B. H. Manners

Here is a series of verses in the Bible:



1.) The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: (2) "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." (3) So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. (4) And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

(5) Then the word of the LORD came to me: (6) "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (7) If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, (8) and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. (9) And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, (10) and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. (11) Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 'Thus says the LORD, behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.' (12) "But they say, 'That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.'



Now, there are other verses stating that a false prophet would be known by what he prophesied not coming to pass. How then would one know if someone was a false prophet when you take the verse above into account with the fact that "not occurring=false prophet"?

It seems to me that you can't. Any prophet whose prophecy did not occur could just say that the people repented if the prophecy was negative. IF a positive rewarding prophecy was given and did not come to pass then the assumption could just be made that someone or persons must have apostasized whether that was true or not.

Kilgore Trout

More examples of the holes in the logic of the bible. It's just another cop-out they threw in there to explain why certain prophecies in the bible were not coming true.

As you say, it leaves it wide open for any street-corner nut to claim he was a prophet. I guess all the christians better listen to the "prophets" who say the world is coming to an end tomorrow. If the world doesn't come to an end, it must mean that someone repented, so god decided not to destroy the world.

Admittedly, it makes sense that god should be able to change his mind about a punishment if people repent. The problem becomes now you can never know who the false prophets are.

B. H. Manners

Yeah.

And if it is a prophecy of blessing and fails to come true, the false prophet can always say that there was some sort of sin in the persons or nation that disqualified the prophesy. Believers are conditioned to believe they are wicked and sinful and so would fall for an explanation as such.

CJD

Gentlemen, you're baiting me, I know it . . .

In a previous thread, Kilgore and I discussed this very issue.

In this current thread, there is an admixture of textual exposition and theological speculation. Let me point them out, so we can see the differences in what the text says and where you folks have interjected your opinions:

Yes, hence the rampant problem of false prophets in Israel.

Yes, the text says as much.

Now, for the mistaken deductions:

Forgive my ignorance, but you could explicitly point out how this violates any law of logic?

Explain textually how "prophecy" means a single, specific prognostication in all circumstances. Better yet, show me significant proof that "prophecies" meant this in ANE culture.

Really. I think that OT "believers" were told explicitly in advance the conditional prediction ("If this . . ., then this . . ."). That is, they knew what to expect if they did or did not abide in the covenant. The quote above does not account for all the sanctions outlined in the various texts.

Finally, the text itself offers an answer to your main question: "The problem becomes now you can never know who the false prophets are." What follows is the textual explanation I offered to Kilgore. He seemed to acknowledge its consistency. Second thoughts?

The reason why "all the christians [had] better [not] listen to the "prophets" who say the world is coming to an end tomorrow" is because Xians, upon recognizing the questionable intentions/theology of so-called 'prophets', regard their "prophecies" as bogus.

Regards,

CJD

wordsmyth

There is no room for "if you do this, then this will happen", because an omniscient being capable of seeing the future already knows full well what will and will not come to pass. If a prophecy does not come about, then it was never a true vision of the future to begin with. It would be deceitful and malicious for an omniscient being to give a prophecy of a future that it knows full well will never come to pass.

If there is a possibility that a prophecy will not come to pass, then the being who gave the prophecy (God in this case) is either not omniscient or is purposefully being deceitful and malicious.

Kilgore Trout

CJD said:
Since you are quoting from that thread... I will quote my answer to you on how to recognize false prophets

As you can see I was pointing out that Jesus completely fits your explanation of how to recognize a false prophet. If you want to say that means I agree with you, then that's fine with me.

CJD said:
Jesus was so radically different from what the Jews were told in the Torah, that any Jew would have recognized that he was a false prophet because he wanted to take them away from the life that god wanted people to live. That is why he is no different from any "steet-corner nut". The true Jews upon recognizing the questionable intentions/theology of Jesus, regarded his "prophecies" as bogus. So they killed him like Deut. 13 instructed them to.

CJD said:
I just explained it. If you applied your logic of how to know false prophets, you would have to rule out Jesus as a true prophet. The bible thinks he is true. Therefore the bible (at least the NT in this case) has flawed logic.

B. H. Manners

""""Explain textually how "prophecy" means a single, specific prognostication in all circumstances. Better yet, show me significant proof that "prophecies" meant this in ANE culture.""""""


Hello CDJ,


I admit I cut and pasted some from the debate negotiations you had with Farrell. However, I am not trying to "bait you.

I admit that the role of the prophet and the term prophecy had connotations other than just fortelling the future. Prophets served as teachers, judges, instructors, and benefactors of the people according to Hebrew scriptures.


What I am wanting to know is how to know a false prophet per see regarding future events and their not coming to pass.

I said it once and will do so again. The verses from Jeremiah nullify Deut 13 from a practical standpoint because if a prophet predicts something will happen in the future and it does not, he can just lie and say "so-and-so repented" or "so-and-so fell into sin" ect. and get out of his predicament. The whole purpose of Deut 13 was to protect people from shysters, was it not?

