Wouldnt say that but it certaintly brought up my confidence in the text.
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Well, it should shake your confidence in how you’ve been told to read the text! It’s fascinatingly weird how otherwise skeptical people suddenly want to ascribe unquestioned infallibility to their own or their subculture’s choices of hermeneutical methodologies.
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Great point.
In some ways, I pity them though; for many, I don’t assume it’s intentional on their part to misrepresent hermeneutics. The issue is they’ve been brought up to read everything word-for-word literally. Perhaps they even grew up in a church that taught them to see the world this way. In that case, I’d understand why they’d initially think this way (I was brought up in a church like this too).
What bothers me with this group in question is an unwillingness to even engage with the possibility of another interpretation. Pastor Mike Winger made a point that some people move from an unthinking Christianity to an unthinking atheism. For me, engaging with theistic and atheistic writings when I wasn’t sure what to believe ended up strengthening and solidifying my faith (though I realize not everyone has this same experience).
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What of this prophecy where the river is suppose to dry up and as to how isaiah seems to emphasize on a literal interpretation, are there any records of the nile drying up?
If you highlight that and right click, 4 dn, ‘Search in…’, pg dn x 2, there’s your answer, in the UK, on a desktop.
What is a prophesy anyway? Is a foretelling of the future or is it a telling forth of what is important before that is generally understood by everyone? If the latter I’m not sure what would falsify a prophesy.
I really do need to watch the whole thing again. It’s probably been 20-25 years and once. Although the last scene greatly altered my world view, driving home with the greatest possible force, everything my German friends ever said about The Big American Häppy Ending.
Often seen as both.
All i found was this video: https://youtu.be/WKCW5Gg6Ffo
And mention of the blue nile drying up during arid seasons, droughts, etc.
What of the verse where isaiah mentions the egyptians will speak the tongue of the canaanites and of where he mentiones the egyptians will convert to mosaic judaism? I couldn’t find much evidence on either events occuring.
What about them? The Bible gets things wrong. It also uses hyperbole, it is didactic in nature with pastoral concerns and it has ex eventu prophecy. If Christianity depends on an inerrant Bible Christianity is a false religion. Despite what fundamentalists and evangelicals might tell you, very rarely, if ever, does the Bible show itself to possess supernatural knowledge of the future. I take it that is what you mean by prophecy.
God is infallible. I trust Him, not the Bible which is only useful in my opinion because God uses it to mediate the sacred, communicate with us and it provides us with a record of the incarnation. I do believe God wanted it written and softly inspired it but there is hardly proof of this theological claim. Without God the Bible might as well be just another book. If we are looking for historical or logical proof of the Bible, we will never find it—only confirmation bias that drowns our intellectual insecurities. There is only experiential reality.
Vinnie
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Thanks Trippy for the questions…I was looking through your epistle for your source — unnamed unless it is RationalWiki which you cite near the end.
Is that the source?
Anything slighty concerning about them as a source in your mind? “Analyzing and refuting” as they say…
Well then, I guess we can say they have their objectives upfront at least…
If it is not them, then I do not know who or what your source is, and this is the problem. As you (or your source) say, there can be differing views on the meaning of various biblical prophecies. But, where I would disagree, is that you can become unhinged with that assertion. If I want to call a ham sandwich a layered pig cake, for example, I can do it. It does not mean that my rendition of the thing is at all related to what most others call a ham sandwich or what people for the last few centuries would have called this particular culinary creation.
Just sayin’…one of your first points is that people who study the Bible “can’t agree what they [the prophetic passages] are referring to.” There may be a range of interpretations many things (“what does the 144,000 in Revelation stand for?”) but there generally is some point of no return where a particular view is just off the wall. If you read French, for example, there might be a few ways of interpreting je parle francais," emphasized text but after you have covered those few — all else is just craziness.
Whatever your source is on this, they are right in saying that there may be a range of views on some passages, but the range is limited.
And I would place your source’s view that “the vast majority of them are self fulfilling prophecies” in that “pig cake” category. This just invites a separate discussion on how one wants to define the method of prophetic fulfillment. God works through people and natural events as often as any other means.
And then you launch into the matter of Tyre…which you declare a “flat out wrong” prophecy because …
Tyre was an island with half a kilometer of open water separating it from the mainland. The island was formidably defended with high walls surrounded on all sides that was 45 meters tall at places.
