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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Do Old Testament prophecies
indicate that Jesus is God?

 

 

return to main-page of the "Jesus" article

 

For an in-depth perspective here, you will need to invest some study time. The links below will help you in your research.

However, allow me to give you the bottom line. Just for a moment, I'll focus on one major claim only, that of the virgin birth.

It will disturb many to learn that the gospel writers who reference the "virgin birth" in Isaiah 9 either are incompetent or, worse, set out to deceive their readers. This is quite clear, actually, and several scholars (below) address this problem.

In brief, the issue is this:

The original Hebrew word for "virgin" that we see in the modern translations is used a great many times in the Old Testament and is never used to strictly denote what we commonly refer to as a "virgin" - there is another Hebrew word for this. But Isaiah does not use that other word, though he was aware of it, because he does use it elsewhere. Instead, in Isaiah 9 he uses the Hebrew word for "young woman," which, as we well understand, is not necessarily the same as "virgin."

The apostle Paul, author of the earliest New Testament documents, knows nothing of a virgin birth, never speaks of it. Instead, in Galatians, he simply states, indicating humble beginnings, that Jesus "was born of a woman"! - meaning, just like the rest of us. The idea of the "virgin birth" was slipped in much later by church politicians attempting to turn Jesus into a god. Read about it detail below.

It is a common tactic of the unscrupulous to rewrite and refashion history to support a private agenda of power and control. When the Church Councils decided that Jesus needed to become a god, it was necessary to fabricate a fanciful and impressive origin for him.

 

Gerald Sigal: Daniel 9

Gerald Sigal: Isaiah 53

Gerald Sigal: Isaiah 9

Gerald Sigal: Matthew 2

Gerald Sigal: Zechariah 9

Jim Lippard

James Sill

 

Also, the writings and Youtube lectures by Bishop John Shelby Spong are excellent in this area.

  

 

Bishop John Shelby Spong:

"When I became aware that neither the word virgin nor the concept of virginity appears in the Hebrew text of Isaiah that Matthew quoted to undergird his account of Jesus' virgin birth, I became newly aware of the fragile nature of biblical fundamentalism. The understanding of 'virgin' is present only in the Greek word parthenos, used to translate the Hebrew word almah in a Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew word for virgin is betulah. Almah never means "virgin" in Hebrew! I had to face early on in my priestly career the startling possibility that the virgin tradition so deep in Christianity may well rest upon something as fragile as the weak reed of a mistranslation."

 

 

 

Editor's note: Notice the provocative masthead-quotation on Bishop Spong's book: "How a one-sided portrayal of the Mother of God has been too often used to keep real women under wraps!" - amen.

 

 

 

Editor's last word:

I know many women who are sensitive to this whole area of male-dominated power-structures in society, and the oft-times second-class treatment for them that has flowed from this oppression; and I more than fully support them in their contention, as one of my unspoken purposes in my writings is to take their side. 

However, these same women, in many cases, will support churches with dark "infallible doctrines" that, in essence, as philosophical underpinning, depict them as mere servant of man, not truly "made in the image."

I see this pathology akin to what happened to Patty Hearst - a manifestation of the power of cultism, causing people to do what they would never do if they hadn't lost themselves to terror of death.