CJD

First, wordsmyth, good to hear from you again. Unfortunately, your comments add little to what the text actually says. Theological speculation is one my favourite pastimes, but generally speaking it is not becoming of atheists. Whatever supposed antinomy you see between omniscience and contingency cannot be laid at my feet. You deal with it. I already have.

"Visions of the future," as I have mentioned elsewhere, are not predictions about what necessarily must come to pass, but what potentially may come to pass. Until you recognize the validity of this understanding in relation to the Tanak and ANE culture, your theological speculation is entirely uninformed.

Greetings, Kilgore. The main thrust of your previous post centered on the supposed flawed logic of the NT. If I am correct on the nature of conditional prophecies, you contend that the NT is flawed in that it posits that Jesus was a true prophet, when he fits rather well the description of a false prophet. While you are certainly free to attempt to make this case, you will have to put a bit more work in it than the following:

IF Jesus was an anti-nomian, then you might have a case. As of right now, that is your mere assumption. You've got your work cut out for you if you plan on proving it from the texts. Until then, I think I'll remain a Christian.

As an aside, I recall a post by the esteemed Apikorus on how the typological fulfillment of Jesus as the Messiah hermeneutic can be "turned on its ear." At least that showed a little effort (and creativity), Kilgore—far more than Jesus' being "no different from any 'steet-corner nut.'"

Finally, B.H. Manners, hello to you.

One thing we must first approach, Mr. Manners, is how to view the so-called "test" of Deuteronomy 18: "(21)And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?'—(22) when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him."

If this text was as rigid as some assume, then every prophet recorded in the Tanak would be false. But such a straightforward reading would be of no value to its audience. Hengstenberg (where, I forget) wrote how such an interpretation would be useless, since recourse might always be had to the excuse, that the case had been altered by the not fulfilling of the condition. Since you assume this rigid reading, your critique follows suit: "if a prophet predicts something will happen in the future and it does not, he can just lie and say "so-and-so repented" or "so-and-so fell into sin," etc. and get out of his predicament." Reading the Deut. 18 "test" in that fashion renders it a useless test—a non-test, one that cannot differentiate between prophets at all. The key is discernment as to where the prophet is attempting to lead the people. At this point I would refer you the above post where I discussed how the people could actually differentiate between a true prophet and a shyster.

As an aside, I think we Christians have largely inflated the events of Scripture. And the atheists have responded in kind. Many of the events (from a naturalistic perspective) are not stupendous at all. Many, of course, are. We have wrongly made prophets out to be sages, white-eyed, eccentric types who walked around uttering futuristic oracles. But the OT community was far more earthy than that. Their covenantal inheritance was an actual plot of land—dirt—not some pie-in-the-sky existence.

Regards,

CJD

Kilgore Trout

I'm afraid I don't know what anti-nomian means. Can you define it for me? In any case, prophets are the ones that have the burden of proof. They are supposed to PROVE to people that they are from god. You are not supposed to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt. I fail to see why you can't understand that what Jesus says is radically different from that the Torah says.

All I am trying to say is that Deut. 13 says if a prophet tries to get you to worship gods that the Hebrews have not known before, or is trying to them away from the life the lord has commanded them to live, then he is a false prophet.

God did not say in the OT that he was a trinity and that Jesus was god. A Triune god is a god they did not know before. Just because Jesus CLAIMS it is the same god, does not make it the same god. If I said I believed in the same god as christians, but I claimed he had six "persons" instead of three, would you call that the same god?

Jesus was amending some of the laws in the Torah. Nobody can add or take away from the laws in the Torah. By saying he fulfilled the Law, so christians no longer obey the Torah, he was taking Hebrews away from the life the lord commanded them to live. According to Deut. 13 this makes him a false prophet. All you have to do is look at the difference between how Jews and christians live and you will see that Jesus took people away from the life the Torah said for people to live.

As I have said, Jesus himself said people had to obey the teachers of the Law (Matt 23:2-3). The teachers of the Law said he was a false prophet and they wanted him killed. So Jesus is implicitly condoning the idea that he is a false prophet and should be killed.


The words of Deut 18 are very clear. Just because you don't like them, you can't pretend there are extra words are in there. It does not say "check to see if this prophet seems to be following the right path." Adding conditions like that would be too subjective. This was meant to be a clear test to decide without a doubt when a prophet was real. No opinions or interpretation needed. If you find this would make every prophet false, then you are saying there are contradictions in the bible. Saying a passage does not mean what it states, because then that would make other passages contradict it, is a circular argument. You are assuming there are no contradictions in the bible and then interpreting passages any way you want in order to make them not contradictions.

