Where the Greek Form Matters
A few differences mattered more than others because the New Testament argument depends on the Greek form:
- Isaiah 7:14. Hebrew ‘almah is “young woman.” LXX parthenos is “virgin.” Matthew 1:23 quotes the Greek and applies it to Mary. That is the single most famous theological fork. The Hebrew verse in its eighth-century setting is a sign for Ahaz; the Greek wording is what Christian doctrine used for virgin birth. Whether the translator meant “virgin” in a strong sense or used a word that could cover a young woman is debated; the effect in the church is not.
- Psalm 40:6. Hebrew: “ears you have opened.” LXX: “a body you prepared for me.” Hebrews 10:5 uses the Greek to speak of incarnation and sacrifice.
- Deuteronomy 32:43. LXX, and some Qumran evidence, has “let all God’s angels worship him,” absent from the standard Masoretic form. Hebrews 1:6 uses that line for the Son.
- Amos 9:11–12. Hebrew: possess the remnant of Edom. LXX: the rest of mankind will seek the Lord. Acts 15 quotes the Greek to justify Gentile inclusion.
Some of these differences go back to a different Hebrew Vorlage. Dead Sea Scrolls sometimes side with the Greek. Some are interpretive translation. The theological impact is not quite the same: the church’s proof texts were often the Greek ones.
Canon and Scale of the Old Testament
The LXX collection is larger than the later Jewish Tanakh. Books and additions that Protestant Bibles call Apocrypha, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Baruch, and additions to Daniel and Esther, traveled with the Greek scriptures into the church. That is why Catholic and Orthodox canons differ from Jewish and Protestant ones. Jeremiah is also substantially shorter in Greek than in the Masoretic Text, another sign that “the Bible” was not a single frozen Hebrew edition when translation began.
The Hebrew’s Reaction
The LXX began as a Jewish work. After Christians claimed it, rabbinic Judaism increasingly treated the Greek version as compromised and standardized public reading on the Hebrew text that became the Masoretic tradition. The Talmudic story of thirteen changes “for Ptolemy” and the fast associated with the Greek Torah are part of that distancing. The split is real: same ancestral scriptures, two communities, two preferred textual forms, two trajectories of interpretation.
Many differences are ordinary translation problems: no sh sound, no exact match for Hebrew idioms, names adapted as Ἰησοῦς. Isaiah in Greek is freer and more interpretive than, say, the Greek Pentateuch. That unevenness argues against a single editorial conspiracy and for translators working book by book in a Greek world. The theological impact is still large. Once scripture is heard in Greek, the Name becomes Kyrios, a young woman can be read as a virgin, angels can be said to worship the Son from Deuteronomy, and Gentiles can be found in Amos.
Christianity did not invent those verses; it brought an altered meaning in translation through which those readings were derived and then pressed them as far as they would go. That is the real history of impact: not that Hebrew disappeared, but that the church’s first Bible was already Greek; and as such two understandings may arrive, one from the Hebrew, one from the Greek. The relation remains while the impact of original intent is brought forward with less impact than the original.
The Most Glaring Example
Isaiah 7:14 is the sharpest single example of how Hebrew, Greek, and later Christian reading pull apart. Let’s map the words, the original setting, and why the debate still matters.
Isaiah 7:14 is the verse where Hebrew wording, Greek translation, and Christian doctrine meet most sharply. The debate is not one word in isolation. It is three questions stacked together: what the Hebrew meant in 734 BCE, what the Greek translator thought he was saying, and what Matthew did with that Greek.
The Scene in Isaiah
Ahaz of Judah is terrified. Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel are attacking Jerusalem in the Syro-Ephraimite war. Isaiah tells him not to fear and offers a sign. Ahaz refuses to ask. Isaiah gives one anyway:
Hebrew: the ‘almah is, or will be, pregnant, will bear a son, and will call him Immanuel, “God with us.” Before the child knows right from wrong, the two enemy kings will be gone.
The sign is timed to Ahaz’s crisis. A birth seven centuries later cannot, by itself, tell Ahaz that the siege will fail in a few years. That is why almost all historical-critical readers take the first fulfillment as contemporary: a woman known in the court, Ahaz’s wife, Isaiah’s wife, or another young woman present, and a child whose early years mark the collapse of the two kings. Candidates often proposed are Hezekiah or Maher-shalal-hash-baz in chapter 8. Chronology for Hezekiah is messy; none of the identifications is certain. The structure of chapters 7–8 still points to a child Ahaz can watch grow.
