026. Chapter 6 - The Virgin Birth

Chapter 6 - The Virgin Birth

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” So said Isaiah to Ahaz, King of Judah (Isaiah 7:14). Syria and Israel had formed a dangerous alliance against Judah. Ahaz was full of fear. Isaiah was sent by the Lord to encourage Ahaz and give him assurance that his nation would survive the peril. He predicted the birth of a child and pictured the enemies of Judah as desolate before the years of maturity should come to the child.

Radical Position The critics who reject the virgin birth records as an idle myth and scorn the idea that a prophet could foretell such an event centuries before it happened, emphasize the context of his prophecy and try to prove that it refers to some child born in the reign of Ahaz. Their theory rests on two arguments: (1) that the Hebrew word almah (virgin) really means a young woman of marriageable age and may or may not mean a virgin; (2) that it would be no sign to Ahaz — no comfort against the threats of Syria — to say that the child would be born centuries later and that Syria would be desolate before the child should be born.

Meaning of Almah But it is certain that the word does mean virgin in this passage and that the full significance of this prophecy, like many others of the Old Testament, was not understood at the time it was spoken. Note, as to the meaning of the word, that Matthew affirms it is a prophecy of the virgin birth; the other six times almah is used in the Old Testament it does mean virgin; the Jewish scholars who translated the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in 285 b.c. rendered almah (Isaiah 7:14) by the Greek word parthenos which can only mean virgin. Professor Willis Beecher says: “There is no trace of its use to denote any other than a virgin.” Martin Luther declared: “If a Jew or Christian can prove to me that in any passage of scripture almah means a married woman, I will give him 100 florins, although God alone knows where I may find them.” James Orr in his great book The Virgin Birth quotes Luther and adds the significant comment that the 100 florins have never yet been claimed. The Miracle Promised The objection that such a prophecy would offer no consolation to Ahaz leads one to ask what greater consolation Ahaz could have had than that his nation should outlive Syria and be great and powerful after Syria was desolate? Whatever the specific meaning of the prophecy, what Ahaz desired to hear was plain: that Syria would be destroyed while Judah would continue for a long and glorious future. Furthermore, how would it have been a sign to Ahaz, if a young woman in Israel married and bore a son? Such a birth would not have been a miracle and a sign means a miracle. The context with its challenge: “Ask thee a sign of Jehovah thy God; ask it either in the depth (Sheol), or in the height above,” demands the promise of a sign of stupendous character. Such a miracle is the virgin birth of the Messiah. The Child not Isaiah’s The effort to say that Isaiah was predicting the natural birth of some child in his own time, presumably his own child, fails utterly in the light of the description of the child in the following chapters. Moreover, Isaiah’s wife was not a virgin. Such a birth would not have been a miracle such as Isaiah 7:14 implies. The name of Isaiah’s child born shortly after this was Mahershalalhashbaz (“The spoil speedeth, the prey hasteth”). This is absolutely different from Immanuel (“The Lord with us”), which is the equivalent of Jesus. There is not the slightest suggestion in the text that the child born to Isaiah was the fulfillment of the prophecy. The Child Described The critic who is so eager to render Isaiah 7:14 in the light of its context is not so eager to render the entire chapter 7 in the light of its context. If Isaiah had meant that some young woman in Israel would shortly bear a son, and that before he grew up Syria would be no more, we should then expect in the following chapters an account of the birth of such a child. Is such an account given? No. Is the child mentioned again? Yes. In the ninth chapter and succeeding passages the child is described in such terms as refer plainly to the Messiah Himself: “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6, Isaiah 9:7).

Two Radical Schools

Around this passage (Isaiah 7:14) turns much of the attack upon the virgin birth. For those who deny the fact must explain the origin of the accounts of Matthew and Luke. One group of critics, led by Harnack and Lobstein, claims that the accounts of Matthew and Luke were invented by early Christian writers under the spell of this prophecy. They saw Isaiah 7:14 predicted a virgin birth for the child, and their imagination did the rest. Other critics, such as Schmiedel, Cheyne, Soltau, and Unsener, are just as positive that the Old Testament could not have been the source, but that what they call a myth arose from pagan sources. With great zest the two groups of critics destroy one another. The second group makes it plain that Isaiah 7:14 was not generally understood to refer to the Messiah. It is not among the 456 passages which are cited by Edersheim as having been given Messianic interpretation by the Jews. They point out that the Jews in the early Christian centuries bitterly attacked Matthew’s interpretation and that the idea of the virgin birth is so foreign to the religious ideas of the Jews that it could not have been invented under any Jewish influence. No Room for a Myth

Harnack and Lobstein point out, in return, that the belief in the virgin birth of Christ can be traced back to the “very cradle of the church,” and that it would take long decades for such a myth to be developed from heathen sources. This destroys their own theory also, for long centuries would have been required to develop such a myth from any source. These critics prove conclusively — a little too conclusively for their own comfort — that there is no room for such development in early Christian history. Finally they argue with great force that the early Christians could not have borrowed these accounts from heathen legends, for they continually express the utmost horror at these coarse stories. Thus the two groups of skeptics destroy one another and leave the accounts of Matthew and Luke standing out hold and clear.

