Sauron

Uh, wrong. On all counts. The following addresses McDowell's usage of both Davis and Hamilton on this point:

c) It draws unwarranted parallels between the two cities, ignoring their geographies and histories - Davis’ wants us believe that since Tyre was destroyed (or so he claimed), then it is reasonable to assume that the sister-city of Sidon would also suffer that same fate. This attempt to connect the two cities’ fates sounds reasonable at first, but upon closer examination cannot be supported. It is true that both cities shared a common Phoenician heritage. However, by the time of Ezekiel their respective histories, their relative importance, and their political and economic situations had changed significantly. And their respective geographic positions dictated a different response to invaders.

By the time of Ezekiel, the city of Tyre had grown in status and prestige, and had eclipsed Sidon in importance. Sidon was the junior city, and built on the vulnerable coastline. This difference was crucial in the way that Sidon dealt with invaders as opposed to how Tyre dealt with the same invaders. Tyre, being the most important city, and being the “impregnable Rock”, was more frequently going to defy or resist the invaders – she had the resources to resist, was geographically positioned to offer a fight, and had more treasure at stake. Tyre had two ports, which were so positioned that ships could sail year round (when winds shifted, one needed only switch ports). This made Tyre a vastly important city to control--not only as a military advantage, but also as a supply advantage. The ability, for example, of Alexander (or any conqueror) to ship in supplies from the Mediterranean year-round was too precious to pass up. And had Tyre been left untaken, her potential as a naval fortress for rebels would be a serious rear-guard threat to Alexander's power, while having his own all-weather naval base would be a great boon. [23]

On the other hand, at this time in history, Sidon was a smaller city, without the vast resources of Tyre. Furthermore, because she was not built on an island, Sidon could not afford to take the same chances that Tyre took; Sidon had fewer options and more quickly sued for peace. This was not unusual; ancient cities facing conquerors often sued for peace, acknowledging the nominal lordship of the conquering army, or paying a monetary tribute. Sidon did precisely the first course of action when faced with Alexander,[24] and followed the second course with Tiglath-Pileser.[25] (Indeed, when Tiglath-pileser arrived, the Sidonians tried to buy him off with presents, helped him cut timber in the mountains, and even tried to placate the Assyrian by taking him big-game fishing on the coast of the Mediterranean.) [26]

In addition to not being as large as Tyre or as rich in resources, Sidon had also just suffered an invasion in 589 BCE by the new Egyptian regent Apries, who was trying to finish the expansion campaign that his father, Psammetichos II, had started earlier.[27] Unlike Tyre, which resisted Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years, Sidon was in no shape to be offering resistance to Nebuchadnezzar. Sidon’s frequent capitulations to would-be conquerors, however, did not guarantee that they would escape destruction. This brings me to my final objection against Davis’ amazing claim:

(d) the main point of this claim, that Sidon was not destroyed, flies in the face of historical evidence – contrary to the claims of Davis, the city of Sidon actually was destroyed. Several times, in fact. It was twice destroyed in war between the 7th and 4th centuries BC and again during the earthquake in the 6th century AD.[28] Furthermore, the city was ravaged again by earthquake in 1837.[29]

McDowell tries to state that, according to the prophecy, the two cities of Tyre and Sidon suffered different fates, leading them to two different present-day conditions. He and his sources want us to believe that the current situations of the two cities demonstrate the accuracy of the prophecy. This is a key point here: in order for the prophecy to stand, he has to make the reader believe that the two cities are distinctly different today, because the prophecies about the two cities are different.

The problem, however, is that when comparing the two modern cities, they are very much the same. Both are small cities in Lebanon; both with illustrious histories, but neither one of world importance any longer. Both are coastal cities, both suffered in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, both have relatively small populations, and both rely on tourism. To a modern visitor today, they appear much the same. If McDowell says that Tyre’s current status is so bad as to be a fulfillment of a prophecy about destruction and oblivion, how can nearly identical conditions in modern Sidon be triumphantly proclaimed as a city “stayed in existence, a monument to fulfilled prophecy”?

Perhaps McDowell means to say that, even though their two modern situations are the same, their respective histories are different? Is that possible? One of McDowell’s sources walks right into this:

The Basis of the Christian Faith, Floyd Hamilton cited another time Sidon was destroyed and writes that Sidon ‘was soon rebuilt, however, and though it has been captured over and over again, its citizens butchered and houses razed time after time, the city has always been rebuilt and is today [1927] a town of about 15,000 inhabitants. Blood has flowed in the streets again and again, but the city stayed in existence and stands today, a monument to fulfilled prophecy.’ “[30]

Destroyed. Rebuilt. Captured. Citizens butchered, houses razed. Rebuilt again.

