The Masoretic (Hebrew) text is post-Christian, and NOT the basis of the Christian faith. The Dead Sea Scrolls, created up to centuries before Christ, are far older than the Masoretic text, and are far closer to the Greek texts.
This is not idle controversy. The Masoretic text describes the Messiah as being born from an unmarried woman (”Alma,” as transliterated from Hebrew). The Greek text says he will be born of a virgin (”parthenos”). Thus, the Masoretic text suggests that the Messiah would be born of fornication, whereas the Greek text suggests he would be born of a distinct, miraculous act of divine creation.
According to legend, the Greek text was created by a miracle: 72 scholars all were inspired by the Holy Spirit to create identical translations from a Hebrew source document, despite being isolated in individual cells. This is “legend” not because it isn’t necessarily true, but because it’s irrelevant: whether due to a one-time miraculous inspiration, or a continual gift of the Holy Spirit, the Greek text is divine truth.
In contrast, the Masoretic text is the creation of people who despite their inspirationally passionate love for God were blinded temporarily from the truth of Christ that they may be, collectively, an example of Isaiah’s suffering servant. Their text, therefore, was written outside the protection of the Holy Spirit, and their motivation included disproving the notion of the divinity of Christ. Even though Protestants have followed the Hebrew in editing out certain books, they too have followed the early Christian church in rejecting key doctrinally problematic Hebrew translations.
(After the death of Christ, the Jews rejected the deuterocanonical books, which Protestants label “apocryphal” because they created the expectation of an imminent Messiah, which Christians saw fulfilled in Christ. Many had historically believed that they were also rejected because they were composed in Greek, not Hebrew, but the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the Hebrew, pre-Christian origins of six of the seven deuterocanonical books. Many others believe that the Hebrews considered them as less authoritative than “the Prophets” and “the Law,” but the Tanakh, in fact, includes other books from this class of books, the Khetuvim, which includes Proverbs, Job, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, etc.)
“The Masoretic text describes the Messiah as being born from an unmarried woman.”
Actually, it just says “young woman,” and says nothing about marriage. It could, theoretically, mean virgin, too, so that is not the conflict.
The real objection is the verse (in context) is interpreted by Jewish scholars to refer to a child who will be (was) born in the time of King Ahaz (as a sign that he would be victorious in a war); this incident has nothing at all to do with the Moshiach, and occurred more than 500 years before Jesus was born.
The "Massoretic text" is a pointed text. Do you even know what that means? The only things the Tiberian Massoretes did was create symbols for vowels, punctuation, and cantation (and previous systems of these had existed, else how would one know how to read an unpointed text?). The actual Divinely-dictated text consists of consonants only (no vowels, no punctuation, no trope) and is the same in every kosher Torah Scroll in the world with the exception of the Yemenite tradition, which has a few extra vocalic letters.
I find it quite offensive that Catholic FReepers so often like to invoke their "suffering" in Protestant America as making them allies of the Jews when your post is a perfect example of the Catholic origin of Protestantism. Centuries before Protestantism existed Catholic/Orthodox chr*stians were attacking the "chr*stless works religion" of Judaism (because they kept the original "works" instead of replacing them with new ones) and of re-writing the Bible to justify themselves. Helloooo? Sound familiar? Every heard of Catholics re-writing the Bible to change "his heel" to "her heel," among other things?
Please have the decency not to proclaim how much closer Catholicism is to Judaism. The whole point is that the closeness means that Catholicism was never necessary to begin with.
First of all, no. Almah means simply "young woman." An unmarried, virginal state is implied (of the seven times almah appears in the Tanakh (OT) it is never used of a non-virgin), but not required. In fact, there is no single word in Hebrew that means "virgin" in the modern sense. (No, "betulah" didn't originally mean "virgin" either; the word changed in meaning later.)
By the way, the Greek "parthenos" may not have originally meant "virgo intacta" either; that's why Luke records Mary saying, "I am a parthenos, who has never known a man." The last clause would be utterly superfluous if parthenos always and only meant "virgin" in the modern sense--and the Spirit never wastes words.
Secondly, the DSS don't rescue you there, since they also have "almah" in this passage.
Thirdly, there is not a single Jewish source that I have ever heard of that uses this passage to "prove" that the Messiah would be born out of wedlock. There are passages in the Talmud that accuse Yeshua of being born such, but they don't use Isaiah 7 in reference to Him.
Matthew did not find Isa. 7:14 and say, "Oh look, it says the Messiah would be born of a virgin!" Rather, he said, "Hey, we know that the Messiah was born of a virgin; are there any passages in the Tanakh that refer to this?" From there, he found a string of prophecy that runs from chapter 7 through chapter 12 of Isaiah about the Messiah which says that He would a) be born of an almah, and b) this would be a miraculous sign, and c) this child would be called "God With Us."
There are certainly variants in the Masoretic Text (heck, the text records quite a number of spelling variants in what are known as qere-ketiv notations). There are also a handful of places where these variants impact messianic passages--but not in Isaiah 7.
Shalom