Apikorus

No, I don't believe I am missing anything. Why would the author of Daniel 8-12 write in Dan 11:45 that Antiochus (the King of the North) would die between Jerusalem ("the beautiful holy mountain") and the Mediterranean ("the seas") after Antiochus had died in Persia during the winter of 164 BCE? There's an extremely strong case to be made that Dan 8-12 was written a matter of months before this event.

I suppose ultimately it comes down to what sort of evidence you are likely to believe. You might insist that I am just a brain-in-a-box and I would be hard-pressed to definitively disprove such an assertion.

Philadelphia Lawyer

I agree. And you are the claimant.

But, as I tried to show you in my last post, lots of people have asserted lots of things in the past. Just because you claim the opposite of what they asserted, the default position is not that you are right and they are wrong.

Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. In your words, this an "initial, primary assertion." But, if I start a thread and claim that the unexamined life is worth living, or that it is equally plausible that the unexamined life is or is not worth living, the burden of proof is on me. It doesn't matter, for purposes of assigning the burden of proof, that Socrates claimed the opposite of my assertion in the past.

You did this once before. You reformulated your OP to exclude any claims. But then you reverted to your claims in your next reformulation. Now, you renounce your claims again and invite the Christians to do the claiming and proving. Can't you make up your mind? Do you want to make claims, and, if so, are prepared to prove them? Or do you want to merely invite the Christians to make the claims so that you can play the role of skeptic?

That's fine. Here, you make no assertion so you have nothing to prove.

To state that something is "plausible" is to make a claim. Again, try to think of an analogy. If I start a thread and claimed that it is equally plausible that the U.S. Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 or 1777, and that it is equally plausible that the text of the Declaration that we have today is or is not the same as that originally adopted by the Continental Congress, the burden of proof would be on me. I would have to review the evidence, and the work of historians and other scholars, and show why either date is equally plausible, and why editing of the text is as plausible as not. The burden of proof would not be on "the other side."

If a Christian make a claim, then you have every right to play the skeptic. I have not argued otherwise.

Johnny Skeptic

Ezekiel DID make a claim, and I am asking Christians to defend it. If they won't defend it, then an undefended claim is not very convincing to the undecided crowd, and they are the crowd who Christians have the best chance of influencing. In your opinion, what qualifies any writing as being prophetic? Is it not that the predictions preceded the events? If so, in your opinion, have Christians provided sufficient evidence that the prophecy was written before the events? I can assure you that they haven't. The very word "prophecy" implies that a prediction or group of predictions predated the event(s). Most Christians and skeptics debate whether or not the prophecy came true, but I do not agree with Christians PRIOR claim, and Ezekiel's PRIOR claim, that it has been reasonably established that the predictions in Ezekiel 26 predated the events.

I challenge Christians to post one single example of a writing 2500 years old or older can be accurately dated to within +/- several years. That is the kind of accuracy that we need regarding the Tyre prophecy. If there is not even one single precedent case that Christians can come up with, I will be happy to let the undecided crowd make up their own minds what they want to believe.

Just plain old common sense should tell you that anyone can write about anything anytime that they want to, and anyone can revise anything anytime that they want to. I am not aware of any criteria for accurately determining when writers will choose to write about something, and when they will choose to revise something if that is their wish. Do you?

Even if the prophecy predated the events, I don't see anything about it that indicates divine inspiration. Do you? Historically, kingdoms rising and falling has been the exception, not the rule. Due to Nebuchadnezzar's proven penchant for conquest, the riches of Tyre, and Babylon's proximity to Tyre, it would have been surprising if he hadn't attacked Tyre.

Apikorus

Challenging Christians to defend the validity of a biblical prophecy is one thing; proving your own claims is another. The title of your thread suggests that you have come up with a falsification of the Tyre prophecy. Do you intend to produce this falsification? Perhaps the title of the thread should have been, "A challenge to Christians" or something similar.

Johnny Skeptic

Why not after the event? At any rate, what about the issue of whether or not the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version? Can we be reasonably certain that the version that we have today is the same as the original version? If so, I would like to know how. If not, then we have Mexican standoff, and I would be quite content with that.

Philadelphia Lawyer

Right, your current posture is one of presenting challenges. As I said before, if that is all you are doing, then you have no burden of proof.

Apikorus

Again, JS, it would be hard to imagine why an author engaging in a retrojective prophecy would knowingly insert false data into his story.

