Given the subject matter, I think it most appropriate to begin with a prayer. And fortunately, I have a special guest…

…who is willing to offer one…

Elphue Zarethra Charboum Nemioth Melitho Thraboutha Mephnounos Chemiath Aroura Maridon Elison Marmiadon Seption Hesaboutha Ennouna Saktinos Athoor Belelam Opheoth Abo Chrasar…

Now that is a prayer! You would like a translation? Well, no one has any idea what these words are. But! I am working on it. So much for the Prayer of Mary as found in the Gospel of Bartholomew.

I now pick a Bible verse of the week for personal edification. And so it is that this week, I have picked…

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He called a little child to him and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstonehung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Of course, in the Prologue of Matthew, the family of Joseph and Mary must flee Judea. Why? The persecution of Herod, of course. Everybody knows that! And they went to…Egypt. I suppose that it was a good thing that they…

…sought asylum from Herod in Egypt, rather than coming to the So-called Christian Nation and Beacon of Light to the World! Otherwise…

Well, that’s the American version of the famous picture. Perhaps someone should be making millions and millions of millstones to hang around the neck of millions and millions of Hypocrites Who Claim To Be Something They Aren’t.

Suffer not the little children? No, that’s not how it’s done here. In this country it’s…make the little children suffer! After all, what better way is there to hurt the parents than to hurt the children? No…you won’t find that in the Gospel of Matthew, with or without the Prologue. Well, not the version in my Bible.

Still, debates about the words parthenos, almah, neanis, na’arah, etc., could go on forever. Indeed! At times it seems as though they have! Perhaps they always will! I too am guilty in indulging in a now standard of topic encountered when evaluating the historicity of the Virgin Birth story. Some comments that I made in other essays on this website need, or so I think, some further elucidation. On a textual basis, that is. One very common argument that will be encountered is that the correct word in Isa. 7:14 is indeed almah, but that, in addition to the meaning…young woman, the meaning…virgin, is also possible, and, in the opinion of those who have taken this position, virgin is the right one. Given that the Hebrew word betulah is more precise as far as virginity goes, one might expect that word if that’s what Isaiah intended. I have also stated my opinion that scholars tend to assign meanings to various Hebrew and Greek words that involve far too much precision to be realistic. In other words, their constructs are simply too artificial and dogmatic to be true.  So acknowledging the gray, I admit that the words enumerated above do overlap in their usage. However, it is fair to ask, if confronted with almah, and not betulah, which one would naturally expect, though not being dogmatic…I emphasize…expect, to mean…young woman rather than virgin, why would you argue in favor of the meaning…virgin? The context of the material and any number of observations I’ve made on this website argue against that meaning. So in one sense, the urge to gravitate to…virgin, would at least give the appearance of a circular pattern of reason whereby you start with your conclusion…I believe in the doctrine, so I must uphold the use of Isa. 7:14 as found in the Prologue of Matthew…

…and the gray area in possible word use and meaning, fully acknowledged by your…

…friend and humble narrator, allows for a double advantage by saying that Matthew is correct, which is to say, the Septuagint is correct, and! I can grant a major concession by affirming that almah is the original reading and was present in the text of Isa. 7:14 from the beginning. Or so one may believe. Thus, no need for…betulah. But others, i.e. Virgin Birthers, see almah as having the meaning…virgin…in Isa. 7:14…although they too like the gray area, yet are a bit more sophisticated in seeing the gray area as a bit more gray than some of their textual comrades. They see no problem with the use of almah instead of betulah, and thus the Greek word parthenos is, in fact, the correct translation. That is understandable, if not laudable. All Lovers of Gray unite! Yet one cannot debate with a person racing around in a Theological Circle, if that is what is happening. One particular permutation is spinning around so fast that I am getting dizzy, which, I can assure you, is not a good thing seeing how I have…

…a weak stomach, as it were. But if the Less Gray Thinkers feel as they do, then it would appear to be that one of the texts, the Hebrew or the Greek, has been changed. So which religion made the unauthorized change? I discussed this at length in a previous essay, but apparently, not long enough, given my need to make a few, further comments. I argued that if one believed that Jews on the one hand, or Gentilic Christians on the other hand, changed the reading of the text of Isa. 7:14, then the Christians would clearly be those most likely to have done it. That is only hypothetical on my part, seeing how I don’t believe that either group changed the reading of the text of their version of Isaiah…whether the Hebrew version or the Greek version. What is there to say about that?

