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>The canonical version of Matthew best reflects this attribute of combining both traditions: it combines the Jewish concern for keeping the Law (5:18) with the Hellenistic attribute of a high Christology in which Jesus is part of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (28:19), and moves from the Jewish mission to save only the lost sheep of Israel (15:24) to the Hellenistic mission to making disciples of all nations (28:19)
>The Antioch editor of the Gospel of Matthew tried to connect the Hellenistic idea of the virgin birth to Jewish scripture by citing Isaiah as prophesizing the virgin birth of Jesus when he said “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” However, this quotation comes from the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah, which uses the Greek word parthenos, or “virgin”, while the Masoretic and Dead Sea Scroll versions of Isaiah use the Hebrew word almah, meaning “young woman”, which better matches the original context from the text that it was a sign for king Ahaz of Judah, possibly that his son Hezekiah would be born
>Using these three versions of Matthew, we can map out the evolution of the Virgin Birth narrative:
>1) The Ebionites use a version of the Gospel of Mark as a source to construct the earliest version of Matthew, which, like Mark, says Jesus was born to two parents and was adopted by the Holy Spirit to become the Christ
>2) The Cerinthians react to the accusation that Jesus was a memzer by adding a genealogy to Ebionite Matthew that highlights four women of questionable purity
>3) The Church of Peter in Antioch adds the Virgin Birth narrative to Cerinthian Matthew and tries to tie it to a Jewish prophecy from the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah
