, but I admit that it is an argument like this one that has caused me to pause when I hear people speak of Matthew creating a virgin birth story. Even if Matthew was being apologetic in defense of Mary’s reputation wasn’t an appeal to Joseph as Jesus’ legitimate father an easier answer than a virgin birth?
Evans concludes his thoughts with the following:
“It is probably better to see the tradition of Mary’s unusual conception and the belief that it was of God’s Spirit as generating an appeal to Scripture, not the Scripture generating the story of Mary’s immaculate conception. In other words, Isa 7:14 was understood to explain the irregularities surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus. The prophecy of Isaiah not only foreshadows the unusual conception of Jesus but places in into the context of Israel’s history, in which God’s saving work is revealed.” (p. 63)
I have been reading Jonathan T. Pennington‘s marvelous new book Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introductionand it has helped me a lot when it comes to thinking about hermeneutics, particularly the function of the historical-critical/grammatical approach juxtaposed with literary readings and canonical/theological readings. In “Chapter Five: Texts and History: The Testimony of the Fourfold Witness” Pennington examines the historical-critical approach, explains it value, and critiques its weaknesses. For Pennington the danger of putting all our eggs into the historical-critical/grammatical basket is that this is limits our reading of the Gospels, refuses to listen to the Gospels as the Gospels are designed to be heard, and ignores the limitations of the historical-critical/grammatical hermeneutic (as well as recent criticisms from the field of philosophical hermeneutics, exemplified by the likes of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricour to name a couple). The Gospels make claims that presuppose things like the existence of Israel’s God and you cannot appeal to deity when doing critical historical studies. There are some things that can be understood about Jesus through historical-critical study, but one can never reach the theological claims of the church through this approach. This is a danger Pennington thinks we must avoid, but he doesn’t think the answer to the problem of the historical-critical lens is one that abandons the importance of history like a Docetic Christology. He writes:
“If we approach the Gospels only as repositories of grand theological ideas and ideals, divorced from the historical reality of the incarnation and the resurrection, then we lose the history. Yet if we (even as believers) draw near to the Gospels thinking we must abandon all orthodox, creedal, and ecclesial notions and constraints on our reading or, less strictly, at least grow our theological construction in pure historical soil, then we not only fool ourselves in these possibilities, but we also deny the canonical nature of the Gospels.” (Kindle Location 2354)
He concludes that the language of “testimony” as presented by Richard Bauckham is a better avenue upon which one can approach studying the Gospels from a confessional perspective. Testimony honors both the aim of these works as a form of bios claiming to speak about historical events as well as recognizing that the theological claims of the Gospels move into a new frontier making the Gospels a unique subcategory of bioi. Likewise, testimony doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that historiography ancient or modern can ever be anything but interpretive (i.e., never fully objective as some claim). Since all history is interpretation the Gospels as testimony about Jesus care about historical events as interpreted through the apostolic kerygma.
Jonathan T. Pennington
I won’t delve much further into Pennington’s argument against limiting ourselves to the historical-critical approach—because it would be unfair to the author for me to try to condense a very well written, thoughtful chapter into a short blog post—but I will (1) encourage you to read this book; (2) provide a book review on this blog when I finish it; and (3) share the approach Pennington suggest for people who read the Gospels both as testimony of historical events and Scripture.
Pennington advocates reading the Gospels from multiple hermeneutical paradigms. He writes, “…my goal in reading is interwoven with the biblical idea of wisdom more than the modern scientific idea of knowledge, understood narrowly and impersonally.” (Kindle Location 2431) So in “Chapter Six: Reading Holy Scripture Well” he provides “three avenues of reading” that I will share and then use as a way to approach studying the doctrine of the virgin birth so that you can understand where Pennington is trying to take his readers.
First, “Behind the Text” or Historical, which includes redaction, form, and source criticism, social-scientific criticism, historical criticism, grammatical-historical exegesis, and movements like the Quest(s) for the historical (historian’s) Jesus.
