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Author Topic:   Accuracy of Biblical Prophecy
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


(1)
Message 16 of 33 (722624)
03-23-2014 1:55 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by lokiare
03-21-2014 9:58 AM


"The shekel is to consist of twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels plus twenty-five shekels plus fifteen shekels equal one mina...
What happened to the gerah and the mina? Does the gerah translate into five agorot now? Or is the prophecy still awaiting fulfillment?
Does sixty shekels make a mina today? Any idea on why there are 20- and 50-shekel notes, but no 60's, 25's or 15's?
Which other prophecies were you going to compare here, again? The Gospel of The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUHHH!) can do as well as this one.

"The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails." H L Mencken

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by lokiare, posted 03-24-2014 3:02 PM Coragyps has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 17 of 33 (722625)
03-23-2014 2:06 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by kbertsche
03-23-2014 1:50 PM


I think a clearer prophecy from Isaiah is the prediction of Christ's crucifixion in Is 53. Since the book of Isaiah was found in the Dead Sea scrolls, there is no question that this was written before Christ, before the Roman Empire, and before crucifixion was a common means of capital punishment.
The dating is clearer, yes. But the discussion of whether the verse relates to Christ is quite heated as is evidenced from these forums.
As I understand it, one of the main reasons that this late date was proposed and accepted was that many scholars rejected the possibility of specific prophecies a priori. Hence, the question of when this was written and whether or not it was true prophecy reduces to a circular argument
That would be true only if the opposing arguments stopped with he a priori assumption. Whether or not you agree with the anti-argument, I think it is not honest to pretend that it is so limited.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 18 of 33 (722628)
03-23-2014 2:28 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Faith
03-23-2014 12:31 PM


Faith writes:
All I said was that Pressie was making the mistake of thinking you could date the book of Isaiah from a copy.
Of course that cuts both ways. You can't say the book is no older than the copy but you can't say how much older it is either.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 19 of 33 (722647)
03-23-2014 10:00 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by ringo
03-23-2014 2:28 PM


Of course that cuts both ways. You can't say the book is no older than the copy but you can't say how much older it is either.
I made no claim whatever about the actual date, merely pointed out that Pressie was wrong to think the writing of Isaiah could be dated from the time of the Qumran Community simply because they had a copy of Isaiah.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 20 of 33 (722648)
03-23-2014 10:03 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by NoNukes
03-23-2014 12:51 PM


Thanks.

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lokiare
Member (Idle past 3650 days)
Posts: 69
Joined: 03-18-2014


Message 21 of 33 (722719)
03-24-2014 2:51 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Pressie
03-23-2014 9:19 AM


Can you prove they are not copied down exactly as written? Because there is proof that they were considered holy scripture and would have thus been well taken care of and meticulously copied from scroll to scroll as we saw from the dead sea scrolls to the later translations without a single mistake, despite them not being direct copies of each other.
In other words there is good evidence that they would have been carefully copied, what is your evidence they were altered or changed?

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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lokiare
Member (Idle past 3650 days)
Posts: 69
Joined: 03-18-2014


Message 22 of 33 (722725)
03-24-2014 3:00 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Faith
03-23-2014 10:17 AM


I guess you think that millions of believers and thousands of Biblical scholars and theologians who accepted it as prophecy wouldn't have known if it wasn't prophecy?
Nice try at the ad populum fallacy.
No. I believe because the facts indicate they were written during the occupation based on the wording and tenses used. So while the initial 1-39 chapters were written before the occupation, chapters 40-54 were written during the occupation. When they couldn't have known who was going to rise to power and set them free.
Actually modern "scholars" sometimes refuse to believe in prophecy same as you, and intentionally redate the prophetic writings after the events prophesied, simply ignoring the traditional dates.
Yes, this is a circular argument. "Because prophecies can't be true these things must be written after the fact, therefore they aren't true."
Now you could say they might not be true because we can't verify when they were written, but that is about as far as you can go without presenting some actual evidence.
Using Wikipedia as my source it appears that due to wording and the tenses used the book has been broken into 3 parts: Before, during, and after the Babylonian occupation.
Book of Isaiah - Wikipedia
If you read further you'll find that pretty much everyone believes them to have been written before the events they describe happening in the prophecy.
What I would like to see is whether any Babylonian documentation survived that would either verify or refute these things. That would be actual evidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Faith, posted 03-23-2014 10:17 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
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lokiare
Member (Idle past 3650 days)
Posts: 69
Joined: 03-18-2014


Message 23 of 33 (722726)
03-24-2014 3:02 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by Coragyps
03-23-2014 1:55 PM


Ridicule has moved your post down to the last one I will respond to. Thanks for your input.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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lokiare
Member (Idle past 3650 days)
Posts: 69
Joined: 03-18-2014


Message 24 of 33 (722733)
03-24-2014 3:19 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by kbertsche
03-23-2014 1:50 PM


