by Isambard Crater 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Halfbanana,
Interesting explanation [“In it he portrayed man's history through an allegory of an image of different metals successively decreasing in worth from a fabled golden race down to powerful empires represented by iron”]
You are right: There is no prophetic element in this image allegory because this is what we observe in history.
What Phizzy said
The ancient Hebrew bible writers were bullshiters/mythological story tellers, mostly around the so called prophecies of certain men or of their almighty god YHWH.
They did write some factual events as well.
Phizzy wrote: "I have yet to discover a Bible "prophecy" that was written before the event and was fulfilled in the exact terms of the prophecy."
Even if you find a prophecy in the Bible in its true sense, still it won't prove divine authorship because when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked during the last days of second World War in 1945 on August 6 and 9 respectively, Albert Einstein said, ' Though it's terribly painful, new lives and purposes will emerge from the ashes of two great cities and they'll become even greater.' And it came true!
Go back and read about Solomon s gold mines and his building of the temple. See according to all the measurements how small the temple would of been . How 10,000 people per day could work on such a small building with 150,000 support staff and yet it still take 7 years. Figure out how much gold and silver was to be there and how impossible that was. Then compare the temple and it's construction and ask yourself why the god of the universe temple looks just like some of those built in Egypt and Arn Dara Syria?
The amount of gold in circulation in the world is well known and that goes back into history because it was a major currency so people always knew how much everyone else had and what it was worth.
There is no way that the bible account is correct because it doesn't fit with the history of the metal, it's an exaggerated account, nothing more.
I think the main point we can learn from the image of different metals is that is was written by a Greek poet as an allegory of what was supposed to have happened in the past i.e. before 700 BCE-- and the striking visual picture was 'borrowed' and re-configured by the writer of the book of Daniel half a millennium later who then claimed it as divine prophecy.
Folk tales, over the top stories of imagined past greatness like Solomon's temple, dreams of national salvation and poetic imagery were absorbed into popular literature and later selected and sanctioned by Imperial Rome in the fourth century as sacred inerrant truth.The Bible is a scam. Wakey wakey JWs!
