by Swamboozled 601 Replies latest watchtower bible
scholar,
To leave something for a nothing is just plain done and shows the state of your intellectual character and faith.
I suggest, rather, being willing to leave a full and rich baseless fantasy life populated with counterfeit truths for a less full, scary and somewhat intimidating reality demonstrates intellectual character and faith.
Staying with lies and counterfeit words doesn't require intellectual character, it requires its absence.
AuldSoul
I just found out Ezekiel was wrong. Tyre has been rebuilt. It is New York.
The point being:
The ancient city of Tyre is in ruins today and has not been rebuilt. In New York a city has been built and named Tyre but it is not the spot where the ancient city of Tyre was. Also nearby the ancient Tyre ruins a city has been built and named Tyre. But the spot where the ancient city of Tyre was remains in ruins and has not been rebuilt.
And finally in reply to Leo and others:
So we are faced with a dilemma. Do we believe Ezekiel and God's word the bible that Neb would devestate Egypt without inhabitant for 40 years? Or do we believe the claims of Egyptian priests and a nation which notoriously leaves out any conquests brought upon them by other nations, thus failing to record any 40 year desolation or even the exodus of the Israelites about 1000 years earlier?
I guess each one will have to decide for themselves.
To put it simply:
Do you believe God's word the Bible or the conclusions of secular historians based on Egyptian records?
Once you decide that then you can also decide do I believe the Bible based 607 or the conclusions made by secular historians that 587 is correct?
That about sums it up. Perhaps the energizer bunny is about to run out of juice.
Go Bunny, Go Bunny, it's your birthdays (607/587)...Go bunny Go Bunny
It seems that thirdwitness and scholar pretendus are mightily vying for the appellations Dumb and Dumber. Their arguments have descended well below what even normally stupid JW defenders post. They're also resorting to the usual lying, deliberate distortion of the Scriptures, and even apostasy against the Watchtower in order to defend the Bible and the Watchtower. Amazing!
According to scholar pretendus, the year before 537 B.C. was 537 B.C. And the man has the nerve to call himself 'scholar'!
In his post 1359 scholar pretendus wrote:
: You answered your own question for modern Tyre is now a modern land city probably consisting of the three parts as you describe.
Indeed it is a land city, just as I described and just as you could see for yourself if you weren't so abominably lazy and would download Google Earth and look at the geographic coordinates I've provided.
But that is irrelevant, in view of the facts below:
: Ezekiel in his famous prophecy of judgement against Tyre in Ezekiel 26:4,14 refers to that Tyre as an ancient island city
This is a direct lie about what the Scriptures contain. Those passages read thus:
4 And they will certainly bring the walls of Tyre to ruin and tear down her towers, and I will scrape her dust away from her and make her a shining, bare surface of a crag.
14 And I will make you a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what you will become. Never will you be rebuilt; for I myself, Jehovah, have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah.Nothing in these verses says or implies that the prophet was talking about an island city.
Oh, but perhaps you misspoke! Perhaps you meant Ezekiel 26:5, which reads thus:
5 A drying yard for dragnets is what she will become in the midst of the sea.’ "‘For I myself have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘and she must become an object of plunder for the nations.
