Is there a contradiction between Deuteronomy and Jonah?

This post is intended to answer Almeyda's claim that there are no contradictions in the Bible by demonstrating a significant disagreement between Deuteronomy on one hand and the Books of Jonah and Jeremiah on the other. A disagreement that is not only clear enough to constitute a contradiction, but is significant enough that it cannot be written off as a trivial scribal error.Deuteronomy:Deuteronomy 18:20-22 states that if a prophecy fails to come true - if the predicted event fails to come to pass - then the prophet did not speak for God and should be executed. (All quotes from NASB)Jonah:According to the book of Jonah, Jonah prophesised that Nineveh would be overthrown within 40 days.Jonah 3:4 That event did not occur. According to the standard put forward in Deuteronomy 18:22 "that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously".But the Book of Jonah disagrees - it states that God did send the message, but changed His mind:Jonah 3:10 This establishes a contradiction.According to Deuteronomy 18:22 a failed prediction is proof that the prophecy did not come from God, and verse 18:20 demands the execution of the prophet.According to the Book of Jonah a prediction that genuinely comes from God may fail, if God changes His mind.Jeremiah:The book of Jeremiah also speaks to this matter, taking the same view as the author of Jonah. And this portion of Jeremiah is presented as a prophecy.Jeremiah 18:5-10 This is a serious issue since if the Book of Jonah and Jeremiah are correct, then Deuteronomy not only requires wrongly rejecting the prophecy - God's word - it also requires the execution of an innocent man. And not just any man, but a genuine prophet of the Lord. For the Law to contain such a severe injustice would be a serious blow to any claim of moral authority made for the Bible.On the other hand if Deuteronomy is correct both Jonah - as presented in the story - and Jeremiah are false prophets. Jonah for the failed prophecy against Nineveh and Jeremiah for delivering a false prophecy which contradicts Deuteronomy.[Note: This message has been edited by AdminSylas]

Are there no inerrantists willing to try to explain this contradiction ?

No, I didn't take anything out of context. Please do not make such charges unless you can back them up. It is neither honest nor conducive to discussion.I never said that God was not allowed to change his mind.
But Deuteronomy 8:22 says that God does NOT change his mind when it comes to prophecies."if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken"If it doesn't happen it is not a genuine prophecy. That is what Deuteronomy 18:22 says. So you are arguing that Deuteronomy 18:22 is wrong - which supports the existence of a contradiction.Just in case you still do not understand here it is as a logical argumentPremise 1: God sends a prophecy
Premise 2: God changes his mind and the prophecy does not come to pass
Premise 3: Deuteronomy 18:22 : If the prophecy does not come to pass then God did not sent it
Conclusion God did not send the prophecy.This contradicts the initial premise - a logical impossibility.Therefore either:
Premise 1 is false - God did not send the prophecy
Premise 2 is false - God did not change his mind and the prophecy did come to pass
Premise 3 is false - and Deuteronomy 18:22 is false.There is no other alternative.

I suggest that you read the Book of Jonah. I have provided the relevant quote from Jonah 3:4 and 3:10. Both of these contradict your argument that God's message of destruction was in any way conditional.Jeremiah 18:5-10 also clearly indicate that God may change his mind about prophecies which offered unconditional messages. If conditions were included in the prophecies there would be no point in Jeremiah 18:5-10 at all ! It would be obvious from the prophecy itself that the prediction was conditional.So, in both cases you are going against the Bible.

You are relying on an interpetation of Jonah "4:10" - however you mean 3:10 which I have already quoted. So you are also relying on a strained interpretation of the NIV which contradicts the NASB, which does not use the word threaten - instead it uses the word "declare". But even the NIV does not state that the prophecy was conditional (which is why you do not quote Jonah 3:3). Morever the dictionary does not state that a "threat" must be conditional. Therefore your claim that the prophecy contained a condition is not supported by the Book of Jonah. Thus you reject what the Book of Jonah actually states.I will point out that you also reject Jeremiah 18:5-10 since it is not limited to conditional prophecies, and as I pointed out earlier it would be completely redundant to if it only applied prophecies that were already conditional.So again the contradiction is affirmed.

