(291)   Wed 21 Jun 95  9:01
By: Dan Ceppa
To: Mike Rooney
Re: D&D
St:
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@TID: WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12  92-0416
-> On 06-18-95  23:42, Mike Rooney got back to Preston Simpson

 PS>Pity, that. Looks like all of those prophets who were inspired by God
 PS>were really disobeying him and will be punished for it.

 MR> is. A prophet of God is NEVER wrong either. Account for that fact, eh?

Here, this should keep you busy for a while:


Originally posted by Larry Sites---

 THE MYTH OF PROPHECY FULFILLMENT

                          Farrell Till

   At The Skeptical Review, we consider articles like the foregoing one to
be an excellent source of materials detrimental to the biblical inerrancy
cause. They are incredibly superficial, naively simplistic, and
consistently illogical. We reprint them as often as we do in order to give
our readers a sampling of the best that fundamentalists have to offer in
defense of their belief that the Bible is "the inspired word of God."

   [Bobby Liddell description deleted-LGS]

   In Liddell's article, for example,  he parroted the old fundamentalist
claim that prophecy fulfillment confirms that the Bible is God's inspired
word, a claim that neither Liddell nor any other Bible fundamentalist can
ever prove. As quoted in "An Example of 'Prophecy Fulfillment,'" (TSR,
Spring 1993, p. 4), Liddell's comrade in arms, Wayne Jackson, has cited
three criteria of valid prophecy: (1) proper timing, (2) specific details,
and (3) exact fulfillment.  When all of these are applied to the examples
of prophecy fulfillment that Liddell cited in his article, they all fall
short of satisfying the criteria.

   Liddell referred to Daniel's prophecy of "kingdoms and peoples then
unknown and unable to be known to him or any other man by ordinary knowl-
edge."  Well, just what was this prophecy that has so fired Liddell's
enthusiasm?  According to the story, Daniel was called into the royal court
to interpret a dream in which Nebuchadnezzar had seen a "great image" whose
head was of fine gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly and thighs
of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
 In the dream, the king had also seen a stone that "was cut out without
hands," which struck the image and broke it into pieces.  The pieces became
like chaff and were carried away by the wind, but the stone that broke the
image into pieces grew into a great mountain and filled all the earth (Dan.
2:31-35).

   It sounds just like another typically obscure biblical vision, but not
to worry, because Daniel was on the scene to give us a divinely inspired
interpretation.  He explained that the image represented four kingdoms.
Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, but after the demise of the Babylonian
empire would arise an inferior kingdom, represented by the breasts and arms
of silver; then after that would appear a third kingdom symbolized by the
belly and thighs of brass; and finally would come a fourth kingdom of iron
that would be "partly strong and partly broken," as symbolized by the feet
that were part iron and part clay.  This fourth kingdom would break in
pieces and be divided (2:36-43).

   Daniel concluded his interpretation by prophesying that "in the days of
these kings [of the kingdoms arising from the fragmented kingdom of iron]
shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed:
and the kingdom  shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever" (v:44).
To
Bible fundamentalists, of course, this kingdom was the church, so they have
had to force an interpretation of Daniel's dream interpretation to make it
appear that an amazing prophecy fulfillment occurred in the birth of Chris-
tianity.

   Here is how fundamentalists have tried to mold history into fitting
Daniel's interpretation of the dream. The Babylonian Empire was the head of
gold (which I won't argue with, because Daniel made this much of his
interpretation quite clear); the Medo-Persian Empire was the breast and
arms of silver; the Grecian Empire under Alexander the Great was the belly
and thighs of brass; the Roman Empire was the legs of iron with the feet
part iron and part clay. "So, aha!" fundamentalists rhapsodize. "The
kingdom of God was established in the days of the Roman Empire, just as
Daniel had prophesied."

