Sven

How does "God simply could have said so" not consider this explanation?

Last time I looked, saying something which is not true while knowing that it is not true was called "lieing". I don't know why it's relevant for this fact if mercy was involved or not.

Then people should stop arguing about what god actually says and what he wants. Your statement above actually renders the bible (and the Torah) null and void.

Problem is of course that other religions have similar stories about experiencing their god - and these stories even happen today (as they claim).
Revelation isn't a good guide too truth.

Good for you. Now the only question which remains is: Why?
You equally well could believe in Allah or Vishnu without actual proof, why not choose one of those to believe in?

I did not say "cruel lie". I said "lie".

Johnny Skeptic

There is no rule of logic or law that says that all claims are true unless proven untrue. If you assume that the prophecy has not been altered, then please tell us why. Since God has allowed hundreds of millions of people to die without ever having heard the Gospel message, why in the world would he be interested in preserving the Bible without revisions? Surely an unaltered Bible is not any better than no Bible at all as far as those hundreds of mililions of people were concerned.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii, why are you still so confused? English may not be your first language (if it IS, you have serious problems), but this applies to quite a few other posters here, and they don't show this sort of confusion (especially after MANY corections).

There is no evidence that Ezekiel considers the daughter villages to be a part of Tyre itself: the text says otherwise. They belong to the Tyrians, but they're apparently not seen as an integral part of the city: they are "Tyre's daughter villages", not synonymous with "Tyre" itself. Yes, it could be argued that they are part of the Kingdom of Tyre: but this is not enough to rescue the "prophecy" from disaster, because of the reference to "ALL" of Tyre's streets.
Verses 8, 9, 10 and 11 refer to Tyre. That's either the island, or possibly the island and the mainland together. It is certainly NOT the mainland alone!

This is your confusion. Ezekiel establishes that "you" is Tyre: this is the "you" that has daughter villages, and the same "you" that has walls etc. "You" is "Tyre", throughout. What Ezekiel SHOULD have said, in order to make your interpretation correct, is:
But he does NOT say that. 26:7 refers to TYRE, and 26:11 STILL refers to Tyre. And, regardless of whether "Tyre" is just the island, OR the whole lot: Nebby failed to do this. He failed to gain access to ALL of the streets of TYRE, as Ezekiel 26:11 requires him to do.

And every single major translation agrees on this. Every single one of them has Ezekiel 26:8 refer to Tyre's daughter villages followed by the siege of TYRE itself, NOT the daughter villages:
So, the prophecy failed.

Of course he did! We've covered this before: Ezekiel 29:18.
Is this another example of your language difficulty? "They" is not an individual.
Because you have not "refuted" anything. Your claim regarding Alexander is STILL doubly false. He could not have "destroyed" an independent kingdom that no longer existed as such, and he could not have permanently destroyed a kingdom that regained its independence later.

Remember: the "genocide and Greek replacement" happened only in your imagination, bfniii. It isn't historical. Your fantasy, no matter how badly you wish it to be true, does not entitle you to say "no, it did not".

History records that many Tyrians escaped (and you still haven't explained why the historian would lie). EVEN IF that didn't happen: what about all the Tyrians who were abroad when the siege began? (Tyre was a trading nation, remember?)... and what about all the thousands of Tyrian subjects in the villages and countryside? After Alex had left, many would quickly have moved in to take that valuable unoccupied real-estate (the harbors were still there, so Tyre was still a viable trading port: as history confirms, Tyre soon recovered). At least all these people would have been on the scene: unlike the Greeks, who had an army, but hadn't set out to colonize Tyre.

...Hilarious! You're still continuing the Great Firmanent Dodge! The issue I was repeatedly drawing your attention to was the FIRMAMENT, the solid sky-dome which covered the flat Earth of Hebrew cosmology. Every argument against Biblical flat-Earthism that you attempted to make was worthless, because it ignored the historical context: the fact that the authors of the Bible believed the Earth WAS flat, and their various references to the FIRMAMENT DOME (a prominent feature of the Hebrew cosmological model) made this clear. This was pointed out to you in post #434, and the dance went on (and on, and on...in posts 458, 468, 471, 487, 500, 521, 527, 551 and 575). This whole digression began when I pointed out that there is no a priori reason to assume that the Bible is reliable (and you certainly haven't provided one): whenever there is an opportunity for the Bible's authors to reveal information beyond the experience of the backward primitives who actually wrote it, the Bible always fails to deliver (hence the apologetics).
You falsely claimed that evolution was not a fact. It is.
The "scientific community" IS of one mind. That's precisely why the ID movement lost at Dover. ID is not science: this has been determined by scientists and confirmed in a court of law. And Genesis creationism is in a much worse situation than ID, having been abandoned by the scientific community two centuries ago because of the overwhelming evidence against it.

Jack the Bodiless

At the risk of perpetuating a derailment:
Your last post in E/C was in April of last year. You stated here (with regard to the fossil record):
You neglected to mention that the reason you disgree is purely religious: you would prefer to believe that it "doesn't support common descent", because your religion dictates that common descent never occurred.

When challenged on this by numerous posters (including myself), you clammed up.

It's a familiar pattern: wishful thinking asserted as if it were fact.

bfniii

what of tyre existed after alexander?



i understand that that is your opinion. i disagree with it.



source?



i have not said that he did. alexander was part of the overall destruction of tyre. he did his part.


wow. i would definitely like to see your source on that.



i didn't say he did. according to some accounts, some tyrians were sold into slavery.



tell us what you think happened after alexander attacked the island? i sure hope you don't refer back to QCR



that is a fact, jack. i have made a case for precisely that and you don't refute it at all with this response.



ezekiel wasn't a prophet? i wonder what the jews think of that.



all of the statements you provided above are either false or just your opinion. but you don't state them that way. you seem to think your opinion is fact.



i demonstrated a response that showed you completely mangled my position.

