Isaiah 7:10-16

If you didn't know where the song “O Come O Come Immanuel” comes from, here ya go. It's a story about a baby being born. Must be a prophecy of Jesus right? Or maybe not. The context of this passage (the Biblical context, not historical or extra-Biblical) is Isaiah warning Ahaz not to get in a fight with the Assyrians because it will bring them down on the rest of the kingdom, and they will lose that battle. The name of the child is Immanuel, a symbolic name meaning “God is with us”.

There is nothing here about virgin births, or some far off future plan for this child. It sounds more like a placement of symbols in time to me; “child” representing something new that will grow into something else later, and “the time he knows how to refuse the evil...” is a few years in the future. In the next chapter, Isaiah uses “Immanuel” to refer to a some land or the people occupying it, as in the tribe called “Immanuel”. And that's it. Until the Book of Matthew, we don't hear about Immanuel again.

Romans 1:1-7

I have stated in other entries that Paul refers to Jesus as a spirit and doesn't seem to know much about a real Jesus. In this introduction to his letter to the Romans he says “in the flesh”. Historians who are more certain of Jesus having been a real person will point to this verse, and also Galatians 4:4 and sometimes statements about Jesus having brothers. I wish it were easier for me to simply direct questions to these historians and ask them to stop highlighting one verse or another and ignoring others, but that's not how scholarly texts work. You have to read them as they are and find those missing references yourself.

I spoke in more detail about this Epistle in the 1st week of this year's Advent. I don't think there is much reason for it this week, other than to place Jesus in the pantheon.

Matthew 1:18-25

In today's world, it is becoming less and less disgraceful to be “found to be with child” before you are married. But Joseph knows he is not the father. It would be extremely unlikely that he would support another man's child. He left himself open to ridicule by those who would be concerned about when they married and whether or not Mary was a virgin. These things may not be important to you or the people around you but they were to those around Joseph. The Bible gives us no details on this, but the few actions portrayed of Joseph paint him as worthy of the tasks at hand.

The important part of the story of course, is Mary's virginity. The virgin birth is a common motif of the time. It was not however a Jewish tradition. The people who first heard this story would have known of virgin births by others claiming to be gods, so they would have known of the significance. They may have been aware of how this story did not depict a lustful father or any sexual details, while other stories often did. There are so many theories on how this idea of a virgin birth got into Christianity, I can't cover them all.