No you did not back up your claim that I took anything out of context. TO do that you would have to produce the relevant context and show what I had left out ad that it materially affected the interpretation of the quotes I used. This you did not do, and the reason you did not do it is because it is not true.The NASB is NOT known as a "bad translation" - in fact it has a better reputation than the NIV.But since you still put such stock in the NIV this is from Deuteronomy 18:22 in the NIV translation: There is no room there for God to change his mind after the propecy has been delivered. And I suspect that that is why you are ignoring Deuteronomy 18 - because your argument relies on denying what it says.You can say that the Bible has never been proven wrong. But your reasction on being presented with such proof shows what really underlies such claim. Firstly you ignore what Deteronomy says entirely - which guarantees that you will not see the contradiction since it is Deuteronomy 18:20-22 that contradicts Jonah and Jeremiah. Then you falsely accuse me of quoting "out of context". When those tactics fail you still refuse to even look at the contradiction and start telling me that you don't have an answer and that I should pray!.I should also point out to you that I don't claim that contradictions in the Bible prove that God does not exist - it is the inerrantists who claim that. I explicitly stated at the start in post 1 that my purpose was to answer a claim that the Bible had no contradictions. And your final sentence which comes close to insinuating hypocrisy is a significant representation of the situation. I am suggestign rejecting the claim that the BIble contains no contradictions after demonstrating a contradicition - you are comparing all that to throwing out science if any scientific error is discovered. But science doesn't claim to be infallible - there is no equivalent claim to reject! There is literally no comparison.

I am sorry that you cannot see the contradiction. However since it is a clear without-a-doubt contradiction I cannot see that presenting another example would help.Perhaps you don't know much about the Bible. Perhaps you do not realise that Deuteronomy is part of the Law and that even under Christian interpretations it applies at least until the establishment of the New Covenant by Jesus. If you want to argue that God changed the Law in this respect between times of Deuteronomy and Jonah then you really need to find a place in the Bible where such a momentous change was made.

How can it not be a prophecy ?I suggest that you read Deuteronomy 18 and tell me why on the basis of that text a prediction sent by God should not be considered a prophecy.If Jonah did not know of a get-out clause it is becuase there was none in the message sent to him. Since Deuteronomy makes no alowance for such things the contradicton is still valid.

I still don't see the problem.
Deuteronomy 18:22 clearly states that if a prophecy does not come to pass it is not from God.
Therefore if a prophecy comes from God then it must come to pass.This is simple logic ~a => ~b (not-a implies not-b) is equivalent to b => a (b implies a).If Deuteronomy did not forsee that God might change His mind then Deuteronomy is in error. Remember that Deuteronomy mandates execution in this case so it would be negligent in the least to have to wait for Jeremiah to come and issue a correction - the more so since the passage from Jeremiah does not even indicate that it does represent a correction to the Law. Moreover Deuteronomy 18:17 attributes this passage directly to God, so any oversight must be directly attributed to God Himself (which is why Deuteronomy 18:20 uses the first person to refer to God - "My name").I don't see how any suggestion that Deuteronomy makes such a serious error could be considered as a defence even if it were not directly attributed to God.

Percy, I think I see the problem. I think you are stuck on the idea that my argument is that Jonah is a false prophet. But my argument is that it is the test of a false prophet in Deuteronomy that contradicts the book of Jonah. If the test is to be reliable - and since we don't want to reject true prophecies and wrongly execute true prophets it had better be - then God can't change His mind about prophecies as the Book of Jonah and Jeremiah say He sometimes does.You agree that the test in Deuteronomy would indeed justify Jonah's execution and that if we believe the Book of Jonah's statements that Jonah's prophecy did come from God that execution would be wrong. So you aren't actually disagreeing with any element of the contradiction.