Got the above off the internet…note the use of past tense with regard to verbiage
I am not sure your source on all the above data that you presented. The matter of Tyre, for example, is interesting but one might say an arcane detail. Most people hardly know of it to even bother making an issue of it.
But since “Tyre” means “rock,” apparently, it is not hard to wonder why that might persist as a name for a city. Thought I would mention it since you wondered. You said “So the city called Tyre has nothing to do with a city called Tyre? Do you see the problem here? If it was truly unrelated to the ancient city, why does it have the same name?” The suburbs of this world are peppered with communities named for cities or people or poets to which they bear no connection beyond, maybe, the fact that someone liked the name, wanted to remember dear old Hampshire (just as a thought) or wanted to remember a poet they once liked.
Nebuchadnezzar /Nebuchadrezzar made an attempt to conquer Tyre and “came away from it with little or nothing to show for his labors,” according to one commentary on Ezekiel. But Alexander’s conquest of Tyre is described in Philip Freeman’s Alexander the Great and also Peter Green’s Alexander of Macedon 356-323 BC. You kind of run around a bit in describing this, Trippy, so that I am not sure what the particular issue is with you. The Tyre of Alexander’s conquest was “on a rocky island half a mile offshore, protected by great walls,” as Green described it in his book (p. 247). He describes it as “an island fortress” in his book. Freeman notes in his book that the siege of Tyre started with demolition of older parts “on the mainland” and used the materials, along with other materials, to build a causeway to the island. The inglorious end was a mass crucifixion on the mainland.
There goes Tyre.
It’s nice that you are interested in these things, but there are a variety of perspectives regarding the demise of Tyre and the prophecies about it as contained in Ezekiel.
that would be acceptable views, not pig cake.
As for Egypt never having been a barren wasteland…as far as I have heard, it is hardly a rain forest. And the verses you note relate to the king of Babylon’s march against Egypt… See Saggs; The Greatness that was Babylon.
Isaiah 19:18 says “on that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty. One of them will be called the City of Destruction.” One commentator has noted that the words translated “sun” and “destruction” are very similar in Hebrew and thus this verse may refer to ancient Heliopolis. But this is not some assertion that all Egyptians will learn Canaanite. Modern Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language, by the way,. Thus the language is not totally dead. And I saw at least one commentator who said Hebrew, or possibly Aramaic, are the languages (one of the two) meant. There was a reasonably strong Hebrew presence in parts of Egypt in those days. Again, you have a source --is it RationalWiki ???
Just had to wonder about that. What "Jewish claim that the new testament authors intentionally misinterpreted the scriptures in order to believe they were making prophecies about Jesus? "
I can think of various modern-day Jewish scholars who have written a bit – OK a lot – more positively about the Jesus of the New Testament than to say that. And the Dead Sea Scrolls have some important moments in this regard as well. Different views of course…but seriously RationalWiki is your source?
OK…just adding to the mix here… Have a good one…
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So what? There are NO prophecies, by our extremely limited, narrow, modern understanding, in the OT. Please find any. One. That was ‘fulfilled’. Those of us saying that Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine are ‘prophesying’ as the ancients did. Find me a single prophecy - something that could not have been extrapolated by natural means - made in history before it was fulfilled in history. Anyone?
Yes but i am not the original poster of the listed refutes, all of those refutes are from a quoted post off of a subreddit, particularly r/debatechristianity.
Probably because i did not type out the refutes above, i simply copy and pasted from r/debatechristianity, mainly because i found some of what was listed to be problematic due to the fact i grew up being told the bible was innerant.
Trippy…it somewhat seems as though Biologos is drawing a curtain here. I see “Last Visit” and then two remarks from you addressed to me. You brought up a range of issues, and the matter of the destruction of Tyre is not a new one, but oft repeated. Most of us trouble ourselves not at all with the details of Mediterranean history…or the conquests of Alexander the Great in that region. Thus, I would not be surprised to know or read that r/debatechristianity has picked it up. But they are passing it off as “an argument against” — I suppose — because it sounds great and is an obscure enough of a point that the average reader (skeptic or not) would not have much to say for or against it.
