How many years from Isaiah's prophecy to the birth of Christ?

AnswerThe Book of Isaiah was written in Hebrew, and does not contain any reference to the birth of Jesus. However, a translation into Greek of this book, and of other early Hebrew scriptures, does contain a passage that Matthew thought could have been a reference to the virgin birth of Jesus. This translation is called the Septuagint and was written over a long period commencing around the middle of the second century BCE. The apparent prophecy arose because the Septuagint mistranslated Isaiah 7:14 to say that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. Instead of "a virgin", the correct translation would have been "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. Taking a single verse out of context, the author of the Gospel of Matthew relied on this mistranslation to show that it was prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin.