Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Doctor X · 03-04-2004, 12:28 AM

Spin:

Quote:

Therefore you are the One.

There can be only one!!

Of course, that is until the sequel but let us not do the one with the stupid planet . . . actually I prefer the series [Get on with it!--Ed.]

Right . . . unless you were refering to Excalibur in which case [Stop it!--Ed.]

I have started "saving" some of these. After you spend a few hours here and there combing references on, say, child sacrifice or why people do not believe Exodus happened, only to have it ignored by the latest fly-by-post fundi . . . well . . . it gets frustration to repeat it.

Maybe we need a FAQ section!

Certainly, on this topic--supposed prophecies--is a good one. I had not looked into it too much because Callaghan and other have written books on it.

While we are at it, here is a bit of wisdom from a mentor. He "wondered" why the Synoptic writers poured through prophetic texts rather than the Torah--"you cannot mess with Torah!" Whether you agree or not, it is interesting that they do NOT quote the Pentateuch.

Of course, later readers poured through the OT trying to make ANYTHING "prophetic." However, the writers did not do that.

To which I close with another example from the same mentor. He mentioned he was at a conference in the South . . . deep South. He turned on the radio for "noise" whilst unpacking and it had a fire-brimstone preacher. What interested him was the guy was discussing some part of Leviticus . . . obscure rules on how much to leave your sons. The preacher screamed, "And what SON am I talkin' ABOUT!" "JEEESSSSUUSSS!!" screamed back the audience.

--J.D.

Jack the Bodiless · 03-04-2004, 02:02 AM

martinc:

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Thus, the view that Isaiah 7:14 must refer to Isaiah's own family betrays an antisupernatural bias. At the heart of this view is an unproved and unprovable conviction either that the Holy Spirit does not exist or that He could not place in Isaiah's mouth an utterance wholly concerned with matters then hundreds of years in the future. But we should examine Isaiah's prophecy without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine its meaning solely by looking at the context and at the precise signification of each word.

As Doctor X has pointed out, playing around with words that might or might not be applied to a "virgin" does not solve the biggest problem with Isaiah 7:14.

we should examine Isaiah's prophecy without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine its meaning solely by looking at the context.

That context is Isaiah's offering of a sign to Ahaz, that "within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people". The birth of Jesus, centuries after these events, would be useless for this purpose.

I hereby prophesy that Osama Bin Laden will surrender himself to the Americans within the next decade. As a sign that this will come to pass, a boy with green skin will be born in the year 2711 AD.

...Do you see the problem here?

Quote:

The ProtevangeliumThe first hint in the Old Testament that the coming Christ would be born of a virgin occurs right at the beginning.And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:15
This prophecy, known as the Protevangelium, comes from the most ancient oracle known to man, from the oracle that the Lord pronounced when He found our first parents, Adam and Eve, guilty of sin. The Lord is speaking to Satan, who has enticed "the woman," Eve, into disobeying the Lord's command against eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is saying that Satan will someday be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by the seed of the woman.

This is not a prophecy. It is part of a Biblical just-so story: "how the snake lost its legs". The Serpent wasn't Satan: that notion came MUCH later.

Again, I will use the same words that you did: "we should examine [this prophecy] without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine its meaning solely by looking at the context."

God punishes ALL serpents, forever. This makes no sense if Satan merely assumed the form of a serpent. He punishes serpentkind by removing their legs: "upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life". And he makes sure that humans and serpents won't be entering into any cooperative ventures henceforth: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel".

THAT is the context.

Now, if you wish to address the other examples of false prophecies that I gave, then please take your own advice first, look up the Old Testament verses, read the chapters in which they occur, and remember: we should examine claimed prophecies without bias, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation. We should determine their meaning solely by looking at the context.

Jack the Bodiless · 03-04-2004, 08:44 AM

A couple of additional points:

Quote:

Genesis 3:15
This prophecy, known as the Protevangelium, comes from the most ancient oracle known to man, from the oracle that the Lord pronounced when He found our first parents, Adam and Eve, guilty of sin. The Lord is speaking to Satan, who has enticed "the woman," Eve, into disobeying the Lord's command against eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He is saying that Satan will someday be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by the seed of the woman.

