My Virgin Birth Debate Slides

I've had some difficulty posting these slides from an online debate with Jimmy Akin, which was hosted by Capturing Christianity. Initially we had agreed to 20 minute openers but decided 10 minutes was enough. Below is my 20 minute slide presentation, which I extended a bit. It puzzles me a great deal why this information doesn't cause more believers to abandon the virgin myth. This is what led me to doubt the gospels as a whole. Enjoy. Please share!

 

Hebrew scholar Dr. Randall Heskett comments as follows:

You must also remember that the sign given to Isaiah that “the young woman” (הָעַלְמָ֗ה) in Isaiah 7:14 would conceive and bear a child named Emmanuel is fulfilled in verses 15 and 16. The "the" article with its lengthen vowel — because of the guttural הָעַלְמָ֗ה —is speaking of a specific woman who is probably Isaiah’s or Ahaz’s wife, so that the Emmanuel child seems to be either Hezekiah but could also be Mahershalelhazbaz. הִנֵּ֣ה should be translated, “look“ because she’s visibly in their presence. In verses 15 and 16, it tells you that the two kings in the north, whom Isaiah refers to in context as smoldering stumps, will be deserted. In other words, the child is born during the Syro-Ephaimite war. The fulfillment of this so-called prophecy happens in the eighth century, BCE. John Calvin, reading as one would on the cusp of modernity, tried to fix it up by looking for a “double fulfillment". This child, probably Hezekiah, will help bring them through the crisis, where Syria and Israel in the north are trying to push them to their side against Assyria. Hezekiah would resolve that problem. Now, my book, Messianism within the Scriptural Scroll of Isaiah shows that later postexilic editing provides warrants for later messianic reinterpretation because now, Emmanuel is no longer a response to the Syro-Ephraimite war, but a response to the exile, when there is no longer a king on the throne. Remember, all kings were called “Messiah,” and now the meaning of Messiah needs to change to somebody outside of Judah. Cyrus is the first and then later it takes on eschatological proportions when Isaiah 65:17–25 demessianize Cyrus, which I set out as my original ideas in two of my works. But the point here is that the pregnant young woman in 7:14 is not a virgin but the wife of either Isaiah, or Ahaz giving birth in that very time. Yet, dishonest Christian readers have misinterpreted it so.