I agree. But I did state the following…the Jews wouldn’t have changed the reading of a prophecy involving the very words of the towering prophet Isaiah in order to stick their thumbs in the eyes of Christians, who were, in their assessment, Jewish Heretics and Gentilic Pagans. I also said that if they had a virgin birth in their text, then Jews had a virgin birth on their hands. It occurred to me the other day that, in a way, they did have that, indeed. But that is only on the surface. In reality…they did not.

The problem one meets head on is that there are no Pre-Christian versions of the Septuagint in existence. The major manuscripts are…

Alexandrinus-     450 A.D
Vaticanus-          350 A.D.
Sinaiticus-           350 A.D.

One other is worth adding. Although it is not complete, it does include the prophets…

Marchalianus-    600s A.D.

 Origen’s Hexapla, which included the Septuagint along with the Greek translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotian, dates to roughly 240 A.D. This, unfortunately, didn’t survive except in fragments, although the Syro-Hexapla, a Syriac translation of Origen’s Hexapla, made by Paul of Tella in 617 A.D., preserves some of the critical symbols used by Origen to mark discrepancies between the Hebrew and Septuagint versions.  So if we had a pre-Christian Septuagint, or at least a pre-Christian Book of Isaiah in Greek, then we could confirm that the pre-Christian reading in Isa. 7:14 was, in fact, parthenos, rather than…neanis. That said, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible is actually much later that Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and even Marchalianus. But it should be noted that the differences between the apparent Hebrew text underlying the Big Three Textual Warriors and the Masoretic text indicate relatively few notable deviations. The rough dates for them would be:

Aquila-               130 AD
Symmachus-      150 – 200 A.D.
Theodotian-       150 A.D.

So these guys, who either re-worked the Septuagint or, as I think is much more likely, made their own Greek translations from a Hebrew text, are far closer to the Pre-Christian era, and so their testimony is particularly important when compared to the much later versions of the Septuagint. And, sorry…they all have neanis in Isa. 7:14. Still, I think that nobody changed the Septuagint reading to…parthenos. And the Septuagint was originally a pre-Christian Jewish version of the Old Testament, one that was deemed problematic at the very least, hence the call to arms of the Big Three Textual Warriors. But wouldn’t that indicate an original reading of…betulah? No. I have discussed the fact that the production of the Septuagint was done over a period of time. It may have begun during the 3rd century BC, and was complete by 130 B.C. at the earliest. And quite possibly, later than that date. The first five books of the Old Testament…the Pentateuch, were translated first. Isaiah? There is a pretty broad time-frame in which scholars have tried to date it, from 170 B.C. to as late as 100 B.C. Taking a mid-range date, one would come up with a date of roughly 135 A.D. That’s 135 years of a Jewish-Greek translation with parthenos in it. The Masoretic text is much later than the four versions of the Septuagint noted above. The work of the Masoretes is dated to a period of time during the seventh to the tenth centuries A.D. The two major groups of Masoretes were followers of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher and the followers of Ben Naphtali, both of whom worked in the city of Tiberias.

A page from the Aleppo Codex, dating to the Tenth Century A.D. produced by the Ben Asher group of Masoretes. The work of the Ben Naphtali Masoretes no longer exists.

It has been said that the Hebrew tradition underlying the Septuagint is not that of the Masoretic (Ben Asher) Hebrew text. That is undeniably true. But does that indicate a different word than almah in Isa. 7:14 in the Hebrew text underlying the Septuagint? No. The current Septuagint manuscripts are much older than the Masoretic text, but as far as Isaiah is concerned, that doesn’t matter.

An old scroll! And it was found in a rather inhospitable place…

Qumran, in the West Bank of Israel, or Palestine, depending upon your point of view. During the period 1946 – 1947, these guys…

…stumbled upon one of the greatest manuscript discoveries of history…the Dead Sea Scrolls. No! Origen wasn’t among them. Perhaps he was so busy tipping over wine jars that he missed the haul of a life-time. And here I cannot resist a slight digression that is, in fact, no digression at all, but rather a foreshadow of more to come and an after-shadow of what went before. One of the texts found at Qumran is called the Damascus Document. Scholars have often identified the religious sect at Qumran as Essenes, the third of the Big Three Jewish Religious Sects of the time, alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Essenes are often viewed as ascetics with a strong component of eschatology and messianic beliefs. However, that Qumran was an Essene headquarters is by no means certain, and it is not clear just what group, if not groups, were responsible for the scrolls. Perhaps the caves of Qumran were a hiding place of last resort for the literature of various groups from various times…perhaps when the Romans put down the revolt that led to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. However, one is tempted to believe that the Damascus Document is related to a Jewish sect that lived at Qumran. And that document discusses a figure identified as the Teacher of Righteousness. According to the document, the sect at Qumran was founded 390 years after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and 20 years after a period during which they wandered about as blind men. Nabu-kudurri-usur II, or Biblical Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, who had been instrumental in bringing down the Assyrian empire, reigned during the years 605 – 562 B.C. So, 390 years calculated from 562 would be 172 B.C. However, the number 390 is a round number, and it may be that it is not an accurate chronological marker. But God raised up the Teacher of Righteousness, who would guide the sect.