But it is a contradiction. Deuteronomy says that the test for a false propheet is to see if his predictions do not come true. The Book of Jonah says that Jonah was a true prophet even though the only prediction he credits him with did not come true.It really is a simple and obvious contradiction. I really don't see what your objection is. Surely you aren't saying that we can't apply logic (in the strict sense) to Deuteronomy 18:22 ? Because by strict logic we can go straight from "if a prophecy predicts events that fail to occur it did not come from God" to "if a prophecy comes from God the predicted events will not fail to occur" - which directly contradicts Jonah and Jeremiah who say that prophecies that come from God CAN fail to occur.Your reference to Abraham is of questionable relevance since it is prior to Moses revealing the Law which is (supposedly) the contents of Deuteronomy. Even if there were a clear prophecy involved (unlike, say the case of God deciding to destroy the Israelites and being talked out of it by Moses), which I do not think is the case it still could be said that since the Law had not been revealed, it did not apply.

I'm not deifying anything. I am just pointing out what the text says.I didn't say that God created a record that contradicted itself. I said that Deuteronomy contradicted Jonah and Jeremiah.And not one person ahs come up with an answer that does not invove saying that one is in some way wrong. If you agree with Percy you agree that Deuteronomy - which claims to be God's Law - can cause a true prophecy to be rejected and to wrongly condemn a genuine prophet to death. Don't you expect God's Law to be a little better than that ?Oh and since you claim that there is another alternative what is it ?
Nobody else has found oneHere's the argument again:Premise 1: God sends a prophecy
Premise 2: God changes his mind and the prophecy does not come to pass
Premise 3: Deuteronomy 18:22 : If the prophecy does not come to pass then God did not sent it
Conclusion God did not send the prophecy.This contradicts the initial premise - a logical impossibility.Therefore either:
Premise 1 is false - God did not send the prophecy
Premise 2 is false - God did not change his mind and the prophecy did come to pass
Premise 3 is false - and Deuteronomy 18:22 is false.There is no other alternative.This message has been edited by PaulK, 05-10-2004 06:39 PM

You're right that Deuteronomy talks about false prophets. It tells how to identify them. By that standard Jonah is a false prophet. Jeremiah denies the standard set up by Deuteronomy and says that even predictions that do come from God may fail to pass.Therefore when the Book of Jonah says that Jonah was a true prophet it contradicts Deuteronomy and when Jeremiah says that true prophecies may fail to occur he contradicts Deuteronomy.

Premise 1 is not intended to represent a particular situation. The purpose of the argument is to demonstrate that Deuteronomy 18:22 denies that God will change His mind about a prophesied event as the Book of Jonah says he did and as Jermiah says He may do.If you wish to apply the argument to the Book of Jonah (which may be a useful exercise) the relevant verses are Jonah 3:1-4However the general arument also applies to Jeremiah's equally general statements in Jeremiah 18:5-10 { Extra post (mesg #42) deleted for PaulK. }This message has been edited by AdminSylas, 05-10-2004 07:20 PM

From what you say you DO see a contradiction, but you do not think that it is serious. That is you do not see it as a serious problem that the author of Deuteronomy did not anticipate the possiblity that God might change His mind.(That there is a contadiction is - as I have shown - not in doubt. It logically follows from Deuteronomy 18:22 that genuine prophecies must come to pass.)There are a two serious problems with such a view. Firstly according to Deuteronomy 18:17 the source of the law is God Himself. Unless Deuteronomy 18:17 is in error on that point we can reasonably expect if not perfection then an absence of serious errors and significant oversights.Secondly, even if we ignore that, and expect the law to have little concern for our ideas of justice it is surely reasonable to expect that the author would have seen rejecting a genuine prophecy and executing a true prophet as a serious matter. Failing to consider a reasonable possiblity is itself an error and arguably negligent.Given both these points together we see that if we take Deuteronomy at face value your view attributes a serious error of omission with potentially drastic consequences to God Himself. This is simply unacceptable to any Biblical inerrantist.