Did Matthew Conceive A Virgin? Isaiah 7:14 And The Birth Of Jesus -- By: Greg Rhodea

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 56:1 (Mar 2013)
Article: Did Matthew Conceive A Virgin? Isaiah 7:14 And The Birth Of Jesus
Author: Greg Rhodea


Did Matthew Conceive A Virgin? Isaiah 7:14
And The Birth Of Jesus

Greg Rhodea*

* Greg Rhodea resides at 3900 Swiss Ave Apt. 1009, Dallas, TX 75204.

I. Introduction1

In the last couple hundred years, the historicity of Matthew’s and Luke’s infancy narratives has fallen on hard times. Among the Gospel stories, “it is the infancy narratives which pose in the most acute form the question of the historical value of the Gospel narratives.”2 These stories are often viewed as part of the last layer of gospel tradition in the NT, and as such their historicity is discounted by some.3

This is particularly seen with reference to the virginal conception of Jesus. As a supernatural element of the infancy narratives that does not have explicit support elsewhere in the NT, the virginal conception is often understood as a fiction of some sort—whether a theologoumenon to “push back” the Christological moment to Jesus’ conception, an apologetic effort to bolster Jesus’ credentials, or one of a variety of other reasons.

One skeptical suggestion is that Matthew or other early Christians invented the virginal conception as a fiction to fulfill the prophecy of Isa 7:14. J. K. Elliott writes that the tradition developed when Matthew felt the need to fulfill the Septuagint “mistranslation” and thus described Jesus’ unique birth accordingly.4 The radical skeptic Bart Ehrman claimed in his bestselling Jesus, Interrupted that “Matthew wrote that Jesus was born of a virgin because that’s what he thought Scripture predicted.”5 Did Matthew or his sources falsely invent the virginal conception to fulfill prophecy, or was Jesus actually born of a virgin and early Christians connected this event with the prophecy? Which came first, the chicken or the egg—the history or the prophecy?

Now at first glance, the invention of a virginal conception to fulfill prophecy seems logical. After all, Isaiah says that a virgin/young woman will give birth to a son and his name will mean “God with us.” All through Matthew’s Gospel the evangelist is at pains to demonstrate how Jesus fulfills the OT. He reaches so far

that he even produces some unusual ideas of fulfillment to our ears (e.g. Matt 2:15). Might this be the case? Did Matthew or...

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