Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
He is referring to TYRE, and to things pertaining to Tyre: Tyre's daughter villages, Tyre's walls and towers etc. Nothing in the text indicates a shift of emphasis.

...But, of course, we've covered this already. From post #527:
You keep trying to tiptoe through the wreckage of this failed prophecy, to pick out individual phrases and apply artificial distinctions which have no textual support whatsoever: pretending that THIS verse refers to physical destruction, THAT verse is only metaphorical, THIS verse refers to the island, THAT verse refers to the mainland... completely ignoring the context of what Ezekiel was saying.

Why not simply accept that the prophecy failed?
Yes, it MUST include the island. How could "ALL Tyre's streets" exclude the island?
...Where?
That is the most straightforward reading of the text. There is no reason to assume otherwise, and (as we have seen) no alternative reading actually stands up.
Then you do not recall correctly. Tyre was largely re-occupied by Tyrians. There MAY have been some Greek immigrants, but how would they have fared in a city containing many survivors of a Greek massacre?

And let's not forget that Tyre was at war with the Greeks again less than two decades later.

But, anyhow, I note that the goalposts have shifted again. And we still have no explanation of why you're doing this: why struggle to defend this failed prophecy? The Bible contains MUCH that is clearly incorrect (the Genesis creation story, for instance). What's so difficult about admitting that this is just one more thing the Bible was wrong about?

bfniii

i'm not following this response. you state that he is only referring to the island because there is a switch from the daughter villages to "your". then you state he is referring to all things tyre and say there is no shift. which is it?

again, just because there is a switch in subject, that does not mean that he is only referring to the island.



actually, i have stated my case regarding the context all along. there is an overarching message. i outlined the details and showed precedent. in each case, i have supported my points from history, the original language of the text, from the context and from precedent. anyone is free to read through the thread and decide for themselves. if you disagree, you can show an example. btw, you did accurately reflect the details of the chapter; some verses applying to some subjects, other verses to other subjects. you have on another occasion accurately stated that ezekiel, like other prophets, uses metaphor to get his message across. what you haven't done is to show that i have applied "artificial distinctions".



posts: 14 (and all the subsequent posts on that subject), 343, 540, 556 and then 600.

perhaps you should read verse 8 again



you can play semantics with "straightforward" if you like. i have supported my case. if what you call straightforward is wrong, then what difference does it make if it is straightforward?



unless your interpretation reads into the text, like yours does, a la tyre's "walls". why do you complain about my alleged picking and choosing, but then pick which walls ezekiel was referring to? how can you not see that that is hypocritical?



when you can show that your qualifier "largely" is unequivocably, irrefutably, historically accurate, then you might have a case. right now, all you have is one dubious report from qcr.



free love?



this response doesn't distinguish exactly who tyre was at that time.



which you don't go on to expain



who says i am struggling?



we have already covered your misconceptions regarding the plagues, flat earth, sky-dome, etc.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to bfniii: Especially for the benefit of new readers, please restate which verses in Ezekiel 26, whether singly or collectively, indicate to you that the prophecy was inspired by God. If you mention Nebuchadnezzar, I will ask you for evidence other than "the Bible says so" that the Tyre prophecy was written before the events, and that the version of the prophecy that we have today is the same as the original. If you mention that Tyre was never rebuilt to its former glory, I will tell you that it is quite common for cities and kingdom to not be rebuilt to their former glory. If you mention the spreading of fishing nets to dry, I will tell you that it would be quite unusual if such had not been the case. People who live on or near water usually catch fish with nets, and they usually spread them to dry.

Jack the Bodiless

He is referring to TYRE. The island, the city, and the inhabitants thereof: collectively. The "daughter villages" are TYRE's daughter villages. He mentions the daughter villages specifically when he's talking about THEM, and he only mentions them in passing: TYRE, the city on the island, is the focus of his wrath.
You have done no such thing, as everyone here knows. I have provided many such examples.
Yes, I have. One of many examples is the one I raised again in my last post: your claim that the physical destruction "breaks at the end of verse 12", which ignores the physical destruction in verse 14 and beyond. And, hilariously, your new insistence that "ALL" actually means "NONE" (of Tyre's streets).
Nope, not a single one of those posts addresses this subject (and, strangely, they all seem to be replies to Johhny Skeptic rather than myself, mostly discussing events on the mainland): ...except post 600, where you simply declared that "ALL" doesn't have to include the island (which, of course, it DOES: the city on the island is TYRE itself).

Even by your standards, bfniii, this is desperate.
A "straightforward" reading of the text is one in which Nebby is depicted as gaining victory over Tyre by destroying the specific obstacle that impedes him, as the text describes: not some irrelevance unsupported by either text or context.
And all YOU have is one HIGHLY dubious report from a false prophet!

So, we are supposed to believe (despite all the evidence) that Ezekiel's prophecy came true (...why, again? Oh, yes... you won't say), and any ancient historian who disagrees with your fantasy is... lying? Why would Quintus Curtius Rufus lie about this, bfniii?
Tyre wasn't permanently destroyed in a physical sense, it was permanently destroyed in a political sense... except that it wasn't.
Everyone here. You have lost, on all fronts. Splitting the prophecy into "Nebby's part" and "Alexander's part" has merely resulted in two failed prophecies rather than one.
Yes: we discovered that you couldn't find any. But if you want to discuss the Genesis creation story, let's go to Evolution/Creation!

bfniii

i will try to help the same way i did before. what kind of test should i apply to the scriptures to prove they were divinely inspired? what would you recommend?



in the past, i have responded to this point by citing 26:1.



do we have a reason to believe that it has been altered?



got any statistics to back that up with?



i addressed this as well in this thread.

bfniii

i agree, but not in that section of the chapter. it is clearly initiated with the events pertaining to nebuchadnezzar and the villages. there is nothing in the text that supports that ezekiel mentions the villages and then switches to the whole of tyre in that section of the chapter. i have already pointed out to you that the "switching" you so love to focus on merely enumerates what is going to happen to things, not that it switches from the collective of the villages to the collective of tyre as a whole.



everyone? you polled every person who has ever read this thread? that's impressive. and they ALL agree? wow. what are the odds?



no, you haven't provided any examples. all you have done is what you are doing in this statement, just say that it is so.



ok. i disagree. i don't think you have.



my response doesn't ignore anything. here, take a look again:
1. i have stated prior that ezekiel/God was metaphorically referring to the nation of tyre. the physical destruction breaks at the end of verse 12. notice the change from "they will" to "I will". notice the change in subject from physical structures to intangible cultural indications.



ok. i disagree. i actually cited the very posts that address this point. they are there. they haven't disappeared. they are not an illusion.



so what? they address the point.



not in that section of the chapter



again: you can play semantics with "straightforward" if you like. i have supported my case. if what you call straightforward is wrong, then what difference does it make if it is straightforward?



defending your position by attacking another. that sounds desperate.



his account, as i have pointed out, does not contradict ezekiel's. i have addressed that point specifically. perhaps you don't recall.



it's not that he is lying, jack. he is not the most accurate historian around. now what you have to do is show how he is irrefutably correct on this account and that his historical records are above reproach.



curious. what makes you think it wasn't destroyed completely in a political sense?



hmm. i sure don't see this "everyone" you are talking about. it looks to me like it's just us two.



ok. i disagree. i don't think your statement is accurate.



no, we discovered that you don't want to become educated on the issue. i provided just one source for you to read. did you? tell the truth.



creation and evolution have different goals. they don't belong in the same discussion. if you want to discuss the genesis account, we can do so in the biblical errors thread. oh, wait, i've already done that as well.

dongiovanni1976x

Because if you cannot accurately date it and thus make a case for whether it was fulfilled or not, then you cannot use it as one of the best examples of a failed prophecy.
By allowing it to be "indeterminate" you allow the possibility that it "could" be true. By ASSUMING a proper date (based upon Ezekiel's post-prediction wrap-up Ez 29:17-18) it is easy to argue how the Tyre prophecy cannot possibly be true.

Tyre was founded upon an island.
Ezekiel prophesied that this island city would vanish (26:17) as the watersd covered it (v. 19), its inhabitants lost (v. 19,20) and though people would search for the city (v. 21) it would NEVER BE FOUND AGAIN (v. 21)

Yet, Tyre is the fourth largest city in Lebanon as of 2006.

Seems pretty cut an dry to me.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
It is plain in the text. The focus is ALWAYS on Tyre: the daughter villages are only mentioned as "daughter villages" (of Tyre, the "parent"). Tyre is the reference point: everything mentioned pertains to Tyre.

<snipping several of your usual fradulent assertions>

Notice that you have entirely missed the point. You have ignored the switch BACK AGAIN to physical destruction in the VERY NEXT VERSE and beyond.

It is profoundly hypocritical to count the first "switch" and completely ignore the second. There is no textual basis for this.
No. They do not address the point. They might as well be nonexistent. Were it not for the fact that they are all yours, and that most seem to have a common (but irrelevant) theme (events on the MAINLAND), I would assume that you simply typed numbers at random.

