martinc

Since I can not debate twenty nonbelievers at once I have decided to post at my liesure the rebuttals to the more serious objections to my faith.
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Argumentum ad veritatem obfuscandam. No strawmen have objected to anyone's faith. Also, the use of "nonbeliever" is a matter of opinion used to Poison the Well.

mc I assure you I am not obscuring anything or making up an adversary that does not exist.The name of this site is infidels.org isnt it? Are you not chief among those who does not believe the Bible has credibility? Well then it is accurate to refer to you as nonbeliever. I will address you by any term you want. I thought nonbeliever was and is an accurate one when debating about the Bible. You certainly do NOT believe many parts of the Bible as history or literally whereas I do.Shall I refer to you as a "skeptic" would that be better?



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Ultimately we can not prove scientifically that every word in the Bible originally was accurately portraying history and was inspired by God .
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Certainly, because we can prove they did not.

mc You have proven nothing (no offense). Where is the proof? I need the actual verses from the Bible that have been proven in some way to be false. Just give me your best three. I don't have the time or inclination to be worn down with endless complaints. I will deal with up to three.Give me your best shot my friend.


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In the final analysis we are told that there is a thing called faith which to a skeptic [Boo. Hiss.--Ed.] seems like foolhardy naivte.
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We are interested in scholarshp, not belief.

mc You forget that if I am right and your wrong,then faith is everything and scholarship is nothing.I can give you plenty of scholarly evidence as my piece detailed however this does not constitute PROOF as in the sense used in a courtroom, meaning beyond a reasonable doubt. For example there are no living eye witnesses to the resurrection. In fact it is practically speaking almost IMPOSSIBLE to prove anything that happened thousands of years ago. About the only thing I am certain of that happened thousands of years ago from a scientific point of view is that the pyramids were built and I say that only because they are still here and we can show that they have existed continually since they were built.


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We are all in Gods hands.
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He should clean them, they are quite gory.

mc Don't worry he has the power to give back life as well as slay a couple hundred thousand pagans in a day.

I will now dispense with parsing the "Confession of Faith" and move on to the "meat" of the post. This, however, is trenchant:


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I have never ever seen a clear contradiction in scripture.
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He has been given the contradictory birth narratives and death of Judas.

mc The death of Judas is a joke.I already explained in another post that Judas could easily have BOTH hung and the rope broke and he burst forth his bowels on the rocks below. That is what I believe and the 2 different narratives can be harmonised with this explanation.In addition see my separate post entitled "Were there two Judas?" from theology.web? It goes into this in much greater detail with references offering other plausible explanations.





We have yet to receive his relevation that harmonizes them.

mc see separate post

If his version of "rebuttal" is to simply ignore everyone and spout confession then he is merely wasting our time.

mc I ignore nothing.I just dont have endless time to post rebuttals to endless objections .I chose the very first one and dealt with it at length. It is insane to think you can copy and paste countless supposed contradictions and then have me do endless homework to rebut them while you simply spend a few minutes copying and pasting . If you email me at sheeple1@cs.com I will absolutely answer up to three objections to scripture. However I would rather direct you to a site like this one

http://www.christiananswers.net/menu-at1.html

where you can get most of the answers that you seek.

or better yet THIS one which deals with iinfidels.org specifically

http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_AALOBC.html



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. . . there are hundreds of scholars that have cast grave doubts upon the skeptics [Boo. Hiss.--Ed.] points and built very logical cases for the scriptures being accurate.
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Ipse dixit and incorrect. I would love him to identify ONE major recognized scholar--since we are playing the "name my expert strawman" game.

mc OK but that depends on your definition of recognized. James Patrick Holding will tromp any supposed Bible contradictions into the dust. His site is at http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_AALOBC.html



He does not identify the writers he quotes and I am not going to bother to do his homework for him.


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You seem to have missed the point that, in many cases, we know they did this.

mc really and your certain? How so?
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Incidents of Mt and Lk rewritting Mk have been given to him. He can start with the opening of Mk, incidentally.

mc How many must I deal with and thouroughly rebut before you will believe me? How many would it take? Won't you just search for yet another so called contradiction? No one rewrote anything.The separate accounts mention different details that's all.There are no contradictions. At least I have never found one and I have been bombarded with supposed contradictions in the past only to find them all lacking in logic.


