There are many who claim to love the Bible who have never read it. More specifically, they love their concept of the Bible. Not the Bible itself. Today’s texts are the source of a translation debate that’s been raging for centuries. The following conversation sorts out who loves what.
In my Old Testament class in seminary, Dr. Julia O’Brien spoke about the passage in Isaiah 7 we just heard.[1] The word in Hebrew is very firmly ‘Young Woman’ and not virgin. “Almah” is the Hebrew word used here, used 9 other times in the Old Testament. It means “young woman.” It has nothing to do with virginity.
Furthermore, when we read the passage in context, the prophet is doing something here. There are two bad kings troubling Israel. What the prophet is saying is “Look… A young woman will give birth and before this kid is weaned, the two bad kings will be gone.”
This was further reinforced by Rabbi Jack Paskoff in my Jewish Interpretation of the Bible class I took. The good rabbi stated that a whole host of scholars and translators met in the making of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the one our church uses. And there was a consensus that YES! This word was “young woman” but the scholars voted to keep in “virgin” because of how Matthew uses it.
This caused a stir in my class! People were up in arms! Matthew can’t be wrong! There was much clutching of perals. Of course, the word means “Virgin” that’s what it always has meant! That’s how it’s always been! We’ve always done it that way!
Harry Buch recently shared a post on Facebook of a tweet from Cathrine na Nollag: “I still think my favourite thing that’s ever happened to me on the internet is the time a guy said ‘people change their minds when you show them facts’ and I said ‘actually studies show that’s not true’ and linked TWO sources and he said ‘yeah well I still think it works.’”[2]
This is the problem of our time. Facts don’t persuade. Story does. Matthew knows this. He is making Isaiah to point to Jesus. The ancients have no problem interpreting history. It’s our modern mindset that strives for accuracy and FACTS and OBESSION with facts. But facts don’t persuade. Stories do.
Here’s an example: Kate’s cousin Wendy is in local theatre in Philadelphia. She was in the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I had it in my mind that we saw her in the play in October. It was a dark comedy. I remember the changing trees, the taste of red wine, the cool temperature, the old wrought iron fence outside this great historic building the play was being held in. It was October! That’s the story I tell myself. Yet Wendy pointed out that this wasn’t factual. The play was held in April. She knows because one dress rehearsal was canceled due to a late snow. The ticket confirmed this. As well as Kate’s journal.
I was factually wrong. However, the feeling of Halloween and October was so overwhelming I thought it was actually held then.
The ancients were more evocative. They told stories. They had no problem interpreting history. This thing the prophet said, it applies to Jesus. Points to him. Nor were the ancient people simplistic idiots, they were just as complex as we are in our day and age.
As John Dominic Crossan written and I have quoted before, “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
Matthew is interpreting Isaiah 7 to fit the present day. He must have a later version of Isaiah, one written in Greek known as the Septuagint. The Septuagint is not as old as the Hebrew version of Isaiah. The Greek word used for the Hebrew word “Alma” or “young woman” is parthenos, which means virgin.
Matthew could also be reminding his readers about how Isaiah is talking about two bad kings, because his readers would know about two bad kings. Isaiah gives a vision that the two kings will be gone by the time the child named “God is With Us” is weaned. What Matthew could be trying to provoke is our imaginations, as the readers in the first century would have been under the rule of two bad kings as well. Both Cesar and King Herod. What the author is doing is inspiring hope saying, “God is with us in Jesus! Cesar and Herod don’t matter when Jesus is on the scene!”
For Matthew loves the story of Jesus and is trying to share the good news. Good News that God is with us through the bad kings of Isaiah’s time, all the way up to the current bad kings. God is with us! And will never leave us. And through Jesus, as come with a new law which fulfills the old.
I love this story too. I love reading it. Studying it. I love swimming in it and debating it. I love reading scholars and the centuries old debates that put normal folk to sleep. However… and this is the most controversial thing I’ll say all day… I’m not in love with the Bible. Getting you to love the Bible is not what Matthew or Isaiah or any other scripture or any pastor worth their salt is trying to do.
Let me take a running start at this. Someone once accused me of “wanting to change the Bible” this past summer. I had no good comeback to this. I don’t want to change the Bible. I didn’t have the words at that moment… and you know what they say about words, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can give me a lifetime of therapy.” I was hurt by those words. It is only now that I have a good comeback to that accusation, months later. I don’t want to change the bible. What I want to change is our understanding of it.
The point of the bible is not for us to love it. It’s not for us to worship it or treat it as some magic idol. The point of the bible is to point beyond itself. It tells the stories of people of faith, warts and all; and how God was with them and how God is still with us in our day. The point of the bible is not for us to love it. The point of the bible is to have us fall in love with God.
What we ended up doing is instead of going after what the bible wants, namely us to fall in love with God and be transformed by grace, thus transforming the world by grace… we have insulated ourselves by making it a reward system for later. Or as Richard Rohr puts it, “A divine evacuation plan from this world.”[3] The price for real transformation is high. It means that we have to change our loyalties from power, success, money, control, and our love of THINGS or at least our love of OUR IDEAS ABOUT THINGS!
I don’t want to change the bible. I don’t even really care if you want the word to be “Virgin” or “young woman.” That’s not the point. My liberal friends love poking holes and burning traditional understandings by insisting it’s YOUNG WOMAN and being uncompromising about it and thus missing the provocative power that Matthew is trying to do. And my conservative friends love talking about ABSOLUTE TRUTH while they won’t deal with the fact that the older Hebrew translation is definitely “young woman.” Either approach misses the real point. The point is for us to be transformed by the love of God shown in Jesus Christ. Liberal or conservative. Libertarian or apathetic. Whatever label and no matter who you are, the point is the transformative power of God’s love! Not the love of a denomination or a theological system.
I want you to know that you are loved beyond your wildest dreams and no amount of evil kings can change that. Not time. Not circumstance. Not what you misinterpret. Nor in any way you continually miss the message…. Love is the message. It has always been the message. Mary brought that message into the world. Jesus preached it. He said, “Repent and believe the kingdom of God is near!”
Repent means to “think differently afterwards.” After you’re transformed, you’ll see things differently.
Maybe if we look at the Christmas story differently, we can be transformed by it. Maybe if we let it speak to our lives instead of arguing with it or wanting it to be something it’s not. If we stop insisting on our translation or our doctrine or our method of control, we can be transformed by its Good News. We can think differently about ourselves. Our neighbor. Our role in the world with a God who created us for Good things. A God who is not distant but is with us, closer than our next breath.
This is an ancient story. One that has transformed countless lives. The Bible is vital and important to faith. Yet the point of the Bible isn’t to love the Bible, but to love the one who inspired it. The point of the Bible is not for us to love it. The point of the Bible is to have us fall in love with God who loves us beyond our wildest dreams. Here and now. The transformation of this world that God created in love and loves very, very much. Amen.
Works Cited
Posed 12/15/2019, original source The Other 98% on December 12th at 4:30 p.m.
Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas; Daily Meditations for Advent Page 17
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