The rest of Matthew 1

It's Easter Day, so here's a bit of Christmas lore, also a bit of a surprise concerning the Holy.

I have decided to return to a bit of translating in the New Testament. I don't know if I still have time to research Hebrew translations of the NT, but there's nothing like starting. If one doesn't start, one can hardly finish.

The first thing I note with chapter 1 is that 'holy spirit' appears out of nowhere. Everybody talks about Jesus and Christ and so on as if they know everything about him. But where did the expression the holy spirit come from.

God is spirit. But what is the origin of this in a Jewish context? The Jewish Annotated NT cites this pair of words as

"a reference to God's creative and enduring presence (Gen 1.2, 2.7, 8.1; Ex 13.21-22; Josh 2.16; Ps 51.11; and a Talmudic tractate Hagigah (Festal Offering)."

Interesting, if I were looking for the spirit of God in Tanakh, I would have looked for that pair of words in that sequence, but here we find cited more generic references to Yahweh God (2.7) or God - wind (8.1), the pillar of cloud (Ex 13). The reference to Josh 2:16 is baffling.

Well there's a question. רוח הקדשׁ never occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The only occurrence is ורוח קדשׁך and your holy spirit ... And treating holy as an adjective, the phrase should be הרוח הקדשׁ.

So how to approach this conundrum. I suppose I could just accept tradition. But this would be a cop out. What I notice about the use of קדשׁ in the Hebrew is that it is often the adjective holy, and it never appears in Hebrew with a definite article, but it is in some phrases interpreted as a divine name, the Holy or the Holy One. The definite article in English is understood because the next word in the Hebrew is an implied definite such as in קדשׁ קדשׁים the Holy of Holies or קדשׁ ישראל the Holy One of Israel. So this birth in the NT is from the sanctuary, the inner sanctum of Yahweh himself.

Note that this usage of קדשׁ is most prominent in Isaiah, occurring 31 times in the prophet, 25 times in other books.

Here's my rendition of the rest of Matthew 1 based on a Hebrew translation of the Greek but guided by tradition. No music reconstructed for this yet.

¹⁸ And the birth of Jeshua, the anointed, was thus.
As Miriam his mother was betrothed to Joseph, ere he came to her, but it was found that she was pregnant, for from the spirit of the Holy she was pregnant.
¹⁹ And Joseph, her man, was a righteous one and did not consent to give her the defamation of the people,
and he promised to send her away in secret.
²⁰ While there was a matter on his heart such as this, behold a messenger of Yahweh appeared to him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, son of David, you will not fear to take to you Miriam your wife, for the one that is born within her was fashioned from the spirit of the Holy.
²¹ And she will give birth to a son and you will call his name Jeshua,
for he himself will save his people from their sins.
²² And all this has happened to fulfill the word of Yahweh by the hand of the prophet, saying,
²³ Behold the young woman is pregnant and will give birth to a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,
that is to say, God is with us.
²⁴ And Joseph awoke from his sleep and he did as the messenger of Yahweh commanded him,
and he received his wife.
²⁵ And he did not know her until she gave birth to a son, her firstborn,
and he called his name Jeshua.