But this doesn't help your claim, in view of the rest of Ezekiel 26. For completeness, let me quote the whole chapter:
And it came about in the eleventh year, on the first [day] of the month, that the word of Jehovah occurred to me, saying: 2 "Son of man, for the reason that Tyre has said against Jerusalem, ‘Aha! She has been broken, the doors of the peoples! The trend will certainly be to me. I shall be filled -- she has been devastated,’ 3 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘Here I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring up against you many nations, just as the sea brings up its waves. 4 And they will certainly bring the walls of Tyre to ruin and tear down her towers, and I will scrape her dust away from her and make her a shining, bare surface of a crag. 5 A drying yard for dragnets is what she will become in the midst of the sea.’ "‘For I myself have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘and she must become an object of plunder for the nations. 6 And her dependent towns that are in the field -- by the sword they will be killed, and people will have to know that I am Jehovah.’ 7 "For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘Here I am bringing against Tyre Neb·u·chad·rez´zar the king of Babylon from the north, a king of kings, with horses and war chariots and cavalrymen and a congregation, even a multitudinous people. 8 Your dependent towns in the field he will kill even with the sword, and he must make against you a siege wall and throw up against you a siege rampart and raise up against you a large shield; 9 and the strike of his attack engine he will direct against your walls, and your towers he will pull down, with his swords. 10 Owing to the heaving mass of his horses their dust will cover you. Owing to the sound of cavalryman and wheel and war chariot your walls will rock, when he comes in through your gates, as in the cases of entering into a city opened by breaches. 11 With the hoofs of his horses he will trample down all your streets. Your people he will kill even with the sword, and to the earth your own pillars of strength will go down. 12 And they will certainly spoil your resources and plunder your sales goods, and tear down your walls, and your desirable houses they will pull down. And your stones and your woodwork and your dust they will place in the very midst of the water.’ 13 "‘And I will cause the turmoil of your singing to cease, and the very sound of your harps will be heard no more. 14 And I will make you a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what you will become. Never will you be rebuilt; for I myself, Jehovah, have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah. 15 "This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said to Tyre, ‘At the sound of your downfall, when the fatally wounded one groans, when there is a killing with slaughter in the midst of you, will not the islands rock? 16 And down from their thrones all the chieftains of the sea will certainly come and remove their sleeveless coats, and they will strip off their own embroidered garments. They will put on trembling spells. Upon the earth they will sit down, and they will certainly tremble every moment and stare in amazement at you. 17 And they must raise up over you a dirge and say to you: "‘"How you have perished, that used to be inhabited from the seas, O praised city, who became a strong one in the sea, she and those inhabiting her, those who gave their terror to all the inhabitants [of the earth]! 18 Now the islands will tremble in the day of your downfall. And the islands that are in the sea must be disturbed owing to your going out."’ 19 "For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘When I make you a devastated city, like the cities that are actually not inhabited, when [I] bring up over you the watery deep, and the vast waters will have covered you, 20 I will also bring you down with those going down into the pit to the people of long ago, and I will cause you to dwell in the lowest land, like places devastated for a long time, with those going down into the pit, in order that you may not be inhabited; and I will put decoration in the land of those alive. 21 "‘Sudden terrors are what I shall make you, and you will not be; and you will be sought for, but you will no more be found to time indefinite,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah."
A careful reading of the above passage shows that the conqueror of Tyre was supposed to be Nebuchadnezzar. It mentions no other conqueror. And whether one regards this passage as a prophecy, or as a dirge written shortly after Nebuchadnezzar's beginning of the siege, one thing is perfectly clear: Nebuchadnezzar did conquer the mainland part of Tyre, but the island part of Tyre continued on until 332 B.C. when Alexander the Great razed it. So scholar pretendus' statement that "Ezekiel 26:4,14 refers to that Tyre as an ancient island city" is a lie, directly contradicted by the very Scriptures he claims to revere.
Furthermore, Tyre has always been regarded as one city, not two, so unless a source is absolutely clear that it is limiting its words to the island or the mainland part of the city, it must be regarded as referring to both.
: which even today that section remains a place of archaeology interest and a spot for a little fishing. Hardly rebuilt as you claim.
stevenyc has given the lie to this claim as well. In his post 1678 he wrote:
Also, regarding Tyre, from the Daily Telegraphs reveiw of the current confilct: "Town Hall officials estimate that more than two thirds of Tyre's population of 270,000 have fled the city."
Here is a simple map of modern Tyre, taken from The New Unger's Bible Dictionary (Merrill F. Unger, 2005 printing, p. 1312):
And here is a satellite shot from Google Earth:
Clearly, Tyre exists on the mainland, the island and the causeway, and has some 270,000 inhabitants. They live in all those buildings so evident in the picture.
: Therefore, Jehovah's word came true exactly as foretold.
Nope. Ezekiel clearly states, without regard to who would raze which part of Tyre or when: "Never will you be rebuilt" (vs.14) and "you will not be; and you will be sought for, but you will no more be found to time indefinite" (vs.21). Because the modern city exists on both the old island and mainland locations, and Ezekiel's words do not state which part they refer to, and we know from history that both locations were razed, arguments about which part they refer to are purely speculative and meaningless.
: Perhaps you should take a trip there but I would postpone such a trip until current hostilities cease and yo can make a comparison of all of Tyre both ancient and modern'
Perhaps you should review the above photograph and the report that stevenyc presented, and see that Tyre exists today on both the island and the mainland.
: Further, one scholar of Tyre's history, Nina Jidejian in her book Tyre Through the Ages (1969) states:"The port has become a haven today for fishing boats and a place for spreading nets" exactly as Ezekiel foretold -Ezekiel 26:5, 14.
Irrelevant to the point that Tyre was to never be rebuilt.
: Further, Halley's Bible Handbook (2000) notes on page 422: "It never recovered its former glory and has for centuries been a 'bare rock' where fisherman 'spread fishnets' (26:4-5, 14), an amazing fulfilment of Ezekiel's prohecy that it "will never be rebuilt".
Most likely, Halley's authors have not bothered to update their Handbook with modern facts, such as the fact that Tyre today has a population of some 270,000.
But two can play at the game of quoting various references. For example,
Unger's Bible Dictionary (mentioned above, p. 1312) states:
At the time our Lord visited Tyre (Matt. 15:21; Mark 7:24) it was perhaps more populous than Jerusalem.
Since Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 B.C. and was rebuilt later, and Tyre was finally destroyed in 332 B.C. and later rebuilt, if Tyre's population at the time of Christ were about the same or even greater than that of Jerusalem, it is obvious that Tyre was indeed rebuilt. Claiming that either one was never rebuilt is completely stupid.
The New Encyclopedia Britannica (2005 edition, Micropedia, Vol. 12, pp. 91-2, under "Tyre") has some interesting things to say that completely support my arguments above:
Tyre, built on an island and the neighbouring mainland, was probably originally founded as a colony of Sidon . . .
In 585-573 it successfully withstood a prolonged siege by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II. Between 538 and 332 it was ruled by the Achaemenian kings of Persia. In this period it lost its hegemony in Phoenicia but continued to flourish. Probably the most famous episode in the history of Tyre was its resistance to the army of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, who took it after a seven-month siege in 332, using floating batteries and building a causeway to gain access to the island. After its capture, 10,000 of the inhabitants were put to death, and 30,000 were sold into slavery. Alexander's causeway, which was never removed, converted the island into a peninsula.
Tyre was subsequently under the influence of Ptolemaic Egypt and in 200 became part of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom; it finally came under Roman rule in 68 BC. It was often mentioned in the New Testament and was famous in Roman times for its silk products and for a purple dye extracted from snails of the genus Murex. By the 2nd century AD it had a sizable Christian community, and the Christian scholar Origen was buried there (c. 254). Under Muslim rule from 638 to 1124, Tyre grew prosperous as part of the kingdom of Jerusalem, a crusader state in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, who died on the Third Crusade, was buried in its cathdral (1190). Captured and destroyed by the Muslim Mamluks in 1291, the town never recovered its former importance.
So after Tyre was razed by Alexander in 332 B.C., it was rebuilt and regained a measure of prominence under Roman rule, equaling or even surpassing Jerusalem in population. It was continuously inhabited until 1291 A.D. when the "Muslim Mamluks" destroyed it. So it remained, more or less, until the early 20th century, when it rapidly gained in size and importance.
In view of the above, to claim that, after Alexander the Great razed Tyre, it was "never rebuilt", is beyond stupid -- it is a lie because it is deliberately at odds with the facts.
