by ithinkisee 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
You know the ones ... how Alexander the Great was supposedly predicted in advance .... how Daniel interpreted dreams and foretold Bablyons destruction ..... how Cyrus was named years in advance .... how JESUS fulfilled so many Hebrew Scriptures prophecies .....
How do you explain this? Conspiracy by the early church? Conspiracy by the 70 scholars of the LXX?
-ithinkisee
Inspiration.
{delete} Duplicate, I thought it didn't take...
1.Take everything that has ever been written.
2.Cut and paste whatever seems to fit.
3.Claim that it was prophetic. Let the flaming begin,
It's a God thing.
ithinkisee....The book of Daniel was written in the second century BC (long after Alexander the Great), and Deutero-Isaiah was written by a post-exilic author. Both are thus examples of vaticinium ex eventu "prophecy from the event", tho the reference to Cyrus in Deutero-Isaiah may not have been intended to be prophetic by itself since nowhere does the author take up the prophetic mantle of Isaiah (the work is anonymous). The literature of the intertestamental period was filled with works containing ex eventu prophecies, such as the Sybilline Oracles, the "Animal Apocalypse" and the "Apocalypse of Weeks" of 1 Enoch, the Testament of Moses, the Testament of Levi, etc. In all of these, the "prophecy" is amazingly accurate to the detail in its "review of history" and then suddenly becomes very vague and wildly inaccurate. It is at this point when the book was itself actually written and the author ventures his own prophecy. Daniel 11-12 is a good example of this. It relates in perfect historical detail what happened in the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms up to the career of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, including his installation of the heathen altar in the Temple, but then its accuracy suddenly ends (at 164-163 BC) and then relates wars that Antiochus never fought, a kind of death that Antiochus never experienced, and the rise of Michael and the resurrection of the dead that never occurred as well at that point in time. Another (more modern) example can be found in the Book of Mormon, which relates in accurate detail the Revolutionary War and the emergence of the United States, and the life and career of Joseph Smith, including his name and "discovery" of the plates, even one of the revelations he gave to his followers before he was to show them the plates, up to 1829, and then after that date, the book becomes especially vague, failing to foresee the rise of the LDS church and Smith's role in it (he is referred to only as a "translator" and "seer" in the book, not as "prophet" or founder of the "restored" church), his death, and whatever else that was to happen after 1829. Not coincidentally, Smith finished work on the book in 1829.
As for the passages in the OT that are applied to Jesus in the NT or by later Christians, most of these are taken out of context and/or make no prophetic claims on their own...in other cases, the NT narratives look like they have been composed on the basis of these texts -- not in the Hebrew original, but through the Greek versions. For a hilarious example of this literary process, to prove that a particular rooster is in fact the Messiah, see the following webpage:
Yeah, what Leolaia said!
No one can say it better than Leolaia good work thx
Thanks Leolaia ... that's exactly what I was looking for.
-ithinkisee
The Bible is truth. Absolute truth, and I think that we all know it to the depth of our souls. If I were the cosmic engineer, I would wire it into our DNA, RNA, and/or both. But the "prophecies"? Why tell someone the future? Especially when your advance men have built your "name" on what'sa commin'. If you're going to believe the Bible, you're going to believe it. The "ability" to fortell the future, whether thru guarded prose, codes, or well placed bullshit shouldn't be a factor. My sheep will hear my voice and follow.
"The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from being seen.
But that's just because he doesn't want to turn into some machine."
If you look for things outside of yourself to tell you what you know, you will never know.
"Let's all get up and dance to a song that was hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago, your mother should know.
Your mother should know."
