…Scholars thus agree that almah refers to a woman of childbearing age without implying virginity,[6] while an unrelated word, betulah (בְּתוּלָה), best refers to a virgin,[7] as well as the idea of virginity, betulim (בְּתוּלִים).[8]
Although the concept is central to the account of the virgin birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the scholarly consensus is that the words denote a woman’s fertility without concern for her virginity.[1][2][3]
So uh, oops, the idea that Mary was specifically, literally a virgin… is kind of a translation error from going over into Greek.
This further explains, amongst many other things… if Joseph is not the literal father of Jesus… then… his lineage is irrelevant.
But his lineage going back to David is highly important to both Christian theology and the contextual, contemporaneous way that this would work in the Jewish culture of the time, that he would possibly be able to be seen as the Jewish Messiah.
So… that’s another dimension of this problem for Christians.
The interpretation/understanding given here is more like… (I think?)… that the Holy Spirit, ie, the sort of ever present, non personified idea of God… well, he/it’s role here is just to make sure the biological conception happens, and perhaps specifically bless it, by way of specifically making it happen… or maybe its more like… imbue it with the pure spiritual essence of God?
“… spiritually God, physically human, and legally the heir of the Kingdom.”
I’m frankly not sure that I’m understanding exactly the idea being proposed here.
I should probably also note that the author of this is a Messianic Jew, ie, one who believes, unlike I think basically most, or perhaps all other variants of Judaism… that Jesus actually is the fulfilment of the Jewish Messiah traditions, where most other Jews do not believe the Messiah has yet arrived.
I would very much appreciate any corrections of misunderstandings I may be having here… I grew up Christian, but my cousins are Jewish, but also they were not highly religious, more like ‘non-practicing Jews’, who partook in the holidays and traditions, but were not like, super duper serious about the theology, so we did not ever really talk about theology.
There’s another theory I’ve heard, that’s based on what seems to have been a fairly common rumor/insult hurled at Christians fairly close to the time of Jesus’ life, which is basically that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, and Jospeh more or less did a kind of pity-marriage to her, as… she pretty much would have been cast out and viewed as tainted or worthless by her family and society.
Obviously that’s impossible to … ‘verify’, but it does at least strike me as plausibe.
You’ve said a lot of things! I don’t have the time or energy rn to reply to all of them, but about the Joseph thing - yes, his lineage should be irrelevant if he’s not actually Jesus’s father. I’ve seen excuses for why it matters, and I think the original reason is that the virgin thing was added on later, they originally did think he was his father.
And yeah, the virgin thing was the author of one of the gospels (I forget which) wanting to ‘fulfil prophecy’ with Jesus and reading something about how the Greek word meaning virgin or young woman would give birth to a son before something happened (in context something to do with a battle, like as a figure of speech to communicate a length of time). So yeah, it’s about a normal pregnancy, and then it was interpreted as a ‘virgin birth’ which the gospel writer used to make Mary a virgin to ‘fulfill prophecy’ (which is in context nothing to do with the messiah).
I hope that’s not too bumbling to make sense, in any case there are plenty people who’ve explained it much better than me, like the YouTuber Mindshift ;)
This is mostly about Christianity, which I will admit is mostly not my expertise. I will confirm that in the OT the Hebrew word does in context mean a young woman who has conceived a child in the usual way, however.
Yeah its Matthew where that happens, the virgin mistranslation thing… and I think also the geneology thing, but I think the geneology thing is a significant part of other Gospels as well?
But yes, what you’ve explained makes total sense, but that’s probably/possibly because I also watch Mindshift and a good deal of other similar kinds of channels.
I guess I just wanted to 1) have the whole ‘alma’ thing directly verified by someone who can read Hebrew, and 2) make sure I was not unintentionally making some significant error when it comes to trying to parse I guess ‘mainstream’ Judaism vs Messianic Judaism.
As you are not as familiar with Christianity, I am not so familiar with the various modern… branches, would you say? of Judaism.