As for thirdwitness, you're inventing your usual strawman. In post 61, you said to stevenyc:
: And to answer Steve's question: Did Ezekiel say that Neb would destroy Tyre to the point of it never being rebuilt?
This is a ridiculous strawman, because my point was never about whether Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre to the point of never being rebuilt, but that Ezekiel 26:14, 21 directly states that Tyre would never be rebuilt. Who destroyed it is irrelevant, because the complete passage is ambiguous about just who was supposed to destroy what part of the city and when, especially in view of the subsequent history of the city.
In post 63 you said to stevenyc:
: Steve, I am afraid that your interpretation of Ezek 26 is obviously wrong according to Zech, Isaiah, and thus Jehovah.
This is a direct lie. Neither Zechariah nor Isaiah say anything that has any bearing on the question at hand: that Ezekiel directly states that, after some destruction involving Nebuchadnezzar (and being ambiguous enough to allow for a later destruction by what turned out to be Alexander the Great), Tyre would never be rebuilt.
In post 69 you posted some pictures of ruins of Tyre, and said:
: Tyre ruins. Hey look. Ezekiel and even Jehovah just might be right after all.
Where do you think those ruins are, you moron? They're right smack in the middle of the same Tyre that appears in the Google Earth photo above. Right smack in the middle of the thousands of modern buildings that its 270,000 inhabitants live in. Who do you think lives in the beach apartments shown in jayhawk1's post 1818? Ghosts?
In post 70 you repeated the same strawman you've been repeating for some time now:
: So just tell us. Are some of you arguing that Ezekiel's prophecy about Tyre failed and so likewise the prophecy about Egypt failed? Is that how you show us that the prophecy of the 40 year desolation of Egypt doesn't prove 607?
I will repeat myself: The fact that Ezekiel's prophecy about Tyre failed proves that Ezekiel's other prophecies cannot necessarily be taken literally, unless there is solid corroborating evidence. When solid evidence directly contradicts an apparently literal prophecy, one has two choices: abandon the prophecy altogether, or allow that it is not literal. Take your pick.
The fact that you've repeated your strawman several times, and been given correction several times, proves that you have no respect for the truth.
Now, in post 7742, Leolaia has given you a good deal of factual, historical information that proves why Ezekiel's prophecy about a 40-year destruction for Egypt cannot be taken literally. This is exactly the information I have had in mind all along.
Now, it is evident that in your claim that the 23rd chapter of Isaiah's statement "that Tyre must be forgotten seventy years" applies from 607 through 537 B.C., you are committing apostasy against what you claim is "the faithful and discreet slave" and its Governing Body. Your explanation completely differs from that given by them "under divine direction". This latest "light" is found in the so-called "Daniel" book, chapter 19, pp. 253-254, "Jehovah Profanes the Pride of Tyre":
"She Must Return to Her Hire"
21 Isaiah goes on to prophesy: "It must occur in that day that Tyre must be forgotten seventy years, the same as the days of one king." (Isaiah 23:15a) Following the destruction of the mainland city by the Babylonians, the island-city of Tyre will "be forgotten." True to the prophecy, for the duration of "one king" -- the Babylonian Empire -- the island-city of Tyre will not be an important financial power. Jehovah, through Jeremiah, includes Tyre among the nations that will be singled out to drink the wine of His rage. He says: "These nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years." (Jeremiah 25:8-17, 22, 27) True, the island-city of Tyre is not subject to Babylon for a full 70 years, since the Babylonian Empire falls in 539 B.C.E. Evidently, the 70 years represents the period of Babylonia’s greatest domination -- when the Babylonian royal dynasty boasts of having lifted its throne even above "the stars of God." (Isaiah 14:13) Different nations come under that domination at different times. But at the end of 70 years, that domination will crumble. What will then happen to Tyre?
