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Old 05-06-2006, 12:46 PM   #221
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If anyone is searching for the former Glory of Old Tyre, I suggest you start by digging 10 to 20 feet beneath the Roman and Greek ruins as pictured here.......

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Old 05-06-2006, 12:49 PM   #222
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Originally Posted by Amaleq13
It is less a matter of obsession with the prophecy, than a fascination with the inability and/or unwillingness of certain apologetic exegetes to accept the blatant failure of the prediction that the continuing existence of Tyre conclusively establishes.
Go visist the ruins of the Greeks and Romans, built on the former Old Tyre! LOL!

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Old 05-06-2006, 12:57 PM   #223
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Originally Posted by Farrell Till
.......If the prophecy was that Tyre would never be rebuilt, then why wouldn't that cover Greeks, Arabs, and anyone else who might try to rebuild it? The prophecy didn't say that Tyre would never be rebuilt except by Greeks and Arabs.

The prophecy failed, Richbee. Get over it.
Over and over again you admit that Tyre was no more! And, yet you insist that you have proven that Ezekiel was wrong!

O.K., let me buy you a Steak in Tyre, because you are so RIGHT!!! Enjoy the Glory! Hmmm, hmmm, good.

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Old 05-06-2006, 01:05 PM   #224
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Farrell Till
.....And now Richbee is resorting to plagiarism.
I quoted sources with complete attributions noted, are you blind?

Quote:
.......We now know where Richbee got his numbered predictions,
Yawn, where have you been, teaching English as a second language?

Quote: (Note the hotlink below)

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures predicted the desolation of Tyre: that God in His righteous judgment would destroy this city because of its people's sins against Him. The Scriptures provide significant insight into the nature of the Hebrew God, Yahweh, His attributes, and why He is to be feared and honored.

[The Kingdom of] "...Tyre was once the commercial center of the ancient world, a market place of nations, and a city renown for its beauty and elegance. This city was described as a very wealthy and luxurious place where commerce revolved and business flourished. In the book of Isaiah (23:8), its merchants are called princes, and its traders are designated as "the honorable of the earth." It is apparent that these individuals held tremendous status and power, and that their city was one of the most illustrious and prestigious in the known world.

As we look into the Judeo-Christian Scriptures we find that the people of Tyre became very prideful and vain. In the prophecy of Ezekiel, the Lord says, "...your heart is lifted up, and you say, 'I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods, in the midst of the seas,' Yet you are a man, and not a god" (28:2). According to the book of Ezekiel, the purpose of God's judgment was to humble the people of Tyre and to judge their wickedness. God revealed that though man can say he is a god, he is powerless against the sting of death and the righteous judgments of God.

The book of Ezekiel is dated 593 B.C. to 570 B.C., and was written by a Hebrew prophet named Ezekiel who identifies himself as "Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi." The prophesy against the city of Tyre begins in chapter 26 of this account, where Ezekiel receives a vision from God in which He reveals the destruction of Tyre because of its people's depravity. God's purpose was to humble the people of Tyre, and pronounce His judgments on those who chose to make themselves gods in their own sight. Ezekiel declares seven prophesies in chapter 26:3-21:

[verse]Ezekiel 26:3-21


"Therefore thus says the Lord God: 'Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to come up [Prediction 1]. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; and I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock [Prediction 2]. It shall be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea; it shall become plunder for the nations [Prediction 3]... He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you [Prediction 4]... They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will breakdown your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water [Prediction 5]... I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading of nets, and you shall never be rebuilt [Prediction 6]... I will make you a terror, and you shall be no more; though you are sought for, you will never be found again [Prediction 7].
[/verse]


This Prophesy must be compared to external historical accounts, and must be scrutinized for validity. Shortly after Ezekiel prophesied of God's judgment against Tyre, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon laid siege to Tyre. After a thirteen-year siege, Nebuchadnezzar broke down the city gates and found the city virtually abandoned. [Some] Most of Tyre's citizens moved to an island about one-half mile off the mainland, and there they fortified a city. Though mainland Tyre was destroyed in 573 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar's army (Prediction 4), Tyre continued to flourish and remained a powerful city many years thereafter.