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1. Matthew 1:23, falsely referring to Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the "virgin birth".

mc ok lets look at that verse in context with the concordant version..
22 Now the whole of this has occurred that that may be fulfilled which is declared by the Lord through the prophet, saying:
23 "Lo! The virgin shall be pregnant And shall be bringing forth a Son, And they shall be calling His name 'Emmanuel,'" which is, being construed, "God with us."
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He shoots . . . he . . . awwwww . . . sorry, defensive rebound. . . .

mc My piece was brilliant and you know it dude



As note by others, "virgin" is a mistranslation of "young woman" or alma. THAT is what the Isaiah text says. It was rendered incorrectly in the LXX as parthenos and the mistake lead to a mythic birth.

mc this is a flaw in your reasoning.If I prophecy a white person will shoot your father in 2117 and later a white man shoots your dad and I say see I was right a white man did shoot your dad,then would you object that I failed to say a white MAN shot your father even though I said white person? Would you count the prohecy as failed because I was not exceedlingly specific?Just because the NT writer was inspired to write MORE specifically than the OT prophet Isaiah doesnt mean Isaiah was wrong. You have failed to prove that Isaiah was NOT referring to Jesus especially in view of the many other points made in my earlier piece. Please give me up to THREE scriptures or incontrovertible points of logic that prove that Isaiah was referring to someone OTHER then Jesus?

mc I aleady noted that the Hebrew word used did not necessarily translate as virgin but rather as damsel.However it signified a young virgin in general but even that is not the point.The point is that it is true that the word used in Isaiah does not prove a fulfillment of a virgin birth prophecy however other parts of the Isaiah narrative give evidence that the son was Jesus as my copy and paste job went into great detail on (and apparently was deleted.)

He then conceeds this point an promises to deal with it later. I prefer to "bury Caesar" right now:

The passage refers to a promise to a king to reassure him about something that will happen at the present--kings coming to kick his ass.

mc that is true if you want a good commentary on the context in Isa read
http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bi.../isaiah/7.html

mc the above link explains how the prophecy was significant in the context of the historical time it occured in.



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This is clear from a look at the context and the historical background of the saying cited. In 733 BCE a group of Syro-Palestinian states allied to offer common resistance to the threat posed by the expansionist policy of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pilser III (745-727 BCE). . . . it is clear that the context of Isa. 7.14 in the view of the prophet calls for an event which takes place at least during the lifetime of Ahaz.

mc How so? What evidence have you for this? It is not clear at all.Let me challenge the skeptic to please tell me exactly WHO the verse referred to and why if it did not refer to Jesus. Don't ignore or delete or edit out this point.
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Funny what one finds when they check the "context."

To quote another non-skeptical scholar:


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How could the unbelieving, idolatrous king be convinced of the certainty of what was so imminent for him by a far remoter miracle of which he did not know and in which he did believe?
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mc I don't believe God was inspiring verse 14 for the sake of the King but for future generations of Israelites.



Now to quote one he may consider "skeptical" [Boo. Hiss.--Ed.]:


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Matthew has made a number of errors in trying to make this into a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus. . . . Since both Israel and Syria had been tributary to Assyria and were now i revolt, there is no point in Isaiah's mind for Ahaz to give tribute to Tiglath-pilser to do what he intends to do anyway. He tells the king that by the time a child to be born shortly can tell good from evil, which most likely would be at the age of 12, the Assyrians will have destroyed both Syria and Israel. So in the context of Isaiah, the Immanuel sign cannot possibly refer to Jesus.

mc why not?your above goobley gook proves nothing.

Matthew makes two more errors regarding the Immanuel sign, both of which would appear to be the result of the author's ignorance of Hebrew and a reliance on the Greek of the LXX. . . . the original Hebrew word used, which was almah, meaning a young woman but not necessarily a virgin. There is a word in Hebrew, bethula, which does specifically mean a virgin. Had Isaiah meant "virgin" he would have used bethula. In the Greek of the LXX almah was translated as parthenos, a word that means both "young woman" and "virgin" depending on the context. . . . Matthew's third and final error is to interpret the name Immauel as meaning "God with us" implying that Jesus was God incarnate. In Hebrew, . . when the verb "to be" takes an object, it is not written, but merely understood. Thus, "He is a lion among men," would be written "He lion among men." As such, Immanuel means, "God is with us," which is the way it is written in English translations of the MT [Massoretic Text.--Ed.]

Quod erat demonstrandum

mc I have already dealt with this above,the NT is simply more specific.Isaiah was not inspired to use the more specific word for virgin..so what? Many other reasons exist for the passage to be applied to Jesus.

mc see.. http://www.apostolic-churches.net/bi.../isaiah/7.html


[quote]mc the nonbeliever further states
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Argumentum ad hominem et Poisoning the Well. Neither are legitimate tactics in a formal debate.

mc Hominum yomommagan again how shall I categorise and describe people who post at INFIDELS.org?
Is infidel appropriate? or SKEPTIC? I really don't care either way. I will call you by your first name if you provide it.

He then tries to requote the passage in the KJV as if that will prove the TEXT says something different. That the translators of the KJV perpetuated the error. Indeed, the rather apologetic RSV conceeds "young woman" and puts a footnote of "or virgin" to save it. Other modern translations agree.

mc see above


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mc First off Immanuel means God with us so who besides Jesus was God with us???


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A number of theoporics exist through the OT and, indeed, history. Perchance some have heard of Benjamin Netanyahu? Also "Immanuel" as a name existed as well. However, Mt's understanding of "Immanuel" was wrong. See above.


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I understand the Hebrew word means damsel which may or may not necessarily be a virgin. . . .
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Virgins do not get pregnant . . . unless they are not virgins.

mc the blessed virgin got pregnant according to the NT writers.

"Tommy doesn't count!" counts.

Apologies if I have destroyed a youthful delusion. Coke also does not work.

mc not sure what you speak of here


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. . . but this does not prove that the Holy Spirit did not inspire the correct word virgin in the New testament.
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or that Star Fleet Command sent Adm. Kirk back in time to confuse Mt. . . .

If this is the level of "evidence" offered then I refer young martin to the decimation of another poster who tried to assert that his belief equaled evidence. It does not.

mc I am not offering this verse in Isaiah as evidence for fulfillment.This would be one of the last I would choose because of this word dispute.The verse is YOUR suposed evidence that scriptures contradict themselves.


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In other words there is no contradiction between Isaiah and NT verses only that New Testament verses may be more specific.
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See above. This is apology to make the text say something it never said and cover a mistake.

However, this IS unfortunate:

mc the verse did NOT say that a NONvirgin would conceive. It said a young woman a damsel would conceive.


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but the oldest manuscripots (sic) properly translated have never been shown to contradict themselves. . . .
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The properly translated manuscripts demonstrate that the Isaiah passage is not a prophecy as Mt claimed.

mc not at all.A word that could include virgins and normally would signify one does not mean that Matthew was in error later to use the word virgin.

Quod erat demonstrandum. However, I will note, en passant that the "oldest manuscripts properly translated" reveal that Mt linked the birth of Junior to 4 BCE and Lk linked it to 6 CE.

mc NONSENSE Luke and Matthew never ever ever contradict each other in any way..I don't know what the skeptic refers to If he would kindly give the EXACT two scriptures he thinks contradict each other I will research and reply.

Quod erat demonstrandum times two. . . .

He then goes on about more "unbelievers" but since he has not demonstrated that Isaiah is a prophecy of Junior, it proves superfluous argumentum ad veritatem obfuscandam et non sequitur.

Had he taken advantage of the references offered to him,

mc I will read two pages of your references for every one you read of mine. a two for one sale
now a bit more on the Isaiah verse from the christian think tank site I quote.

quote..Of course, we need to discuss this further, but we should note already that Matthew may not be focusing on the virginity aspect at all. He might be only interested in the 'God with us' part (perhaps indicated by his translating that specific word). In fact, in the Luke account, the virginity of Mary is only a 'oddity' for Luke the Physician--the passage focuses on the Davidic heritage and Ruling Sonship (messianic themes, present in our Isaiah passage). His emphasis is on the identify of the son--as the promised messiah--as Matthew too seems to be focused on the Divine Visitation aspect.So, although most discussion on this topic/passage focuses here on the 'virginity' aspect of the prophecy, this might be out-of-synch with what Matthew was all about.


mc So my points are first off I did not pick Isaiah 7:14 as a strong proof text and would just as soon concede that it does not specify virgin (nor does it specify NONvirgin) however the skeptics have not shown any contradiction with what Matthew wrote and Isaiah only they have successfully cast doubt on Isaiah specifically using a word meaning 100%virgin. I have no problem conceding this.There are hundreds of oher texts that taken together make a compelling case for Jesus fulfilling prophecy,what may have been impressive the most to Matthew and that he was inspired to write may have been the "God with us " aspect not the virgin born part which may have not been meant to be clearly conveyed in the passage.


he could have avoided all of this. Most unfortunate.

--J.D.

Reference:

Callahan T. Secret Orgins of the Bible. Altadena: Millenium Press, 2002.

Lüdemann G. The Unholy in Holy Scriptures: The Dark Side of the Bible. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Reimarus HS. Apologie oder Schützchrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, edited on behalf of the Joachim-Jungius-Gesellshaft der Wissenschafen Hamburg by Gerhard Alexander, I, 1972.



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Doctor X

I gather this is directed to me.

Gentlemen refer to one another by names. I have two that appear in all of my posts.

You have been given the mistake of Mt with regards to "virgin," you have been given Lk's having Judas explode versus Mt's hanging, you have been given Mt's date of before 4 BCE versus Lk's date of 6 CE, you have been given the conflicting genealogies. Shall I continue? Others have detailed the errors of the Flood Myths.

Hardly. In order to be correct you must provide evidence.

We have yet to see any of this.

On the contrary, as with the "mistakes" above, I can re-provide a summary of the evidence against the existence of an Exodus-Conquest.

No you have not. Forensic science contradicts you. The text of Acts contradicts you. Whether you translate the Gk to mean "fall headlong" or "swell up" you cannot get a hanging out of it. Cut the rope on a hung body all you want, you will not get the result.

Yet you claim you can rebut any objection. You have yet to rebut one.

I am not interested in apologetic non-peer reviewed web-sites. Provide the evidence. I also spend considerable time gathering evidence from peer-reviewed literature.

Go to Evolution to discuss this mess:

it has been rebutted countless times here and there.

See above and see what posters have done to Holding. It is not pretty.

One.

I will ignore the argumentum ad misericordiam.

Ipse dixit and contradicted by the texts. Failure is hardly synonymous with "brilliant."

My father will not live to 2117. Isaiah in the text gives a prophecy that refers to contemporary events. A distant future is irrelevant. You have not addressed the textual critical issues above.

He refers to a specific child as explained in the original thread. The child is not Junior. Quod erat demonstrandum

Various circling around a previous thread occurs. No rebuttal to the quoted reference is given. What we are given is retorts such as this:

Apparently history he does not like is "goobley gook." Nevertheless, it does not address and it does not rebut the explanation. Ignoring it does not make it go away, but it does indicate the poster is a waste of time.

I do not waste my time. . . .

--J.D.

martinc

mc Here is a quote from theolgy.web detailing plausible explanations for the so called contradiction in the two narratives concerning Judas. I have yet to see a "Bible contradiction" that couldn't be explained.

begin quote>>>>Re: Were There Two Judases? If Not, Then.............
Good grief. This has been done here before, Viking Man. I even had a discussion here with "Matthew" about this last year.

(Of course, no doubt my use of such scholarly sources as the Toronto Journal of Theology will be called, um, twisting, contorting, and tap dancing. It's usually the view from certain levels.)

------------
The standard explanation given by harmonists is that Judas hung himself, and then his body fell and broke open. This has some promise: Judas hanged himself on Passover and before a Sabbath, and no Jew was going to touch the hanging corpse (touching a dead body caused defilement; it would have been work to take it down on the Sabbath; added to that, death by hanging was especially a disgrace; and hoisting a dead body isn't an attractive vocation if it isn't on your property), so it is safe to assume that Judas hung himself and that the branch or rope eventually broke.

