Monday, January 28, 2008

Matthew, chapter 1

Next one: The Gospel of Matthew (around 100 A.D.)

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.
So Jesus was conceived by Mary getting impregnated by a spirit. Just like a lot of classical Demi-Gods actually. And how old was Mary at the time? Since she hadn't had any kids yet and considering the time, the society and the customs she lived in, she was probably between 12 and 14 years old. So the biblical God impregnated a young teen. I wonder why they don't tell you this in Sunday School ...
22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD ITH US."
So if all of this HAD to happen again then History is indeed just God's plan unfolding and we're the robot-pawns in it. Free will is an illusion in that case.Do also note that the Hebrew word that got translated into 'virgin' was 'almah' which rather means 'young woman' and not 'virgin' (although the young woman of course can be a virgin too). If Isaiah had wanted to make it clear that it should indeed be a virgin he would have used 'bethulah'.
24 And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25 but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.
The word 'until' indicates that he didn't keep her as a virgin afterwards hence the Catholic dogma as Perpetual Virginity is nonsense. On the other hand it explains why the Bible talks about Jesus' brothers in some verses.

6 comments:

Danny Boy, FCD said...

Concerning Matthew and Isaiah, it's Matthew's fault for not consulting the Hebrew original, since he probably used the Greek Septuagint and seeing the Isaiah passage use the word parthenos, which does mean sexual virginity. Isaiah meant young woman, not necessarily a virgin.

I've blogged about this "prophecy" too.

Cheers!

Daldianus said...

Thanks for the comment, dan. I'm gonna read your article!

Anonymous said...

Heathen Dan's article is really good! I think that people focus on the virgin thing ignoring the much more obvious problem of reading the original prophecy in it's context! All praise Maher Shalal Hashbaz!

I blogged about the nativity of Matthew before - it's just a retelling, but I do like the Matthew stories that he makes up out of the hebrew scriptures.

Daldianus said...

slash:

Your article is great as well! I had to laugh out loud :)

Anonymous said...

Wow statutory rape, doesn't seem like something God would do.

Daldianus said...

on:

then you better check how the customs were at those times ... girls mostly got married after their first period.