jgreen44

Sennacherib's Hexagonal Prism states:

"I threw up earthworks against him." (Hezekiah in Jerusalem)

Isaiah 37 states:

"He shall not come into this city (Jerusalem)...."nor build a siege mound against it."

A siege mound is an earthwork.

Sennacherib says he threw up a siege mound at the gate to Jerusalem. Isaiah says God promised it would never happen. On this point, the archaeological record clearly contradicts the biblical record.

One can infer that Sennacherib gave up the siege because great numbers of his men died in one night. But, if the mass death really did happen, why on earth would Hezekiah pay tribute to Sennacherib and not the other way around?

Back Again

Sennacherib's earth works were seemingly not put in place to breach the walls but rather to prevent Hezekiah's escape. A siege mound against a wall would be for another purpose.

Blaming the death of 185,000 of Sennacherib's troops on angels is clearly fiction. I'm not sure it even makes sense to theorize what, if anything, resulted in those deaths. Disease? Civil war? What's clear is that the Jews, trapped in Jerusalem had nothing to do with any Assyrian deaths outside their walls.

The simplist explanation was that Sennacherib wiped out all of the smaller towns in Judah, surrounded Jerusalem and then took a tribute from Hezekiah without "firing a shot". By leaving the government intact, you can always go back and demand more tributes later.

Anat

And you leave in place a mechanism for organizing the economy to produce said tribute.

Back Again

And presumably you have a buffer kingdom between you and Egypt.

jgreen44

The KJV, instead of "siege mound", uses the phrase, "nor cast a bank against it". A "bank" could be either an earthwork or a siege mound.

Other translations:

ASV - mound

Douay Rheims - trench

GWD - dirt ramps

Holman - assault ramp

NLT - banks of earth

Young's Literal translation - a mount

And this author ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZkB...ank%22&f=false [*]

indicates that the earthwork and the siege mound are interchangeable in this passage.

[*]The Chronology Of The Old Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Floyd Nolen Jones

Back Again

The point I'm making is that the Taylor prism says: "and Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape"

A siege ramp or siege mount is something different. A siege ramp is a large earthen ramp built against a wall which allows the defenses to be breached. It's so the invaders can get in. What the Taylor prism is talking about is more like a door stop. It's not so invaders can get in but rather so that Hezekiah can't get out.

I don't think that this is exactly a failed prophecy. Anyway, since I don't believe an angel of God swept in and slaughtered 185,000 Assyrians, I'm not sure a minor failed prophecy is the biggest of our worries here.

rob117

Isaiah 36-39 is not written by Isaiah-- it refers to Isaiah in the third person and mentions the exile in Babylon. It is lifted directly from 2 Kings 18-20 and in its final form is probably exilic.

"He shall not enter this city, etc." would then be a historical inaccuracy rather than a failed prophecy.

Back Again

Within the narrative, it is written as prophecy:

It's imbedded in a message from Isaiah to Hezekiah and directly quotes "The Lord" within the larger quote. I can always write about something that has already happened and back date it and call it a fulfilled prophecy. If I have an historical inaccuracy which causes my phony prophecy to fail, I guess it's an irrelevent matter of semantics of whether it is REALLY a failed prophecy.

rob117

Agreed.

jgreen44

I understand that a siege ramp is something different from an earthwork. But not all translations of the Bible use the phrase "siege ramp" in that passage. If a more generic term, such as "mound" or "bank", is accurate, then Sennacherib's Prism contradicts the book of Isaiah.