Matthew describes how the miraculous birth of Jesus from a virgin fulfills a Biblical prophecy:
Matthew 1:18-25 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. 20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. 21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. 22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: 25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.
This quotation from Matthew is based on a story found in Isaiah 7:1-16 which you can read below. This story in Isaiah is about Ahaz, King in Jerusalem over 700 years before the time of Jesus. Ahaz was terrified of two enemy kings who were marching on Jerusalem. Isaiah is sent to Ahaz to calm his nerves and to give Ahaz a sign that would prove that God was on Ahaz’s side. When told to ask for a sign, out of fear, Ahaz refuses to test God by requesting a specific sign. Isaiah then names the sign that God would give to Ahaz. That sign is that a woman who was already pregnant would soon give birth to a male, and that child was the sign for Ahaz.
Remember, a sign is not a miracle. A sign is something real, that points to something else, just like a stop sign is real metal and real paint, and points to the place in the road where one is to stop. The child himself is the sign, and his conception was not meant or referred to by Isaiah to be anything special or miraculous. Isaiah calls the son a sign, and not a miracle. As a sign, every time Ahaz would see the child, he would be comforted to know that God was on his side, and that he had nothing to worry about from those enemy kings. That is what made the child a sign to Ahaz.
This is also why the son’s name was to be “EmanuEl,” which means “God Is With Us.” Every time Ahaz had to call the child by name, he would be reminding himself that “God is with us,” and not with Ahaz’s enemies. The name does not mean that the child would be God, but rather the child’s name was a reminder to Ahaz that God was with Ahaz and his people. This is similar to the name given to the prophet Elihu. Elihu means, My God Is He, or He Is My God. It does not mean that Elihu was God, it means that He (God) is my God.
Isaiah tells Ahaz that by the time that child was old enough to be able to tell the difference between Good and Evil, the two enemy kings would be dead. How old is a child before he or she is old enough to know the difference between Good and Evil? Some might say by the age of two or three. Others may claim around the age of 12 or 13, the ages of a Bat or Bar Mitzvah. This means that the sign was meant for Ahaz’s own time as the first verse below states, and not for a time that was 700 years in Ahaz’s future:
Isaiah 7:1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, King of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. 2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. 3 Then said the Eternal unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-yashuv thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field; 4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. 5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, 6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal: 7 Thus saith the Eternal God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. 8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. 9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. 10 Moreover the Eternal spoke again unto Ahaz, saying, 11 Ask thee a sign of the Eternal thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. 12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Eternal. 13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Eternal himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman (ha-almah) has conceived (harah) and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
The word which is mistranslated is the word for “the young woman” (in Hebrew: ha-almah). The fact that she is called “the young woman,” and the definite article, “the” is used, indicates that the young woman was known to both Isaiah and to Ahaz and therefore must have lived in their day. The fact that this all took place in the time of Ahaz is further indicated by the past tense “has conceived (Harah).” One may argue that a young woman could also be a virgin, but the sign sas not the birth, the sign was the child himself, who would be the reminder, the sign, to Ahaz that he had nothing to worry about because, With Us Is God The word almah does not refer to the young woman’s sexual status. Had the Biblical Author wished to express the idea that the woman was a virgin, the Author would have used the Hebrew word for virgin, which is “b’tu-lah.” Even if the text had called her a virgin, there is no reason to believe that the virgin would have conceived her child through any other means than through a sexual act. It is only reading the verse through the eyes of Christianity, assuming a virgin birth, that would lead one to interpret the verse in this way.
The fact that “almah” does not mean virgin can be shown by looking at the use of the same word in Proverbs 30:18-20. Here again the word “almah” is used in the Hebrew. However, here there is no question that the young woman is not a virgin. These verses are an expression of amazement that things can happen which leave no trace that they have occurred. These things include the fact that two people can make love and leave no trace that they have had sexual intercourse. This can only be true if the woman was not a virgin, because the loss of her virginity would be an indication that she had engaged in sex. We also know this because “the young woman” is likened to an adulterous woman who commits adultery through the act of sexual intercourse but leaves no trace of the transgression. This could only make sense because she, as an adulterous woman, was not a virgin:
Proverbs 30:18 There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: 19 The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a young woman <almah>. 20 Likewise is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.
Christians might say that there is a dual prophecy regarding these verses, that one prophecy was fulfilled in the days of Isaiah and Ahaz, but another prophecy based on the same verse was fulfilled by Jesus. If that is true it means that the birth of Jesus by Mary was not the first virgin birth in history. Furthermore, why claim that there is only a dual prophecy to this or to any other verse in Scripture? Perhaps there is a third or triple prophecy and the third prophecy was fulfilled by any of the many gods who were the product of a virgin birth, the result of a human woman being made pregnant by a god, but without the sexual act? Perhaps this was a triple prophecy, the third being fulfilled by Perseus, who was the son of the human woman named Danae and who had Zeus for a father? Zeus made Danae pregnant by showering her with gold rather than through the sexual act, which was like a virgin birth. Or maybe this could have been a quadruple prophecy or more. If one allows for a dual prophecy, there is no reason to say that the number would stop at two, except through the wishful thinking of Christian theology.
So we see that the whole story of the virgin birth appears to be proven on a mistranslation of the word “ha’almah.” Therefore remember that when a Christian missionary, or missionary literature, references a verse from the Hebrew Scriptures, look up the verse in the original Hebrew. The Christian translation may be a mistranslation.
It is possible that the early Christians wanted to have the birth story of their Jesus to reflect the same miracle nature as the birth stories of the pagan gods of their day, and so they latched onto the mistranslation found in the Septuagint (Greek translation) of the verse from Isaiah and built their story of Jesus’ birth upon this verse. It is not that the mistranslation of a Biblical verse led to the belief about Jesus, but rather that the belief in Jesus, that he had to be born of a virgin, for example, led to the use of a mistranslated verse to validate the already held belief.
The earliest Christians might have been Jews, but they were very assimilated into Hellenism and the culture of that time. Since other gods had miracle births, like that of Perseus explained above, it is possible that they first had the belief about the virgin birth of Jesus, and then found a verse that had already been mistranslated to use to indicate that Jesus was fulfilling that verse. The earliest Christians who were Jews used the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, far more often than the original Hebrew. This is another great indication of just how assimilated into Greek pagan culture these early Christianized Jews were.
The word “Septuagint” should only refer to the Greek translation of the Torah, the five books of Moses, and not to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures. The word “Septuagint” comes from the Greek word for “seventy,” a reference to the story of seventy Jewish scholars who translated the Torah into Greek in rooms separated from one another, but who came out with exactly the same translation. Later Greek translators took the remaining books of the Hebrew Scriptures, but we do not know who they were, and their translations are just not that accurate to the original Hebrew. Isaiah was translated by one of these unknown translators. Eventually, all of the books of the Jewish Bible were translated into Greek and collected together. Unfortunately, these translations are incorrectly collectively called the “Septuagint,” but in truth, the term “Septuagint” really should only refer to the Greek translation of the Torah and not to the translation of the rest of the books of the Jewish Bible.
Whether these early Christians first had the belief that their Jesus was born of a virgin like so many other pagan gods and then found a passage in the Septuagint’s mistranslation to justify their belief, or that they just based their story on the mistranslation of the word “ha-almah,” cannot be known. What is known is that the basis of their interpretation remains an incorrectly translated Hebrew word.