22 Isaiah continues: "At the end of seventy years it will happen to Tyre as in the song of a prostitute: ‘Take a harp, go around the city, O forgotten prostitute. Do your best at playing on the strings; make your songs many, in order that you may be remembered.’ And it must occur at the end of seventy years that Jehovah will turn his attention to Tyre, and she must return to her hire and commit prostitution with all the kingdoms of the earth upon the surface of the ground." -- Isaiah 23:15b-17.
23 Following the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C.E., Phoenicia becomes a satrapy of the Medo-Persian Empire. The Persian monarch, Cyrus the Great, is a tolerant ruler. Under this new rulership, Tyre will resume her former activity and try hard to regain recognition as a world commercial center -- just as a prostitute who has been forgotten and has lost her clientele seeks to attract new clients by going around the city, playing her harp and singing her songs. Will Tyre succeed? Yes, Jehovah will grant her success. In time, the island-city will become so prosperous that toward the end of the sixth century B.C.E., the prophet Zechariah will say: "Tyre proceeded to build a rampart for herself, and to pile up silver like dust and gold like the mire of the streets." -- Zechariah 9:3.
So, according to this "faithful slave" who you obviously profess to worship, the 70 years during which Tyre was to be "forgotten" was actually the period of Babylon's greatest domination -- which certainly was not from Jerusalem's claimed destruction in 607 B.C, but which according to Watchtower chronology must have begun when Babylon became the "third world power" in Bible history after it conquered every other nation in Mesopotamia, which the Society dates to Nebuchadnezzar's accession in 625 B.C.
In other words, you are committing apostasy against "the faithful slave" by promoting a "divergent belief".
What does the Society say about promoting such divergent beliefs? Note the clear policy statement in the April 1, 1986 Watchtower, pp. 30-31:
Questions From Readers
O Why have Jehovah’s Witnesses disfellowshipped (excommunicated) for apostasy some who still profess belief in God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ?
Those who voice such an objection point out that many religious organizations claiming to be Christian allow dissident views. Even some clergymen disagree with basic teachings of their church, yet they remain in good standing. In nearly all the denominations of Christendom, there are modernists and fundamentalists who greatly disagree with one another as to the inspiration of the Scriptures.
However, such examples provide no grounds for our doing the same. Why not? Many of such denominations allow widely divergent views among the clergy and the laity because they feel they cannot be certain as to just what is Bible truth. They are like the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day who were unable to speak as persons having authority, which is how Jesus taught. (Matthew 7:29) Moreover, to the extent that religionists believe in interfaith, they are obligated not to take divergent beliefs too seriously.
But taking such a view of matters has no basis in the Scriptures. Jesus did not make common cause with any of the sects of Judaism. Jews of those sects professed to believe in the God of creation and in the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Law of Moses. Still, Jesus told his disciples to "watch out . . . for the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:11, 12; 23:15) Note also how strongly the apostle Paul stated matters: "Even if we or an angel out of heaven were to declare to you as good news something beyond what we declared to you as good news, let him be accursed." Paul then repeated that statement for emphasis. -- Galatians 1:8, 9.
Teaching dissident or divergent views is not compatible with true Christianity, as Paul makes clear at 1 Corinthians 1:10: "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." (New International Version) At Ephesians 4:3-6 he further stated that Christians should be "earnestly endeavoring to observe the oneness of the spirit in the uniting bond of peace. One body there is, and one spirit, even as you were called in the one hope to which you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all persons."
Was this unity to be achieved and maintained by each one’s independently searching the Scriptures, coming to his own conclusions, and then teaching these? Not at all! Through Jesus Christ, Jehovah God provided for this purpose "some as apostles, . . . some as evangelizers, some as shepherds and teachers . . . until we all attain to the oneness in the faith and in the accurate knowledge of the Son of God, to a full-grown man." Yes, with the help of such ministers, congregational unity -- oneness in teaching and activity -- could be and would be possible. -- Ephesians 4:11-13.
Obviously, a basis for approved fellowship with Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot rest merely on a belief in God, in the Bible, in Jesus Christ, and so forth. The Roman Catholic pope, as well as the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, professes such beliefs, yet their church memberships are exclusive of each other. Likewise, simply professing to have such beliefs would not authorize one to be known as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Approved association with Jehovah’s Witnesses requires accepting the entire range of the true teachings of the Bible, including those Scriptural beliefs that are unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses. . .
Do we have Scriptural precedent for taking such a strict position? Indeed we do! Paul wrote about some in his day: "Their word will spread like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of that number. These very men have deviated from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already occurred; and they are subverting the faith of some." (2 Timothy 2:17, 18; see also Matthew 18:6.) There is nothing to indicate that these men did not believe in God, in the Bible, in Jesus’ sacrifice. Yet, on this one basic point, what they were teaching as to the time of the resurrection, Paul rightly branded them as apostates, with whom faithful Christians would not fellowship.
Similarly, the apostle John termed as antichrists those who did not believe that Jesus had come in the flesh. They may well have believed in God, in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Jesus as God’s Son, and so on. But on this point, that Jesus had actually come in the flesh, they disagreed and thus were termed "antichrist." John goes on to say regarding those holding such variant views: "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, never receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. For he that says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works." -- 2 John 7, 10, 11.
Following such Scriptural patterns, if a Christian (who claims belief in God, the Bible, and Jesus) unrepentantly promotes false teachings, it may be necessary for him to be expelled from the congregation. (See Titus 3:10, 11.) Of course, if a person just has doubts or is uninformed on a point, qualified ministers will lovingly assist him. This accords with the counsel: "Continue showing mercy to some that have doubts; save them by snatching them out of the fire." (Jude 22, 23) Hence, the true Christian congregation cannot rightly be accused of being harshly dogmatic, but it does highly value and work toward the unity encouraged in God’s Word.
So what will you do now, thirdwitness? Will you repent of your apostasy by abandoning your ridiculous claims about "the 70 years of Tyre"? Or will you unrepentantly continue promoting your divergent beliefs?
AlanF
In reply to your more recent posts....I noticed that you break apart the oracle in Ezekiel 26, such that you claim that v. 7-12 refer to Nebuchadnezzar's siege (as Nebuchadnezzar is explicitly mentioned in v. 7) and then arbitrarily assign v. 13-14 to some later attacker or event, e.g. presumably Alexander the Great centuries later. Here again is something stipulated for no other reason than to avoid a contradiction with historical facts. There is no textual reason to assume a temporal break there, that a long passage of time is supposed to intervene between v. 12 and v. 13, or that the identity of the attacker has changed from Nebuchadnezzar to someone else. In fact, v. 13-14 resumes the same statement in v. 4 which leads to the mention of Nebuchadnezzar in v. 7, and the statement in v. 6 that "her daughters on the mainland will be put to the sword" is resumed in v. 8 which says that "he [i.e. Nebuchadnezzar] will put your daughters on the mainland to the sword". The reference to Tyre being "left as a naked rock," which you want to deny reference to Nebuchadnezzar, is paralleled by the references to Nebuchadnezzar "throwing your massive pillars to the ground," "razing your walls, shattering your luxurious homes, and throwing your stones, your timbers, your very dust, into the sea" (v. 12). This theme is resumed in ch. 27 which describes Tyre as shipwrecked such that "all will sink surrounded by the seas ... your cargo and all your crew have foundered with you" (v. 27, 34). And yet, in contrast to these expectations about Nebuchadnezzar destroying Tyre, he did not do these things. He did not raze Tyre and throw even its very dust into the ocean.