Second, “In the Text” or Literary, which focuses on literary criticism, genre analysis, narrative criticism, composition criticism, and intertextuality.
Third, “In Front of the Text” or Canonical/Theological, which includes the history of interpretation, reception, history, Wirkungsgeshichte, biblical theology, redemptive history, theological reading, Regula fidei, figural reading, and intertextuality.
Let’s examine the doctrine of the virgin birth from these angles. First, the “Behind the Text” approach aims to understand not the message of the text itself alone, but the culture within which it was proclaimed. Honestly, if we use traditional historical-critical criteria as found in academic discussion we will not arrive at a virgin birth because solutions that cannot be reached by means of methodological naturalism are disqualified immediately. In other words, when doing history in this context, we cannot say, “Well, yes, it is impossible for this to happen, but God…” This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, if we acknowledge the “language game” in which we chose to partake if we do academic history. If a scholar of Islam happened to be a confessing Muslim we Christians would question his academic biography on the Prophet Muhammad if when s/he reached the tradition about the Prophet’s ascent into heaven s/he begged-the-question by telling readers, “This happened because Allah…” This is not to say that it is impossible in reality that Allah accepted the Prophet into heaven, but rather that there are limitations on doing academic history that attempt to prevent any and every suggestion from having the same value (e.g., the abduction of a famous person is easier explained as having a human protagonist, even if the mystery is never solved as to who did it, than it is an alien from space, even if the alien theory is theoretically possible it is not the most probable).
On the other hand, historical-grammatical readings of the text might have more wiggle-room when it comes to discussing the doctrine of the virgin birth. In fact, I propose that most evangelical scholars who delve into historical research do so from a historical-grammatical angle rather than a historical-critical one. In the words of Gadamer the difference is between approaching a text with the hermeneutical of suspicion over against the hermeneutic of trust. Christians, even when engaging these texts as historians, tend to give the authors to benefit of a doubt in a way that a scholar who is not a Christian is not likely to do. This is not to say that one is better or more objective in my opinion. There are strengths and weaknesses to both approaches. For example, if Jesus did not resurrect from the dead a confessional scholar is not likely to see this because of the presuppositions brought to the study of the proclaimed event. Likewise, a skeptical scholar is not likely to come to affirm the reality of the resurrection, even if it did happen, because of the presuppositions brought to the study of the proclaimed event. I don’t mean to say that it is “all relative”, but it is subjective, always.
The historical-grammatical reading aims to make sense of a proclaimed event by means of studying the historical context in which it was proclaimed (e.g., the resurrection can be understood as a event proclaimed to have happened in first century Judea, near Jerusalem, under Roman governance, and so forth, and honestly, the presuppositions with which one approaches this topic will likely inform how this historical data “functions”, just compare the works of people like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan to others like N.T. Wright or Michael Licona). So when one studies the doctrine of the virgin birth through a historical-grammatical lens it might be one and the same with the historical-critical, or it may be from a confessional standpoint where the virgin birth is understood as something that did happen, and then the study of everything from ancient womanhood, birth practices, first century Bethlehem, and other factors will be considered.
The “In the Text” is not concerned with the historical events within which the doctrine of the virgin birth is proclaimed. Even the Synoptic Problem falls into the first category better, though there are points of contact. This second approach may study things like how the doctrine of the virgin birth is proclaimed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and how this claims fits into the immediate narrative and how that narrative fits into the larger message of the Gospel. This approach can be used by the atheist scholar who doesn’t find these Gospels to produce much truth as well as the pastor who is preparing a sermon for Sunday and who wants to make sure that s/he proclaims a particular text in such a way that the literary message is received by the audience. One could discuss how the doctrine of the virgin birth fits into the message of the beginning of the Gospel of Luke without ever discussing the archaeology of Bethlehem, the socio-cultural role of “shepherds” in the first century, and other elements that are “Behind the Text”, though very helpful to understanding the text itself.