When I read this, I was struck at how amazingly similar this description is to the long history of Tyre. Yet when faced with nearly identical bloody histories and periods of rebuilding after invasions, what do McDowell and Co. make of that? They call one city (Tyre) “destroyed, never to be rebuilt” and call the other city (Sidon) “. . . stayed in existence. . . a monument to fulfilled prophecy”. [31]

We’ve already indicated that Sidon was actually destroyed three times in its history. Now we see that even McDowell’s own source, in the quotation above, admits that Sidon was destroyed. So what reason can there be to differentiate between the two, since both experienced destruction, and since both cities rebuilt? What permits McDowell to portray one city as permanently destroyed and the other one as continually in existence?

Let’s see. Perhaps McDowell is defining a “destroyed” city differently. Perhaps “destroyed” refers not to the number or frequency of destroyed buildings, but instead upon the level of human lives lost? Let the reader note that this definition would contradict McDowell’s assertions in his section concerning Tyre, where he went into great detail discussing the physical destruction of the city and buildings. (Let the reader also note that Floyd Hamilton’s admission, quoted above, that Sidon was destroyed contradicts McDowell’s claim of “No Mention of Her Destruction”). Anyhow, let’s test this theory. Was that tally of the dead greater for Tyre, than for Sidon?

At the end of the Persian era, unable to resist the superior forces of the emperor Artaxerxes III, the desperate Sidonians locked their gates and immolated themselves in their homes rather than submit to the invader. More than 40,000 Sidonians died in the flames, as compared to the 30,000 Tyrians slaughtered by Alexander.[32] So: Sidon’s loss of life during the invasion of Artaxerxes was even greater than Tyre’s loss of life at the hands of Alexander. It would appear that, measured by the loss of human life, there is a stronger argument for considering Sidon ‘destroyed’, and not Tyre. Which is the opposite of McDowell’s position, of course.

So we see that the current position of the two cites in the world is the same, and their histories of destruction and rebuilding are the same. Yet McDowell (and his sources) consider Tyre to be the one that was destroyed, and not Sidon. The inescapable conclusion is that McDowell is, once again, trying to force the prophecy to match the evidence, trimming out the evidence that doesn’t fit into the prophetic picture. He did it before with Tyre; now we see him trying it with Sidon.

lpetrich

However, it's easy to produce a similar "Sun miracle" by staring at the Sun, as this article explains.

But the overall point is correct. Miracles have mostly dried up in recent centuries, as philosopher David Hume had noticed 250 years ago.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, could Mother Teresa:

Cure blindness?
Drive out demons?
Raise the dead?
Induce blindness in someone who stole from her?
Zap Missionaries of Charity employees for keeping too much for themselves?
Zap an out-of-season fruit tree?
Point out a monster-infested tree?
Calm storms?
Desalinate seawater?
Recharge batteries?
Have a crab bring her a lost crucifix?
Have the Gift of Tongues, fluently speaking several languages without having to learn them?

lpetrich

Also, I've had an argument with Radorth about the crucifixion-darkening question and why only Thallus had recorded it.

Consider the case of Pliny the Elder, who had written a bulk of writings, of which only his Natural History has survived. Though I have never read that tome, I notice that nobody else has claimed that Pliny had recorded that mysterious alleged 3-hour midday darkness.

Since he had been born ~23 CE, he would have been 7 to 10 years old when it happened, and he would have known lots of older people who had seen it.

It's like someone living a few blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 claiming that "I never saw anything happen to it"

And Pliny would have recorded it if he had seen it. His Natural History is full of odd curiosities (from the Smithsonian's article on him):

He wrote of dog-headed people who communicated by barking, and people with no heads at all, their eyes in their shoulders. He wrote of snakes that launch themselves skyward to catch high-flying birds, and of the "basilisk serpent" of Africa, which kills bushes on contact, bursts rocks with its breath and is so venomous that when one was killed by a man on horseback, "the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but also the horse."

Imagine someone who writes about such things -- and not about a mysterious midday 3-hour darkness.

And not just Pliny -- other historians also.