But rather than trying to understand Ezekiel on his own terms, you appeal to the Tyre oracle in Isaiah 23 as if Isaiah could clarify what Ezekiel meant and as if they (writing more than a century apart) were talking about the same thing. But the situation assumed in Isaiah is one of Assyrian -- not Babylonian -- hegemony. Thus Babylon is not the attacker of Tyre, for it already has been destroyed by Assyria; the prophet tells Tyre: "See the land of the Chaldeans, this was the people who no longer exist. Assyria assigned her to the wild beasts, they raised their siege towers, they stripped her citadels, making her a ruin" (23:13). This alludes back to the earlier oracles about the destruction of Babylon in ch. 13 and 21, which reflect the political situation in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC, particularly the devastations of Babylon by Sargon II in 710 BC and Sennacherib's more thorough destruction of Babylon in 703 BC (involving the Medes who were subject to Assyria as 2 Kings 17:6, 18:11 attests). Whereas Babylon is the agent of Yahweh in Ezekiel, Assyria is his agent in Isaiah (cf. especially ch. 7). The oracles against the nations in ch. 14-23 are dated to this time (cf. 14:28, dated to 715 BC) and reflect the political situation of that time, cf. Sargon II's pillaging of Philistia in ch. 14, the allusion to Tiglath-pileser III's capture of Damascus in ch. 17 and the fall of Samaria in 17:4-6, the capture of Ashdod by Sargon II in 711 BC in ch. 20, the defeat of the Edomites in the same year in ch. 21, and ch. 22 clearly pertains to the eve of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BC. These chapters thus depict the rise of Assyria as a world power. Chapter 23, which concerns Tyre, alludes to Assyria's prior destruction of Babylon in v. 13 and probably refers to the fall of Sidon and Tyre to Sennacherib in 701 BC. The political status of Tyre in Isaiah is quite different from that in Ezekiel; whereas Tarshish is only a trading partner in the latter, this city is depicted in Isaiah 23:14 as a colony of Tyre (referring to Tyre as the "stronghold" of Tarshish) and Cyprus is also under its influence in v. 12, just as Tyre has far-reaching political power in v. 8 ("Tyre, giver of crowns"). This was the situation when Phoenician power was at its height in the 8th century BC but the campaigns against Tyre by Sennacherib and especially by Esarhaddon in 677 BC ended this hegemony, such that Esarhaddon asserted his authority over Cyprus and other Phoenician colonies, built his own port city on the coast of Lebanon in place of the devastated Sidon and Tyre, and the Phoenicians subsequently lost their colony of Tarshish to the Phocaean Greeks in the 7th century BC. If one wants to find fulfillment of this prophecy, Tyre was indeed "forgotten" during most of the 7th century when Assyria ruled supreme and did not return to prominance until after the Assyrians were defeated by Babylon in the late 7th century and before Nebuchadnezzar began his siege in the 6th century. However, the prophecy in 23:17-18 claims that when Tyre returns to form "her profits and wages will be dedicated to Yahweh" which will benefit "those who live in the presence of Yahweh". Although this follows the defeat of Assyria (cf. 14:24-27, in which Yahweh has planned in advance the destruction of his agent, and 19:16-25 in which Assyria and Egypt turn to Yahweh), this wasn't what happened historically. The restoration of Tyre is followed in ch. 24 by an apocalyptic judgment of the kings of the earth and the eschaton in ch. 25-27 of a restored and pardoned Israel. A future threat by Babylon is not yet in view. Babylon, Tyre, and other cities were devastated many times over the years, and one should not assume that a devastation of a city mentioned by two different writers necessarily assume the same event.
Don't hold your breath waiting, Alan! His co-conspirator, scholar, demonstrated the same type of incongruous position.
Still, it'll be 'interesting' to see thirdwitless's response.
I note a tone of frustration in your comments. Is the heat of my long and skilled research getting to your tired and borrowed ideas on chronology. You have provided no evidence for your views just a repetition of the Jonsson nonsense and I have demolished most of your arguments, those that remain will be disposed off in the course of my posting on this board. Never fear, scholar is here to hold your hand and guide you in the path of understanding.
Unfortunately, the posting guidelines do not allow for an apt description of your childish arrogance. You have not demolished anything, and I yet to see one single person say that you have taught them anything at all.
