Organization of the Year

Generally, though, religions try to offer better answers than that, because an answer like that only creates bigger questions – if that’s not what it said, what did it say? Could be anything.

This is the problem.

This is the genius of Mormonism. The church teaches it’s doctrine but always leaves these answers to the individual, without reservation, because the church taking an official stand on these details is not what is going to build your faith. This whole thing about beliefe hinging on minutiae which are ancilary to core truths, products of history (for better or worse) and subject to corruption is foreign to me.

Actually, that was poorly expressed by me. Matthew never again calls Jesus Immanuel again after the verse in the nativity story where he’s connecting the story back to Isaiah. In fact, nowhere else in the gospels is that name used, and I think it’s only used 3 times in the entire Bible. The answer to your question seems to be that Matthew is making a theological rather than literal connection to the Isaiah story (and really, that story if read in its entirety, the story of Azaz, pretty clearly has nothing to do with any Jesus and Mary coming hundreds of years later).

/Lean left is my advice

All right, well, now that the kids are in bed I’ve got a couple of references I can point you to.

5 " Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD,

      " That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness;
      A King shall reign and prosper,
      And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
       6 In His days Judah will be saved,
      And Israel will dwell safely;
      Now this is His name by which He will be called:

      THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.[a]

-Jeremiah 23:5-6

30 "These are the exits of the city. On the north side, measuring four thousand five hundred cubits 31 (the gates of the city shall be named after the tribes of Israel), the three gates northward: one gate for Reuben, one gate for Judah, and one gate for Levi; 32 on the east side, four thousand five hundred cubits, three gates: one gate for Joseph, one gate for Benjamin, and one gate for Dan; 33 on the south side, measuring four thousand five hundred cubits, three gates: one gate for Simeon, one gate for Issachar, and one gate for Zebulun; 34 on the west side, four thousand five hundred cubits with their three gates: one gate for Gad, one gate for Asher, and one gate for Naphtali. 35 All the way around shall be eighteen thousand cubits; and the name of the city from that day shall be: THE LORD IS THERE."[b] -Ezekiel 48: 30-35

In the first case Jeremiah is obviously looking forward in a similar way to Isaiah, but I think the passage is meant a certain way. It’s emphasizing the relationship between this descendent of David and the people of God – I don’t think it’s meant to say his name is actually going to be “Yahoweh-tsidkenu.” (Forgive the rough Anglicizing, my Hebrew never took, what little I had)

The second passage is, I think, undeniably allegorical. Ezekiel is describing a future Jerusalem, and doing so in obviously poetic terms. There’s no expectation that Jerusalem is going to be renamed Yahoweh-shammah.

There are other cases, too, where prophets use names in less than literal ways – when Jeremiah renames the priest that beat him and threw him in prison from “Freedom” to “Terror on every side.” Then he refers to him by his given name again a few lines later – obviously the “renaming” was not meant to actually rename, it was a comment on the person.

There’s also the beginning of Hosea, where Hosea is instructed to name several kids names, and each one is named something significant like “You are not my people.” I don’t think it is necessarily a given that it was the name the kid carried the rest of his life, although the prophets tended to be pretty serious guys so it may well have been.

But you get the idea – names are often bestowed in the prophets, and the emphasis is almost always the meaning of the name and the message it sends.

As I’ve said, if you land on the other side of this, that’s fine by me. Maybe the mother thing tips it for you, I don’t know. There is a strong tradition in other places of the Bible (mostly historical books) of mothers having kids and giving them significant names. For me, I think there’s a pretty clear case for a poetic meaning.