I have previously stated that this solution is also supported by, of all people, the fringe scholar Hyam Maccoby (also noted by Polhill in his Acts commentary [92n]. In his book Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil [180], he notes that the phrase translated "becoming headlong" (prenes genomenos -- translated as "falling headlong" in the KJV, but literally being "becoming headlong" as shown in Green's Interlinear translation, 366) is a mere transcription error away from being "becoming swollen" (presthes genomenos). The latter may well be what was originally written, and as such might describe Judas' body swelling up after hanging for a while. This reading is found in later Syriac, Georgian and Armenian mss., though perhaps as an attempt at textual criticism of the sort we are doing. Taken together I still consider the "hanging body/rope broke" solution possible -- but now find something else even more likely....

....I would now opt for the idea that this is an example of Matthew's creative use of an OT "type". This would combine the idea that Matthew is not actually describing Judas' death, with Matthew's use of the OT texts as typologies. Audrey Conrad, in "The Fate of Judas" (Toronto Journal of Theology [7] 1992), notes that Matthew's unique words "departed" and "hanged himself" are found in combination in another place in the LXX:

2 Samuel 17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.

Conrad notes that rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 41:9 ("Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.") thought that Ahithophel was the traitor David was describing -- and of course this same verse was applied by Jesus to Judas (John 13:18). Conrad still thinks there are not enough parallels (!) but we would maintain that the parallels are sufficient, and that Matthew is indeed alluding to the traitor Ahithophel in this passage, and is therefore NOT telling us that Judas indeed hung himself, but that Judas fulfilled the "type" of Ahithophel by being a traitor who responded with grief and then died. Matthew is thereby making no statement at all about Judas' mode of death, and Luke's "swelling up" stands alone as a specific description of what happened....

(on the purchase)

The word used by Matthew for "bought" is agorazo -- a general term meaning, "to go to market." It means to purchase, but also to redeem. It is a verb that refers to the transaction of business. Note how Luke uses it in opposition to another word:

Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell (poleo) his garment, and buy (agorazo) one.

Poleo can mean "sell" but it's primary meaning has to do with trading and bartering. Therefore the translation of "buy" (and "sell") is made according to context.

How does this mean anything with regard to Judas? First note the word Luke uses. It is ktaomai, which means to "get, acquire, obtain, possess, provide, purchase." This word has the connotations of ownership that agorazo does not. Matthew says that the priests transacted business for the obtaining of the field, but they did not thereby have possession of the field. The money they used was Judas' and the field was bought in his name; the field was techincally and legally his.

...Note that the money cannot be put in the treasury -- it cannot be made to belong to the temple again -- because it is blood money. Keener observes in his Matthean commentary [657-8]:

Ancient Eastern peoples regarded very seriously the guilt of innocent blood, sometimes viewed in terms of corporate responsibility. Like Pilate the priestly officials wanted nothing further to do with the situation, and likewise understand that the blood was innocent...

The money was profaned and tainted by the way it was used. By ancient thinking, it was ritually unclean -- though even today a charity may refuse money if it is gained by ill-gotten means. Now it follows that when they transacted the business of the field for the temple, to avoid association with ritual uncleanness, the priests would have to have bought it in the name of Judas Iscariot, the one whose blood money it was. The property and transaction records available to the public and probably consulted by Luke would reflect that Judas bought the field -- or else Luke is indeed aware of what transpired and is using just the right verb to make the point.
<<<end quote>>>

The Evil One

What a big load of rubbish. Here, for reference, are the two passages (Young's):

Matthew:
Acts:

To suppose that the falling headlong and bursting asunder refers to what happened to a hanged corpse after the branch or the rope broke is to assume that Peter, speakign to the Apostles about Judas' death, chose not to mention how Judas died, but rather to discuss an incidental and rather gory detail of what happened to his body, and that the Acts-author, in reporting Peter's speech (in a document which nowhere else mentions "hanging" or "stangling" with regard to Judas), repeated this oddity without thinking to clarify by actually mentioning how Judas died.

This is a ridiculous assumption.

Let's look at some points of the apologetics cited (sorry if I've missed one, the post was quite hard to read):

If "fell headlong" is really a transcription error for "swelled up", then we have a clear instance of an error in the Bible. Transcription error or otherwise, it's an error. So much for inerrancy.

Alternatively, if Matthew saying that Judas "strangled himself" is to be explained as an old testament reference and not literally meaning that "Judas strangled himself", then this is a clear instance of a passage of the Bible trhat is not literally true. So much for inerrancy.

Quick summary of the other contradictions (bedsides strangled/split open):

1) What does "The Field of Blood" refer to - Jesus' innocent blood spilled to buy it (Matt) or Judas' guts spilling out on it (Acts)?
2) Did Judas keep the money or give it back?
3) Who bought the field? Judas or the priests?

To say that "The money they used was Judas' and the field was bought in his name; the field was techincally and legally his" is a stretch, but possible; but it does not reconcile the texts. Acts says "this one, indeed, then, purchased a field " where "this one" refers back to Judas. In other words, Acts says specifically that Judas bought the field. Even if the priests (in Matthew) bought the field in Judas' name with his money, that is still a contradiction with Acts. So much for inerrancy.

To say that "The property and transaction records available to the public and probably consulted by Luke [Acts-author] would reflect that Judas bought the field " is to concede that the Bible contains a historical error due to a failure in investigative proicedurees by one of its authors. So much for inerrancy.

To say that "Luke [Acts-author] is indeed aware of what transpired and is using just the right verb to make the point" is to concede that (at least one of) the Bible authors were willing to write down accounts of events which they knew to be factually false for rhetorical pruposes. So much for inerrancy.

Jack the Bodiless

martinc:

I'm not sure why you abandoned the previous thread to continue the same discussion here, as it wasn't off-topic for that thread. However, I will re-post my last two posts on that thread verbatim, as you still have not resolved the problems with the Isaiah "Immanuel" reference:
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?
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

(second post)

A couple of additional points:
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".
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.
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):

Jack the Bodiless

...And now:
Let's try to make this more relevant to the actual situation.

If, writing in 2004, you refer to another author writing in 1964, who CLAIMS to have prophesied the assassination of JFK by a white person in 1963, and you now claim that this is a prophecy that Doctor X's father will be shot in 2004, and this has actually happened: then the problem isn't that the prophecy has failed. The problem is that there was no prophecy.

As it happens, there ARE Biblical prophecies that failed. But Matthew's out-of-context reference to Isaiah was a concocted claim that a prophecy existed.

Christians are apparently unable to provide a clear example of an ACTUAL prophecy that did NOT fail.

Doctor X

Jack the Bodiless:

Indeed. There was no need to start a new thread since he had not handled any of the cases in that thread.

As I stated, I do not waste my time. However, I must confess the attempt to make Acts have Judas hang himself--without mentioning it--and torturing the texts to state what they do not proves most amusing.

He will not read the reference you gave him. He has ignored the references and arguments hitherto. He is just another apologist spreading claims without evidence that are rebutted by evidence.

--J.D.

Jack the Bodiless

...Actually, my analogy was slightly flawed, as it assumes that both the events referred to (JFK's assassination and that of Doctor X's father) had actually occurred. The true situation is worse than this, as all the relevant events are fictional.

Here's another attempt:

In one of the Star Wars films (either The Empire Strikes Back or Return Of The Jedi, I forget which), Darth Vader attempts to recruit Luke Skywalker, and mentions a prophecy, that Luke could defeat the Emperor: "...He has foreseen this! Together we could rule the Galaxy as father and son!". Later, the father-and-son team do indeed defeat the Emperor.

Now, just as Matthew modified Mark's script, Peter Jackson made various alterations to Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. Let's suppose that Jackson had added the following line where Gandalf rescues Frodo and Sam from the lava after the destruction of the One Ring: "Good work, Frodo! You have vanquished the Emperor, as the Vader Prophecy foretold!".

Does this make Peter Jackson a true prophet?