This insightful article is reprinted from the February 1984 edition of the Christian Courier which was published by the East Main Street Church of Christ in Stockton, California. Wayne Jackson was the author and editor.
The Old Testament contains numerous prophecies which vividly foretold the Jewish rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. Isaiah had prophetically asked, "Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" (53:1) In the New Testament, the apostle John shows this prediction to be fulfilled in the Jews' disbelief in Christ (cf. John 12:37-38). The Lord Himself declared that He was that prophetic stone which was to be rejected by the builders (Psalm 118:22; Matthew 21:42). The Jews crucified their Christ (through the instrumentality of the lawless Romans [Acts 2:23]) and they were vicious persecutors of Christianity until crushed by the Roman forces in 70 A.D. The Jews were thus a powerful force to be reckoned with in the first century.
The Gospel of Matthew, written sometime within the first four decades of the church's existence, was designed to address this problem. First of all, it represents an attempt to evangelize the Jews; to win them over by means of persuasive evidence, to the cause of the Lord. Secondly however, this remarkable gospel record was intended to function as a defense of the historical facts concerning Jesus, and thus, to counter the popular Jewish arguments which were being hurled against the Christian message.
A few of the Jewish slurs (some of which are alter recorded in their writings, e.g., the Talmud) doubtless were, Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary, His miracles were but magical tricks learned in Egypt, His home was in despised Nazareth so He could not be the Messiah from Bethlehem, and He was not raised from the dead but His body was stolen by His disciples.
Because these same ignorant charges are hawked by infidels (including religious modernists) of this century, Matthew's rebuttal of them is as eloquent today as it was nearly two millennia ago.
The Virgin Birth - The early Jews circulated the story that Jesus was the illegitimate child of Mary and a Roman soldier whose name was Ben-Pandira or Ben-Panthera. Joseph Klausner, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature and Jewish History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, felt that the name, by a simple transposition of letters, could be traced to the Greek word for virgin, parthenos and therefore that the slander is but an echo of the early Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus (Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, 1925, pp. 23-24). Matthews arguments for the Lord's virgin birth are devastating. Consider them.
1. In chronicling the legal genealogy of Jesus from Abraham to Joseph, Matthew uses the verb "begat" no less than 39 times, yet as a connective between Joseph and Jesus, "begat" is conspicuously absent. This is a subtle but deliberate suggestion of the virgin birth. In addition, he stressed concerning Mary, "...of whom was born Jesus." The pronoun "whom" (hes) is singular number, feminine gender, thus excluding Joseph from any involvement in the Lord's birth.
2. Mary was "found" to be with child, "of the Holy Spirit" before she and Joseph, "came together" and when they were as yet but "betrothed" (1:18). The word "found" indicates a discovery or detection and is evidence of Joseph's lack of complicity. The child was miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and the angel confirms this. The conception occurred before Joseph and Mary "came together" (sunerchomai), a term euphemistically used for sexual union (cf. I Corinthians 7:5). Too, the word "betrothed" had to do with an engagement period prior to any sexual cohabitation. The very fact that Joseph was, "minded to put her away" reveals that he knew that he was not responsible for the pregnancy and the fact that he did not put her away is a demonstration that he was convinced that Mary's conception was a miracle.
3. Matthew contends that Mary's conception is a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, the virgin shall be with child..." Isaiah uses the Hebrew almah. Much controversy has surrounded the meaning of this term due to modernism's bias against the doctrine of the virgin birth. Some have suggested that the term does not actually mean a virgin. Rather, it simply denotes a young woman. That assertion will not stand the test of evidence. Edward J. Young has observed that almah, "is never used of a married woman, either in the Bible or elsewhere" (The Banner, April 15, 1955). Robert D. Wilson, an incomparable scholar who mastered some 45 different languages thoroughly researched the word and declared, "Alma, so far as known, never meant young married woman; and secondly since the presumption in common law and usage was and is, that every alma is virgin and virtuous, until she is proven not to be, we have a right to assume that the alma of Isaiah 7:14 and all other almas were virgin, until and unless it shall be proved that they were not. The language itself is not the difficulty. The great and only difficulty lies in disbelief in predictive prophecy and in the almighty power of God; or in the desire to throw discredit upon the divine Sonship of Jesus" (Princeton Theological Review, XXIV, p. 316). Even Jewish scholar Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon, who made some of the archaeological discoveries at Ras Shamra, has conceded that recent evidence confirms that, "the New Testament rendering of almah as virgin is correct" (The Journal of Bible and Religion, XXI, April 1953, p. 106).
In his rendition of Isaiah's prophecy, Matthew used the Greek parthenos. Now parthenos is "virgin" as the consultation of a Greek lexicon will reveal. The fact that parthenos in rare instances may refer to one who is technically a non-virgin is no argument against the normal use of the word. For instance, Dinah is called a parthenos even after she was raped (Genesis 34:3, LXX). However, the Old Testament frequently uses former appellations in a figurative sense to denominate subsequent situations. Abigail is called Nabal's "wife" even after she married David (II Samuel 2:2) and Jerusalem is referred to as, "the faithful city" while playing the "harlot" (Isaiah 1:21). It may be that Dinah is called a parthenos even after her violation to stress her non-consent in the horrible act.