But if you are going to read them, then I do suggest you read some of those historians I cited (Green, Freeman and more) who also discuss this episode in the life of Alex the G (as I call him). Or see:
Everything from that era was removed and thrown into the sea to build Alexander’s causeway, leaving only “ shining, bare rock ” (Ezekiel 26:4). Impressive ruins from Roman period do exist and UNESCO has declared the area a World Heritage Site. Alexander’s causeway permanently altered the sea currents and many long centuries of sedimentation has turned the causeway into a sandy peninsula approximately 500 meters wide. In recent decades the area has been heavily built over. The area of the causeway now contains hundreds of apartment blocks and Lebanese Tyre has a population roughly estimated in 1993 to be 117,000 (although the real number is probably much higher). Tyre’s southern harbour gradually filled with silt and has long since disappeared but the northern, “Sidonian” harbour is still used and is filled with fishing boats and pleasure craft. Recent years have seen a marked increase in tourism and it is hoped that the newborn city’s white sandy beaches and rich historical heritage will make modern Tyre a tourist hotspot.
The above comes from a biblearchaeology website…which is among your most likely sources for such data at this point (outside of biographies of Alex the G). If you can listen to one, you should listen to and consider the arguments of the other…and give both a fair shake.
There is more to the chapters in Ezekiel than just the couple verses on Tyre, however…Most commentators (liberal and conservative) see the references to Tyre’s fall and the king of Tyre – linked to a larger story found in those chapters… partly from Ugaritic myths involving a king’s downfall due to hubris. The king of Tyre even is equated with a great cherub…and some commentators even equate this with “the Satan” whom you may have heard about elsewhere. I believe that Terry Sampson above alluded to it.
As for inerrancy in the biblical text…depends on how you mean that term.
Historicity issues with the Bible as a whole…just saw an article discussing the deadly qualities of slings — just in case you wondered how a shepherd boy could have conked Goliath with one…ancient kings spiked their wine with vanilla from either India or subtropical Africa…a few years ago evidence of Hezekiah was found on a bulla seal…there is a town in the U.S. state of Arkansas that was named for the discovery of the springs of Siloam that became big news in 1880, the year of the town’s renaming…bodies found buried under ash and mudbrick debris in biblical Gezer…texts and letters attesting to details around the demise of Sennacharib – also mentioned in the Bible…I can cite at least one authority on Ancient Assyria who said that the Old Testament is “generally reliable” as a source of history…and I can think of another modern archaeologist who said that the author of the Gospel of Luke was quite well educated, thorough and detail minded, and obviously a physician because he knew terms the average bloke of his era would not have known. Note that the Assyriologist said “generally,” and I also did not pick up any hints that the commentator on Luke was an inerrantist. Just making an observation. One modern Jewish commentator remarked on the detailed knowledge of Jewish law displayed by the author of the Gospel of Mark…and, better than the average Gentile reader this writer noted assertions of divinity on Jesus’ part…and the timeliness of some of the rabbinical disputes that Jesus addressed…And yes, there was an expectation amongst the inhabitants of Judea/Galilee in what we call the first centuries BCE/AD/CE — that a Jewish man would soon come who would be both Messiah and God. What you have heard about disciples making things up (I forget how you termed it) is off the mark…You may have specific issues with what you were raised or taught to believe. But the Bible is not so far off as you seem to have just discovered. Get a little balance in things… not just the bloggers whose expertise you seem to not question.
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What I’m a bit curious about though, is that if he can’t remember or get right smaller details like that, then how can we be so sure he can get the main point right and not slip up? /srs
What? Like he’s in Rome and about to be crucified, and one day he wakes up and says: “Hey! why am I here?”
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Well - all I know is that Paul himself would be thunderstruck at this angle of attack.
“Wait a minute! So you’re telling me that before God can use me or teach anything useful or true through me, that I’ve got to be an infallible genius with a perfect memory? I can’t so much as misspell a word or have a memory lapse, and suddenly all the actually important stuff has to get tossed!? Remind me never to accept an invitation to dinner at your house! If I pick up the wrong fork for my salad and suddenly everything I’ve been teaching you about Christ and atonement and love is all tossed to the curb!! It’s like all you moderns haven’t learned anything at all from anything I’ve written. Here I am, the chiefest of sinners, the most cracked jar on the shelf - and God says ‘That’s mine’ - and proceeds to use my weak words, contemptible speech, and imperfect memory to reach hearts. What is this infallibility nonsense you moderns have made up? I hope you don’t treat your own leaders and prophets this way. What a crock of an excuse to dismiss a whole lot of important stuff! I bet you don’t give beloved conspiracy theories that same kind of shabby treatment! You’ll find ways to continue to think highly of them well enough!”
Okay - that was a bit of a rant - and not directed at you, Rave; your post was just an opportunistic springboard for me to react to a wider class of you all out there - believers and ex-believers, but rarely ever ex-fundamentalists.
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