I have written previously about Yeshu ben Stada, also mistakenly referred to as Yeshu ben Pandera, who, I will argue, are two different men. Yeshu ben Pandera features as the star of the Toledoth Yeshu, a bawdy Jewish tale that, among other things, mocks Jesus of Nazareth. And this series of essays is, of course, named after the elusive, but ultimately not so elusive, figure known as the Panther, the obvious source of the name…ben Pandera…the son of the Panther. But the name ben Pandera, as I’ve discussed before, appears in the story of Yeshu ben Stada in the Talmud. Yeshu ben Stada was a real historical character, a former rabbinical student who was subsequently demonized by orthodox Judaism. He set up a movement with himself as leader, and despite a connection to the royal administration of king Alexander Jannaeus, he was later executed as a heretic, along with his top disciples. What makes this interesting is that Michael Wise (The First Messiah: Investigating the Savior Before Christ, HarperCollins, 1999) maintains that the Teacher of Righteousness was a messianic figure long before Jesus of Nazareth. According to Wise, this Messianic Teacher of Righteousness appeared during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus and was a priest and friend of the king. He ultimately split with orthodox Judaism, and founded his own sect. He was then held out as the one who fulfilled various prophesies found in the Old Testament, with a particular emphasis on the prophesies of Isaiah. He was executed by the Jewish religious establishment, and then took his place at God’s throne. It was believed that he would return and usher in the kingdom of God. Following his death, the sect grew in size, until finally, failing to have made his return, disillusioned members moved on to other religious movements. And those are fascinating observations. It will perhaps be readily apparent that not only does the Teacher of Righteousness provide an astonishing parallel to Jesus of Nazareth, there would appear to be parallels with Yeshu ben Stada. According to the Talmud, Yeshu ben Stada learned sorcery in Egypt, and brought incantations from Egypt with him upon his return, having cut them into his flesh. In the Toledoth Yeshu, Jesus is accused of having stolen the Name of God from the temple in Jerusalem. How did he do this? He snuck into the Temple, and then smuggled out God’s name in an incision under his skin. What is described here is the same thing that is referenced in the Talmud…Yeshu ben Stada practiced the art of tattooing. It would seem that something akin to “scratch tattoos” is being described…scratching, or cutting, words, letters, or symbols into the skin and then adding ink to the cuts. But! The Teacher of Righteousness, the Renegade Messiah, associated himself with the prophesies of Isaiah. Isaiah? Yes…Isa. 7:14 was used as the Old Testament prophecy by the redactors of the Prologue of Matthew as that which was fulfilled by the Virgin Birth of Jesus of Nazareth. However, the reference to Isaiah and the practice of tattooing by Yeshu ben Stada suddenly brought this to mind…

“But now hear, O Jacob my servant,
    Israel whom I have chosen!
Thus says the Lord who made you,
    who formed you from the womb and will help you:
Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
    Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
    and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring,
    and my blessing on your descendants.
They shall spring up among the grass
    like willows by flowing streams.
This one will say, ‘I belong to YHWH,’
    another will call on the name of Jacob,
and another will write on his hand, ‘YHWH's,’
    and name himself by the name of Israel.”

That is Isa. 44: 1-5. I would suggest that this passage has just as much right to be regarded as messianic as the one selected by the Prologers of Matthew as fulfilled by the return of Jesus’s family from Egypt…

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
    and out of Egypt I called my son.

Actually, Isa. 44: 1-5 has a much, much better claim. Why? I will quote the broader context of the material chosen by the Prologers. Hos. 11:1, a verse which the Prologers have torn out of a distinctly Not Messianic Context, a context that is as follows…

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
    and out of Egypt I called my son.
But the more they were called,
    the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals
    and they burned incense to images.

