Isaiah 7:14: The "Virgin" Birth?
The most widely discussed NT interpretation "contrary to the literal and accepted meaning" of a Hebrew text is the dogma of the Virgin Birth, which Matthew bases on Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel." Matthew 1:22-23 says the virgin birth of Jesus happened to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew was probably using the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) as his "Old Testament," and the Septuagint translates the Hebrew word almah, meaning "young woman," as the Greek word parthenos, "maiden, virgin, unmarried girl," so that the Greek text may falsely be read, "a virgin shall conceive." "Behold, the young maiden will conceive" does not mean she will be a virgin when she gives birth, nor does it imply that Yhwh will be the father. In other words, the original Hebrew text of Isaiah never prophesied a virgin birth, only that a young woman would bear a child.
But that is by no means the worst problem! Besides using a misinterpretation of the Hebrew, the NT takes Isaiah 7:14 totally out of context. The passage actually refers to an imminent invasion of Israel by the Assyrians, which took place in the late 700s BCE. The story of Isaiah 7-8 goes as follows. During the reign of King Ahaz of Judah, Kings Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem (7:1). Ahaz feared the worst, but Isaiah told him Yhwh would not allow the two kings to destroy Jerusalem. Then Isaiah tells Ahaz that Yhwh will give a sign to prove the truth of what he says: the young woman will give birth to a son and call him Immanuel, and before the boy is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the land of the two kings, whom Ahaz fears, will be laid waste by the king of Assyria (Isa. 7:14-17). Obviously the king of Assyria did not destroy Israel and Aram when Jesus was a boy--no, that happened in 732 and 722-21 BCE, so Jesus could not fulfill this prophecy. The birth of the child in Isaiah was supposed to be a sign that the attack on Jerusalem in the 700s BC would fail.
In fact, the very next chapter in Isaiah, chapter eight, continues the story. Isaiah goes to the prophetess (maybe his wife?), and she conceives and bears a son. In verses 3-4, they call him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz ("quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil") because before the boy is very old the king of Assyria will "plunder" and "spoil" Damascus and Samaria. And verses 8 and 10 again refer to Immanuel ("God is with us"), because Yhwh will save Ahaz and because even though the Assyrians will sweep all the way into Judah (701 BCE), their plans against Jerusalem will not succeed. Whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz and Immanuel are the same child or two different children matters not; both belong in time to the 700's BCE and to chapters 7 and 8 of Isaiah. Isaiah 8:18 even lets the reader know that the children in chapters 7-8 belong to Isaiah himself: "Here I am, and the children Yhwh has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel" (Isaiah's other child was Shear-Jashub, "a remnant will return," Isa. 7:3 and 10:21). To summarize this issue, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew both used a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14 and conveniently ignored 7:15-17 and the context of the "Immanuel" verse, as he misused Isaiah to support the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. But in the Greco-Roman world, the virgin birth of a divine or semi-divine hero was a common motif.
Matthew 2:5-6: Bethlehem?
Matthew 2.5-6 says, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel’" (quoting Micah 5.2).
Micah 5 actually originally referred to a king who was to rescue Israel-Judah from Assyrian domination in the 700's - 600's BCE, as is clear if one continues to read to verse 6 of Micah 5 (quoted below). To think Micah 5 refers to Jesus shows complete ignorance of and disregard for the historical context and message of the book.
The writers of both Matthew and Luke want Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. Why did some Christians want to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth?
Various Jewish groups had been constantly reinterpreting their scriptures for centuries. When Christians began to claim that Jesus was the messiah, they began to comb the Jewish scriptures for "messianic" passages, or passages they considered possibly messianic, and develop narratives to link such passages to Jesus. They did not concern themselves with the original historical or literary context or intent of such passages.
Among other claims, they developed the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the messiah mentioned in Micah 5, despite the fact that the historical and literary context of Micah dealt with hopes for a king who would rescue Israel from Assyrian domination in the 8th-7th centuries BCE. The reason Micah 5 had mentioned Bethlehem in the first place was simply because Jewish tradition held that King David had been born there, and the writer hoped for a Judean king from David's lineage to come along and reunite the north and south and deliver Israel from the Assyrians.