The Hebrew verb harah can describe a woman already pregnant. Combined with the definite article, ha-‘almah, “the young woman,” many Jewish and critical readers hear Isaiah pointing to someone already there, not announcing a miracle of conception.
What ‘Almah Means
‘Almah occurs a handful of times in the Hebrew Bible. The scholarly majority holds that it means a young woman of childbearing age. It does not encode virginity. The clearer word for virgin is betulah, and betulim for virginity. Isaiah did not use betulah.
That majority is not unanimous. A minority, including Motyer, some conservative lexicographers, and recently Christophe Rico, argue that in practice an ‘almah is an unmarried, sexually inexperienced young woman, so “young virgin” is a fair English gloss. Proverbs 30:19, “the way of a man with an ‘almah,” is the verse both sides fight over: either it implies sexual experience or it does not. Ugaritic cognates point to youth and sexual maturity more than to intact virginity.
Fair summary of the Hebrew: ‘almah does not require “virgin.” In that culture an unmarried young woman was presumed a virgin, so the idea can sit in the background. It is not what the word itself proves.
What the Septuagint Did
Greek Isaiah renders ‘almah as parthenos. In classical and Hellenistic Greek, parthenos most often means virgin or unmarried maiden. It is Athena’s title. It is also used more loosely. The same LXX calls Dinah parthenos in Genesis 34:3 after she has been raped, translating Hebrew na‘arah, “girl.” So parthenos is the default “virgin” word, but it is not a laboratory term for virgo intacta in every line.
Elsewhere the LXX often translates ‘almah with neanis, “young woman.” Isaiah 7:14 and Genesis 24:43, Rebekah, are the places it chose parthenos. That choice predates Christianity if the Greek Isaiah we have is essentially pre-Christian, which is the usual view, though a few polemical writers claim Christians later swapped the word in. Second-century Jewish revisers, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, reused neanis. Justin Martyr already knew Jewish teachers were citing those revisions against parthenos. The fight over this verse is that old.
So, the Greek translator of Isaiah made a choice that can be read as “virgin” and that later Christians did read that way. Whether he intended a miraculous conception is another matter. Nothing in Greek Isaiah 7 looks like a virgin-birth doctrine. The surrounding verses still time the sign to the fall of the two kings.
What Matthew Did
Matthew 1:23 quotes the Greek: “the parthenos shall conceive.” He applies it to Mary and to Jesus as Immanuel. That is a classic New Testament “fulfillment” move: a text that first marked God’s presence in Ahaz’s day is read as marking God’s presence in Jesus. Matthew is not doing historical-critical exegesis of 734 BCE. He is claiming that the deeper meaning of “God with us” has arrived.
Christian readings then split:
- A single remote prophecy: Isaiah spoke only of Jesus; the Ahaz setting is prelude.
- Double fulfillment: a child in Ahaz’s time and Jesus.
- Typological: the first child is the sign; Jesus is the greater Immanuel.
Jewish readings, and most critical Christian ones, stay with the first horizon: a young woman in Judah, a near-term political sign. They treat Matthew’s use as later midrash, not as Isaiah’s original sense.
Where the Debate Actually Sits
Three claims get confused:
- Lexicon: ‘almah does not mean “virgin” as a necessary meaning. That is the academic consensus, including in many Catholic notes. NABRE calls it “young woman of marriageable age without specific reference to virginity.”
- Translation history: the LXX chose a Greek word that usually means virgin. Matthew quoted that Greek. Later Jewish Greek Bibles refused that choice.
- Theology: the entire belief that Jesus was born of a virgin rests on Matthew and Luke, not on proving that Isaiah’s Hebrew already taught parthenogenesis. Even if ‘almah merely means “young woman,” Matthew intimates a virginal conception and still calls Jesus Immanuel. The dispute is whether Isaiah truly predicted Yehoshua’s birth in the plain sense of his words.
A strong argument: Isaiah used the wrong word if he meant virgo intacta; he pointed to a woman already in view, and timed the sign to Ahaz, an evil king of Judea. The strongest Christian translational case: pre-Christian Greek Jews themselves wrote parthenos, and in that culture an ‘almah was presumed chaste. Both can be stated without pretending the other side has no evidence.
The verse became a hinge because one language said “the young woman,” another said a word heard as “the virgin,” and a gospel writer joined that word to Mary. That is the translation debate in full: not whether Christians believe in a virgin birth, but whether Isaiah 7:14, in the Hebrew, had already said so.
Pastor Mark