Prophecy of Messiah: Isaiah 7

From my point of view it is quite true that Ahaz' submission to Tiglath Pileser thwarted the prophecy. The Assyrians did not attack Judah within the time limit and therefore the prophecy failed. If Ahaz had tried to remain independant it is likely - or at least more likely that the prophecy would have been fulfilled

I have yet to see any better reading of the prophecy. And we already know that YOUR understanding failed very, very badly.

Isaiah 7 is set at the time of the initial attack, and it seems that Ahaz does not know what to do. There is no indication in Isaiah 7 or 8 that Ahaz has chosen to submit to the Assyrians.On the other hand as I point out the link betwen verse 15 and 22 indicates that the whole prophecy from the fall of Syria to the devastation of Judah must fall within a relatively short period of time - too long for the historical dates. I have yet to see any reasonable explanation of why the text would be written as it is if your interpretation was intended.

I'm sorry, I thought I was discussing with someone who had some nowledge of Hebrew. Obviosuly not. Almah, by the way is the feminine equivalant of the word meaning "young man" and therefore has no strong coonnotations of virginity. It seems that you are confusing the two.

Tell me, how can you seriosuly suggest that the sign would noot appear until seven hundred years AFTER the events it was to be a sign OF ?It is perfectly obvious that the birth must come first.

The implication is that you have a reference to an "almah" who is not young, even though any decent Hebrew lexicon will tell you that is specifically means "young woman".Do you have such a reference ?Do you have a source which describes the meaning of "almah" as untouched ?The Strong's lexicon at Crosswalk.com lists the following words for "untouched" "bal" and "paqad". The meanings listed for almah state that it refers to a "woman of marriagable age" or "maid or newly married". "untouched" is NOT listed as a meaning - and youth is clearly indicated, contrary to your claim. The origin of "almah" is listed as "elem" meaning "young man". "Bethulah" on the other hand is solely listed as meaning "virgin", with no indication of age given.Quite frankly it appears that you are making things up.

Since Fortenberry is claiming things that are contradicted by the sources I have found, and offers no sources of his own I question whether he has done his homework at all.So far as I can tell almah means "young woman" and is derived from elem meaning "young man". Fortenberry contradicts both but offers no sources supporting his claim at all.

OK neither of your posts 37 or 55 addresses the question of how the sign could follow the fulfulment. The purpose of the sign is to indicate that the fulfilment is close - not that it happened centuries in the past.From the rest of your post it appears that you are relying on the apologetic work of inerrantists who wsih to maintain that the translation of Isaiah as referring to a virgin birth is correct for religious reasons (why else do they say that there is "no instance where it can be PROVED 'alma designates a young woman who is not a virgin." - empahsis mine - unless they know that they do not have a positive case that it DOES mean virgin ?)As for your examples they become less impressive when it is noted that Deuteronomy 32:25 uses "bachuwr" for "young man" rather than "elem", Jeremiah 13:31 does the same and does not even link the two (and Jeremaiah is full of references to the "virgin of Israel").
The 2 Lamentations entries use the same word for young man.And what about, say Leviticus 21:14 ? Or Deuteronomy 22:23 and 28 ?
Both Deuteronomy 22 references refer to a "Na'arah" (that is a girl) who is "bethulah". That would be redundant if bethulah meant "young woman" as you say - and it looks unlikely to be an example of repetition for effect. All three seem to quite clearly refer to virginity. On the other hand almah is never used when it would specifically mean "virgin". You claimed that almah is ALWAYS used "in reference to true virgins" - yet the only example where virginity is known, is where the same woman is also called "bethulah"I also notice that you offer no reference where almah is used to refer to a woman who is not young, but still a virgin - despite the fact that you clearly claimed this meaning with no support. Obviously you have not done as much homework as you would have us believe.

Yes Buz, it has been quite obvious that the you are trying to force the text into your preconcieved ideas rather than paying attention to what it actually says.It is absolutely clear that the Bible contradicts your beliefs to the point where you are unable to actually READ what the Bible says.
Surely even you have noticed that you cannot refute the reasoning behind the other readings that have been given.