There are different views and arguments on the dating of the book of Isaiah. The traditional view is that the entire book was written by Isaiah in the 8th century BC. The modern critical view is that "second Isaiah" (Is 40-66) was written after the exile and the rebuilding of the temple. As I understand it, one of the main reasons that this late date was proposed and accepted was that many scholars rejected the possibility of specific prophecies a priori. Hence, the question of when this was written and whether or not it was true prophecy reduces to a circular argument. I don't think either side can make an argument that will convince their opposition.
Actually they think the middle section (40-54) was written during the occupation and the rest (55-66) after the exile was ended. So while my initial post said the book of Isaiah was 150+ years old, the part with the prophecy was much younger.
quote:
While it is widely accepted that Isaiah the prophet did not write the book, there are good reasons to see parts of chapters 1—39 as stemming from the historic Isaiah ben Amoz, who lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the reigns of four kings from the mid to late 8th century BC.[16][26] During this period Assyria was expanding westward from its origins in modern-day northern Iraq towards the Mediterranean, destroying first Aram (modern Syria) in 734—732 BCE, then the Kingdom of Israel in 722-721, and finally subjugating Judah in 701.[27] Proto-Isaiah is divided between verse and prose passages, and a currently popular theory is that the verse passages represent the prophecies of the original 8th century Isaiah, while the prose sections are "sermons" on his texts composed at the court of Josiah a hundred years later, at the end of the 7th century.[28]
The conquest of Jerusalem by Babylon and the exile of its elite in 586 BCE ushered in the next stage in the formation of the book. Deutero-Isaiah addresses himself to the Jews in exile, offering them the hope of return.[29] This was the period of the meteoric rise of Persia under its king Cyrus the Great — in 559 BCE he succeeded his father as ruler of a small vassal kingdom in modern eastern Iran, by 540 he ruled an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, and in 539 he conquered Babylon.[30] Deutero-Isaiah's predictions of the imminent fall of Babylon and his glorification of Cyrus as the deliverer of Israel date his prophecies to 550—539 BCE, and probably towards the end of this period.[31]
The Persians ended the Jewish exile, and by 515 BCE the exiles, or at least some of them, had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple. The return, however, was not without problems: the returnees found themselves in conflict with those who had remained in the country and who now owned the land, and there were further conflicts over the form of government that should be set up. This background forms the context of Trito-Isaiah.
from Book of Isaiah - Wikipedia
So the prophecy was written around 586 BCE and then the end of the exile and the restoration of the temple happened around 515 BCE a gap of 71 years. Not quite 150+. That's assuming the original author didn't simply take a past tense stance when writing the material knowing that the future Israeli people would be reading it. Most of the dating is based on things like writing style and tenses of words. I'd like to see some outside corroboration from a Babylonian or Persian source to either prove or disprove it.
I think a clearer prophecy from Isaiah is the prediction of Christ's crucifixion in Is 53. Since the book of Isaiah was found in the Dead Sea scrolls, there is no question that this was written before Christ, before the Roman Empire, and before crucifixion was a common means of capital punishment.
Actually there is a description of his crucifixion in the psalms of which he was quoting from "father why have you forsaken me" That describes crucifixion long before it was practiced.
Bible Search and Study Tools - Blue Letter Bible
Instead of copying the whole thing, I'll just link it.
P.S. If someone could explain how to quote the text in a post, I'd appreciate that as it would make responding much easier, for right now I'm doing it manually.

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Replies to this message:
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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 25 of 33 (722747)
03-24-2014 5:11 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by lokiare
03-24-2014 3:19 PM


lokiare writes:
P.S. If someone could explain how to quote the text in a post, I'd appreciate that as it would make responding much easier, for right now I'm doing it manually.
quote:
Pick a post with quotes, then click the Peek button to the lower right to see the codes.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 26 of 33 (722750)
03-24-2014 5:18 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by lokiare
03-24-2014 2:51 PM


In other words there is good evidence that they would have been carefully copied, what is your evidence they were altered or changed?
Go back and read Pressie's post in message 8. He does not claim that the documents are forged. He claims that they were written after the events that they prophesied had already occurred.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by lokiare, posted 03-24-2014 2:51 PM lokiare has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 27 of 33 (722751)
03-24-2014 5:23 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by lokiare
03-24-2014 3:19 PM


P.S. If someone could explain how to quote the text in a post, I'd appreciate that as it would make responding much easier, for right now I'm doing it manually.
You are doing it correctly. You have to cut/paste from the text and then add the quote codes manually. The message you are replying to is available to make the cutting/pasting easy.
The system used to provide automatic quoting facilities, but many posters could not resist quoting and posting the entire message to which they were responding.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by lokiare, posted 03-24-2014 3:19 PM lokiare has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 28 of 33 (722752)
03-24-2014 5:25 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by lokiare
03-24-2014 3:00 PM


Why are you arguing with me? I believe in prophecy.

This message is a reply to:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 29 of 33 (722771)
03-24-2014 10:06 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by lokiare
03-24-2014 3:02 PM


That wasn't ridicule. Your verse talked about shekels and the other monetary units that go with them. Modern shekels are nothing like that. Not even close.

"The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails." H L Mencken

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by lokiare, posted 03-24-2014 3:02 PM lokiare has not replied

  
Pressie
Member
Posts: 2103
From: Pretoria, SA
Joined: 06-18-2010


Message 30 of 33 (722782)
03-25-2014 3:51 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Faith
03-23-2014 12:18 PM


Faith writes:
I can hardly wait to see if there is an honest nonChristian here who will show you how you're wrong.
Not even you can show me that I'm wrong. Fact is, the oldest 'copies' found are dated way after the event was supposed to have occurred.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Faith, posted 03-23-2014 12:18 PM Faith has not replied

  
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