bfniii

that's specific



i have asked you, or anyone, what would be a good reason to you to believe it's true. can you provide an example that's not impossible or unverifiable?



funny, i thought i was at an atheist/skeptic website. boy was i mistaken.



what's that got to do with anything here, especiallly the tyre prophecy?



so an omnipotent God is completely incapable of making a young earth look old? in order for you to disprove this idea, you have to prove there is no God. (keep in mind i'm not espousing YEC, i'm just asking you to debunk it)



again, an omnipotent God is imminently capable of either.



not only are you unable to prove this statement, it's debatable.



because it's debatable and i'm unconvinced by the objections.



i refer you to the answer i provided for johnny skeptic.



i'm confused by your statement. if i'm not mistaken, n.t. wright is the current bishop of durham and i don't recall him stating that he didn't believe in the resurrection of christ.



i'm still wondering if you think christians are in disagreement about christ.



it's not a contradiction and to state that God didn't personally destroy tyre is semantics.



i have re-read my posts from that thread and i don't find an example of me claiming that God "wanted" them to do so. i did state that God was prepared for such an outcome and that God did want us to have choice, thus the tree.



ugh. what a strawman. besides, your misunderstanding of the leviticus passage was profound.



those are the pariculars, yes. but the prophecy in it's totality is not concerned with streets or walls or whatever. i have cited the verses that support that to you before.



no more insufficient than your claim that it is. you don't get it. you are making a debatable statement and passing it off as certainty. i am merely illuminating the fact that you do this.



what i am saying is that just because ezekiel wrote in past tense does not prove it's not a prophecy about future events. this is not the only case in the bible of such an occurrence.



i am not abandoning the rules of ancient hebrew. what i am asking you about is the employment of that rule and why your interpretation of it is correct. "just because" doesn't cut it.

Johnny Skeptic

Nor do I need to. You haven’t answered the question as to why those people were right, or why Muslims or anyone else is wrong. Your position is that the prophecy is most likely true, but it is not my current position that the prophecy most likely false. The prophecy is an initial, primary assertion, analogous to the opening statements that are made by a plaintiff in a court trial. It is not up to the defense to reasonably disprove claims that are made a plaintiff.

You have misrepresented my current position. Just two paragraphs previous to this paragraph I said “Do you find it surprising that he attacked Tyre�? Please answer my question. If you expect me to answers questions, then you must answer questions too. I have never used the word “inevitable.� All that I have ever said is that in my opinion it would have been surprising if Nebuchadnezzar had not attacked Tyre, but I didn’t really need to say that. All that I need to do is to ask you if you find it to be surprising that he attacked Tyre? I do not expect you to answer the question. If it wasn’t surprising, then why should anyone be impressed that it happened?

Please quote your historical sources. I quoted two historical sources that disagree with you, including the Encyclopedia Britannica. I do not recall that you quoted any historical sources.

You don't even understand your own sources. the part of Tyre that successfully withstood a prolonged siege is the nation of Tyre, not the mainland.[/quote]

A Christian web site that I will quote later says that Nebuchadnezzar did not have a navy. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Ezekiel 26 mentions Nebuchadnezzar’s chariots, but chariots most certainly do not travel over water, and ancient historian Richard Carrier says that Nebuchadnezzar did not use chariots.

Consider the following from a Christian web site:

Nebuchadnezzar spent 13 years in the siege of Tyre and was never able to take the city. He finally abandoned the attempt sometime in 573/572 and put his resources into the invasion of Egypt, having already destroyed the Israelite stronghold in Jerusalem.

The city of Tyre did pass into Babylonian vassalage, but that was the result of a negotiated settlement that required tribute, a form of taxation (or extortion). The city of Tyre was not destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar or the Babylonians, and in fact continued to thrive as a commercial center.

Now, some who want to maintain the absolute inerrancy of biblical prophecy point to the fact that Tyre was eventually destroyed, and so the accuracy of Ezekiel’s prophecy is vindicated. Tyre was, indeed, destroyed in 332 BC by the Greek Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great). He used the ingenious tactic of using rubble from the destroyed mainland settlements to build a causeway to the island, providing a land bridge for his troops. Since that time, Tyre has no longer been an island, now connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus.

