Is Matthew's Story of the Virgin Birth Based on a Mistranslation?

With the arrival of advent, I thought it would be fitting to take a closer look at the infancy narratives. To ask, what should we make of them as history and literature?

One popular idea is that Matthew invented the story of the virgin birth based on a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14: ‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’

In the Hebrew of Isaiah, it says that the almah will conceive. Almah was a term that could refer to a young woman who was a virgin, but it didn’t necessarily imply virginity. It could simply refer to a young woman. The Hebrew betulah was the more technical term for a virgin.

The Greek translators of Isaiah, however, translated almah with the word parthenos, a word with stronger connotations of virginity. Thus it is said that Matthew, reading a Greek translation of the Hebrew Isaiah, invented the idea of a virgin birth based on a mistranslation; he mistook Isaiah’s ‘young woman’ for a ‘virgin.’

To quote Richard Dawkins, “this one translator's slip was to be wildly inflated and give rise to the whole preposterous legend of Jesus’ mother being a virgin!”¹

And it is not only popular polemicists who have made this argument. When esteemed Hebrew Bible Professor, Francesca Stravrakapoulou, was asked on day-time television what biblical literalists should do with this striking piece of information, she replied, “Learn Hebrew!”² I suspect that she would wish to say the same to Matthew himself.

To lay my own cards on the table, I certainly do not think that Isaiah 7:14 is a predictive prophecy of the Christ. It is widely agreed that the young woman is serving as a ‘sign’ is her own generation. If this is about Jesus, it is only so In Christian eyes.

Nevertheless, following other mainstream scholars (e.g. Goodacre here), I am highly suspicious of the narrative that Matthew has crafted his story on the basis of a mistranslation. In this post, I want to highlight three problems with this thesis.

Three Problems with the Mistranslation Thesis