Help With Bible Chronology Please

by Yan Bibiyan 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Yan Bibiyan

My question revolves around prophecies.
Believers will claim that one of the sure signs of the divinity of the bible is that it predicts events hundreds/thousands of years before the events actually occuring.
From a more pragmatic viewpoint, a prophecy is a prophecy if it was predicted and documented ahead of the events in question.
The oldest known copies of biblical texts aare the Death Sea Scrolls, dated from what I understand somewhere between 200BC-100 BC.
Is there anything in the scrolls (not other books of the bible, but in the few biblical texts in the actual scrolls) that points to historically confirmed events postdating the scrolls?
In other words, are there biblical prophecies written on paper (or whatever medium) that:
a. Can be confirmed to have been written prior to the predicted event - by means of radiological dating or other scientific metod, and
b. Describe an event that can be independently verified for its accuracy and time of occurence by other means (archaeology, etc.)?
processor

To my knowledge, no and no.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain only an almost complete Isaiah scroll, and they were written ca. 180 BCE. The oldest copies of most Bible books are from the 4th and 5th century CE or later.
The Bible does not contain any prophecies that were clearly fulfilled after that time. Of course you can see "symbolic" or "antitypical" fulfilments if you have enough imagination ...
Satanus

Daniel is used as proof of prophecy. Leoleia has done a great job of showing that it ain't so.
S
Satanus

'Course, extant copies don't meet your 'a' requirement.
S
Christ Alone

Is there anything in the scrolls (not other books of the bible, but in the few biblical texts in the actual scrolls) that points to historically confirmed events postdating the scrolls?
All the prophecies of Jesus. There are over 300 that deal with Jesus life and his death alone. Mathematicians have calculated the odds of Jesus fulfilling only 8 of the Messianic prophecies as 1 out of 10 17.
Objection: Jesus manipulated events to fulfill prophecy. Answer: (a) Many prophecies were out of his control (ancestry, place of birth, time of death). (b) His miracles confirmed Jesus to be the Messiah. (c) There is no evidence that Jesus was a deceiver. (d) In order to manipulate all the people (including his enemies) and even his disciples to make it appear that he was the Messiah, Jesus would have needed supernatural powers. If he had such powers, he must have been the Messiah he claimed to be.
Here are just a few of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled:
2 Samuel 7:16
King David's throne would be established forever
Daniel 9:24-26
Daniel predicted when an anointed one would be rejected
Deuteronomy 18:15-18
God promised another prophet like Moses
Genesis 22:18
The Messiah would be a descendant of Abraham
Isaiah 7:14
Isaiah foreshadowed the virgin birth of Jesus
Isaiah 9:6-7
There would be a son called God
Isaiah 35:4-6
He would perform miracles
Isaiah 40:1-5,9
The Messiah would be preceded by a messenger
Isaiah 49:6
God's salvation would reach the ends of the earth
Isaiah 50:6
Jesus was spat upon and beaten
Isaiah 53:1-3
The Messiah would be rejected
Isaiah 53:4-6
God's servant would die for our sins
Isaiah 53:7
God's servant would be silent before his accusers
Isaiah 53:9
God's servant would be buried in a rich man's tomb
Isaiah 53:12
God's servant would be "numbered with the transgressors"
Jeremiah 23:5
The Messiah would be a descendant of King David
John 3:16
All who believe in Jesus will be saved
John 4:19-26
Jesus proclaims that he is the Messiah
Matthew 20:17-19
Jesus foretold his death and resurrection
Micah 5:1-2
The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem
Psalm 41:9
Jesus was betrayed by a friend
Zechariah 9:9
The Messiah would enter Jerusalem while riding on a donkey
Zechariah 12:10
Zechariah foreshadowed the crucifixion of Jesus
There is no evidence that these passages were altered AFTER Jesus' life. The Jews of Jesus' day were well aware of these prophecies. The accusation could be made that the Bible writers "changed" Jesus' life to reflect a fulfillment of these prophecies. But again, there is no evidence of this either. There were no accusations that what the gospels said did not happen. Remember that there would have been eyewitnesses to Jesus' life when the gospels were written. These eyewitnesses would have been able to say "This is a lie" if it did not happen. Again, there is no evidence that this ever happened. The sort of criticism that we see today is a somewhat new phenomenon. The evidence is that there were no arguments about the validity of the gospels claims back in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Going back to Isaiah's prophecies, reading them reads like it belongs in the NT. Isaiah 53:4-6 says: 4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. There are countless "what ifs". But the evidence does not support the claims made by Jesus deniers. Isaiah was NOT written after Jesus' life. And there is no evidence to support the claim that the Bible writers altered their reports to make it appear that Jesus fulfilled these 300+ prophecies.
Yan Bibiyan