Of course that doesn't mean anything to you, because the whole system of faith is based on circular arguments. You start out believing Jesus is a true prophet and if what he says goes against the Law and makes him a false prophet, you just say Deut 13 does not mean what people think it means. If the prophets in the bible make false predictions, then they are false prophets. But since you guys use circular arguments, you assume the prophets in the bible are sent by god, and if any of their predictions didn't come true, you assume there must have been implied conditions.

That is why I said before that understand that your bible says that there may be conditions to prophecies. But, just because it says that, does not stop it from being a cop-out they threw in later because the realized that the prophets kept making wrong predictions.

Christians always like to point out that the reason why we skeptics should accept the bible as the word of god is because of all the amazing predictions that came true. You say predictions did not always come true as they had conditions attached that we don't know about. Since you can't prove they had conditions, I would like to know what evidence you do have that the bible is the word of god. I guess more circular arguments.

CJD

Kilgore Trout, thanks for your thoughtful response. I think, however, that you posit a few thoughts on the text that are not consistent with the text. See below.

Antinomianism: a typical smashing together of two Greek words—"anti" (against) and "nomos" (law). This is how I took your description of Jesus to which I responded. Many people make this mistake. What's worse, they just assert, rarely proving from the text how it is so. Hence my challenge: the burden lies on you to prove such a thing.

A-ha. I would ask for an example, but unless you're really interested in getting into a rather tedious discussion about how Jesus necessarily kept every jot and tittle of the Torah (not mishna, mind you) or else evacuate the whole concept of salvation as presented in the NT of any real meaning, I won't.

I, of course, agree. But I don't think Jesus fits into this category.

Where? I see him teaching from the Torah what should have been taught since its inception (BOTH the spirit and the letter of the law); I see him challenging the mishna-stranglehold that oppressed the people. But I don’t see him "amending" (or emending) the Torah. And as far as the sacrificial rites are concerned, I would think that every faithful covenant-keeper knew full well that when the Lord consummated his kingdom on earth, the need for sacrifices would end. If you try to put yourself in ANE shoes as best you can, I think you will find this to make more sense.

"Don't suppose that I came to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I did not come to do away with them, but to give them their full meaning. Heaven and earth may disappear. But I promise you that not even a period or comma will ever disappear from the Law" (Matt. 5:17–18).

Either 1) Jesus is speaking about how his doctrine (i.e., the gospel) is in total agreement with the Law or 2) Jesus lied. Textually substantiate the opposite to # 1 and you will have shown Jesus to be # 2. The reality is, Kilgore, that Jesus himself here pre-empts your accusation. Just as soon as new method of teaching appears, degenerates are ready to throw off the old, as if everything is to be overturned. He received such accusations then as he receives by your hand even now. Proof of this is seen in the fact that he is recorded to have turned his attention to the scribes and Pharisees immediately after saying this (5:20–22). The text points to a continuity even before the time of Jesus (Jer. 31), so I cannot be accused here of merely reading into the OT the NT. I could have easily read the OT and expected the new covenant to be enlivened by God in the hearts of his people (again, Jer. 31). Jesus stated nothing more or less.

Nonsense. Everywhere the NT charges Xians to live by the law of the new covenant (Jer. 31)—the law written on their hearts. What do you think the Sermon on the Mount was but an exposition of how an external, dead ritualism should be lived out dynamically in everyday life? In other words, the point is the heart must coincide with the head. This is not a strictly NT concept—see especially Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (yet another attestation of its continuity).

All this to say, Kilgore, that "he was taking Hebrews away from the life the lord commanded them to live" is a serious assertion for which you have provided no justification.

He also called them hypocrites and broods of vipers! Besides, what "preaching" was Jesus referring to in this passage? Their "preaching" that he was a false prophet and should be killed? You should note the phrase "Moses’ seat," i.e., in the synagogue, i.e., the preaching of the Word of God. His recognition here that the teacher occupied a legitimate office does not contradict or negate his condemnation of their adding human tradition to the law and for evading the spirit of the law.

Puh-lease. He was advancing the idea that he was a true prophet and would nonetheless be killed for it! Read on: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town . . . (23:29–34).

First, a text need not say something explicitly in order for it to mean that something. Secondly, I have at least shown you a plausible textual explanation. You have not done that at all. You’re just saying, "Na-ah." What’s more, you don’t know what I think about biblical contradictions. True, I am taking the Tanak as a whole, literary unit, but I need not assume the things you are making me assume in order to come up with a plausible explanation of the texts in question. You have completely missed the fact that the Tanak was, by the time the latter prophets were written down, a complete unit in the hands of the scribes. "Biblical contradictions" is not even a category in this discussion. It’s nothing, not relevant at all.

Well, that about sums up life for everyone, if you ask me. Are you privy to understanding something before you believe anything about that something?

I have at least shown a plausible textual explanation. I am also beginning to understand why it is that you have not shown a textual alternative to the contrary—the texts in question simply cannot be reconciled in your eyes, and so they must just stand there in contradiction. Hmmm. I guess we’re done.