So, the inerrantists would claim, the prophecy was really a long range prediction even though Ezekiel himself thought it was a short range prediction. But this raises another whole series of serious problems, and sounds far more like the rationalization of a position in spite of contrary evidence than it does a careful analysis of the biblical text. There are still several aspects of the Ezekiel prophecy unresolved.

1) Even though Alexander did, indeed, destroy the city of Tyre, it was immediately rebuilt and became an important Greek, and later Roman, seaport. It still exists today as a resort city of Lebanon. This clearly violates Ezekiel’s judgment that it would never be rebuilt and become a bare rock upon which to dry fishnets.

2) There is no internal rationale for changing the specific reference to Babylonians and assume that it really means Greeks, or to change Nebuchadnezzar to Alexander. If the text were inerrant in the way that many claim it to be, then we should be able to read "Greeks" and "Alexander" here. Again, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to preserve a certain view of prophecy that the evidence will not support.

3) There are serious implications about the nature of Scripture and revelation (and God!) involved here. To maintain the "long range" view, Ezekiel, facing one urgent historical situation for which the people needed an immediate word from the Lord, actually and unknowingly addressed a situation 250 years in the future, spoke of a nation that had not yet emerged on the scene of world history, referred to persons and events for which he could have no direct knowledge, and predicted world events that involved huge shifts in how history unfolded from his own time. In other words, the only way this position can be maintained is to affirm both that history is predetermined, and that Scripture is verbally given to the prophet without any awareness on his part of the actual meaning of what he was being told (100% God!). In fact, it even deceives him into thinking he was actually talking about his own situation when in fact he was talking about a situation centuries in the future. This, as it often does, assumes a certain theory of inspiration of Scripture in order to maintain its inerrancy, which is then used in a circular fashion, to confirm the same theories of inspiration (see Revelation and Inspiration of Scripture and God’s Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Human Freedom).

4) Even beyond that, there is some sense that Ezekiel was himself worse than in the dark about his own prophecy. He seems to have rather badly misunderstood his own message, because he seems to believe that he is talking about the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar, when in reality, according to this view, he is talking about the Greeks and Alexander. This raises other serious questions about how we at any time in history can understand God’s work in the world. This seems to make Scripture more obscure than it makes it more authoritative.

5) What good is a prophetic word, or Scripture, if it has little or no meaning for 200 or 1,000 or 2,000 years when the precise "fulfillment" finally comes about? This reduces God’s word to a puzzle to be solved, or something that has little relevance to ordinary living because there is no way to tell, until after the "fulfillment," whether it has any meaning for today or not. It is not a living word that shapes how God’s people live their life as His people now, but is, at best, only a pregnant word with some potential that we may or may not understand, and may never live to see. The word of God is not redemptive for God’s people in on ongoing way, but is reduced to the level of proof to bolster our own criteria of validation.

All this says that to attempt to relate this prophecy to events 250 years later simply to vindicate a certain view of prophecy is not valid, and borders on not dealing with the biblical text honestly.

But there is even more compelling evidence from within Scripture itself, indeed, from Ezekiel himself, that this view is deficient. In 571 BC, two years or so after Nebuchadnezzar abandoned the siege of Tyre and it had become obvious to everyone that he would not be able to destroy the city, Ezekiel gives another prophecy concerning Tyre.

29:17 In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 29:18 "Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre; every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare; yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had performed against it. 29:19 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army. 29:20 I have given him the land of Egypt as his recompense for which he labored, because they worked for me, says the Lord GOD.

Here, Ezekiel rather frankly acknowledges Nebuchadnezzar’s failure to take Tyre even though he labored hard trying to do so (13 years!). So Ezekiel, seemingly without any embarrassment at the failure of his original prophecy, simply changed it after the fact to fit the historical situation as it had actually unfolded.

Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw the Babylonian invasion as part of the out working of the consequences of Israel’s sins and repeated failure to serve and trust God. While God had fought for Israel in the past, both prophets vigorously proclaim, "Not this time!" So the Babylonians are unwittingly serving the purposes of God in the world, and the prophets conceptualize them as actually in the employ of God. And if they are working for God, God needs to pay their wages. Since they did not get anything from Tyre for their labor, Ezekiel affirms that God will allow them to be paid from the riches of Egypt (29:20).

Now, we do not know from historical records whether the Babylonians ever sacked Egypt. History is silent on this point. But it doesn’t matter. The issue was never whether or not a certain historical event would unfold exactly in the specific way any particular prophet predicted that it would. History simply does not work that way, and that is not really the task of a prophet. The issue had always been the truth of what Ezekiel was proclaiming to the people about God and their responsibility and accountability to Him as their covenantal God. The prophet's role was to help the people respond faithfully to God in their own time. So, Ezekiel could change his prediction, and even admit that he got it wrong, because, finally, the historical prediction was not his message!

What is even more amazing is that the community of faith, perceptive enough to know that this failure was in the Ezekiel tradition, did not attempt to gloss it over or change it to fit some modern ideas of inerrancy and the absolute infallibility of prophetic prediction to fit within a certain view of how God orders the world. In other words, the community of faith who collected together Ezekiel’s writings and oracles saw no problem in preserving this failure, even though they most likely knew about the criteria in Deuteronomy (18:22). They saw no problem because, I suggest, they understood that "prediction of the future" is not primarily what a prophet does, is not the final or only or most important test of a prophet of God, and because they had no need to establish or maintain any dimension of inerrancy.

And the important fact is, Ezekiel was right! He was not right about all of his historical predictions. But he was right in that the message he proclaimed about the nation of Israel, its responsibilities to God, and the consequences of their failure to respond to God in faithfulness was proven true in the flow of history (which is the heart of the Deuteronomy 18 passage). That is, the community could look back at Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, and understand that they had faithfully borne witness to God, even though virtually no one listened to them at the time. They knew that not every historical prediction, or even most of them, directly corresponded to some specific historical event. But the community understood Ezekiel’s proclamation about God and His work with humanity, as they verified it in their own historical experience, to be a faithful witness to God.

http://www.cresourcei.org/ezekieltyre.html

CJD will no doubt tell you that he agrees with the Christian web site. He has said basically the same thing that the web site says. The texts clearly show that Ezekiel refuted his own prophecy regarding what you are trying to make out of it. What more proof do you want?

mata leao

Johnny, bfnii has eaten your lunch son, bfnii has wiped the floor up with you, you have lost, its over, debate finished, admit it, just go away quietly, even your atheist buddies wont back you up anymore, ........the great Naval power, city-state of Tyre was defeated, vassalized, and destroyed, and has never been rebuilt. I have been there and seen it. You havent. Save your lunch money from your momma and go see yourself.

Johnny Skeptic

Why is that?

Johnny Skeptic

The prophecy said that the residents of the island settlement would be there when Nebuchadnezzar attacked it. The web site said that it was probable that after he went home, the residents went to the island, but maybe that is not what happened. The burden of proof is not on me to prove what happened. Quite frankly I do not know what happened, but for some strange reason that you have not disclosed, you believe that you do know what happened.

What sources have you used that reasonably prove that the prophecy was written before the events, and that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version? If a similar prophecy appeared in another religious book, you would use exactly the same arguments that I am using.

“Most people�? I am surprised that you think that you can get away with that. By all means, please quote your historical sources that indicate that most people believe that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the mainland city and attacked the island. The word “most� is an appeal to the majority. When I once appealed to the majority, you protested, but now you are appealing to the majority. You said that the majority might be biased, and now you are appealing to the majority.

Upon what evidence do you base that conclusion?

Rather, since the prophecy is an initial, primary assertion, can you prove a reason to believe the traditional position? For the one thousandth time, my current is not that I believe that the prophecy is false, although your position is that you believe that the prophecy is true.