   Well, excuse me, but just where did Daniel say that the kingdom of God
would be established in the days of the Roman Empire?  He simply said that
it would be established in the days of "these kings" [of the fragmented
kingdom of iron].  Wayne Jackson's second criterion of "valid prophecy" is
specific details, so if Daniel was prophesying by the guidance of an
omniscient, omnipotent deity, why didn't he specifically say that after
Nebuchadnezzar would arise the Medo-Persian Empire, after which would come
the Grecian Empire under a ruler named Alexander the Great, after which
would arise the Roman Empire? Then he could have told us that "in the days
of the kings of the Roman Empire the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom
that will never be destroyed."  Armed with that kind of specificity, the
fundamentalists really would have had something to crow about, but, as it
is, they have nothing but speculation to go by in determining that these
were the specific kingdoms that Daniel meant.

   In reality, history has left Christian fundamentalists with too many em-
pires for Daniel's prophecy to fit the mold that they want to cast it in,
so they have had to restructure empires to fit their need. Actually, the
empires and kingdoms that existed between Nebuchadnezzar and the Roman
Empire were so unstable and factional that it is difficult to determine
when one ended and another began.  The Median Empire overlapped the
Neo-Babylonian Empire that Nebuchadnezzar II ruled, and they were both
absorbed by the conquests of Cyrus the Great, which gave rise to the
Achaemenid or Persian Empire.   The conquests of Alexander the Great,
however, absorbed the Achaemenid Empire and gave rise to a worldwide (in
terms of the then known world) Hellenistic Empire. So if the Median and
Achaemenid (Persian) Empires are considered separate entities, as actually
they were and (as we will see) Daniel apparently considered them, then the
Hellenistic Empire of Alexander the Great should have been the fourth or
iron kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream.  Fundamentalists can't have this,
however, because it doesn't make Daniel's interpretation fit the mold they
need, so they conveniently consolidate these two and call them the
"Medo-Persian Empire."  That way, the
Hellenistic Empire becomes the brass kingdom so that the Roman Empire can
be the iron kingdom. Then, presto, just like that, they have an amazing
prophecy fulfillment in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

   A flaw in this interpretation is the obvious fact that the writer of
Daniel considered the Median and Persian kingdoms to be separate empires,
because he had the Neo-Babylonian empire falling to "Darius the Mede"
(5:30-31). This is historically inaccurate (just one of many historical
inaccuracies in the book of Daniel), because reliable records of the time
indicate that Cyrus the Great captured Babylon and ended the Neo-Babylonian
kingdom. Nevertheless, the writer of Daniel told of a reign under "Darius
the Mede" that preceded the reign of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great
(6:28; 10:1).  So if the writer believed that the Neo-Babylonian Empire
fell to the Medes and then the Medes fell to the Persians, then the fourth
kingdom in Daniel's interpretation would have been Alexander's Hellenistic
empire.

   This is exactly how reputable Bible scholars interpret Daniel's
interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream.  Certain clues, which I will have
to discuss later in a separate article, indicate that the book was written
around the middle of the second century during the Maccabean wars
chronicled in the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees.  These wars
occurred after the disintegration of Alexander's Empire into four separate
kingdoms, so if the scholars are right in the dating of Daniel, this gives
reason to believe that the writer intended the Hellenistic Empire to be the
kingdom of iron, whose instability was symbolized in the dream by the feet
made partly of iron and partly of clay.

   In 323 B.C., Alexander the Great died in Babylon at the age of 33, only
seven years after he had conquered the Persian Empire.  Almost immediately,
his empire fragmented into separate political entities that were ruled by
Alexander's generals.  From 312 to 64 B.C., the Seleucids, a dynasty estab-
lished by the Macedonian general Seleucus, ruled a kingdom that extended
from India to the Mediterranean Sea with its capital in Antioch of Syria.
In opposition to Seleucid rule, the  Greco-Bactrian kingdom arose in the
far eastern sector of the old Hellenistic empire. The rule of the Ptolemies
arose in Egypt and other southwestern territories of the old empire. By the
third century B. C., nomadic Iranian tribes had begun to intrude on
territory in the Seleucid kingdom.  These intrusions began in the province
of Parthia under the leadership of a chieftain named Arsaces, and slowly
but surely new territories were gained from both Seleucia and Bactria, as
well as remnants of the old Median Empire, until a distinctive Parthian
Empire emerged under the leadership of king Mithradates.  Eventually, the
Parthian kingdom fell to Roman conquests from the west.

   Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, however, recognized
only two kingdoms between the head of gold (Babylon) and the legs and feet
of iron, but when recognition is given to the existence of the kingdoms
that arose from the fragmented Hellenistic Empire, we find that there were
at least six separate kingdoms (Persian, Hellenistic, Seleucid, Bactrian,
Ptolemaic and Parthian) between the Neo-Babylonian and the Roman Empires.
Obviously, Liddell's application of Daniel's interpretation conveniently
ignores a huge slice of ancient history so that he can have a "prophecy
fulfillment" that will fit a pet theory of his.

   Daniel's interpretation of the dream depicted the iron kingdom as one
that would "crush and shatter all these [prior kingdoms]" but would itself
become "a divided kingdom" (2:40-41) as symbolized by the feet that were
part clay and part iron.  In this sense, the Hellenistic Empire fits the
description of the iron kingdom much more exactly than does the Roman
Empire.  Alexander the Great absorbed into his empire all of the
territories in the NeoBabylonian, Median, and Achaemenid (Persian) Empires,
but the Roman Empire came nowhere close to doing so.  The Hellenistic
Empire reached as far east as China, but the Roman Empire, whose territory
was more western, fell far short of crushing and shattering all sectors of
its predecessor empires.  Furthermore, the rapidity with which Alexander's
empire fragmented into the kingdoms mentioned above fits the description of
the brittle feet of iron and clay much better than the Roman Empire whose
disintegration was much slower.

   This is exactly the way responsible scholars, who have no cherished
fundamentalist beliefs to defend, interpret the book of Daniel.  They see
it as the effort of a second-century author to instill optimism in
beleaguered Maccabean forces by making it appear that a sixth-century
prophet had predicted that their struggle would eventually bring about the
establishment of the long-awaited messianic kingdom.

   So this brings us to the factor of "proper timing" in Jackson's criteria
of valid prophecy.  Bible fundamentalists like to think that Daniel was
written in the sixth century B. C., shortly after the events that the book
closes with during the reign of Cyrus the Great, who had conquered Babylon
in 539 B. C.  Few reputable Bible scholars, however, would fix the date
that early, because the book exhibits signs of a much later authorship.
Scholars cite the writer's obvious confusion about political events of the
time that a contemporary author would have surely been familiar with, the
linguistic style (especially the section written in Aramaic), and other
factors too numerous to discuss in detail as evidence that the book was
written at the extreme end of the Old Testament period (no sooner than the
second century).  If this is so, then the author would have known about the
rise of empires that succeeded Nebuchadnezzar's.  Since, in fact, the book
even told of Babylon's absorption into the Persian Empire, there can be no
doubt that the writer had first-hand knowledge of the emergence of a second
kingdom after the demise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.  If scholarship is
right about a probable second-century B. C. authorship of the book, then
the writer would also have known about the rise and disintegration of
Alexander's Hellenistic kingdom.  If that is so, then certainly the writer
did not speak of "kingdoms and peoples then unknown and unable to be known
to him or any other man by ordinary knowledge" as Liddell alleged in his
editorial.  In fact, there would be a high degree of probability that the
writer was just another second-century believer in the imminent fulfillment
of longstanding messianic promises, and so he was trying to put words into
 a  sixth-century prophet's mouth to make it appear that the messianic
fulfillment that the writer expected to happen shortly had been foreseen by
the prophet.  There is certainly nothing in this likely scenario to get
excited about.

[other debunked "prophesies" deleted-LGS]

                 ********************************

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... Fundamentalism: Proof that anacephaly is not necessarily fatal.
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