* The connexion of v.l6 with v." is as follows. A young woman ^vill bear n ^nn nnd -vdl his name Immanuel. This will be a sign. f<,i- i' will < -t'l' -- a faith which triumphs over the appearan,-, ,,■ m : i-lir. And it is truly God-
inspired faith, t ,i ' iididly vindicated. Ere the
child thus born in d,i,~ ,,, ,1 ii,,ii,ss knows how to distinguish between hurtful and i,i,:|,ci ujJ, the hostile power mil be crushed, and thus God's presence with His people will be clearly manifested. Immanuel will be a standing rebuke to the king's scepticism.
t The LXX of Is T" reads in B : Sii t»Dt» 8i«i Kipiu ttiris tt,uiv mfjiucv lioij V) rxpSifO? iy yxrrpt XrsfA^trtct skk/ ri^trxt miv, xxi aatXtVfi? TO oVotta x-jreZ '¥,pLfjLxvouitX. For h^.^'^t-rxt, howevef,
NAQ read V|i;, which is the same rendering as that in Matthew. For xoLKiirui we have in H xtti^iau ; neither B nor N here coincide with Matthew. The text in Mt 123 reads lUv y, -rapdiyei iv yxinpi
JSi
IMMANUEL
IMMOETALITV
readily be suggested by his belief in the Virgin- conception.
Among tliose, however, who regard the belief in the Virgin-birth as a piece of primitive Christian mythology, there has been a controversy as to what led tlie author to quote tliis passage, and the re- lation between that belief and the passage in Isaiah. Many think that the former was created by the latter,* and probably in the form given to it by the LXX translation. The Hebrew, it is thought, would not naturally have lent itsi-ir (.. this purpose apart from the tletinite use uf Tra^Curis in the LXX. Several recent scholars, on the other hand, consider that the use of wapeifos is quite insufficient to account for St. Mattliew's quota- tion. They consider that even, before the birth of Jesus there had been formed a doctrine of the Messiah, which included among other tilings His supernatural birth. This was ultimately ilerived from the pagan stories of children of the gods, but was not taken over directly from p.aganisni by Jewish ('Inisti.iiiity. It had arisen on the soil of JiKlai^iii it~eli, aiiil it is in the JudiEo-pagan syiu retisin, with its iluet vine that the Messiah must be burn of a virgin, that the origin of the belief is to be sought. What was said of Christ was sub- sequently transferred to Jesus, when Jesus and the Christ were identified. A quotation from Gunkel will make this position clear. After say- ing that the mythological representations did not make their first appearance in the later Gentile Cliristianity, he proceeds : ' But this would have been inqmssible if Juilaisiu itself had not previ- ously ]ii)ssesseil lliis or siniilar representations. The' birth of Christ from tin' \'ir,t;in through the Divine Spirit IkuI, wi' iii.iy ;i"Uiiie, already be- longed to the Christi>lo'-:ii:il .L.ljiiki before Jesus, just as His birth in ll.'tlil.l,,,,, ,,ii,l from David's race, and has been tr.iii-fernil lo .lesus only at a later time. What we li;i\e t.. learn then, and what will siibseiiuently be shown again, is that this .Tud.iisiLi which found its way into primitive Christianity must have been strongly inclined to syiuretisni' (Ziiiii religionsgeschichtlichen Ver- stand Ills dci NT, p. 69). Similarly, Cheyne, in his BiMe Problems, considers that the historical ex- planation of the statement of the Virgin-birth is that it arose 'in the story of non- Jewish origin current in Jewish circles and borrowed from them by certain Jewish Christians.' He interprets ' virgin ' in a peculiar sense. In its original mean- ing ' it expresses the fact that the great mythic mother-goddess was independent of the marriage tie' (p. 75). For him the passage in Mt. 'is a Jewish - Christian transformation of a primitive story, derived ultimately, in all probability, from Babylonia, and analogous to the Jewish trans-
• Ct. Hamack : ' Even the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin sprang from Is T". . . The conjecture of fst-ner, that the idea of the birth from a virgin is a heath-n iii'/th whir}) was received by the Christians, contradicts ih. . ntn, .iih. i development of" Christian tradition, which is I! .1 ,: ,i myths, so far as these had not already lieeri , I .1.
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formation of the Babylonian cosmogony in the opening section of Genesis ' * (p. 93). On the other hand, a good many scholars take the view that the story was created, not simply out of pagan materials, but on pagan soil and among Gentile Christians. This is the view of Usener, Schmiedel, Soltau, Prieiderer, and others (see references below). It does not fall within the scope of this article to discuss this question further, since it is concerned sini]ily with tlio bearing of the LXX translation of rr:^-; iy ^•n^n.'rui on the development of the belief ill the XiiLiii c. inception of Christ. To rebut the t'lirisiitiii Use (it Is 7" as a prediction of the super- natural birth of Christ, later Jewish translators substituted veavis for vapeivoi. See VIRGIN BiRTH.
6a4 ; Harnack, History oj Dogma, i. p. 100, n. 1 ; Box, ' The Gospel Narratives of the Nativity and the alleged Influence of Heathen Ideas ' in ^ZATIF, 1905, p. 80 ff.