What I am referring to is skeptics who are loving according to your own standards. Actions are much better indicators of the intent of the human heart than beliefs are. Our entire legal system is built upon actions and injured parties, not upon beliefs. Again, please transfer all arguments that are not pertinent to this thread to the thread on Biblical errors.

bfniii

according to you. instead of just stating this, why don't you actually try to show that my case isn't credible?



that's not the entirety of my case. unfortunately, you seem unable to grasp this point because every time i make a point, you just repeat your original questions over and over and over and over and over and over.



yes it is true and i pointed out how it is specifically with each and every response you provided. you replied with "if God showed up and did so and so" which of course were all absurd. you seemingly have stopped attempting that rationale.



no, no, no. this is a perfect example of what i am talking about. you have no case other than non-committal questions. i asked you what would be proof to you and all you responded with were situations that were either unfalsifiable or impossible.



i don't see how you can consider this an appropriate response. it doesn't even come close to answering the point. call the position whatever you want, traditional or tim-buk-tu, i don't care. the point is that all along, christians have believed that ezekiel was a prophet and this was a prophecy written prior to the event. the source i cited (not wikipedia), capitulates. why is that notion wrong?



actually, you did. but you later changed your position.



and i have said all along that i am perfectly open to analysis of the issue. let's list the objections. so far, none have been convincing.



now you're just getting irrational. you asked me point blank what i thought of the prophecy and i responded.



completely untrue. are you at all capable of accurately representing my position?



this is a skeptic website, right?



who cares about that garbage? this isn't a court of law. it's an issue of history and beliefs. i agree that some court protocols are helpful.



thank you for making my point. you agree that there was no guarantee he would have done so. assumption is irrelevant. likelihood is irrelevant. we're talking about guarantee. assumption and likelihood only become a factor in the degree of specificity of the prophecy.



because it's not reasonable and you have done nothing to show that it was.



it may seem that way to you, but you have completely missed the point.



i am not shifting any burden. i have explained my position on burden ad nauseum.



there is no indication that i know of, that the prophet ezekiel wrote this passage after the event. writing in past tense in the original hebrew does not prove anything. the size and scope of the undertaking proves nothing. ezekiel's proximity to nebuchadnezzar proves nothing. these are speculations and nothing more. that might be convincing to someone else, but not to me.

not being able to "prove" when it was written does not invalidate the prophecy. i think it was in this thread that someone actually tried to prove that they had written something at a particular time and found out it can't be proven. since that's the case, we need to analyze what gave people the idea that it had been written prior to the event, a belief that has been held for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Johnny Skeptic

I am not certain what your case is. What is it? If your case is that the prophecy was divinely inspired and that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version, my current position is not that your case IS NOT credible, but your position is that your case IS credible. I would like to know why you believe that your case is credible. When I asked you if you believe that the Tyre prophecy could stand on its own merit without being associated with other prophecies that you believe are easier to defend, you said yes. Do you mean that if a similar prophecy was in another religious book, it would stand on its own merit? The Tyre prophecy contains lots of claims. Which claims do you believe most suggest divine inspiration, and why don't you believe that it is just as plausible that revisions were made as it is that revisions were not made?

I do not need to show that your case is not credible. It is not up to skeptics to disprove the Tyre prophecy. It is impossible to disprove, just as it is impossible to disprove a man's claim that he saw a pig sprout wings and fly. It is up to Christians to prove the Tyre prophecy. The prophecy is an original, primary assertion, just like an initial, primary assertion that a plaintiff makes in a lawsuit. Unlike you, I am not suggesting what probably happened thousands of years ago. For some strange reason that you have not disclosed, you hold the prophecy to be true, but I do not hold the prophecy to be false. Most skeptics claim that the prophecy is false, but I do not use that approach. That is why you are having a lot of trouble dealing with my arguments. One of your favorite arguments is "why is the prophecy false?," but I never said that it is false.

There is no indication that I know of that Ezekiel wrote the passage before the event. In addition, there is no indication that I know of that if he did write the passage before the event that he learned about it from God.

I never said otherwise.

I never said otherwise.

I never said otherwise.

But I am not trying to convince you what happened thousands of years ago.

I agree. That is why I have revised my topic and opening statement several times. My current position is that the prophecy is impossible to invalidate, and that it is impossible to validate. I am willing to consider any evidence that you have that the prophecy can be validated. I am not aware of any means of doing so. Are you?