Finally, we have the approach that is “In Front of the Text”, i.e., an acceptable presupposition that informs how we read a text. For example, if one reads the Gospel of Matthew from approaches one or two it doesn’t matter all that much whether the Old Testament canon ends with Malachi as we find in the Christian tradition or Chronicles as it does in most versions of the Hebrew Bible. In this third paradigm it does matter though because Malachi ends with a proclamation to remember the Law of Moses and a promise to send the prophet Elijah before the “Day of the Lord” (4:4-6) whereas the Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy of “Jesus the Messiah” (1:1), describes his birth of a virgin, the visit of the magi, the flight into Egypt, the slaughter of the innocents, and then we have “Elijah”, or John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. If you use approaches one or two you want to read Luke-Acts together, but if you read it canonically you know that John recreates the contexts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and ends the fourfold Gospel transitioning to Acts which moves through the sequence of three main figures—Jesus to Peter to Paul—which then escorts the reader into Romans, the gateway and interpretive key to the Pauline corpus. Canonically Matthew transitions readers from the Old Testament to the fulfillment of the Old Testament, Jesus. Acts transitions from Jesus to his authoritative apostles, including Paul, and validates the Pauline corpus that comes next (I owe these insights to Brevard Childs).
Is there a way (singular) to approach the Gospels? Pennington will suggest “no” if you are a Christian. I concur. If you are a Christian willing to discuss the “historian’s Jesus” then you must enter that language game knowing what you can and cannot say and prove about Jesus. The goal and aim is to show that some really important things can be said about Jesus, even through the limitations of modern critical historiography, e.g., Jesus was a first century Jew; Jesus was remembered as a miracle worker and an exorcist; Jesus was crucified; Jesus’ followers did not disperse but became convinced for some reason that the eschatological resurrection of the dead has an “already, but not yet” exception in Jesus of Nazareth and they were willing to die for their believe. All of this is fantastically interesting, but you can’t secure the confession that the Spirit has raised Jesus from the dead, or that Jesus has been made Lord and Christ, or that Jesus is the Logos of God, or that Jesus is the second person of the one God as Trinity.
I think the historical-critical method is immensely valuable, as does Pennington, but it does have limitations. It is a matter of epistemology (what can we “know” through the restraints of academic historiography?), rather than objective truth (the dozens upon dozens of historical Jesus models you will find should be sufficient evidence of this). Sometimes the use of the Gospels to get “Behind the Text” to the historical Jesus misleads us into misreading the Gospels themselves. We ignore the message of the evangelists about Jesus for some piece of solid footing upon which we can reconstruct Jesus. Again, this is good and necessary in certain venues, but it doesn’t determine truth.
Likewise, the third approach tells us a bit about how Christians should read Scripture as Christians in the ancient-to-contemporary community of the faithful. If we use the historical critical approach we may conclude that Mark as the earliest Gospel shows no interest in a virgin birth, so he did not know about it or (from a more skeptical view) the myth had not been invented when Mark was composed. Matthew received or invented the tradition somewhere. Luke received it somewhere, maybe from Matthew. John’s Logos Christology doesn’t need a virgin birth as long as you affirm that Jesus is the Son of God come from God the Father in heaven. A canonical/theological reading realizes that Mark doesn’t need the virgin birth if it doesn’t fit the literary message because the Spirit has provided this proclamation in Matthew and Luke, already, and that John’s Logos Christology should be interpreted canonically, meaning, the Logos of God entered this world through the virgin birth—this is the beginning of how Christians discuss Christology in the language of faith.
All three approaches have value. Where we Christians struggle at times is realizing that these different approaches are different language games sometimes intended for a variety of audiences. When we try to use the historical-critical method apologetically to “prove” something like the doctrine of the virgin birth we have gone the wrong direction, not because it didn’t happen in space-time history, but because historical-critical methodology includes the presupposition of methodological naturalism, something that can never “discover” a virgin birth anymore than one may have been able to discover Jesus was born of a virgin if his DNA was studied to examine the genetics of his “father”. We can believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth from a confessional perspective, and we may have decent reasons for believing it happened historically (e.g., Matthews awkward use of Isaiah 7:14 leads me to think Matthew already believed in the doctrine and he sought a passage of Scripture to support it, rather than he happened to read Isaiah 7:14 one day and thought, “This proves Jesus was born of a virgin!”), but we cannot prove it historical-critically, and that is OK. We must recover some comfort with speaking the language of faith and sometimes faith demands that we speak of things catholically, rather than individualistically, as if something can be true if and only if I can verify it through means that make me the final authority, rather than the church and the Scripture of the church.
All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ — the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.
John Byron took this as his cue to ask reader of his blog, “Must you believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian.” When I checked last it seemed that most people who commented said “no”, but there was caution from some that this doesn’t mean that the doctrine isn’t important, merely that our status as Christians is determined by “…what Jesus did, not what Mary didn’t do” as one person put it. Personally, I agree with those who say that affirming or denying the virgin conception/birth doesn’t make a Christian, but that is because I think it is a work of the Holy Spirit for one to become a Christian, not our current stance on doctrine. So in this sense I disagree with Mohler.
That being said, I don’t think that some people denying the virgin conception or struggling to affirm it demands that it be set aside as an orthodox confession. The virgin conception does protect against heresies like Adoptionism and Nestorianism. Sure, sure, there are passages in Scripture that can be used to support these errors (e.g. the baptism of Christ is important for adoptionistic Christology), but the catholic “Rule of Faith” seems to have filtered out these views over time leaving us with the orthodox Christology that many of us confess today.
I see a partial analogy with the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a national confession that citizens pledge allegiance to the flag of this country and the Republic for which it stands–”one nation, under God, indivisible…” Many individuals may say, “I’m atheist, so how can I affirm our nation stands “under God” and while reciting this “creed” they personally cannot affirm those words. This doesn’t prevent it from being a national creed though. This crude analogy may give some insight into how the virgin conception may be a “Christian confession” even if some or many Christians do not or cannot confess it. As my citizenship is determined by my birth into this country, and not my willingness to affirm every line of the Pledge of Allegiance, so someone’s citizenship in the Kingdom of God is determined by a “new birth” in the Spirit and not their adherence to every aspect of all creeds.
Personally, I submit myself to the church catholic on matters like the virgin conception even if I struggle to understand or believe it at times. I don’t think my personal beliefs change what the church should teach. Yet the church’s safeguarding of the story as the responsibility of the church is not (in my opinion) one and the same with the saving work of God. So I willingly recite along with the Apostle’s Creed that Jesus was “…conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary” and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that Jesus was “…was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary…”, but I know God saves and God alone, not creeds.
There are two sources for the Matthean virgin conception concept that I find unlikely.
First, the idea that the Evangelist reasoned from the LXX of Isaiah 7.14 to the concept of the virgin conception seems odd. In Hebrew that text signifies nothing regarding a future Messiah conceived of a virgin. While the LXX wording fits better (ἡ παρθένος) the context still seems to demand much reworking by Matthew. In other words, I don’t find Isaiah 7.14 an apparent source for a virgin conception narrative. Rather, I think Matthew had the concept and he scanned through his knowledge of Torah for any evidence that Scripture foretold such an event. In other words, Isaiah 7.14 seems like it must be reworked to serve as a proof-text for a virgin conception more than it seems like an obvious prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.
Second, pagan deities being born of a virgin assumes a higher Christology than I find evident in Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew is more concerned with presenting Jesus as the Messiah (though we may say in proto-orthodox language as a Messiah within whom YHWH dwelt in a unique way) than as a “deity” in the pagan sense of the concept. So sure, there are examples of pagan gods being born of virgins. I’m not convinced this motivated the Jewish Evangelist.
Of course, this does not prove a virgin conception, but I don’t think these proposals are as sound as some argue as evidence against it.
In the Gospel of John the main concern of the Evangelist (or the community that edited and completed the work) is that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (20.31). Throughout the Gospel he makes it most apparent that this is substantiated by Jesus’ peculiar relationship with God the Father as the Word of God who has come into the world. Jesus’ deeds verify this claim and that is why you should confess Jesus as Messiah.