My statement stands, and I will assume that this new form of evasion is a tacit admission of failure on your part. You obviously CANNOT address the fact that Nebby's forces were supposed to charge down ALL Tyre's streets, history records that he failed to gain access to ANY of TYRE's streets, and therefore your claim that "Nebby fulfilled his part of the prophecy" is entirely false. EVEN IF you arbitrarily decree that the streets of USHU (the mainland town) should be included AMONG the streets of Tyre itself (...why?), the word ALL has completely annihilated Ezekiel's prophecy.

Game over. You lose. Thank you for playing.

Continuing beyond this point is probably superfluous, but...
This has, of course, already been addressed. Apparently you have no problems worshipping a deceitful, trickster God. You still haven't explained why you have a problem accepting that such a god could simply tell a straighforward, outright lie instead (and lie about being "unable to lie", as the Bible itself indicates).

Though we do at least seem to have made SOME progress here. You are no longer attempting to argue that yours is the "straightforward" interpretation, whereas mine is the "twisted" one.
You seem to have forgotten that Ezekiel's status as a false prophet has already been established, independently of the "Tyre prophecy" (e.g. by the failure of the Egypt prophecy).
His account contradicts YOU, bfniii. It isn't Ezekiel who insists that Alexander wiped out the population of Tyre: Ezekiel knew nothing about this.
Curious: you already know the answer to this question (and you conveniently "forgot" to include the word "permanently"). So why are you pretending you do not?
I have proved that it is (many times over). Your "disagreement" doesn't change the facts.
We discovered that my knowledge of secular theories regarding the "plagues" already exceeded your own. But oh, what fun we had with the Great Firmament Dodge! You ducked, you weaved, you stonewalled, you pretended to misread, you fell flat on your face. Ah, memories... <wipes tear from eye>

...Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes...
Evolution is fact, whereas Genesis is a proven falsehood. But the "goal" is the same: to provide an explanation of origins. Sure, some claim that there was a "hidden agenda" in Genesis (contrasting it with other creation myths in the region: but why, then, did it steal so much material from them?), but it doesn't change the fact that the Bible's account is false.

...But I understand your evasion unwillingness to engage on this.

noah

Sure. Lots in fact. Rome for starters. Remember the empire over which it presided? Rome was sacked and vandalized and destroyed a number of times. Today Rome is just another capital city in a country that really has little bearing on world events.
Jericho's another example. It was a great city. Jericho was sacked and destroyed four or five times. Now it's just a quiet little backwater. It's been a resort town for the last few centuries.
Then there's Athens, Carthage, Kano, Genoa, Tenochtitlán, Tell el Amara, Sofala, Benin, Nineveh, Antioch,Tripoli etc. etc.

Jack the Bodiless

...AHA! bfniii, I think I've finally unravelled this bizarre "14, 343, 540, 556, 600" hallucination.

The key to deciphering it is to remember that you always post the exact opposite of the truth whenever you think this can be made to sound vaguely intelligible.
You are denying that the text indicates a subject switch. Therefore you believe that a switch IS justified.

"not that it switches from the collective of the villages to the collective of tyre as a whole". Therefore you believe that it DOES switch in the OPPOSITE direction (my own position, maintained throughout, is that there is no switch: "you" is Tyre).

So, presumably BECAUSE there is absolutely no reason to do so, you insert a switch, from "your" (Tyre's) "daughter villages" to "your" (daughter villages') "walls and towers" etc (and, because there is no evidence that these existed at all, these must be what was intended).

Now, all along, I've assumed that your inclusion of mainland "walls" etc was a rhetorical device to have Nebby smash something, as the prophecy indicates. But, by adhering to the "opposite-speak" principle, I now see that I was subtly mistaken. Because Tyre is the ISLAND, it is NOT the island: "Tyre" means "everything EXCEPT the island of Tyre" in bfniii-speak. Hence, when Nebby's forces overran Ushu, they ran down ALL the streets of not-Tyre (i.e. "Tyre"). The streets of TYRE can be excluded because they're the only streets that are NOT Tyre (OK, this is a bit of a struggle, but it's sorta holding up so far...).

"Tyre" can't refer to the big rock of the island because the word means "rock", "in the midst of the sea" is plainly a reference to the mainland, the whole "Ushu-prophecy" must be meant in a metaphorical sense because it refers to physical destruction, Alexander features prominently because he's never mentioned or even hinted at by Ezekiel... and so on.

(In hindsight, I really should have figured this out from other threads: God punishing Adam and Eve because he wanted them to eat the forbidden fruit, God ordering Satan to arrange a census because he didn't want one, and so forth)

If you always think backwards, and type backwards too: is that why your words come out the right way round?