Johnny Skeptic

Do we have a reason to believe that it has not been altered? Please do not refer to truth by association with other Scriptures. I once asked you if the Tyre prophecy could stand on its own merit without you referring to other Scriptures, and you said that it could.

Since God has allowed hundreds of millions of people to die without ever having heard the Gospel message, why in the world would he be interested in preserving the Bible without revisions? Surely an unaltered Bible is not any better than no Bible at all as far as those hundreds of mililions of people were concerned.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
All of it. Tyre made a complete recovery.
Yes, and that is your fantasy. It has no Biblical basis.
..Hey, it's YOUR fantasy. If you want to assert it as fact: YOU should be providing a source.

Of course, Ezekiel doesn't mention these things anyhow, as he isn't referring to the "daughter villages" in the relevant verses.
Have you not bothered to read ANY of the links provided, in ANY of the various Tyre threads?

Alexander damaged the city. He is described as destroying "half" the city. Why are you now saying that you'd "definitely like to see" sources that you've ignored in the past?
It is a fantasy that no Tyrians escaped, a fantasy that Quintus Curtius Rufus was a liar, a fantasy that all the Tyrians were in the city when Alex beseiged it, and a fantasy that it was repopulated from distant Greece rather than the surrounding countryside. Combining all that lot makes for a very elaborate fantasy indeed!
No, it is a falsehood.
Which "Jews" are you referring to? I'm sure many people of Jewish ethnicity, and an unknown number of those of the Jewish religion too, accept it (and you're also forgetting that predicting the future was NOT the primary function of a "navi" anyhow).
None of my statements were false. But YOU have no hesitation in stating your opinion as fact. I'm wondering why you still apparently expect us to regard your unsupported opinion as authoritative.
Your "position" directly contradicts the text of the Book of Ezekiel (as I have demonstrated).

bfniii

i was making the point that tyre and rome weren't analogous. therefore, tyre didn't have to have had seeds of demise planted over long periods of time.



source?



are you talking about after nebuchadnezzar or after alexander?



this is not at all true. it started with nebuchadnezzar.



he "destroyed" it enough that tyre was finished both physically and politically. whatever happened after that was under the auspices of grecian authority, not tyrian.



you go to the trouble of chronicling the complex political difficulties that rome experienced over a long period of time, suggesting erosion on many fronts, but then try to equate the sacking of alaric with the "downfall of rome". that's contradictory. that one event may have had a profound psychological impact, but only within the context of the romans not realizing the gravity of the slow, steady decline of the empire. i can't see how the two are analogous. rome's demise was self-inflicted in several ways. it doesn't seem that tyre has any parallel.



this response does not refute my point. is there, or is there not, more than one way to refer to someone? the answer is yes. therefore, alexander could have been referred to by ezekiel just as daniel referred to the different nations in the vision of the statue.



just above you stated that alexander could not have been part of the prophecy because he wasn't referred to and here you are saying he could have. which is it?

besides, if "they" are predicted to do something and someone comes along who fits right in to that scheme, then it would be reasonable to include that person in the "they".

you can pick any one part of a prophecy and show that it isn't specific because something similar has happened in this existence at some point. but at what point do all of these little things add up to something specific?

this is all beside the point of the overall picture anyway. the prophecy is about control and retribution. alexander was a part of the tyrians losing the control over their destiny and retribution for past offences.



those aren't the only details. but nice try at a strawman



the words "the only significant" are the key words in this response. what makes you think it is the only significant aspect? aren't they all significant?



exclude? i haven't once excluded that despite your strawman attempts to claim that i have.



this is red-herring. stating that it is common for cities/nations to fall is only part of the equation. what you would have to first show is that it is common that prophets predict the demise of a city and the prohecies were fulfilled. then we'll go from there.



ah, arbitrary. is this the best response you have for the analysis i provided? i examined the original language of the text and supported the case from history and precedent and all you can say is arbitrary? how is that a refutation?



my point was that it is presumptuous for you to conclude that your points are correct when the issue is still being debated and you haven't provided refutations for my points. you merely state they are incorrect without supporting your statement.



while interesting, this doesn't refute my point. my point was that tyre did not pull itself up by it's own bootstraps. it did not rebuild itself. someone external came along, finished off what was left after nebuchadnezzar and reshaped tyre as he saw fit. this is exactly what ezekiel was getting at. tyre would be completely stripped of it's glory. the tyrians, what was left of them, were not in control of their destiny at that point.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to bfniii: In case you did not read my previous post, here it is again:

Do we have a reason to believe that it has not been altered? Please do not refer to truth by association with other Scriptures. I once asked you if the Tyre prophecy could stand on its own merit without you referring to other Scriptures, and you said that it could.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii, why are you continuing as if nothing has happened?

Ezekiel was a false prophet. The "Tyre prophecy" failed in verse 26:11, as I have demonstrated. Therefore there is no reason to imagine that anything which follows "was accomplished by Alexander" (especially as there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that Ezekiel was aware of Alexander, whom he never mentions or alludes to).

You have failed to refute my post #618, and my further clarification of your error in post #663 (and I note that post #651, your alleged "response to post #618", doesn't even quote or address the detailed breakdown of Ezekiel 26:7-11 that I provided for you).

So it's over.