Christ Alone,
My intent is not to start a debate. I am putting my pragmatic glasses on and look for any texts that fit with the (a.) and (b.) requirements in my original post.
By saying: " There is no evidence that these passages were altered AFTER Jesus' life", you are already taking the path I am not intending to take.
Alteration is not what I am looking for here, just the facts as seen through the eyes of an impartial observer.
Yan Bibiyan

Of course you can see "symbolic" or "antitypical" fulfilments if you have enough imagination...
Nope, driven by pragmatism alone. No emotions involved in this exercise...
Leolaia

There may be a few that prophets got right; I don't know if these would meet the criteria in the OP. The prophet Isaiah was pretty accurate about Tyre's prolonged trade inactivity from Esarhaddon onward, although the period of "70 years" wasn't entirely accurate and was drawn from traditional prophetic motifs. Jeremiah used the same motif in reference to Babylonian supremacy and he also was right in general terms, though one might quibble over the details. It should also be recalled that Jeremiah correctly read the then-current political situation and was on the right side of history in opposing Judea's rebellious stance towards Babylon. There were other prophets who took the opposite position, so history kind of selected which prophet was remembered as "true". None of these prophecies can be "scientifically" proven to date prior to the events in question, but are generally accepted as such in scholarship (although it is clear that the Jeremianic oracle contains much redaction, as the contrast between the MT and LXX shows). In both cases, these prophecies were pretty safe bets. The "hits" however are far outweighed by the "misses", if the prophecies are not reinterpreted in a way that eases their disconfirmation.
The Hebrew writer of Daniel gives a series of visions and oracles concerning the Maccabean crisis of 168-164 BC. The date of writing is securely set by the disjuncture between accurate prophecy (written about events in the recent past) and inaccurate genuine prediction (written about imagined events in the author's future). The author wrote that the sanctuary would be defiled for 3 1/2 years after which it would be cleansed, and then the desolator (Antiochus IV Epiphanes) would be destroyed, after which there would be the resurrection of the dead. The cleansing occurred exactly 3 years after the abomination of desolation was placed on the altar (and 3 1/2 years is accurate if time is counted in year-quarters from the time the pogrom began to the death of Antiochus), but interestingly Antiochus Epiphanes did die the following spring at the time expected by the author. So I would consider that in some way a "hit". The manner of his death was wholly unlike what was predicted (Antiochus did not die in Judea in the midst of a third campaign against Egypt), so this looks like a genuine prediction that did partially come to pass. Of course, God's kingdom did not then replace the Seleucid and Lagid dynasties, and war continued between Judea and the Syrians for several more years to come until Jewish independence was achieved.
The important point to recognize is that prophetic disconfirmation is never really recognized in texts that the community accords the status of scripture. Fulfillment is instead simply deferred perpetually into the future and the prophecy itself is reinterpreted, often quite ingeniously, to apply to a new situation from a later time. A prophecy can then either be made "fulfilled" in retrospect, or it can again just be deferred. It is thus important to distinguish this hermeneutical process from what the prophet originally intended; usually such reinterpretations are inconsistent with the literary form or presuppositions of the original prophecy. Much of the work of the exilic and post-exilic prophets was to envision a full restoration of Israel to conditions better than what existed prior to exile, including a gloriously rebuilt Temple and a Davidic kingship in perpetuity, with eternal peace and sovereignty. The reality of the post-exilic period was a disappointment and thus there was much creative theological reinterpretation of the prophecies, giving rise to messianic apocalyptic scenarios which would one day fulfill all these expectations. The Seventy Weeks oracle in ch. 9 of Daniel, for instance, is a quite conscious reworking of Jeremiah's expectations of the restoration of Israel occasioned by the Maccabean crisis; why have the blessings not yet been realized hundreds of years later? The Hebrew author then devised a prophetic scenario of the end-times (which, among other things, saw the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah as fulfilled in the Maccabean martyrs), which would culiminate in the fulfillment of the old restoration prophecies, but which itself failed. And so it was itself deferred into the future, and then became source material for a new generation of prophets, including the authors of the Olivet discourse, 4 Ezra, and Revelation who applied the expectations of Daniel to their own time (the author of 4 Ezra was even explicit that his interpretation of Daniel, applying the expectations to the circumstances of the Roman empire, was very different than the one given to the original prophet). And then Revelation itself presented a scenario for its own time that did not come to pass as expected, and so it was deferred as well perpetually into the future, and thus remains a primary resource for end-time speculation by modern-day would-be prophets.
Liberty