Awkward. Not really so awkward if one is mindful of the fact that in the pericope from Hosea, God’s “son” is the nation of Israel. And we all know the story…Israel left Egypt and, moving into Canaan, they became idolaters. But if the names…Israel…Jacob…can be Messianic, then why not in Isa. 44: 1-5? After all, that pericope is not set within the context of abject apostasy against God. But I suppose that the real significance of the material in Isa. 44:1-5 is readily apparent. What is that? It would appear to describe the act of tattooing the name of Yahweh on the hands. Yes…the name of God, which in the Toledoth Yeshu, is stolen by Jesus of Nazareth by tattooing it into his skin. I would suggest that this is exactly what Yeshu ben Stada had done…he tattooed YHWH on his hand, or arm. Then his followers did as well, and therefore they went around with God’s name visible on their skin, which was meant to signify that the member of Yeshu’s sect belonged to Yahweh, God of Israel. It was also guaranteed to seriously offend the Jewish Religious Establishment as out-and-out heresy. Could it be that the practice of tattooing words and possibly even symbols, including the name YHWH, associated with Yeshu ben Stada, was not an act of paganism or sorcery, but rather in imitation of Isa. 44: 1-5, which Yeshu and his followers decided was a messianic prophecy referring to Yeshu himself…who was then believed to be the Foretold Messiah? If one can draw upon the ideas of Michael Wise as a base, then proceed without him, one might conclude that the Teacher of Righteousness was actually Yeshu ben Stada, and that his sect, or some later form of it, was based at Qumran, and thus some of the scrolls, including the Damascus Document, belonged to the Yeshuites. If so, then Yeshu ben Stada was an eerie forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth, who, according to the Prologue to Matthew, had also lived in Egypt. We know that he was also accused of practicing sorcery that he learned in Egypt, and some claimed that his father was named…Pandera. Jesus of Nazareth founded his own religious movement originally centered around the Repentance Movement of John the Baptist. He was executed by the Jewish Religious Establishment as a heretic, and, following his death, he ascended into Heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. And we know that in the Toledoth Yeshu at the latest, Yeshu ben Stada was crossed with Yeshu ben Pandera…and Jesus of Nazareth. I said latest…after all, Epiphanius, King of the Bread Basket, He Who Controls the Medicine Cabinet Containing the Antidotes For All Spiritual Maladies, Arch-enemy of Heretics, Ripper Of The Holy Curtain…Wait! Yes, I tossed that in, perhaps, quite unexpectedly. We all know the very cool claim in Matthew 21: 50-51…

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split…

I admit that I cut off the quote at the splitting rocks. The remainder of the verse goes on to say that tombs suddenly opened and dead people appeared. But the tearing of the curtain may be based on the story I cited in a previous essay…the sudden appearance of leprosy on the face king Azariah, also called…Uzziah, father of king Jotham, grandfather of king Ahaz, and therefore great-grandfather of Immanuel. Josephus tells us that the moment that Azariah pre-empted the religious role in the temple…

On a most remarkable day, when a general religious festival was to be celebrated, King Uzziah put on the holy garment, and went into the temple to offer incense to God on the golden altar. Azariah the High Priest, who had many priests with him, attempted to stop the king. Azariah told the king that it was not lawful for him to offer a sacrifice, and that, “None besides the descendants of Aaron are permitted so to do.” And when they shouted that he must leave the temple, and not transgress against God, the king was furious at them and threatened to kill them if they didn’t remain quiet. Suddenly, a great earthquake shook the ground, and a split appeared in the temple wall, allowing the bright rays of the sun to shine through it. When the sunlight fell upon the King’s face, leprosy broke out on his skin.

That earthquake did, in fact, happen, registered around 8 on the Richter Scale. And what of Epiphanius? Well, he was, essentially, a vandal…

Moreover, I have heard that certain persons have this grievance against me: I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel to participate in a religious celebration with you. After I left the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing by, I saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray. And I saw a curtain hanging on the doors of the church. This curtain was dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ, or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose image it was. Seeing this, and becoming angry that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ’s church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it in half and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a sheets for some poor person.

As I said, Epiphanius the Vandal! It’s a good thing that they hadn’t invented spray paint yet…

Apparently, the church officials were somewhat displeased…

They, however, murmured, and said that if I made up my mind to tear their curtain, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one, and said that I would send it at once. Since then there has been some little delay, due to the fact that I have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give to them instead of the former one, and thought it right to look in Cyprus for one. I have now sent the best curtain that I could find.

