Is there a contradiction between Deuteronomy and Jonah?

This is incorrect. (IMO)The meaning of not knowing their right hand from their left is a reference to children. Nineveh had 120 000 children, which was untrue of course, it was never inhabited by so many people.BrianEdited to add (IMO)This message has been edited by Brian, 05-09-2004 06:05 PM

Hi,I would like to make a comment on this: I think you misunderstand what 'prophecy' is. Prophecy is NOT a prediction about the future, prophecy is only proclamation. A prophet prophesies whenever he passes on any message from God, that's what prophecy is. True, a prophecy may contain a prediction about a future event, but prophecy itself is only the passing on of God's words by a prophet.This is a very common error, but prophecy does not equal prediction.Brian.

Hi Percy,I realise that ‘prophecy’ has a range of meanings, however, in relation to the Old Testament the only definition applicable is ‘proclamation’, but that proclamation may include a prediction. In my opinion, in the context of this discussion, using this definition of prophecy is pointless, because prophecy is much more complex than this.For example, a prophecy (as prediction) does not need to come true for it to be a ‘true’ prophecy, the words of the prophet can come from God but may not come to pass, but this is still a prophecy as the words have been placed in the prophet’s mouth by God. The lying prophets of Ahab are a prime example of this. God told the prophets what to say, they spoke on behalf of God but the prediction was a lie. This is still prophecy, although it was a lie, it is still the passing on of God’s word.God also posed as another god and used prophets to test the loyalty of Israel. God would give a prophet a prediction that would come true, but the prophet would not be speaking in behalf of Yahweh, so the prophet should be executed by the people of Israel. I think this is pretty nasty to mislead a person like this, the prophet was essentially conned by Yahweh into thinking that a god had told him an accurate prediction, that prediction came to pass and because Yahweh had lied to the prophet by giving that prophet a false name, the people would then murder the prophet!Deuteronomy 13:1-5If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.The criteria for telling a true prophet from a false prophet are really all loaded in favour of Yahweh, the criteria are very problematic when other biblical passages are read.The two rules for a true prophet are:1. The prophet must say that he speaks for Yahweh
2. That which is spoken should come to pass.This is problematic when you consider predictions that come to pass that are not from Yahweh, and we know that Yahweh deliberately sends prophets in the name of other gods to test Israel’s faith. So we have a totally innocent guy, who Yahweh has misled, being murdered for passing on a prophecy that he has actually been told by Yahweh!The Deuteronomy 18-15-22 reference as well is not doing justice to biblical prophecy, taking prophecy as simply a prediction does not cover the complexity of this passage:The LORD said to me: "What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. 19 If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death."
21 You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?" 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.For the prophet to speak ‘presumptuously’ is not tantamount to that prophet deliberately misleading the people, that prophet believes that he is passing on God’s word.Also, there is no time limit on a prophecy coming true, so a prophet who wishes to con people could easily do so, he just has to say he is speaking on Yahweh’s behalf and then make up some vague prediction.I really think that prophecy is a fascinating subject to study as literature, but to use it as some sort of weapon for biblical accuracy is a total and utter waste of time. Prophecy is loaded; it is like prayer in a way, no matter the outcome, God has to win. I think that the definition being used is not appropriate for describing Old Testament prophecy. Anyone can feel free to disagree, but I think using the current definition does not deal with the intricacy of biblical prophecy. I can see how this definition is useful for dealing with the current question, but, IMO, the current topic needs to be understood in a much wider context and limiting it to simply a coming to pass, or not, of a prediction ignores too many factors.Finally, I think it is also good to point out to people reading this thread that prophecy does not equal prediction in the Old Testament because, in my experience, even undergraduates make this mistake.I do realise that I may be coming across as a bit picky here.Brian.

Hi,
I meant to reply sooner but: Sure, the 120 000 children give an estimate of around 400 000 — 500 000 inhabitants in all, but Austen Layard excavated Nineveh in the 1840’s and 50’s, and he discovered a fairly small settlement which doesn’t resemble the biblical description at all. (Layard, Austen H. 1853 Discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon : with travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the desert, being the result of a second expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum John Murray, London.) Excavations beginning in the mid 1800’s reveal a walled city, somewhat trapezoidal in shape, with a perimeter of about seven and one half miles. (Lloyd S. 1984 The Archaeology of Mesopotamia Thames and Hudson, New York pp187-201) Its (Nineveh) special importance as capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire does not seem to be precisely known to the writer either, for at the time of the historical Jonah, Nineveh was not capital at all. Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III had held court there for a time in the 9th c BCE, but the city was only built up and fortified as the imperial capital by Sennacherib, after 705 BCE. In 612, the city was destroyed by the Medes and never rebuilt. (Wolff, Hans Walter, 1986 Obadiah and Jonah: A commentary. Ausburg Publishing House, Minneapolis page 99.)The longest distance across the city was about two and three quarter miles.( Limburgh, J 1993 Jonah, SCM Press LTD, London p78.)The narrator lends the city specific form by giving it dimensions which were unheard of in the world of the time ‘the extent of three days march.’ This means that the city had a diameter of about 40 to 50 miles. Sennacherib’s Nineveh was 3 miles wide at its greatest extent (from north to south). Attempts to verify these dimensions historically miss the point of what the writer is trying to say. The reader is not supposed to do arithmetic. He is supposed to be lost in astonishment so that he can take in the events that follow in an appropriate way. (Wolff. Page 148)The author of Jonah, whoever he was, was clearly writing to impress his audience, accuracy of detail, as with most of the biblical authors, was not high on his list of priorities. The message is far more important that the historiography of the story.Brian.

I actually think when studying prophecy that a good exercise is to take God out of the equation for a minute. Imagine that the text is written solely by human hand.What I think this does is to show that the testing of a prophet is a rigged one, set up as a sort of self preservation strategy. For example, the text that says that a false prophet can tell of a forthcoming event, and that event may happen suggests to me that there were prophets who made true proclamations but in the name of other gods. So how could the Isralite leaders deal with this when it was they who were meant to be following the one true God? Fairly easily, all they do is to say that all prophecies that don't come from Yahweh are false prophecies and shouldn't be listened to. But this doesn't answer the problem of accurate predictions by these 'false' prophets, so what is the solution, they say that Yahweh is testing Israel's loyalty. This effectively eliminates that opposition prophets who may have had a higher strike rate that the Yahweh prophets. It is simple self protection.Biblical prophecy is highly over rated.As for God changing His mind, how ludicrous is that?Brian.