Amaleq13

No, I wouldn't. Could you provide an example of a similarly retrojected but non-"cryptic" and detailed prophecy from the OT?

It seems to me that the author was too bright to explicitly state the obvious.

And the story is better for it! I just don't think your version would have the same appeal.

Ben C Smith

1 Kings 13.2 is not very cryptic:

And [the man of God] cried against the altar by the word of Yahweh, and he said: O altar, altar, thus says Yahweh: Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you. Then he gave a sign the same day, saying: This is the sign which Yahweh has spoken: Behold, the altar shall be split apart and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out.

Compare 2 Kings 23.15-16, 20:

Furthermore, the altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he broke down. Then he demolished its stones, ground them to dust, and burned the Asherah. Now, when Josiah turned, he saw the graves that were there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned them on the altar and defiled it according to the word of Yahweh which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things. .... And all the priests of the high places who were there he slaughtered on the altars, and he burned human bones on them; then he returned to Jerusalem.

Daniel 11 is also a pretty clear record of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings that followed Alexander.

These prophecies do not spell out all the details, but they certainly hit a lot more than they miss, so to speak, and they are more detailed than, say, Mark 13, in which it is remarkable that there is debate over even the most central images, such as the abomination of desolation, with some scholars seeing Caligula, others Titus, others the Romans after bar Kokhba in its predictive plan!

I know you asked about the OT, but the Jewish pseudepigrapha are also full of prophecies that are spelled out pretty clearly after the fact. They are dressed up as symbols (the eagles and wings in 4 Ezra, for example), but the point is that virtually every detail has an historical referent that can easily be identified in retrospect.

Ben.

Steven Avery

Hi Ruski fella,

This is one of the strong arguments that the Gospels and Acts
(and in fact arguably the whole NT) was written before 70AD.

Richard H. Anderson has made the case that the earliest gospel was
about 40 AD, Luke addressing the high priest Theophilus. Around the
time of Acts in the 60's his son was the high priest. Theophilus was
no longer "most excellent Theophilus", the address was more simply
"O Theophilus".

In that context the NT writings are often warnings of the impending destruction.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

jakejonesiv

If you applied even an iota of this logic to Paul, you would be an instant mythicist. You are so inconsistent.

Amaleq13

I question how analogous this is since the "fulfillment" of the prophecy is explicitly described later but there are clearly more details that could have been added so that objection, at least, seems to lose support.

This, OTOH, does seem more analogous but it seems ridiculuos to suggest it is not cryptic. In fact, I would say it is more cryptic than Mark! I would also concede that it is more detailed but we've already seen that there is really no good reason to expect them in a retrojected prophecy.

There is debate now but do you think that it was as cryptic to Mark's intended audience?

I suspect it was more than enough reference for them to know exactly what he meant.

Ben C Smith

I selected this example because the prophecy actually gives the name of the king, Josiah, and tells exactly how the altar would be defiled (burning human bones, being broken). The synoptic apocalypse fails to give the name of Titus or Vespasian or Gallus or anybody, and it omits the most visible feature of the destruction of the temple, to wit, the fire.

I do not understand, then, what you mean by cryptic. I think Gamera was saying that ex eventu prophecies give an opportunity for precision which the synoptic apocalypse lacks. Sure, Daniel 11 is written mysteriously, but Daniel 11 is also precise. Once you understand that the kings of the north and of the south each represent an entire line of kings, it is possible to understand virtually every alliance, every political move, every military action in the chapter (up to the point where scholars believe the book was written, and then the prophecies start to fail). In the synoptic apocalypse the details, if one can call them that, are much more vague. Famines? Earthquakes? Which ones? These details are hardly comparable to the daughter of the king of the south marrying the king of the north and then being betrayed.

I agree that we cannot necessarily expect them, since not all retrojected prophecies are exact (and this may be the only point you are trying to make), but the lack of details in the synoptic apocalypse leaves open the possibility of its having been composed before 70. That possibility becomes a probability, IMHO, when it is noted that some of the details actually conflict with real history.

I think it was cryptic to his intended audience. But that is because I think the basic draft of the synoptic apocalypse was written before 70, but after the Caligula crisis, and it framed expectations of the impending destruction in terms of that crisis. Events did not turn out that way (for example, no desolating sacrilege of the kind that Caligula had planned ever stood in the temple); instead the temple was just unceremoniously burned and toppled.

In a manner of speaking, I agree. I think everybody would have thought of the Caligula crisis as the model of what was supposed to happen. It just did not quite turn out that way in real life.

Recall that Tacitus wrote of the Caligula incident that manebat metus ne quis principum eadem imperitaret (a fear remained that some emperor would command the same thing [as Caligula]); I think Mark 13 is an expression of that fear.

Ben.

Amaleq13

"mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous" Since you use a variation of "mysterious" to describe Daniel 11, I think you do understand what I mean since I consider it to be cryptic.

He went beyond that to an expectation of that precision being present.

Yep

Agreed

Interesting thoughts. Thanks.