From 733 to 700 BCE, the Assyrian empire took over the land of Israel, exiled most of the Israelites, settled other peoples in the territory of Israel, took over 40-something towns of Judah, exiled many from Judea, and exacted tribute from the remnant of Judah living in Jerusalem. Micah, like other writers during Assyrian domination ca. 733 – 600's BCE, hoped/said that YHWH would gather the remnant of Israel with a new king and with YHWH as their head (2.12-13; 4.6-7); that the new king would restore the former dominion of the country; that the people would live peacefully and securely with their king, whose greatness would reach the ends of the land (eretz) (4.8; 5.2-5); and that this king would deliver the people from the Assyrians, leading Israel to triumph over its enemies (5.6-9). Such predictions failed to come to pass, but various sects of Jews would continue to reinterpret such writings and apply their hopes to new situations.
Here is the actual context of the passage from Micah:
Micah 5.1-9: "1. Marshal your troops, O daughter (city) of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2. But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. 3. Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. 4. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of YHWH, in the majesty of the name of YHWH his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the land (ha eretz). 5. And he will be their peace. When the Assyrian invades our land and marches through our fortresses, we will raise against him seven shepherds, even eight leaders of men. 6. They will rule/crush the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrian when he invades our land and marches into our borders. 7. The remnant of Jacob will be in the midst of many peoples like dew from YHWH, like showers on the grass, which do not wait for man or linger for mankind. 8. The remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which mauls and mangles as it goes, and no one can rescue. 9. Your hand will be lifted up in triumph over your enemies, and all your foes will be destroyed."
Matthew 2:15: Out of Egypt?
Another example of an out-of-context quotation is Matthew 2:15, which says that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Egypt to escape danger from Herod and then bought Jesus back to their homeland in fulfillment of the prophecy, "Out of Egypt have I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). But the original verse contains no prophecy at all and in fact refers to the legendary Exodus, Yhwh's previous deliverance of his "son" Israel from bondage in Egypt. Through the Exodus, as the story went, Yhwh called his enslaved "son" Israel out of Egypt.
The author's loose appropriation of passages from the Old Testament matches his willingness to fabricate other elements of his Jesus story. For example, Matthew and Luke both try to harmonize two different traditions: one that Jesus was from Nazareth, and another mistakenly suggesting that the messiah had to come from Bethlehem. Each author attempted the harmonization in different ways. Matthew assumed Jesus' parents were from Bethlehem, and using part of the Moses plot from the Old Testament, he invented a story in which King Herod tried to kill the prophesied child-king, causing Jesus' family to flee to Egypt. Herod's baby-killing episode was unknown to ancient historians and even to other gospel writers; it is a mere fabrication. Also, in Matthew, Mary and Joseph only move to Nazareth because they are afraid to move back to their home town of Bethlehem. Contrast this plot with that of Luke. The writer of Luke imagines that Jesus' family is originally from Nazareth, not Bethlehem (as in Matthew), and this writer must invent some plot device to get them from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to incorporate the other tradition. So the author invents a Roman census under a governor named Quirinius requiring all Jews to register in their ancestral home towns. Notice, there is no trip to Egypt in Luke, as in Matthew. Historically speaking, there was no empire-wide census requiring people to travel to their ancestral homes in order to register. Also, the writer unknowingly made a chronological error. Quirinius was governor 10 years after the death of Herod, which means that no census under his supervision could have occurred during the reign of King Herod (as in the gospel story). Quirinius' dates as governor are known from Tacitus and Josephus (two different Roman historians) and from ancient inscriptions. The census story in Luke is no more historically accurate than the plot of Matthew. The writer of Luke used or invented or supposed the census story as a plot device to move the birth of Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The author of Matthew used a completely different plot device, having Bethlehem as Mary and Joseph’s home town to begin with, and only later moving them to Nazareth after a fictitious sojourn in Egypt developed to make Jesus’ biography parallel to the story of the nation of Israel. See my other paper, "The Fictitious Birth Narratives of Jesus in the Bible," for more information.
Matthew 27: Jeremiah?
There is even one case in which the NT not only takes a passage out of context, but refers to the wrong prophet as the source of a supposed prophecy. Matthew 27 says that Judas, through an incident involving 30 pieces of silver, fulfilled the words of Jeremiah. But the passage to which Matthew refers comes from Zechariah 11: 12, not Jeremiah, and if one reads it in context, one wonders how "Matthew" could ever think of it as a prophecy for his time anyway. Even if Matthew had named the proper source, to think that Zechariah 11:14-17 predicted Judas, the 30 pieces of silver, and the situation in Matthew 27:3-10 would be totally groundless. It is more likely that the story of the 30 pieces of silver never happened, but was put into Matthew to try to link the Jesus story with the OT.