Basis of Radical Position The particular theories offered by radical critics to explain the origin of these records are so numerous and contradictory that each furnishes the refutation for the theory of his neighbor, and reveals the shallow and superficial character of them all. The only real basis either group of critics has for its objections is the conviction that the new scientific ideas (theory of evolution) prove that a virgin birth is an impossibility. This can not be classed as either evidence or argument. It is merely the reflection of colossal egotism and self-sufficiency.

Insinuations

One cannot but express disgust for those who attempt to destroy belief in the virgin birth of Jesus by innuendo and covert insinuation. They are to be classed with those who undertake to destroy the reputation of a good woman by evil surmise and slander based on their own conjectures. Brought into the court of facts and historical evidence, they have no proof to offer but their own prejudice and evil surmises. Dr. H. E. Fosdick has attempted to state in popular language the insinuation that the records of Matthew and Luke are to be derived from the unspeakably vile stories of the pagan world as to the birth of some of their heroes. Fortunately, most people are able to discriminate between folklore stories of supernatural birth arising out of a dim and distant atmosphere of superstition, and this straightforward historical testimony offered in documents so “closely related in time to the facts described as to belong to the sphere, not of myth, but of history.” The early Christian writers themselves point out the vulgar nature of these heathen tales, and the fact that they are vague myths having no historical basis. And yet, during this very period, the critic imagines that the noble and pure records of Matthew and Luke were copied from these same heathen stories. James Orr, in contrasting the Gospel records with the heathen myths, says of the accounts of Matthew and Luke: “They relate to an historical person, and are given, as we saw, in an historical setting, with circumstantial details of name, place, date, etc. The myths with which they are brought into comparison — Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Persian — show nothing of this kind. They are on the face of them quite unhistorical — vague, formless, timeless; their origin lies far back in the dawn of time, mostly in the poetical personification of natural phenomena….But surely to urge these coarse fables as analogies to the story of the Gospels is to show a strange blindness to the facts of the case. It is the fact that not one of these tales has to do with a virgin birth in the sense in which alone we are here concerned with it….It is a strange imagination that can suppose that these foul tales could be taken over by the church, and, in the short space before the composition of our Gospels, become the inspiration of the beautiful and chaste narratives contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke!” (The Virgin Birth of Christ, pp. 167, 169).

Summary of Evidence The records of the early chapters of Matthew and Luke find their simplest and most satisfactory explanation in the actual fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. Note: (1) Two Gospels affirm the virgin birth. Their accounts are remarkably different and entirely independent of one another; yet their testimony is a unit. They offer the only records we have concerning the birth of Jesus. (2) These early chapters of Matthew and Luke are inseparable parts of these Gospels. No manuscript evidence of any significance can be produced against them. The peculiar readings of Matthew 1:16, found in the cursive of the twelfth century (346), a few other late Greek manuscripts and the Diatessaron (two manuscripts in Arabic) and the Sinaitic-Syriac, do not necessarily deny the virgin birth and are so feebly supported as to emphasize the overwhelming character of the textual evidence. The desperate expedient of Harnack, Von Soden, Schmiedel, et al., in cutting Luke 1:33, Luke 1:34 from the text when there is absolutely no evidence against it, illustrates the bitter prejudice of the critic and the unassailable character of the textual background of the records of the virgin birth. These early chapters of Matthew and Luke cannot be split off from the respective Gospels. They stand or fall as an integral part of the biographies of Jesus. (3) Matthew and Luke, in offering this testimony, fit into and supplement the rest of the New Testament in this regard. They throw a flood of light upon the profound discussions of the incarnation offered in the rest of the New Testament. Paul and John evidently presuppose the virgin birth, and build upon it in offering their whole conception of Jesus. (4) The citing of ancient myths of the birth of heroes from gods and goddesses is idle gossip unless some literary connection can be established between these and the New Testament. (5) The great importance of the virgin birth in the “divine meaning of Christ” is shown by the persistent and bitter attacks of the radicals upon it. (6) The fact that most of those who deny the virgin birth also deny the sinlessness and the pre-existence of Jesus, and in fact, the incarnation itself, argues for an essential connection between the manner of Jesus’ birth and the entire New Testament conception of Him. If Jesus is God, and existed from all eternity, how else could He enter the world than through a miraculous birth? Does not His sinlessness demand it? With two human parents, could He have escaped the universal contamination of sin? Without one human parent, could He have shared our experience? The manner of His birth seems essential to the incarnation itself — the inexplicable union of the human and the divine.