There is a problem with Bible prophecy because it is so difficult to find them in a form that is proven to have existed before the "fulfillment" occurs. Christ Alone gives us a listing of "fulfilled" prophecy but ignors the fact that there is no physical evidence of any New Testament writtings dated before 125 AD, nearly 100 years after Jesus' death. So, yes, all the New Testament prophecies could easily have been modified to fit events that had already occurred since the "prophecies" could easily have been written long after the "fulfillments" occurred.
In short, if it were "prophesied" in 1935 that Hitler would shoot himself on April 30th 1945 as he realized that the as then unknown World War II was lost for Germany it would be a real prophecy. However, if you couldn't find any evidence of it being written down or printed before April 30th 1945 it could have been made anytime after the event and is not a prophecy at all.
As far as all the Old Testiment "prophecy" associated with Jesus these could easily be modified to fit because there is so little evidence that Jesus was real at all. If you make up a story it can be made to fit any "prophecy". Jesus is easily made to have the events around him fit any pattern needed (even if he was based on a real person). Fiction writers do this all the time, hence "miraculously", Harry Potter fits and fulfills the prophecies in the FICTIONAL wizard world he inhabits. This was especially true 2000 years ago because there were no cameras or printing presses to document events and pin them down to actual dates on an historical timeline.
Traditional Bible based Christianity has the same validity or lack-there-of as does Islam or Mormonism since they are based on faith in unprovable events that can't be validated by hard evidence to any actual historic context beyond their own closed worlds. In fact, since Islam and Mormonism are more recent religious manifistations they have a slightly greater chance of being "true" since they don't have as many centuries seperating the events from us and with less of the "evidence" being lost to time. For example, Joseph Smith can be proven to be a real person even if what he preached is pure nonsense whereas Jesus cannot even be proven to be real let alone the nonsense he supposedly taught or prophecies he relayed or "fulfilled".
Ultimately, it is all faith based since there is no hard evidence for any of these religious beliefs. That is why skeptics do not believe in prophecy, Bigfoot, visits by space aliens, the Loc Ness Monster nor do they tend to become Mormons, Muslims, or Christians.
processor

King David's throne would be established forever
So, where is it?
Jesus did not sit on David's throne, which has been destroyed centuries before Jesus was born.
He claimed that he would inherit David's throne, but this was just a claim, not a fulfilled prophecy.
Daniel predicted when an anointed one would be rejected
There were thousands of people who claimed to be "anointed ones" and have been rejected. Just go downtown, tell everyone that YOU are the Messiah, and see how they will reject you.
God promised another prophet like Moses
There were (and are until today) lots of prophets. Why should this prophecy have been fulfilled with Jesus?
The Messiah would be a descendant of Abraham
Sure, since all Jews (the only people that believed in a Messiah) were descendants of Abraham.
Isaiah foreshadowed the virgin birth of Jesus
No, he did not. He told the king that a young woman (not a virgin!) will get pregnant and call her son Immanuel ("God is with us"). This should show that Syrian threat would be over before a young woman would give birth (= within 9 months), so that she would give her child a positive name. Isaiah did not mention a virgin, and he did not mention the Messiah. And, Mary gave Jesus the name Jesus, not Immanuel.
There would be a son called God
Jesus was called God? And if he was, what about the Roman emperors? They were called Gods too.
He would perform miracles
And according to Matthew 24:24, "false Christs" would also perform miracles. Nothing spectecular.
The Messiah would be preceded by a messenger
Lots of people were preceded by a messenger. Nothing special.
God's salvation would reach the ends of the earth
Yes, God's salvation can be seen to the ends of the earth today. No hunger, no pain, no death. He saved us all.
Jesus was spat upon and beaten
As were countless other people.
The Messiah would be rejected
All religious leaders, cult founders and other persons were rejected by the majority of people. I reject your ideas too, does that mean that you're the Messiah?
God's servant would die for our sins
Jesus died, and claimed that it would have been for our sins. Yet, nothing has changed since then. We are still sinners, and still we die. As death is the consequence of sin (according to the Bible), if Jesus would have taken away our sins we wouldn't sin and die anymore. So, nothing happened.
God's servant would be silent before his accusers
As was Obama in the first TV debate.
God's servant would be buried in a rich man's tomb
As were all rich men.
God's servant would be "numbered with the transgressors"
As were all transgressors.
The Messiah would be a descendant of King David
As were countless other Jews
All who believe in Jesus will be saved
No, he just claimed that.
Jesus proclaims that he is the Messiah
Ähh ... was this a prophecy about the Messiah that he fulfilled???
Jesus foretold his death and resurrection
Yes, but wrongly. He was not dead for 3 days. According to the Bible he was dead for barely 2 days.
The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem
Over the centuries countless people have been born in Bethlehem.
Jesus was betrayed by a friend
Me too.
The Messiah would enter Jerusalem while riding on a donkey
This is one of the prophecies that he fulfilled by intention (if the Bible is true).
Zechariah foreshadowed the crucifixion of Jesus
Jesus was not really "pierced through".
Apart from that, most of these "prophecies" were no prophecies. They were just statements. Later, the Christians saw prophecies in this accounts and claimed that Jesus would have "fulfilled" those.

Help With Bible Chronology Please

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