Finding analogies between Hebrew and Greek myths

She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God is with us." – Matthew 1: 21 – 23

The Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi comes to us through the translation of seventy-two Israelites – six from each of the twelve tribes – commissioned by King Ptolemy II of Egypt in the middle of the third century B.C. A Jewish scholar, Laura Bernstein, in her attempts of healing the Jewish–Christian rift, saw here a mistranslation of the Hebrew. She argues that a virgin Jewish mother is a departure from Jewish tradition, which considers healthy sexuality to be an asset and a blessing.

However, the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “almah” in the text of Isaiah as parthenos (usually translated as “virgin”),  must be interpreted in connection with the Greek/Roman goddess of innocence and purity, Astraea, who was the last god to abandon the earth when war sprang up before the beginning of the historical period.

The mythological complex with which the translators of the Septuagint contrast Isaiah’s prophesy (with the Suffering Servant as its principal human protagonist) is the Iron Age. Changes in society and the outcome of a new and superior technology are reflected in mythology.

During the Iron Age cutting tools and weapons were mainly made of iron or steel. But men were not satisfied with what the surface produced and dag into its bowels, drawing forth from thence the ores of metals. The earth, which till now had been cultivated in common, began to be divided off into possessions.

In the mythological view, the Iron Age brought crime and war – gold and iron were used to produce weapons; modesty, truth, and honor fled. In their place came fraud and cunning, violence and the wicked love of gain. The guest was not safe in his friend’s house; and son-in-law and fathers-in-law, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives could not trust one another. The earth was wet with slaughter and the gods, one by one, abandoned it.

This myth is thus, more or less, analogous with the crisis of traditional faith and moral standards of Isaiah’s age. Astraea is associated with Themis or Justice; the Golden Age with innocence or return to origins. After leaving earth, Astraea was placed among the stars, where she became the constellation “Virgo” – the Virgin.

The emphasis on the role of justice in the Babylonia’s exile is not at odd with a favorite idea of the old Greek/Roman poets that these goddesses would one day return, and bring back the Golden Age. Even in the Fourth Eologue of Virgil, this idea occurs:

Now the virgin is returning …

A new human race is descending from the heights of heaven …

The birth of a child, with whom the iron age of humanity will end and

The golden age begins …

Under your guidance, whatever vestiges remain of our ancient wickedness,

Once done away with, shall free the earth from its incessant fear …”

In both forms of religion, however, the Golden Age is pictured as an age of innocence and happiness, where truth and right prevail, though not enforced by law, nor will it be any magistrate to threaten or punish. According to Isaiah, the Messiah will bring peace, justice, and harmony to the whole world, heralding a messianic age when the wolf will dwell with the lamb and war will be obsolete (Isa. 11: 16, 2 – 4).

At the beginning of the Iron Age Israel was slowly increasing its own territory in the Levant. What had been a loose confederation of nomadic tribes became a monarchy, under Saul in the late eleventh century B. C. E. and then David and Solomon in the tenth. But the Assyrian’s advance toward imperial domination in the region affected the independence of Israel. They captured and destroyed Samaria in 722, making the northern kingdom of Israel an Assyrian province.

Isaiah’s prophesy was written seven hundred years prior to the birth of Jesus (734 BCE). Bernstein, however, argues that Immanuel (God is with us) was to be a sign assuring king Ahaz of Judah, the Jewish southern kingdom, of the coming destruction of both the northern kingdom and Syria by Assyria: “Judah will have divine protection,” Isaiah prophesied. Indeed, the powerful Assyrian army was miraculously stopped outside the walls of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. during the reign of Hezekiah. According to Isaiah’s own account, all 185.000 Assyrian soldiers were said to have perished in one night (Isa. 36: 1 – 37: 38) but it was a short-living military victory. The siege to Jerusalem subsisted until the Assyrians subdued Judah, forcing King Hezekiah’s submission. 

Again Jerusalem, caught up in the event of an imperial war between Assyria and Babylonia, was besieged in 597 by the army of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. In 586, the Babylonians destroyed the Temple that Solomon had built, and a significant part of the population was deported to Babylon, and others fled to Egypt and elsewhere: this was the beginning of the Diaspora or dispersion, of the Jewish people.

The reinterpretation in light of the Second Temple destruction by the Romans in 70 CE is clear enough in Matthew’s Gospel.