Isaiah 61: The spirit of Yhwh is upon me?
Luke 4:18 has Jesus reading from Isaiah 61, "The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me . . . to preach good news to the poor . . . liberty to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." Luke portrays Jesus as "fulfilling" this "prophecy," but important questions arise: Was that passage in Isaiah prophetic, or did it refer to Isaiah himself, or Cyrus, or someone else in Isaiah's time? Doesn't "liberty to the captives" and "release for the prisoners" refer to Isaiah's message to the Jews who were "captives" and "prisoners" in Babylon? Doesn't Isaiah 61 fit in with the rest of Isaiah 40-66 in dealing with events from the 500's BCE? Doesn't Isaiah elsewhere portray the exiled Jews as poor, blind, deaf, oppressed, and afflicted (42:7,19-25; 48:10,19; 49:7-9,13-14,21; 50:6,8; 51:7,11,13-14,21; 52:2-5; 53)? When one pursues the answers to these questions, one finds that the NT has again taken the Hebrew scriptures out of context. The Christians probably took this passage as applying to Jesus simply because it had the word "anointed" (messiah) in it; they did not seem to consider historical or literary context or the intent of the author.
Matthew 2:23: Inventing Prophecies?
Matthew 2:23 says that by growing up in Nazareth, Jesus fulfilled a prophecy saying, "He will be called a Nazarene." However, the OT contains no such prophecy. It does mention Nazarite vows, but it never says the expected messiah would take such vows, and even if it did, the Jesus of the Gospels certainly had not taken the Nazarite vows explained in Numbers 6, for he drank wine.
Genealogies of Jesus?
Matthew and Luke both give genealogies to show that Jesus was a descendant of King David, but these genealogies have three problems: 1) they conflict with each other on whether Joseph (Jesus' "father") descended from David through Solomon or Nathan, 2) Luke 3:35 follows the Septuagint and contains an extra name conflicting with the list in the Hebrew Genesis, and 3) the genealogies do not matter anyway if Joseph was not really Jesus' father (i.e. Virgin birth). Since the Messiah was to be a descendant of David, the Gospel writers or others preceding them thought they had to "prove" the genetic link. Obviously, the different writers neglected to consult each other on Jesus lineage, giving us another clue to the story's fabricated nature.
Summary:
The NT abounds with other examples of illogical interpretations of OT passages, and this paper has no space to explain them all here. The writers of the NT appear to have found nothing wrong with taking a single phrase or section out of an OT text and applying to Jesus regardless of what it meant in context or when it was written. After reading the prophets in their historical circumstances, to suggest that they "saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him" (John 12:37-41) is absurd. Indeed, if one studies the OT source passages and their historical backgrounds and then reads the NT's claims of fulfilled prophecies, it appears that the NT authors were inventing elements of a story to try to match isolated, non-contextual passages in the OT so that they could claim their story fulfilled ancient prophecies.
If interested, one should explore the following for examples of NT interpretations of the OT:
Matthew 1:18-23; 2:6,15,17-18,23; 3:3; 4:14; 8:17; 10:35; 11:2-5,10,14; 12:17,39-40; 13:14,35; 15:7-9; 17:10-13; 21:4-5,16,42; 22:41-45; 26:24,31,54,56; 27:9-10,35; Luke 4:17-21; 18:31-34; 24:25-27,44-47; John 2:14-17,18-22; 5:39-40,45-6; 7:38;12:38-41; 13:18; 15:25; 19:24,28-30,33-36,37; Jesus' interpretation of Daniel (in Mt 24; 26:64; Mk 13; Lk 21:17:24-35; and John 5:25-30; 6:40,44,54); Acts 1:15-20; 2:1-21,24-31,34-35; 3:22,24; 4:25; 26:22-3; Hebrews1:5; 10:5-10; Galatians 3:7; and Revelation's use of various OT visions. This list omits many verses in Mark, Luke, and John that have parallels in Matthew. A Bible translation with good footnotes will usually give the OT reference for a verse or passage.