I’m working back through the passages where the New Testament writers were guilty of “spiritualizing the text” of the Old Testament. That’s sarcasm; I reject the notion there is anything wrong with doing that. Yet the same people who assert that it is wrong ignore how often it was done in Scripture itself.
I never finished the series because there were so many passages that offered a good example of it. I’m thinking about trying to finish the job and making it a book. For now, here is a sample of my work:
Matthew 1:23
The first one is easily the biggest and hardest to summarize. We note in passing that Matthew’s Gospel is one of the most Hebraic works in the New Testament. His style is very Old Testament, as it were, so if anyone sets the tone for what’s culturally appropriate, it’s Matthew.
He quotes Isaiah 7:14. When we read that in its context, we realize Isaiah was referring to the threat to Judah from the alliance of Ephraim and Syria. He was saying something like this: Assume a young virgin marries today and conceives a son. By the time that boy is old enough for his Bar Mitzvah, so is the length of time it will take for God to reveal His deliverance from the kings of Ephraim and Syria. There is some dispute about the time frame meant by this, but the point is Matthew clearly does not use this passage as intended by Isaiah.
That is, unless you take a moment to consider Matthew didn’t suffer the Western Christian paranoia about the Virgin Birth. This one thing is easily the second item of faith dismissed by Western skeptics, right after they dismiss the Resurrection. It is thus one of the most sensitive topics for Fundamentalists — it’s one of the Five Fundamentals. There is the unique claim to be the Son of God, and Virgin Birth is part of that package. Given Matthew and the other Gospels go on to pointedly state Joseph kept Mary chaste until after Jesus was born, that Mary conceived without human sex, we aren’t in any trouble if we simply realize Matthew wasn’t emphasizing that here.
Typical of Hebrew thinking, this passage is loaded with subtle references, and justly so; the Hebrew God is addressing a Hebrew man in the Hebrew language. If you ignore all of that subtle mysticism inherent in Hebrew writing and culture, it’s easy to be panicky about using this passage as a literalist support for the doctrine. That approach is awfully hard to reconcile with Isaiah’s obvious intent. So how about approaching from the Hebrew perspective? Isaiah’s promise of deliverance from the kings north of Judah foreshadowed something much bigger; it was a parable, both literal fact and symbol. Those kings eventually died in battle against Assyria, but then Assyria played rough with Judah until God killed Assyria’s king, too.
On the one hand, Matthew’s narrative shows God commanding Joseph to take no offense from Mary’s pregnancy; she wasn’t fooling around. God did this; divorcing her would be unjust. “Be a good man and adopt the son she will bear.” God connects that to the prophecy of Isaiah about how long it would take to bring about deliverance. The focus for Isaiah was prodding Ahaz back to the Covenant Law, by pointing out how well God keeps His end of the Covenant. So while this business of the Virgin was both literal and symbolic, it had more to do with the Law. Jesus came to fulfill the Law, something Ahaz and all the nation of Israel failed to do, despite the generous and patient deliverance God provided. Born purely by God’s hand, yet under the Law (born of a Jewish woman), Christ would enter the world without the taint of sin. He would be able to obey His Father and Joseph should keep his eye on the future Bar Mitzvah of his adopted son. Once that symbolic ritual comes, look for this boy to manifest beyond all doubt His destiny.
You could say all of that is devotional in nature and is not found in the historical-literal approach, but I counter this is precisely how a Hebrew mind would read it. It’s almost funny how, if we see Matthew pulling out a radically literalist reading of Isaiah, it violates the historical-literal approach. If we read it all fuzzy and mystically, it makes perfectly good sense. God has a sense of humor.