Well, it seems that you have great trouble grasping a very simple point.
A sign is supposed to indicate that the fulfiilmnet of a prophecy is near.
Therefore it must occur shortly before the fulfilment.According to your interpretation the "sign" occurrs centuries after the fulfilment.And if you don't know that the sign is the birth of the child named Immanuel then there really isn't much point discussing the prophecy since you obviously don't know what it says, nor can you be bothered even to read it.Do you NOW understand the problem ?And migh I ask how you can claim that you have answered the point if you do not understand it ?In post 77 you qouted "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke"In fact you quoted it to disagree with a claim I made - which comes directly from the Strong's lexicon from crosswalk.com. (Note the ultimate source is Strong's not "The Theological Wordbook..."). So we were not using the same source.Well lets go on. You tell me that if your list of 11 is not rendered less useful as evidence if the examples I check out turn out to be too weak to offer significant suppport to your point. And are the other seven any better ? If you've got one good example then bring it out, but it's rather a moot point given that we know that in the Bible "betulah" is used specifically to mean virgin and "almah" is not.And it should be obvious why the use of bacwr weakens your case - we migh expect a poet to link elem and almah since they are related words, similar in sound as well as meaning. But why should a poet necessarily use almah if he also uses bachwr ? In short without some reason to suppose that the author did not intend to mean "virgins" where is the evidence ?And I see now that you are quibbling and quibbling and retreating.At least you admit that betulah is used specifically to carry the meaning of "virgin" - at last. Which in itself demolishes your arguments. Since we know that "betulah" was used rather than "almah" in precisely the cases where the concept of virginity needs to be conveyed why would Isaiah use "almah" instead of "betulah" ? Why is this verse the exception ?What is the difference between "ALWAYS used in reference to true virgins" and "only used in reference to true virgins" ? And even if I had used extra-Biblical sources why would it matter ? Are you truly trying to suggest that the Bible used some special dialect of Hebrew distinct from any other ? And how is this quibble even relevant when I only referred to the Bible in the first place ?To answer your question, about the uses of almah. When I said "none", I menat "none". Is it really so hard to understand ?And again, if "almah" menas "virgin" rather than "young woman" as you say it clearly must include women who are still virgins, yet not young. Or are you now saying that "almah" DOES only refer to young women ?So lets go back to the Bible uses. Despite your claim that "only used in reference to true virgins" only one clearly does so (even your own sources argue only that it cannot be *proven* that the women referred to are not virgins).
You cannot find even one usage of "almah" where it clearly does mean "virgin".
There are uses of "betulah" which clearly do mean "virgin".So what possilbe basis do you have for lcaimign that Isaiah would use "almah" rahter than "betualh" to mean "virgin" ?

Indeed it does. The only person you managed to fool was Buzsaw, who can't even manage to read the Bible without putting his preconceptions ahead of the text.If you'd really done your homework you'd have not made so many errors.

Clearly your "reading" is based on preconceptions, since it fails to even deal with the context of Isaiah 7 in the English transdlations.You use Matthew's short out of context quote of a translation of Isaiah as the only rule on how to interpet Isaiah. You put this ahead of the Hebrew text of Isaiah itself - not only the words used, but the context. How can you justify that without appealing to preconceptions ?The Greek can be dealt with easily. It cannot override the Hevrew, nor can it override the context of the original. Both indicate that "virgin" was not the intended meaning, therefore the Greek is wrong. Since it comes from a translation generally regarded as being of poor quality the Greek use of parthenos can be taken as one more error on the part of the translator.And one more question. The last time you left you conceded that the Bible says what it says. Why do you now deny that Isaiah 7 says what it says ??

Regardless of whether the child in Isaiah 7 is the same as the child in Isaiah 8 it is absolutely clear that the child of Isaiah 7 must be born before the events of the prophecy occur.Those events include the defeat of the kingdoms of Aram (Syria) and Israel. Both were long gone by the time Jesus was born.This refutes any idea that the child of Isaiah 7 could be Jesus.

But that is the error of the fundamentalists. The Bible itself never claims to be the literal Word of God. At most some parts of it are claimed to be - typically prophets repeating messages that they say were sent to them from God.Can you find one book in the Bible which is clearly written as if God were the author ? It's not hard to find books which were written as if a human writer were the primary author - and Isaiah is one of them.-->http://

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The claim is that the "human" authors wrote entirely under divine inspiration; therefore, their words are perfect. This gets difficult when one notes discrepancies and inconsistencies even in supposedly pristine texts (i.e., texts that don't show errors in copying or transmission).

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As I remember, Paul corrects himself in one of the epistles. If he was writing under perfect divine inspiration why would he make a mistake ?And how many of the writers actually claim to be writing under direct divine inspiration ?All they have is 2 Timothy 3:16. And there are numerous problems in interpreting that as they do. From the vagueness of the statement to the question of authorship to the fact that it does not claim to be scripture or clearly identify which books it does refer to (if Paul wrote it he would ahve to mean the Septuagint and not a single NT book)..This message has been edited by AdminJar, 03-20-2006 08:47 AM