... Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. 14), has been
interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary,
and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years. ...
Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom
this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the
misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to
Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is
simply this:
The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned
that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called
Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made
war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies
towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account
says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are
moved with the wind.
In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and
assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to
satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.
This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he
would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says,
ver. 14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son;” and the 16th verse says, “And
before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,
the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom
of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Here then was the
sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or
promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and
choose the good.
Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him,
in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the
consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It
certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a
girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any
more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it
may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, “And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a
son.”
Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and
this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that
the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in
later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and
have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ;
begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a
woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a
virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory
which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as
fabulous and as false as God is true.
But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to
attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in
silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and
which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt
against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the
name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an
hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem
was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters
carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter
Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. ...
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