Rather, what gave only one SPECIFIC group of people the idea that it had been written prior to the event, and what gave only one SPECIFIC group of people the idea that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version? The notion that the prophecy was written before the events is world view specific, but the verification of say a stock market prediction and fulfillment is not world view specific.

And I have said all along that I am perfectly open to analysis of the issue.

Let's list the verifications. So far, none have been convincing. I don't have any objections except that you have not provided any credible evidence that the prophecy was written before the events, and that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original version.

I do not assume what most likely happened, but you do. Why is that? You said that I am non-committal, but that is what logical people do when they have good reason to believe that there is not sufficient evidence to make an accurate assessment one way or the other, especially regarding what happened thousands of years ago. Many historians will tell you that they are non-committal regarding a great number of historical issues. You have attempted to disguise faith as history and apologetics, but it won't work.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
I think you're getting lost again. The issue here is YOUR failure to provide "specifics".

So, you're agreeing that the failure to provide specifics (i.e. YOUR failure to provide specifics) is a problem.

You have thus refuted yourself.
As the Bible is merely a collection of books, there is no good reason to believe that the Bible as a whole is true. But an unambiguous OT prophecy of an unusual event in New Testament times (that actually happened, verifiable by non-Christian sources) would be a good indication that part of the Bible is true, because the text of the OT has been preserved by non-Christians. Or maybe some scientific knowledge that the Hebrews lacked, which can be discovered only by modern scientific instruments.
These can be answered together.

There can be no disproof of "Last-Thursdayism" (the notion that the Universe was created last Thursday, complete with fake evidence for a greater age, false memories for all of us, and so forth). But there is also no reason why we should take such a claim seriously. And YOU cannot disprove the notion that it was ALLAH who did this: and yet, you don't take this claim seriously.

We go where the available evidence leads. You don't.
More of the same. Last-Thurdayism (or any variant thereof, including "God faked the evidence for common descent and hid the Flood from geologists") is NOT "debatable": it's nonsense, not worth taking seriously. On the other hand, if we accept the evidence: that WAS debatable, and has BEEN debated, and the issue has been settled for two centuries now.
I was referring to the previous Bishop of Durham (hey, tenses don't matter, right?). From here:
Obviously, they are (and, historically, they've killed each other over such disagreements). But why didn't you answer the question?
Nope, it's a simple fact.
So you've changed your position again.

We could revisit that thread if you like. It might be interesting to see how your tactics for evading those issues have changed over time. Meanwhile, back to Tyre:
No, MY interpretation is backed by the Bible. YOUR interpretation is backed by... nothing.
So you would actually use this lame excuse elsewhere in the Bible too?

You MUST abandon the rules of ancient Hebrew in order to claim that the past tense does NOT refer to the past. So, what you're saying is "I'm not abandoning the rules, I'm merely choosing to completely ignore them, and I'm asking why YOU don't just ignore them too".

Why should I, or anyone else, do this?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to bfniii: In your opinion, what gives legitimacy to any given being's ability to enforce rules of his own choosing?

Jack the Bodiless

mata leao:

If you claim to have BEEN to Tyre, then why are so many of your claims erroneous?
1. Tyre is NOT a "bare rock". The southern part of the former island is an archaeological site with standing ruins (certainly not a "bare rock"), and the northern part is still inhabited (the northern port is still in use).

2. The town of Sur IS Tyre: "Tyre" is the Greek form of the Phoenecian "Sur".

3. Fishermen have ALWAYS spread their nets. But there never was a prophecy that the PALACE of Tyre would be destroyed (the prophecy refers to the city). Thus, your "Buckingham Palace" analogy fails. What would we say nowadays about a prophet in the 1800's saying that fishermen would be spreading their nets on the ruins of London? We'd call him a failed prophet: like Ezekiel was.
...Defeated by whom? Not by Nebby, and not by Alexander either! (...because Tyre wasn't an independent city-state when Alexander attacked it).

Defeated by God? If Tyre was "defeated" when it VOLUNTARILY decided to join the Persian Empire: will you claim that every state in the United States of America was "defeated" when it signed up?

So, your God destroyed your country.