In contrast to Matthew and Luke we find different responses to allegations regarding Jesus being a child born of fornication and not being born in Bethlehem.
In 7.42 some question whether Jesus could have been the Messiah since the Messiah had to have been born in Bethlehem. The Evangelist is ambivalent to whether this matters or not. He doesn’t clarify that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but neither is there any suggestion that he agreed with the accusation that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem. Again, I think he has mentioned over and over again that Jesus comes from God. If this is true, does it matter how he got here?!
Likewise, in 8.41 while Jesus and his opponents debate fatherhood (Jesus says that they are not children of Abraham, but Satan in vv. 31-47) the opponents of Jesus state “We were not born of fornication.” This seems to be an attack on Jesus. Who is Jesus to doubt the validity of their relationship to Abraham since he is the result of sexually immorality?! Rather than a virgin conception narrative the Evangelist expects the reader to call the bluff of Jesus’ opponents. Why would they say that when they know very well he claims to have come from God the Father. Now this doesn’t mean that John denied Jesus’ virgin conception, but rather he seems unconcerned with the accusation because in his eyes Jesus’ relation to the Father is enough to rebuff such accusations.
Obviously, we cannot know for sure what John thought about the virgin conception tradition though his logos Christology and later date of composition make me think he was aware of it and affirmed it indirectly. Likewise, we cannot know what he thought of the tradition that Messiah had to come from Bethlehem or whether or not he thought Jesus did come from Bethlehem. What we do seem to know is that he felt that these matters were secondary to who he knew Jesus to be.
In the Gospel of Mark we do not find an Infancy Narrative like we do in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Why? I don’t know that we can find a definite answer, but this is a collection of possibilities. Some are not exclusive of the others.
(1) Mark didn’t know about the virgin conception. It may be that for one reason or another he was unaware of this story. It is hard to include something you don’t know!
(2) The virgin conception had not been ‘created’ before the composition of Mark’s Gospel. If Matthew was the originator of the story this would make sense. Mark cannot know what Matthew created. If Matthew did create it we must explain Luke’s knowledge of it. This would demand Luke’s knowledge of Matthew or a tradition derived from Matthew.
(3) Mark rejected the virgin conception. If he was aware of it he may have not affirmed it. This would put him at odds with Matthew and Luke, though maybe not John.
(4) Mark may have sought to avoid controversy regarding the birth of Jesus. It is apparent that some felt that Jesus was the result of Mary’s sexual immorality. This seemed hinted at by the Gospel of John 8.41 where Jesus’ opponents state, “We were not born of fornication.” Did they mean to insinuate that Jesus was? Whether this was true or not it could have been sufficient reason for Mark to avoid any discussion of Jesus’ birth or childhood lest it distract his audience, especially if he knew his audience was aware of these accusations.
(5) The virgin conception was irrelevant to the theme(s) of Mark’s Gospel. In Mark 1.1 we read “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In 1.2 he moves straight into the proclamations of John the Baptist. Mark ends abruptly with a resurrection narrative. It could be that Mark’s main concern was the “ministry” of Jesus from the preaching of the Baptist to the resurrection. Somehow, for Mark, this is “the gospel” and Jesus’ birth is foreign to “the gospel”.
(6) The virgin conception is assumed. If the title ‘Son of God’ had obtained a high Christology by the time Mark wrote his Gospel then maybe calling Jesus Christ the ‘Son of God’ rather than the ‘son of Joseph’ was enough of an introduction. Of course, this depends on whether one thinks ‘Son of God’ was original with Mark’s Gospel in 1.1. The same could be said of John’s Gospel with its logos Christology. There may not have been any reason to discuss a virgin conception when you are claiming that God’s Word became flesh and tabernacled among humans (1.14).
(7) Matthean Priority is accurate. If Mark knew Matthew’s Gospel was in circulation and he was seeking to create a shorter, catechism of a Gospel then he may not have felt like rehearsing what was already declared in a longer, earlier Gospel. This could pair with possibility #3.
