(717)   Tue 19 Nov 96 11:36                             
By: DAVID RICE
Re: Bogus Prophesies 01
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PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 001>


Prophecy fulfillment is a popular argument that bibliolaters rely
on in trying to prove the divine inspiration of the Bible. They
claim that the Bible is filled with recorded events that prophets
foretold years and even centuries before they happened. They argue
that there is no way to explain how these predictions could have
been so accurately made except to conclude that the Holy Spirit
enabled the prophets who uttered them to see into the future. In
prophecy fulfillment, then, they see evidence of God's direct
involvement in the writing of the Bible.

A very simple flaw in the prophecy-fulfillment argument is that
foreseeing the future doesn't necessarily prove divine guidance.
Psychics have existed in every generation, and some of them have
demonstrated amazing abilities to predict future events. Their
"powers," although mystifying to those who witness them, are not
usually considered divine in origin. If, then, Old Testament
prophets did on occasions foresee the future (a questionable
premise at best), perhaps they were merely the Nostradamuses and
Edgar Cayces of their day. Why would it necessarily follow that
they were divinely inspired? Even the Bible recognizes the
possibility that uninspired prophets can sometimes accurately
predict the future:

"If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he
gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes to pass,
of which he spoke to you, saying, `Let us go after other
gods'--which you have not known--`and let us serve them,' you shall
not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams,
for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh
your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 13:1-3,
NKJV with Yahweh substituted for "the LORD").

By the Bible's own testimony, then, natural psychic ability could
offer a perfectly sensible explanation for any example of prophecy
that bibliolaters might cite in support of the inerrancy doctrine,
but an unbiased contextual examination of the alleged prophecy will
very likely uncover an even more rational explanation. Usually,
Bible "prophecies" turn out to be prophecies only because
imaginative Bible writers arbitrarily declared them to be
prophecies. The same can be said of their alleged fulfillments: the
fulfillments are fulfillments only because obviously biased New
Testament writers arbitrarily declared them to be fulfillments.

NONPROPHECIES

Later, I will examine several examples of these "imaginary
prophecies," but a more logical place to begin examination of the
prophecy-fulfillment argument would be with what, for lack of a
better term, I will call "nonprophecies." These involve those cases
where, although alleged prophecies were quoted or referred to by
New Testament writers, Bible scholars have been unable to find the
original statement. An example is found in John 7:38 where Jesus
said, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his
heart will flow rivers of living water." If Jesus was right in
saying that scripture said this, just where was it said? No such
statement in the Old Testament scriptures has ever been located,
yet "the scripture" to Jesus would certainly have been the Old
Testament. In this statement, then, we apparently have a
fulfillment that was a fulfillment of--what? How could there be a
fulfillment of a prophecy that was never even made?

Jesus claimed another fulfillment of nonprophecy in Luke 24:46.
Speaking to his disciples on the night of his alleged resurrection,
he said, "Thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the
Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day." That the
resurrection of Christ on the third day was prophesied in the
scriptures was claimed also by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
15:3-4: "For I delivered to you first of all that which I also
received: that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the
third day according to the scriptures ." In two different places,
then, New Testament writers claimed that the resurrection of the
Messiah on the third  day had been predicted in the scriptures. Try
as they may, however, bibliolaters cannot produce an Old Testament
passage that made this alleged third-day prediction. It simply
doesn't exist.

Confronted with a challenge to produce such a scripture, Bill
Jackson, a Church-of-Christ preacher from Austin, Texas, said in my
debate with him that "the prophecy had to do with the event... and
the fleshed-out details need not have been given at the time" (
Jackson-Till Debate,  p. 20). He had to say something, of course,
but all the talk in the world about fleshed-out details doesn't
remove the fact that Jesus plainly said it had been written that he
would "rise again from the dead the third day" and that the Apostle
Paul agreed that such a prophecy had been written. The claim of a
third-day resurrection prediction, then, was just another example
of nonprophecy.

In another example, Matthew said that the purchase of the potter's
field with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas cast back to the
chief priests and elders fulfilled a prophecy made by Jeremiah:
"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the
prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the
price of him that was priced, whom certain of the children of
Israel did price; and they gave them for the potter's field as the
Lord appointed me" (27:9-10). The only problem is that Jeremiah
never wrote anything remotely similar to this, so how could this be
a fulfillment of "that which was spoken through Jeremiah the
prophet"? Some scholars have suggested that Matthew was quoting
"loosely" a statement that was actually written by Zechariah
(11:12-13) rather than Jeremiah. If this is true, then one can only
wonder why a divinely inspired writer, being guided by the
omniscient Holy Spirit, would have said Jeremiah instead of
Zechariah. To offer this as a solution to the problem posed by the
passage doesn't do much to instill confidence in the inerrancy
doctrine. Furthermore, if Matthew was indeed referring to Zechariah
11:12-13, then he certainly was "quoting loosely," so loosely, in
fact, that any semblance of a connection between the two passages
is barely recognizable: "Then I said to them, `If it is agreeable
to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.' So they weighed out
for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And Yahweh said to me, `Throw
it to the potter'--that princely price they set on me. So I took
the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of Yahweh
for the potter" (NKJV). Many versions (RSV, NRSV, JB, NAB, REB,
GNB, NWT, Moffatt, and Lamsa's translation from the Peshitta text)
translate this passage to read _treasury_ for _potter,_ and the
Septuagint (the Holy Spirit's favorite version) reads _furnace_ for
_potter._ All of these variations indicate that the meaning of the
original certainly wasn't clear enough to claim this as a prophecy
of the purchase of the potter's field with the money that Judas was
paid to betray Jesus. If it was, then fundamentalists owe us an
answer to the question posed earlier: Why did a divinely inspired
writer attribute to Jeremiah a prophecy that was made by Zechariah?
Of course, when bibliolaters talk about "wonderful prophecy
fulfillments," they don't have much to say about this one. The
reason why they don't should be obvious.