Source:: More
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Old 05-06-2006, 02:46 PM   #225
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
IMO, the Kingdom of Tyre was ended by the Babylonians, and the people of Tyre ceased to exist after Alexander the Great.
When Alexander left Tyre in 332 BCE he installed his own king (Ballonymous; see Diodorus, Histories 17.46.5-6) over the remaining inhabitants of Tyre that were not crucified or enslaved. If a King was sitting on the Tyrian throne after Alexander's siege it logically follows that there were PEOPLE, unlike what you claim. Where is your evidence that Tyre's population was totally decimated? What are you basing this claim upon?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
Farrell Till attempts to claim that many Tyrians survived the Greek conquest, but of course, they were nothing more than slaves or subjects of the Greeks.
And how are these not people? I really am at a loss to understand youtr objection here...first you claim taht all the people were eitehr killed or led away from Tyre and now you say that some remained but were just the subjects to the Greeks...huh?? When Alexander left Tyre his newly installed puppet King ruled over the remaining people of Tyre as well as new immigrants who may have stayed behind once Alexander's army marched south towards Egypt. Regardless, the point is that tehre were peopel living in Tyre before the siege and after the siege and the city continued in existence- in fact, Tyre recovered so quickly that when it past to Alexander's general Ptolomey, another Alexandrian general, Antigonus the one eyed, besieged Tyre AGAIN less than 18 years later!!! (“Eighteen years had passed since Alexander had seized the Tyre and the city had recovered rapidly.” Jidejian, N., Tyre though the Ages 1969 p80,81 see ancient sources for this event: Diodorus’s Histories 19:58.2-5 and Polybius The Histories 5.62)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
The Glory of Tyre, their wealth, their power was gone forever.
You are supposed to be demonstrating that Tyre would be destroyed (27:32), that the ocean would wash over it (26:19) and all that would remain was a little bit jutting out from the middle of the sea where fishermen would unknowingly lay nets upon to dry (26:14)...not even realizing (26:21; never to be found again) that they were doing so on the once might and powerful city of Tyre, the queen of the seas...

You are trying to say that the Prophecy was that some unspecified number of unspecified nations would attack Tyre at some unspecified time in the future and that it wouldn't be destroyed forever but just reduced from this unspecific prediction that spans over an unspecific number of centuries...Look at how insignificant you are making Ezekiel's prediction...

Tyre existed before Alexander besiged it, it remained when he held the ceremony to install his new king Ballonymous in Tyre and it remained after he left the city to march south to continue his quest for glory. But all of these facts were never even mentioned in Ezekiel's prophecy as he only specified Nebuchadnezzar, who failed to conquer the city as Ezekiel predicted- by Ezekiel's own admission (Ez 29:17).
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Old 05-06-2006, 04:10 PM   #226
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
After Tyre was defeated, Alexandria, Eygpt took over was the dominate Port city.
Patricia Maynor Bikai, Ph.D. in Biblical Archaeology from the Graduate Theological Union, who was a field archaeologist who excavated Tyre with her future husband Dr. Pierre Bikai, from 1971-1975, has this to say regarding your claim that Alexander's siege destroyed the trading power of the city of Tyre,

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Patricia Bikai
"After the siege of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E., Tyre was never again an island fortress. The sand quickly built up against the land bridge he had constructed, and a peninsula was created, shown in the aerial view of Tyre in Figure 7.1 The new land was immediately put to use, initially for the practical purposes of animal pens...From the period immediately following Alexander, the Hellenistic era or ca. 332-64 B.C.E.,...the city was rebuilt by Alexander and fought over by his successors, the Ptolemies, who controlled Egypt, and the Seleucids, who controlled Syria...the Ptolemies reopened the canal connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and ALexandria became a major port so that it was no longer necessary for goods to travel overland to reach the sea at Tyre...it was certainly this change in trade routes that began Tyre's downward spiral, not the damage caused by Alexander's siege." (my own emphasis/boldface added)
Source: Bikai, P. Classical Tyre p61 in Chapter 7 of Martha Joukowsky's The Heritage of Tyre, 1992

