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Talk:Biblical prophecies/Archive2
Destruction of Egypt reference[edit]
First, reference [6] seems to have been taken down/deleted/moved etc. So can someone fix that?
It has come to my attention that reference [7] about Amasis II can not be verified, so any reference to it is invalid. I say this because the opening line on him states 'Most of our information about him is derived from Herodotus (2.161ff) and can only be imperfectly verified by monumental evidence.' In the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1959, Vol. 8, p. 62) it comments about Herodotus history of this period; 'His statements prove not entirely reliable when they can be checked by the scanty native evidence'. Is there any sturdy evidence or history records so as to justly categorize the prophecy as either failed or not? - 22:30, 29 August 2014
Nostradamus quote[edit]
According to http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/nostradamus_2.htm , the quote from the first paragraph is a hoax. If this is the case, it should be removed. If it's true, a reliable source would be useful.
city of tyre[edit]
In 586 BC (confirmed by secular sources as the 11th year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah), "Ezekiel" predicts the fall of mainland Tyre to the Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar. 5 The text further describes the siege against the island fortress of Tyre (a half mile off the coast of mainland Tyre) hundreds of years later. Ezekiel's prophecy describes how the future invaders would tear down the ruins of mainland Tyre and throw them into the sea. They would "scrape her dust from her and leave her as the top of a rock". 6 "They will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water." "I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets." 7
Secular history records that Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the great mainland city of Tyre about a year after Ezekiel's prophecy. The Encyclopedia Britannica says: "After a 13-year siege (585-573 BC) by Nebuchadnezzar II, Tyre made terms and acknowledged Babylonian suzerainty." 8 When Nebuchadnezzar broke through the city gates, he found it nearly empty. Most of the people had moved by ship to an island about a half mile off the coast and fortified a city there. The mainland city was destroyed in 573 BC (Ezekiel's first prediction), but the city of Tyre on the island remained a powerful city for several hundred years.
Secular history next records that "Alexander the Great" laid siege to the island fortress of Tyre in 332 BC. His army destroyed the remains of mainland Tyre and threw them into the Mediterranean Sea. As Alexander's army constructed a causeway to the island, they scraped even the dust from the mainland city, leaving only bare rock. Historian Phillip Myers in his history textbook, General History for Colleges and High Schools, writes, "Alexander the Great reduced Tyre to ruins in 332 BC. Tyre recovered in a measure from this blow, but never regained the place she had previously held in the world. The larger part of the site of the once great city is now as bare as the top of a rock -- a place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry — Unsigned, by: 198.232.223.248 / talk / contribs
Mistranslation: Ezekiel 30:12 doesn't say the Nile will dry up[edit]
The verse says "ונתתי יארים חרבה" - And I will make the rivers dry. It does not say anything about the Nile specifically.
Some (mis)translations do mention Nile, but KJV is not one of them. Most translations including JPS do not include the word Nile.
The word Ye'or does not necessarily mean Nile, it just means; river, stream, canal, channel, waterway, shaft, etc. (In the bible it often refers to the Nile, but that's not what the word itself means.) The Hebrew word for Nile is נִילוֹס. — Unsigned, by: Yaakovaryeh / talk / contribs
The prophecy against Tyre was fulfilled to the letter[edit]
“”Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause MANY NATIONS to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And THEY shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and it shall become a SPOIL to THE NATIONS. And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the Lord.
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| —Ezekiel 26:3-6 |
“”For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach. With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground.
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| —Ezekiel 26:7-11 |
“”And THEY shall make a SPOIL of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and THEY shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and THEY shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard. And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
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| —Ezekiel 26:12-14 |
In this Bible text, Yahweh foretold that Tyre would be attacked by “many nations”, including Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, and that, ultimately, it would be utterly destroyed, its rocks being thrown into the sea.
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In the 6th century BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II A little more than two century later (332 BCE), Alexander the Great Some argue that Ezekiel’s prophecy has failed because its fulfillment cannot be totally attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, a fact that seems to be in contradiction which Ezekiel 26:7-14, but they miss the following points:
Another argument used against this prophecy is the fact there is still a city where ancient Tyre used to be[3]. Yet, the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre destroyed by Nebucadnezzar and Alexander the Great was never rebuilt as suggested by Encyclopædia Britannica :
I haven't written on that topic yet but the prophecies of Daniel, especially Daniel 2 and 7, were also fulfilled with stupendous accuracy. Yet they were not just predicting a single event but rather a succesion of consecutive events spanning several thousands of years (altough beware that many interpretations of the prophecies of Daniel you may read are deliberately misleading to move the focus away from those whose evil rule during the dark ages was foretold). The Bible is really unique among all other religious books in its ability to predict the future. As matter of fact the God of the Bible tells us we can test him by His ability to predict the future.
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, king of Babylon, besieged Tyre for 13 years and conquered it but most of the inhabitants escaped to a nearby island. However, the prophecy that Tyre would be thrown into the sea was not yet fulfilled.
— Unsigned, by: Fpoof / talk / contribs
...Seriously?[edit]
Okay, I'm going to give you people the same response I give a flat-Earther whenever they talk about the Bible referring to the "four corners of the Earth":
Haven't you ever heard of idioms, figures of speech, or Hyperbole? The Biblical authors used those, just like you do in your daily life, or literally anyone and everyone else ever. How is God saying "Nobody will walk through Egypt" any different from a company coming up with a new product and saying to their rivals "nobody will buy your stuff anymore"? I won't deny that "symbolic" was a terrible way of phrasing it, but come on here, people. When Jesus said that we were to be "like doves," he didn't mean that we were to lay eggs, now did he?
Additionally, Nothing in the passage about Nebbuchanezzar attacking Tyre indicates that Tyre will be completely destroyed, nor does it indicate that it will stay that way forever. As you yourself have acknowledged here, Nebby was whacking the crap out of that place for over an entire decade before they surrendered. I personally find it hard to picture a city going through that sort of damage that wouldn't fit the description of that prophesy. When it says "the sounds of they harps shall no more be heard," it's probably referencing the simple fact that nobody would leisurely play music like that if their city was being torn apparat around them (Nero notwistanding). Now if it had instead said "the sounds of thy harps shall never be heard hence, then we would have a problem.
Also consider the fact that many another passage you might call out as being inaccurate may potentially have simply been an common idiom at the time. Like if a '90s kid says "we're gonna party so hard, we'll raise the roof!" this should not be taken to mean that a '90s kids' idea of a good time is modifying a given building's architecture.
Another example I like to give is Shakespeare. There is a scene in Hamlet where the titular character is breaking up with his sweetheart, and he tells her "get thee to a nunnery." Now if I handed you an unmodified version of the play's script that had no commentary or anything, you'd probably read right past that without it ever entering your mind that he meant anything other than that she should become a nun so as to protect herself from men. However, any shakspearean scholar will tell you that in the time and place that the play was written, "nunnery" was slang for "whorehouse". The Bible is saturated with cases like these.
Come to think of it, you guys talk a lot of talk about being so ready to change your beliefs as skeptics, and yet I've seen many an article with an item in the talk page that completely obliterates something in the main page, and yet the item has no refutations and the thing in the main page remains there.Skadooshbag (talk) 09:38, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
- Figures of speech may be so (where is TrumpWall?) but are not prophecies (beyond 'The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray' etc), - but 'I thought this was Rationalwiki' - drink. Anna Livia (talk) 19:51, 17 April 2020 (UTC)