2000 Years
of
Male Tampering
with
Reproductive Functions
A recent PBS
television series about a mystery-solving priest named Father Brown has the
priestly sleuth lecturing a severe nun
who is inflexible on the sin of pregnancy out of wedlock with these words: “Even Our Lady was a single mother for a while.”
Indeed, she was.
There is a great deal of debate about tampering with women’s
reproductive functions these days, from religious doctrinaires in the Roman
Catholic Church to evangelical Christians in America, yet the world is about
to unquestioningly celebrate tomorrow what is perhaps the most famous religious holiday in history,
a holiday which depends on the story of just such a tampering by a divine
tamperer.
The virgin birth of Jesus is believed to be a true occurrence by all Roman Catholics and a
majority of Protestants in 2013 , even though scholars in dusty divinity closets debate whether in fact this doctrine is
based on a centuries-long mistranslation.
The entire virgin birth theory of Christianity in the New Testament
is based on the translation of one word alleged to be predicting the birth of just such a messiah as Jesus; a word in the OLD Testament book of Isaiah 7:14; a word which in
Hebrew (the original text) is “almah“ meaning “young woman”. However, when the Hebrew “almah” gets translated in into the later Greek version of the Bible , the word used is “parthenos” meaning “virgin”.
Therefore, the Lord, of
His own, shall give you a sign; behold, the young woman (the virgin?) is with child, and she shall bear a son, and
she shall call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14)
Hence the possibility that the entire superstructure of the
Nativity in Chriitianity (the event we are about to celebrate tomorrow across the world) is based on a willful or sloppy scholarly mistake made centuries ago and universally ignored by the faithful. (See below).
NOTE: There is a similar scholarly debate about the translation of
“virgin” in another major world religion whose divine reward is “72 virgins” in
paradise , but I prefer to deal with the religion of my upbringing here, and
leave other religions to their own internal debaters.
Putting aside the question of patriarchal control of women's bodies, what can we make today, December 24, 2013, of this focus on women’s reproductive
functions as the central pillar of the Christian religion?
Joseph obviously is concerned about his future wife’s
purity and even considers a 'divorce' when Mary becomes pregnant during the one
year period of Hebrew betrothal, a time
to establish property rights and family relationships, and, incidentally, to figure out if your betrothed is pregnant with another man's child !
In one version, Joseph is visited by an angel who tells
him to calm down, since the pregnancy has
been caused by God so his own son can be born of human flesh.
Angel or no angel, Joseph calms down and Jesus is born in Bethlehem, out of wedlock, a situation which Joseph belatedly—and nobly -- remedies.
If sloppy scholarship has built up a story based on a
mistranslation of the Hebrew text, sloppy believers have used that story to punish women for their
reproductive decisions ----– and accidents ----- for centuries.
Perhaps Christmas (the birth day of the illegitimate son of God and Joseph) is a time to focus our judgments on Hebrew and Greek translations of Isaiah,
rather than on the reproductive functions of the the
world’s women.
After all, to rephrase Time magazine's Man of the Year, who are we to judge?
_______________________________________
Wikipedia
Isaiah
Therefore, the Lord, of His own, shall give you
a sign; behold, the young woman is with child, and she shall bear a son, and
she shall call his name Immanuel. Cream and honey he shall eat when he knows to
reject bad and choose good. For, when the lad does not yet know to reject bad
and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread, shall be abandoned."
In this passage from the Book of Isaiah Book of Isaiah the prophet predicts to King Ahaz Ahaz that a young woman will give birth to
a son who will be called "Immauel Immanuel", meaning "God with us", and that
Ahaz's enemies will be destroyed before this child learns the difference
between good and evil, i.e., before he reaches maturity. The Hebrew word is
"עלמה" (almah almah),
which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, without any
connotation of virginity, and the context of the passage makes it clear that
Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. The Greek-speaking
author of Matthew, however, used the Greek translation Greek
translation of Isaiah,
in which the word is given as "παρθένος", parthenos, meaning a virgin. [52]
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