St. John Maximovitch on the Hebrew Word "Almah"

Some of you may remember that I recently started a thread about problems with some modern Bible translations like the RSV and NIV.

One of my complaints was that the translators of the RSV render the Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 as "young woman" rather than as virgin.

Here is the whole verse from the RSV: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold a young woman will conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14).

Now here it is from what I regard as a better and truer translation: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14, Douay Rheims Bible).

A young woman bearing a son is not a very striking sign; however, that a virgin should do so is quite a sign indeed.

Anyway, in re-reading St. John Maximovitch's great book, The Orthodox Veneration of Mary The Birthgiver of God, I came across St. John's explanation of the idea that almah can mean "young woman" instead of virgin.

According to St. John Maximovitch, Christian-era Jewish translators of the Old Testament wished to discredit the ever-virginity of the Mother of God and so came up with a new translation of almah, rendering it as "young woman" in Greek rather than as virgin (The Orthodox Veneration of Mary The Birthgiver of God, pp. 29-30).

That this translation represents an innovation is apparent from the fact that the pre-Christian Jewish translators of the Septuagint rendered almah as virgin and not as "young woman." The translators of the Septuagint, living as they did in the 3rd century before Christ, had no anti-Christian axe to grind. They gave the true meaning of the word almah.

What is the purpose behind re-translating the bible? Is it because scholars believe a mistake has been made? Do people re-translate it to better suit their own beliefs and ideas?

Now here it is from what I regard as a better and truer translation:

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To clarify, is this based on your scholarly knoledge or on personal opinion?

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel

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I read this as the woman is a virgin and then conceives on her first sexual experience. Maybe the sign they were talking about was the name emmanuel?

Is this sentance about the coming of Jesus, if so why does it say his name will be Emmanuel - does Emmanuel have another meaning?

You're looking only at one line here. Let's look at context, shall we? King Ahaz is worried because there are a couple other kings out to get him. Isiah tells Ahaz (who doesn't actually want a sign) that the Lord will send one. There's a young woman/virgin/whatever about to give birth, and by the time her child learns to reject the bad and choose the good, everything will be great and the two kings won't be a problem. This is, what, a couple hundred years before Jesus, yeah? What does this have to do with him, anyway?

standing_on_one_foot said:

You're looking only at one line here. Let's look at context, shall we? King Ahaz is worried because there are a couple other kings out to get him. Isiah tells Ahaz (who doesn't actually want a sign) that the Lord will send one. There's a young woman/virgin/whatever about to give birth, and by the time her child learns to reject the bad and choose the good, everything will be great and the two kings won't be a problem. This is, what, a couple hundred years before Jesus, yeah? What does this have to do with him, anyway?

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The prophecy says a virgin will conceive and bear a son, whose name will be Emmanuel, which means "God with us."

When did that happen in Ahaz's time?

It was a prophecy fulfilled in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

Halcyon said:

What is the purpose behind re-translating the bible? Is it because scholars believe a mistake has been made? Do people re-translate it to better suit their own beliefs and ideas?

To clarify, is this based on your scholarly knoledge or on personal opinion?

I read this as the woman is a virgin and then conceives on her first sexual experience. Maybe the sign they were talking about was the name emmanuel?

Is this sentance about the coming of Jesus, if so why does it say his name will be Emmanuel - does Emmanuel have another meaning?

Click to expand...

In this particular instance, the reason for re-translating the Old Testament into Greek was, in part, to counter the Christian claim that Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy of the birth of the Messiah. By rendering almah as "young woman," it could be claimed that Isaiah was merely speaking of a young woman about to give birth in the time of King Ahaz and not to the birth of the then-future Messiah. It is significant that the earlier Jewish translators of the Septuagint (3rd century B.C.) rendered almah into Greek as virgin rather than "young woman."

I am not an expert in biblical languages. It is my opinion that the Douay Rheims is a better translation than the RSV. That is not a bald assertion, however. There are reasons that I gave in the prior thread.