Isaiah makes it very clear that Mary would conceive as a virgin. If a virgin marries (thus losing her virginity) and bears a child, such certainly cannot be called a virgin birth. The prophet must have had exclusive reference to Mary's virginal conception. Thus, the view (becoming increasingly popular) that Isaiah 7:14 involved a double prophecy, i.e., a "young woman" of the prophet's own time in addition to Mary, is forthrightly to be rejected!
4.The child's name was to be Immanuel; which is interpreted, God with us. The use of "God" in a compound name does not in itself of course, demand the deity of the person so named. It is plain however, that Matthew's use of the name does involve the Sonship of Jesus. With the birth of Christ, God (deity) has come to earth!
5. Finally, it is stated that Joseph took Mary as his wife but, "knew her not till she brought for a Son..." The verb "know" translates the Greek ginosko, which is used frequently both in sacred and profane literature for sexual relations (Genesis 4:1, 17; Luke 1:34). Here the exact form is eginosken, in the imperfect tense, suggesting that Joseph kept on refraining from sexual intimacy with his betrothed until after the birth of Jesus. Matthew thus makes an unanswerable case for the Lord's virgin birth.
Jesus' Miracles - Matthew attributes twenty miracles to Christ, three of which are peculiar to his narrative. The charge as later reflected in the Talmud that He learned magical arts in Egypt by which He deceived people, is totally ludicrous. The apostle is careful to note that it was as a, "young child" that Jesus was taken into Egypt and it was as an infant that He returned (2:13, 20-21). He was never in Egypt thereafter! The Talmud thus bears unwitting testimony to the fact that Christ was doing some remarkable deeds that needed in some fashion, to be explained.
Jesus the Nazarene - In reply to the accusation that Jesus could not be the Messiah since He was from Nazareth and not Bethlehem (cf. John 7:41-42), the following rebuttal is offered. Jesus was in fact born in Bethlehem, according to Micah's prophecy (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1). After the flight into Egypt, Joseph had intended to settle in Judea but being warned by God in a dream, he returned to Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets, that He should be called a Nazarene" (2:23). Nazareth had a scornful stigma (John 1:46) and Jesus' residence therein was a fulfillment of the multiple testimonies of the prophets that the Messiah should be despised and rejected of men (cf. Psalm 22:6-9; Isaiah 53; 2-3). Hence, the true Messiah must not only be born in Bethlehem but be scorned as well. How wonderfully Matthew blends together these two elements.
The Resurrection - Another evidence of the apologetic thrust of Matthew's gospel is the attention which he (and he alone) pays to the attempts to prevent and conceal the fact of Christ's resurrection (27:62-66; 28:11-15). On the Saturday Jesus' body was in the tomb, a group of Pharisees visited Pilate warning him that the "deceiver" had promised to rise from the dead after three days. They requested that the tomb, "be made sure" lest His disciples steal the body and fabricate a tale of the resurrection. The governor assigned them a guard and suggested, "make it as sure as you can."
After Christ was raised, some of the Roman guard sent into Jerusalem and reported the dramatic events to the Jewish officials. A hasty meeting was called of the Sanhedrin resulting in a large bribe being paid to the soldiers with the charge, "Say his disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept." And Matthew, writing two or three decades after the event, reported that the story spread among the Jews even until, "this day." (Note: In fact, the rumor continued many years beyond Matthew's time. Justin Martyr who died in 165, refers to it in his Dialogue with Trypho and it is repeated in a later document known as the Toldeoth Jesu, thus proving that the body was never found.)
From this narrative several interesting matters arise. First, it is noteworthy that the Jewish chief priests were the first to be told by the guards, "all the things that were come to pass." Though these priests initially resisted the impact of the report, one wonders if this could be related to the fact that later, "a great company of priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7). Secondly, had it not been for Matthew's account, we might not see the full picture of how utterly befuddled and panic stricken the Sanhedrin became as evidenced by their anemic suggestion, "Say, His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept." The very idea; a sleeping witness! They might as well have instructed them to report, "We dreamed His disciples stole the body!" At any rate, the very fact that the officials sealed the soldiers' mouths with a bribe is proof that the Roman seal had not been violated.
Interestingly, Matthew reports that, "there was a great earthquake" at the time of the resurrection; a foolish claim to make and one easily refuted if it did not occur. In connection with this though, is also the apostle's unique notation that after Christ's resurrection, many bodies of the saints that had died came out of their tombs and entered into Jerusalem and were seen by many. A bribed guard may sway some but it is difficult to argue with a walking corpse!
Read this great book and be thrilled.
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