Voices of the One God

The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are, by Norman Podhoretz (Free Press, 390 pp., $30)

BEHOLD, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The time is the late 8th century B.C., and the speaker is Isaiah the prophet; he is telling Ahaz, the king of Judah, about a sign of hope that will soon be manifest-ed in his war-threatened kingdom. This, at least, was how the verse was understood for the centuries before the birth of Jesus; but since the advent of Christianity, exegetes eager to find confirmation of the story of Jesus’ virgin birth have read “virgin” for “young woman.” Surely, they say, the Church—as the inheritor and thus the new “copyright holder” of the Hebrew Scriptures—has the right to amend the traditional understanding in the light of the new, greater truth.

About the Author

Michael Potemra

Michael Potemra was a literary editor for National Review.

The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are, by Norman Podhoretz (Free Press, 390 pp., $30)

BEHOLD, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The time is the late 8th century B.C., and the speaker is Isaiah the prophet; he is telling Ahaz, the king of Judah, about a sign of hope that will soon be manifest-ed in his war-threatened kingdom. This, at least, was how the verse was understood for the centuries before the birth of Jesus; but since the advent of Christianity, exegetes eager to find confirmation of the story of Jesus’ virgin birth have read “virgin” for “young woman.” Surely, they say, the Church—as the inheritor and thus the new “copyright holder” of the Hebrew Scriptures—has the right to amend the traditional understanding in the light of the new, greater truth.