Barring divine intervention, virgins don't conceive without artificial insemination. In the process of conceiving, virginity is lost first.

Isaiah's prophecy is speaking of a miraculous act of conception in which the child's mother is and remains a virgin. Any other use of the word virgin in that verse wouldn't make sense. The normal, biological process of a young woman giving birth wouldn't be much of a sign. That happens all the time. Naming a child Emmanuel wouldn't be much of a sign either. Anyone could do that, especially if she already knew of the prophecy.

Emmanuel means "God with us." It is a prophecy of who Jesus would be, not a prophecy of his literal name.

But what does it have to do with Jesus, given the context? I just don't see how the Messiah coming two hundred years later is going to be a useful sign to Ahaz.

It's specifically supposed to be a sign to Ahaz, after all. "The Lord spoke further to Ahaz: 'Ask for a sign from the Lord your G-d, anywhere down to Sheol or up to the sky." (7:10) The prophecy doesn't even seem to be about the birth so much as about what will happen as the child reaches a certain age. When he reaches this age, "the ground whose two kings you dread shall be abandoned. The Lord will cause to come to you and your people and your ancestral house such days..." (7:16-17) It doesn't in any way mention the Messiah, and it implies that this will happen in Ahaz's time (otherwise, why say come to you?).

According to St. John Maximovitch, Christian-era Jewish translators of the Old Testament wished to discredit the ever-virginity of the Mother of God and so came up with a new translation of almah, rendering it as "young woman" in Greek rather than as virgin (The Orthodox Veneration of Mary The Birthgiver of God, pp. 29-30).

If you really want the truth of it stop reading Christian apologetics and find out what the dead sea scrolls use as the oldest original word/term.

That this translation represents an innovation is apparent from the fact that the pre-Christian Jewish translators of the Septuagint rendered almah as virgin and not as "young woman." The translators of the Septuagint, living as they did in the 3rd century before Christ, had no anti-Christian axe to grind. They gave the true meaning of the word almah.

Please provide a reference for the rendering of "almah" as virgin by pre-christian jewish scribes.

This would be intriguing if one of those Christian translaters who used the faulty septuagint didn`t state in his memoirs that they had made an unintended error in translation but that it was too late to fix it now that all of Christianity had bought into it.

St Jerome.

Not to mention that the content of isiah has nothing to do with Jesus.

** Moved to debate forum **

I apologise if I posted out of place Scott.
I never even looked to see where this was originally posted.

For the OP..

I just ran across this at IIDB...

Isaiah's original Hebrew, with the mistranslated words underscored, reads: "Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel"; -- which, falsely translated by the false pen of the pious translators, runs thus in the English: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel". The Hebrew words ha-almah means simply the young woman; and harah is the Hebrew past or perfect tense, "conceived," which in Hebrew, as in English, represents past and completed action. Honestly translated, the verse reads: "Behold, the young woman has conceived -- (is with child) -- and beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel.

Can anyone who knows Hebrew verify this? I knew that "almah" meant young woman, but is the Isaiah passage really talking in past tense?

The form of the verb HRH, "to conceive", is grammatically perfect (there're no tenses in Hebrew), meaning the action has been done. However, the syntax indicates that we are not dealing with a verb -- the verb is usually before its subject --, but with an adjective -- which follows the noun (in this case, )LMH, almah) -- originally from the verb, meaning "pregnant": behold, a pregnant young woman (is to) give birth to a son..."

The young woman is (already) pregnant.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=121024

If what the final poster says is true that itself would seem to destroy any idea of prophecy of Jesus in the Isaiah verse.

The tenses of Biblical Hebrew are a bit hard...it's more or less, here's the pregnant young woman and she will give birth to a son and call his name Immanuel. It's difficult to say whether she's already pregnant or not, though. I'm inclined to say that the past tense here is indeed past tense, but Biblical grammar is really strange. My translation gives it as a woman who has conceived, for what it's worth.