We can be reasonably sure that the text is very close to the original version because we have fragments of every chapter from Daniel represented at Qumran (hmmm...possibly not Dan 12 -- need to check that) and the Qumran fragments are clearly proto-rabbinic and agree well with the MT, from what I recall. I believe 4QDan(c) is dated to the late 2nd century BCE -- only decades after the notional autograph -- and it contains several verses from Dan 11.

To scholars, this evidence is pretty convincing. Of course there are still conservatives who insist that Daniel is a unified text from the Persian period, but most scholars -- save the evangelicals, who are clearly fettered by confessional stance -- see this as a slam-dunk for the late chapters being composed in 165/4 BCE.

If you have a plausible explanation for why an author writing after the death of Antiochus would insert an incorrect story of Antiochus' death into an otherwise meticulously accurate parable of his actions, I'd like to hear it.

Johnny Skeptic

A number of suspected interpolations regarding Josephus' writings exist. That is just one of many examples. If you are asking why some people lie, I suggest you ask some psychologists. You can also ask them why some people have innocent but inaccurate revelations. Various religious books are replete with lies and innocent but inaccurate revelations, so I am surprised that you asked why anyone would revise the Tyre prophecy when many revisions have occured in many religious books, and in a good deal of non-religious literature as well. Even though the Holocaust occured less than 70 years ago, there are disputes regarding who is telling the truth about it and who is telling lies. You seem to have a better opinion about the average human being than I do.

One example of what I think is a reasonable possibility regarding a revision of the original prophecy is the claim that Nebuchadnezzar would go down ALL of the streets of the mainland settlement. There is no evidence that that happened. Ezekiel called Nebuchadnezzar "a king of kings," and yet this king of kings failed to conquer the mainland settement and eventually went home. Consider the following Scriptures:

Ezekiel 26:

7 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people.

8 He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee.

9 And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.

10 By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach.

11 With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground.

12 And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.

All of the verses refer to Nebuchadnezzar, and the destruction that they mention is extensive, and yet it took "many nations," reference Ezekiel 26:3, centuries to accomplish what this king of kings could not do. Ezekiel might have learned about Nebuchadnezzar's planned invasion in advance by oridnary means and expected him to defeat the mainland settlement by himself. The words "a king of kings" and that his forces would go down "all" of the street of the mainland settlement suggest this possibility. In addition, Nebuchadnezzar's prior conquests would have caused many people to believe that his invasion of the mainland settlement would succeed. Once it became apparent that Nebuchadnezzar was not going to defeat the mainland settlement, Ezekiel (or someone else) might have tried to save face by adding "many nations" to the prophecy.

Another important issue is that even if the prophecy was written before the events, what about it indicates divine inspiration? Historically, kingdoms rising and falling has been the norm, not the exception. Due to Nebuchadnezzar's power, his proven penchant for conquest, the riches of Tyre, and Babylon's close proximity to Tyre, it would have been surprising if he had not attacked Tyre. I believe that it is much more probable that Tyre angered Israel, not God. Ezekeil 26:2 says "Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste." Even the New Testament speaks harshly against Tyre. Israel was and still is in close proximity to Tyre, and I believe that a squabble must have developed between Israel and Tyre, just like squabbles developed between the Jews and a number of other groups of people. Quite a few Old Testament prophecies are directed against enemies of the Jews, and yet God allowed the Jews' enemies to demolish them on a number of occasions. It is interesting to note that the Old Testament deals mostly with the Middle East and areas adjacent to the Middle East, because that is where most Jews lived. Why was God not concerned with the rest of the world? Why didn't he protect anyone but Jews?

As I have told Lee Merrill and bfniii, since Deuteronomy 13 says that bad people can predict the future too, it is not a question of who can predict the future, but of who has good character. I believe that God's character is suspect for a number of reasons. Therefore, I would not follow him even if I believed that he could predict the future.

Apikorus

Johnny, you're all over the map now. Try to focus. Josephus has nothing to do with the provenance of Daniel 8-12.

Johnny Skeptic

You asked me why the writer of Daniel 8-12 would have wanted to lie. Is lying not endemic in much of the human race? Are various religious books not replete with lies and inaccurate revelations? This thread is about the Tyre prophecy, and I specifically told you why I believe that it is plausible that the prophecy was revised so that Ezekiel could save face when it became apparent that Nebuchadnezzar would not be able to defeat the mainland settlement. Now is that enough on topic for you?