They murmured? They were angry? It’s too bad that they didn’t have…

Ok…ok…curtains are ok in churches if they don’t have a face on them. And that is why I got in trouble with Epiphanius when I sent a curtain to the church vandalized by Epiphanius…

I’d like to see Epiphanius tear that one! After all, it survived several fires, including at least one case of arson. Still, Epiphanius the Curtain-Tearer actually stated that the royal throne was transferred to the Christ after Alexander Jannaeus. It would seem inescapable that Epiphanius knew of a source, which could not have been the Toledoth Yeshu, that seemed to place the birth of Christ in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, the exact time that Yeshu ben Stada lived. Thus the crossing of Yeshu ben Stada and Jesus ben Pandera of Nazareth must have existed long before the Toledoth Yeshu, seeing how Epiphanius died in 403 A.D. The Toledoth Yeshu also refers to Jesus making little clay birds, a story to be found in the Gospel of Thomas, and then later, in the Qur’an. One might be justified in believing that there was some sort of apocryphal Christian source that drew a connection of some kind between Yeshu ben Stada…the Teacher of Righteousness whose sect lived at Qumran and Jesus ben Pandera of Nazareth. This would explain the otherwise mind-boggling dating of the birth of Christ to the time of Alexander Jannaeus by Epiphanius, of all people. But there are more elements to the story that might very well explain the source of Epiphanius’s assertion on this point. I believe that there was a Christian source which drew a direct, familial connection between The Panther (Pandera) and Jesus of Nazareth, his brother, called James the Just, and Simeon, a cousin to the two sons of Mary, Mother of God…real sons…and not an honorary one like the pretender and Great Wishful-Thinker…John the Beloved. And I will show in another part of the Panther serial essay that John was not, in fact, the disciple that Jesus loved. The John-Group took advantage of a Bizarre Scriptural Aberration that allowed them to create, in John, a Most Peculiar Changeling. It is not beyond possibility that some form of the Yeshuite sect still existed in Jesus’s time, and may have ultimately gravitated to the New and True Teacher of Righteousness.

But! I almost forgot…again. I showed an image of a large scroll just before transitioning to the discussion of Qumran, and then following it on to an impossible destination. That scroll is the Great Scroll of Isaiah, found in the very spot where followers of Yeshu ben Stada may have lived. This scroll is vital to the perpetual debate around almah and parthenos, and which word actually  appeared in the oldest, verifiable Hebrew text. And my, what a providential thing happened! The scroll is damaged on the right-hand side. And Isaiah 7:14 is as well, but not the key phrase…

And so we have our almah! The Great Isaiah Scroll dates to ca. 125 B.C. That is much older than the Christian era Septuagint manuscripts. So who needs Ben Asher when you have Qumran? And! If the Septuagint translation of Isaiah was completed in ca. 135 B.C., then the origination of the Great Isaiah Scroll was within one to two decades of the completion of the Septuagint translation of Isaiah. This would support my suggestion in an earlier part of this essay series that neither Jews, nor Christians, altered their versions of Isaiah 7:14. I proposed that the translator chose the word parthenos, but did not intend an Immaculate Conception or Virgin Birth. It was an interpretative translation, whereby the translator showed a remarkable amount of understanding about the pericope in question. Ahaz had not yet consummated his marriage to Avi, daughter of Zechariah, a friend of Isaiah. The prophet’s friendship with the king’s father-in-law gave him an intimate view into what was otherwise shrouded in mystery…the innerworkings of the royal family. Thus it was that Isaiah knew that the wedding had been delayed as a result of the extreme military emergency existing at the death of King Jotham and the accession of King Ahaz. But the marriage, and the consummation of it, was to happen very soon; and so the woman who was, at the very moment that Isaiah spoke to the king on the walls of Jerusalem while quite possibly dodging arrows being fired by the archers of Pekah and Rezin and with Isaiah’s young son Shear-Jashub standing beside them…an excellent visual cue for Ahaz...would soon cease to be a virgin upon the First Night of Marital Bliss. But at that moment, the almah was also a parthenos. Isaiah would, just like Ahaz, father a son at apparently the same time as Ahaz and Immanuel…Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, the two little boys with highly symbolic names being paired together. And I found Isaiah’s family photo…

Is one kid Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz and the other his pudgy brother Shear-Jashub? Or are the Two Little Guys actually Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz and his Symbolic, Virtual Twin…Immanuel?  I don’t know! But it’s too bad that Zechariah isn’t around…I’ll bet he’d know!