Given Dr. Bikai's credentials, her years of expertise at the city of Tyre and the logic behind why opening the Red Sea up would naturally draw huge amounts of traffic south to the newly emerging metropolis of Alexandria...how do you respond to her assertion, which is in direct contrast to your claim about the immediate destruction of Tyrian trading power as a direct result of Alexander's siege etal?
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Old 05-07-2006, 09:52 AM   #227
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dongiovanni1976x
Patricia Maynor Bikai, Ph.D. in Biblical Archaeology from the Graduate Theological Union, who was a field archaeologist who excavated Tyre with her future husband Dr. Pierre Bikai, from 1971-1975, has this to say regarding your claim that Alexander's siege destroyed the trading power of the city of Tyre,

Source: Bikai, P. Classical Tyre p61 in Chapter 7 of Martha Joukowsky's The Heritage of Tyre, 1992

Given Dr. Bikai's credentials, her years of expertise at the city of Tyre and the logic behind why opening the Red Sea up would naturally draw huge amounts of traffic south to the newly emerging metropolis of Alexandria...how do you respond to her assertion, which is in direct contrast to your claim about the immediate destruction of Tyrian trading power as a direct result of Alexander's siege etal?
I quote Dr. Bikai not only for her expertise but because you cited her as a source and I thought you may respect her opinion...unless you disagree with her just like you do your other favorite source: John Bloom

See Richbee's post #3248027/#48 below:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
See: Patricia M. Bikai, Phoenician Tyre: The Heritage of Tyre

Bikai stresses that, due to severe space constraints on the island, the majority of the population and most of Tyre's factories and warehouses were located on the mainland.
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Old 05-07-2006, 12:14 PM   #228
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I'm not overly interested in the subject matter as such, but have to say that I admire the persistence of several of you in demonstrating the errors in what already by definition is false.

I'm also generally not too interested in the modern Middle East, but the pictures Richbee posted of a thriving modern town with interesting monuments from a loong history almost make me want to go there to (figuratively) dig into its past and to rehearse the Arabic that I have all but forgotten.
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Old 05-08-2006, 04:48 AM   #229
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Default Farrell Till embarrasses prophecy buffs

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
Historically, kingdoms rising and falling has been the rule, not the exception, so why do fundamentalist Christians find the partial destruction of Tyre, or any other city for that matter, to be in any way unusual? It is suspicious that although Ezekiel called Nebuchadnezzar a king of kings, there is no evidence that this king of kings defeated the mainland settlement in the manner that Ezekiel described. It is also suspicious that when Alexander finally conquered the island settlement, the Tyrians against whom the prophecy was originally spoken had been dead for centuries, many of whom died from natural causes and were not taken into slavery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
So what? So why be obsessed with Ezekiel's prophesy, and it was more than one about a City and the physical structures. It was a prophesy against the King, Kingdom and the people - the trade and commerce, and their gods.
You need to accurately date the prophecy. You also need to reasonably prove that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version. These are two basic requirements that need to be dealt with before any other details of the prophecy are discussed.
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Old 05-08-2006, 05:20 AM   #230
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
So what? So why be obsessed with Ezekiel's prophesy, and it was more than one about a City and the physical structures. It was a prophesy against the King, Kingdom and the people - the trade and commerce, and their gods.
No, it wasn't. And as others have pointed out: it isn't WE who are "obsessed".

Tyre is a failed prophecy. This isn't surprising. There are plenty of failed prophecies and other falsehoods in the Bible (and not a single verifiably successful prophecy).

But some people just don't "get it". THEY are the "obsessed" ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richbee
But, that wasn't Tyre, built by Tyrians was it?

When the Greeks ruled, or the Romans, it meant that the Tyrians were slaves or worse, dead.
The fact that this claim is false doesn't bother you at all?

Do you feel the same way about Osama Bin Laden's total destruction of New York City on 9/11/2001? No New Yorkers survived, right? The city was destroyed, and is now a bare rock, never to be rebuilt? In case you haven't noticed: this claim is just as true as yours, or Ezekiel's.

What are the limits of your own obsession, Richbee?


(from the New American Bible, St. Joseph edition)

Is this your world, Richbee? Are you prepared to insist that it is true, and defend it regardless of the evidence?

If not: why have you abandoned the Bible on THIS issue, while continuing to defend the equally false "Tyre prophecy"?
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