Septuagint translators and the immoral perpetuation of the virgin birth.

There are likely few reading this who have not been connected with Christianity at some stage of their life. Probably not many could claim complete secularism, particularly if their parents considered themselves of the faith. Perhaps you were christened or it could be if you are a man that your johnson received some God endorsed plastic surgery. If nothing else it is likely your school had some form of religious studies. No matter what your history with this religion i wonder if you have heard of what i am about to discuss?

Personally I considered myself a Christian for about seven years during my teens. I used to go to this horse riding slash indoctrination facility called Mill Valley Ranch. If you ever attended one of these camps it was impossible not to be drawn in to the all encompassing salesmanship. It never stopped. Daily church attendances, smaller group discussions and every tee-pee we slept in contained a cool Christian councillor to ensure you had no place to escape. Suffice to say it worked a treat on me.

I soon got tired of the lack of non-spin-doctor answers to any of my questions and moved on. That and the fact that my cat died while i was away at some God awful (hee hee) weekend camp with the most aggressive bunch of sexually repressed teens in my life. I took it as a sign and never went back.

I am slightly off point here however i felt it necessary to paint a picture of where i am coming from when telling you about something i discovered while reading The Selfish Gene. It was merely an offside remark Dawkins makes to describe the replication of genes, however i took note of it and as usual went a googling.

The section i am referring to in the book is this - "I suppose the scholors of the Septuagint could at least be said to have started something big when they mistranslated the Hebrew word for 'young woman' into the Greek word for 'virgin', coming up with the prophecy: 'Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son ..'.

Huh? What was that again?

I couldn't believe my eyes. I went to the footnotes for further clarification as well as googling it. There are many links to various sites below however for the sake of completeness i will stick with Dawkins response to those who corresponded with him after reading his book. He explained that this is well known to biblical scholars and indeed not disputed. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is Almah which means 'young woman' of marriageable age, whether married or not, or a virgin or not; in a broad general sense exactly like girl or maid in English. If virgin were the word they were translating it would have been 'Bethulah'. What occurred is the pre-christian Greek translation known as Septuagint used 'Parthenos' which really means virgin. Many English translations also carry this error - 'Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son ..'.. The New English Bible correctly gives 'young woman' in Isaiah. Honestly translated, the verse reads: "Behold, the young woman has conceived-[is with child)-and beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel."

So the story of the virgin birth is false, the Church know it is false and yet belief in the virgin birth is still maintained. This is outrageous and completely immoral to me. After all this is a huge part of the religion we are talking about. It is also a huge shock that i had never heard of this before. There are plenty of sites out there that will try and counter some of the facts however it is as usual with a profound lack of reasoning or credible evidence that they present their arguments.

If i had any respect straws left on my faith camel they are well and truly broken now. What will we find out next, that the second coming was also false? Perish the thought my heathen friends.

Indeed I once was blind, but now I see.

Want to read more? Here is a nice article - http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/2virgi93.html