After telling the story of the virgin birth, Matthew says that all this happened so as to fulfill the words of the prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

The problem with this is that no prophet said that. Matthew seems to be thinking of Isaiah, who says that the Messiah will be born of a young woman (he uses the word almah). If he’d wanted to say virgin, he could have quite easily used bethulah.

Unfortunately, when Matthew was writing his gospel there was a translation of the OT from Hebrew into Greek, called the Septuagint, that mistranslated almah as parthenos, which does mean virgin. So it looks like yet another case of either Matthew or his sources inventing stories to agree with prophecies they’d read about.

Well done on the podcast, it’s a highlight of my fortnight.

As for last weeks “homework”, here in pharmacies the store part that sells all sorts of crap like homeopathy, magnet crap, naturopathy, vitamins and everything from toothbrushes to tampons and the prescription dispensary are 2 separate entities.

The prescription dispensary is run by a licensed pharmacist who usually rents space in a chain run store so most pharmacists here won’t profit from selling you woo.

Pat

I’m not a scholar, though. For all I know, Jesus was born last week.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9388754