From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian
On 25/07/2025 01:37, John wrote:
I had a brief conversation with the real Jesus recently, he's working at Asda in their customer service department.
He he. When I was at college there was a Spanish student literally
called "Jesus" (only he pronounced it Hesus). The less reverent of my
fellow students took great delight in yelling "Jesus" to attract his
attention on every possible opportunity.
It got me thinking, if the virgin (1) was to name her child Immanuel,
why did Mary call her boy Jesus?
You may remember that our Muslim friend made the same point. My personal feeling is that Jesus probably had multiple names. For example, all
pharaohs have five names which appear to have been used in different situations or roles. In India people commonly had more than one name -
and I'm not referring just to our first, second and surnames. A man
might have a pet name used by family, an official name, a Hindu or
Muslim name, a Christian name, the equivalent of our stage name, and so
on. It could get very confusing.
So I don't believe that "Immanuel" and "Jesus" was the problem that you
seem to think.
-a As is my way, I also read the
surrounding verses to put it into context, and in my opinion it doesn't
fit the narrative that this was a prophecy about the coming Messiah.
The points you make about Ahaz are perfectly valid, but what you are forgetting is that the Bible wasn't written for you; it was written for
a Middle Eastern people 2,300 years ago.
I don't know whether you have ever read the book "Exodus"? In one of the
later chapters it describes how the Jews in (I think) Safed invented a
mortar which they called "Davidka" and which helped them in their
struggle with the attacking Arabs. The thing went off with a terrifying
noise and two local rabbis promptly looked for a Biblical reference: one declared that a verse in X+x+x+ which said "The Lord thundered from
heaven" was obviously a prediction of the weapon whereas the other
insisted that a verse in Y+y+y+ "The earth shook at the presence of the
Lord" was the only possible prophecy. While the young Jews fought for
their lives, the older ones in the yeshiva fought over which was the
correct prophecy - yet you and I would say that neither had anything at
all to do with a modern weapon!
So by the principles of Biblical interpretation that you and I would
follow the prophecy has nothing to do with the Messiah, to the early
Jewish Christians it was as plain as the nose on your face.
(1) It was translated as virgin in the Septuagint but the Hebrew is more likely to mean maiden or young woman.
Well, our modern understanding of the Hebrew word does indeed mean
nothing more than "young woman", but clearly the Jewish rabbis who
translated the LXX understood the word to mean "virgin". (How Isaiah
would have understood it I cannot say.) I am inclined to say that the
rabbis probably knew their language better than the most expert of
modern experts.
Words do accumulate meanings beyond the actual meaning. For example, if
you heard someone remark "She said it was her first time" you might well assume a sexual meaning to the expression, even though there is nothing obviously sexual in either "first" or "time".
God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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