This is fantasy, with no basis in the text. "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" cannot be read as "Satan will be crushed and thereby utterly defeated by Jesus".

Quote:

But why is He called the seed of a woman? A child is ordinarily regarded as the seed of his father and forefathers. The striking and unnatural character of the expression "her seed" suggests that it is a uniquely fitting name for the victor over Satan. Unlike other men, He would be the seed of a woman only. He would not be a man's seed. A virgin would conceive Him without losing her virginity.

Nonsense. Again, the context is clear: the enmity is initially between Eve and the Serpent, because Eve was the one the Serpent tempted, not Adam. When this enmity is extended to subsequent generations, the author reverts to the standard use of the male pronoun.

Quote:

The critics take Isaiah's concluding pronouncement to the king as proof that he expected the whole oracle to be fulfilled within a few years. The prophet stated that before the child could tell right from wrong, "the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" (v. 16). A better translation is, "The land that you hate will be forsaken before both her kings" (23). In other words, both Israel and Syria would be forsaken before the child reached the age of moral responsibility. Among the Jews, that age was thirteen (24). But who is the child? He cannot be Immanuel, if Immanuel would be born hundreds of years later. The child intended here must be Shear-jashub (25).

There is no indication that Immanuel will be born "hundreds of years later", so this author is raising a nonexistent objection. The usual interpretation is that the Immanuel is Maher-shalal-hash-baz, not Shear-jashub. The fact that he wasn't named Immanuel hardly matters: Jesus wasn't named Immanuel either.

From Farrell Till's PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED in the II Library (I suggest you read the whole thing):

Quote:

The fact that this child was given a name other than Immanuel has led some Bible apologists to argue that he was not the one predicted in Isaiah's prophecy. But even if they could unequivocally prove this argument true, which they cannot, that would do very little to restore Isaiah's credibility as a prophet, because Jesus, who presumably fulfilled the prophecy in at least a secondary sense, was not named Immanuel either. No record exists of Jesus ever having been called Immanuel by his contemporaries. Those who in later times applied the name to him, and still continue to, have done so only in labored attempts to make Matthew's statement a valid interpretation of prophecy. So of what value is a "double-sided" prophecy that has been shown to have serious flaws on both sides?

The argument of bibliolaters not withstanding, there is convincing evidence that Isaiah did intend his son born of the prophetess to be seen as fulfillment of his prophecy. First, Isaiah, although naming his son Maher-shalal-hash-baz, did after the child's birth refer to him as Immanuel while warning that the Assyrian king in overthrowing Syria and Samaria would also subdue Judah and "fill the breadth of Your land, O Immanuel" (8:5-8). So at least once the child of that generation was called Immanuel, and, as previously noted, that is once more than Jesus, in his lifetime, was ever called by the name. As a matter of fact, the name was used only three times in the entire Bible, twice (as just noted) in Isaiah and the third time when Matthew quoted Isaiah's "prophecy." This is hardly sterling proof of prophecy fulfillment.

Further proof that Isaiah considered his son Maher-shalal-hash-baz to be the fulfillment of his prophecy is seen in a close examination of context. When he made the prophecy to Ahaz (as a sign that the Syrian-Israelite alliance would not prevail), he also promised that "before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread (Syria and Samaria) will be forsaken by both her kings" (7:16). This same prediction (prophecy, sign, whatever) was repeated after the child Maher-shalal-hash-baz was born: "For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, `My father,' and, `My mother,' the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria" (8:4). Both statements are identical in substance; both show also that Isaiah intended his prophecy to apply to a political situation of his day rather than to some event in the far-flung future. And, more important for the moment, the context of the passage gives sufficient reason to believe that the child who was named Maher-shalal-hash-baz instead of Immanuel was contemporarily considered a fulfillment of the prophecy. Why Isaiah did not name the child Immanuel is a mystery, but stranger mysteries than that are recorded in the Bible.

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