Almah vs Bethulah: Facts and Questions

Isaiah 7:14 is one of the most contentious verses in the Old Testament. The Hebrew term alma is translated by the LXX as parthenos ‘virgin’, and it is this manuscript that is cited by Matthew in his gospel (1:23). This paper is an attempt to show that the term alma need not cause undue difficulty in translation, and can usually be rendered ‘girl’ or ‘young (unmarried) woman’.

The Master's Seminary Journal, 2022

Many evangelical scholars deny that Isaiah’s prophecy of a virgin giving birth to Immanuel directly predicts the birth of Jesus, arguing that the words and syntax of Isaiah 7:14 demand fulfillment in the time of King Ahaz. This article provides three arguments to support a messianic-only interpretation. First, the greater context of chapters 1–12 consistently anticipates immediate judgment upon the nation, with Judah’s hope lying beyond exile when God takes up residence with his people. Second, hermeneutical proposals of double fulfillment are shown to be unconvincing because they lack any basis in the text. Third, analysis of Isaiah 7:14–17 reveals that an 8th-century fulfillment is impossible given the nature of the sign, the meaning of almah, the syntax of the announcement, as well as the child’s name, role, diet, and character. A closer look at the timeline in Isaiah 7:16–17 shows that Immanuel could only be born after the land of Judah was laid waste, a reality that did not occur in the 8th century. This study thus concludes that Matthew and the early church exercised sound exegetical and hermeneutical principles in identifying Jesus as the sole fulfillment of the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy.

Ex 15: 20; Num 12:1-5; Micah 6:4

2024

A slightly updated version of the paper with cover art and an added Introduction. Originally a paper given at EABS 2024 in Sofia, Bulgaria. In recent decades, the figure of Asherah has been a subject of considerable debate. While some scholars believe that Asherah was simply a forbidden tree or wooden cult object associated with the worship of Yahweh, others emphasize Asherah's role as a goddess in ancient Israelite religion and possibly even as the wife of Yahweh. Asherah is, for example, mentioned alongside the god Yahweh several times in the inscriptions of Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom from the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. While Asherah has been exhaustively examined from numerous perspectives, such as archaeology, inscriptions, comparative cultural material, and iconography, the text-critical material has so far been widely overlooked. In this study, I investigate whether further mentions of Asherah can be found from different textual sources such as the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and whether these mentions can give us any more clues concerning Asherah in the Hebrew Bible.

The female metaphors for the Old and New Testament saints as related to Yahweh and Jesus Christ are manifold. Strictly correlating the images of the church produces a perplexing picture; yet assuming their compatibility, a full picture emerges of the church as pleroma. She is a chaste virgin, daughter Zion (and her synonym, daughter Jerusalem); yet, she is also a bride, 1 2 betrothed to both Yahweh and to Christ. In addition, she is a fruitful mother, bearing, birthing, 3 4 and bringing her children to strength. As such, she is foreshadowed in Eve, the mother of all-loving, the wives of the patriarchs, and also Deborah, who arose as a mother in Israel, and in the figure Mother Jerusalem in Isaiah. In Galatians 4, she is Sarah, an allegorical covenant-city, 5 whose child through promise is the free Jerusalem above (vv. 23, 26-27). In Revelation 12, she is mother of both the "male child" (vv. 4-5) and "the rest of her offspring" (v. 17), and in Revelation 21-22, she is the fruitful bride of the Lamb (21:9; cf. 22:2). It soon becomes apparent that daughter, bride, and mother are all images representing the one reality of God's people throughout time in relation to God upon the throne and the Lamb. From various 6 relationships comes forth the one telos of humanity, union with the triune God. In this paper, I intend to give specific attention to the royal mother image of the church, not neglecting other feminized images of the church, that coalesce to give us the one city-people-the 1 "Daughter of Zion, used 23 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, is only found in the mouth of the prophets.. 2 "Daughter of Jerusalem is used 5 times by the prophets, four times immediately paralleled with Daughter of Zion and appearing in the same verse. 3 See Isaiah 54; Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16, Hosea 2 (indeed the context of the whole of Hosea's prophecy).

The literature of the Hebrew Bible favours male characters, metaphors and language, predominantly due to the ancient, patriarchal era in which it was written. Today, this preference still plays a role in reading, interpretation and folk-theology. While feminist theology has played a role in broadening biblical studies with more gender inclusive frameworks, it is easy to overlook the few positive encounters with females and feminine metaphors due to the significant number of instances that contrast these. One such encounter is found in Deutero-Isaiah in the paralleled geographical metaphor of Jerusalem/Zion, both of which are characterized as feminine. Jerusalem/Zion is an invitational, positive encounter with the feminine within this biblical text. This dual metaphor is utilised within this section of biblical literature to define a hopeful future for the whole " people of God " , a rare paradigm shift which depicts this community as female. In an ungendered language such as English, these readings of the feminine are undervalued within patriarchical Christian traditions, and present new possibilities for the presentation of gender in contemporary Christian rhetoric.

2010

This is a very English collection, and deliberately so, for it comes out of a conference held at King’s College, London, in 2006 which had the explicit agenda of establishing an ongoing English forum for debate over gender and sexual difference in the Hebrew Bible. Seven of the contributors are from England, two from the USA and one from Germany. The collection is divided into four parts: methodological considerations, which has one essay by Deborah Sawyer; gender in law and ritual; ethnological and anthropological approaches to gender; and gender in post-biblical literature. The spread of essays in these three sections is four (Deborah W. Rooke, Bernard S. Jackson, Amy Kalmanofsky and Nicole J. Ruane), two (Carol Meyers and Ovidiu Creang) and three (Tal Ilan, Andrew Angel and Rebecca Jefferson). In typical Sheffield fashion it has a comprehensive biblical and extra-biblical index and an author index, but no subject index. The vagaries of conference papers and interests of authors h...

Sárospataki Füzetek, 2013

ABSTRACT During excavations at Kuntillet ʿAjrud and Khirbet el-Qôm, inscriptions were found which mentioned “YHWH and his Asherah”. These discoveries caused a flood of publications discussing the meaning of this reference to “his Asherah”. In more popular literature on the subject, it became the accepted view that in Israelite religion YHWH originally had a wife, something which, in this view, the Old Testament carefully avoids to mention. Based on publications on the subject, it turns out that such a conclusion may be premature. In the inscriptions, Asherah is only possibly referred to as being connected in some way to YHWH, but even this is not sure. Yet, independently of how these words ‘his Asherah’ are interpreted, the inscriptions allow a glimpse into a world of syncretism and polytheism in ancient Israel. In this manner, the inscriptions support the picture which the Old Testament provides about the cult of ‘other gods’ in pre-exilic Israel.

2010

Chapter 6: Impurity and the Question of Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah…… 118 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 145 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….. 149 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge Professor William H.C. Propp for his support as the chair of my committee.