Seeing as you can actually read Hebrew, and have read the Torah in Hebrew… what do you think of the following?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah
So uh, oops, the idea that Mary was specifically, literally a virgin… is kind of a translation error from going over into Greek.
https://www.jewishvoice.org/read/article/was-mary-virgin
This further explains, amongst many other things… if Joseph is not the literal father of Jesus… then… his lineage is irrelevant.
But his lineage going back to David is highly important to both Christian theology and the contextual, contemporaneous way that this would work in the Jewish culture of the time, that he would possibly be able to be seen as the Jewish Messiah.
So… that’s another dimension of this problem for Christians.
The interpretation/understanding given here is more like… (I think?)… that the Holy Spirit, ie, the sort of ever present, non personified idea of God… well, he/it’s role here is just to make sure the biological conception happens, and perhaps specifically bless it, by way of specifically making it happen… or maybe its more like… imbue it with the pure spiritual essence of God?
“… spiritually God, physically human, and legally the heir of the Kingdom.”
I’m frankly not sure that I’m understanding exactly the idea being proposed here.
I should probably also note that the author of this is a Messianic Jew, ie, one who believes, unlike I think basically most, or perhaps all other variants of Judaism… that Jesus actually is the fulfilment of the Jewish Messiah traditions, where most other Jews do not believe the Messiah has yet arrived.
I would very much appreciate any corrections of misunderstandings I may be having here… I grew up Christian, but my cousins are Jewish, but also they were not highly religious, more like ‘non-practicing Jews’, who partook in the holidays and traditions, but were not like, super duper serious about the theology, so we did not ever really talk about theology.
There’s another theory I’ve heard, that’s based on what seems to have been a fairly common rumor/insult hurled at Christians fairly close to the time of Jesus’ life, which is basically that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, and Jospeh more or less did a kind of pity-marriage to her, as… she pretty much would have been cast out and viewed as tainted or worthless by her family and society.
Obviously that’s impossible to … ‘verify’, but it does at least strike me as plausibe.
You’ve said a lot of things! I don’t have the time or energy rn to reply to all of them, but about the Joseph thing - yes, his lineage should be irrelevant if he’s not actually Jesus’s father. I’ve seen excuses for why it matters, and I think the original reason is that the virgin thing was added on later, they originally did think he was his father.
And yeah, the virgin thing was the author of one of the gospels (I forget which) wanting to ‘fulfil prophecy’ with Jesus and reading something about how the Greek word meaning virgin or young woman would give birth to a son before something happened (in context something to do with a battle, like as a figure of speech to communicate a length of time). So yeah, it’s about a normal pregnancy, and then it was interpreted as a ‘virgin birth’ which the gospel writer used to make Mary a virgin to ‘fulfill prophecy’ (which is in context nothing to do with the messiah).
I hope that’s not too bumbling to make sense, in any case there are plenty people who’ve explained it much better than me, like the YouTuber Mindshift ;)
This is mostly about Christianity, which I will admit is mostly not my expertise. I will confirm that in the OT the Hebrew word does in context mean a young woman who has conceived a child in the usual way, however.
Hey, that’s more than fair enough!
Yeah its Matthew where that happens, the virgin mistranslation thing… and I think also the geneology thing, but I think the geneology thing is a significant part of other Gospels as well?
But yes, what you’ve explained makes total sense, but that’s probably/possibly because I also watch Mindshift and a good deal of other similar kinds of channels.
I guess I just wanted to 1) have the whole ‘alma’ thing directly verified by someone who can read Hebrew, and 2) make sure I was not unintentionally making some significant error when it comes to trying to parse I guess ‘mainstream’ Judaism vs Messianic Judaism.
As you are not as familiar with Christianity, I am not so familiar with the various modern… branches, would you say? of Judaism.
In this case it’s not really to do with Judaism, but rather the meaning of the Hebrew word ;)
Rabbinic/mainstream orthodox Judaism does have some interesting ideas about Jesus however