Matthew was quite adept at citing nonprophecies. When Joseph took
his family to Nazareth upon their return from Egypt, Matthew said
that he did so "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through
the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene"(2:23). Bible
scholars, however, have been unable to find any statement that any
prophet ever made that this could be a reference to. As a matter of
fact, the Old Testament prophets never referred to Nazareth,
period. The word _Nazareth,_ as well as _Nazarene,_ was never even
mentioned in the Old Testament. If this is so, how then could the
period of Jesus's residency in Nazareth have been prophesied by the
prophets?

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 002>

This matter also came up in my debate with Bill Jackson. He tried
to circumvent the problem by claiming that the prophecy was only
_spoken_ by the prophets and that nothing was said to imply that it
had ever been written ( Jackson-Till Debate, p. 20).This is at best
a far-fetched quibble that fails to take note of the fact that
Matthew routinely introduced written "prophecies" by saying that
they had been spoken  by so-and-so. He said, for example, that the
"voice heard in Ramah" had been "spoken through Jeremiah the
prophet" (2:17-18). Earlier he had said that the famous
virgin-birth prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 had been "spoken by the Lord
through the prophet" (1:22). He introduced Isaiah 9:1-2 by saying
that this had been "spoken through Isaiah the prophet"(4:14). He
introduced Isaiah 42:1-4 by saying that this had been "spoken
through Isaiah the prophet" (12:17). There are numerous other
examples in Matthew to show that his style was to introduce alleged
prophecies by saying that they had been _spoken_ by such and such a
prophet. If the prophecy-fulfillment argument offers such wonderful
proof of divine inspiration, then, we have every right to demand
that bibliolaters show us just where it was prophesied that Jesus
would be called a Nazarene as Matthew claimed in the passage cited
from his gospel account. How can there be proof of divine
inspiration in a prophecy statement that may never have been made?

In two oral debates, my opponents have quibbled that Old Testament
scriptures called Jesus a Nazarene when the Messiah was referred to
as a "branch" that would come out of Jesse (Is. 11:1; 53:2),
because the Hebrew word _netser_ (branch) is the word from which
the town of Nazareth derived its name.  Strong's Concordance ,
however, declares that the name Nazareth is of _uncertain
derivation,_ and  Eerdmans Bible Dictionary  says that the name was
derived perhaps from _naser,_ which means _watch_ or _neser,_ "a
sprout or descendant" (1987, p. 751). There is obviously scholastic
doubt over the linguistic origin of the name _Nazareth,_ and as
long as that is true, this "argument" is completely without merit.

IMAGINARY PROPHECIES

In "The Holy Bible--Inspired of God: a Look at the Evidence," Wayne
Jackson a well-known defender of Bible inerrancy in the Churches of
Christ listed three criteria that prophecy must comply with in
order to be "valid." The second of these was, "It must involve...
specific details--not vague generalities or remote possibilities" (
Christian Courier, May 1991, p. 2).To this, I give my unqualified
endorsement. Why anyone wanting to prove the inspiration of the
Bible by appeals to prophecy fulfillment would make an admission as
damaging as this one is hard to understand, because when it is
applied honestly and objectively to the prophecy fulfillments
alleged by New Testament writers, they all must be rejected as
"valid" prophecy fulfillments. With the exception of two or three
that will be analyzed later, none of them contain details specific
enough to pass Jackson's validity test.

In their desperation to give credibility to their new found
religion, New Testament writers often distorted Old Testament
scriptures or quoted them entirely out of context to shape them
into "prophecies" that seemed to fit contemporary people and events
they were writing about. In the book of Acts, Luke twice resorted
to this in his application of Psalm 16:8-10 in sermons allegedly
preached by Peter and Paul (2:27-28; 13:35-36):

I have set Yahweh always before me: Because He is at my right hand,
I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory
rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave
my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see
corruption.

The apostles presumably saw this passage as a prophecy of the
resurrection, because in both places they cited it as proof that
Jesus had risen from the dead. However, looking at it with the
honesty and objectivity previously mentioned, we have to ask,
"Where are the specific details  that Mr. Jackson spoke about?" We
see only vague generalities and not even remote possibility in the
statement. Who reading this statement in the original context would
have supposed that it was a prophecy of a resurrection that would
occur centuries later? The entire psalm was written in first person
and had obvious reference to matters that concerned the writer's
present condition. In the opening verse, he said of the god to whom
the psalm was addressed, "I have no good beyond thee." Does this
sound like something that the sinless Jesus would say? After the
statement that Peter and Paul allegedly quoted as proof of the
resurrection, the psalmist said, "Thou (Yahweh) will show me the
path of life" (v: 11). Are we to believe that Jesus, who was the
way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6) and not just that but was
God himself (Jn. 1:1), would need Yahweh to show him "the path of
life"?

The context of the statement certainly lacks the "specific details"
that it needs to convince rational readers that it was a prophecy
of Jesus's resurrection. So what proof do we have that it was what
Peter and Paul allegedly said it was? Well, after citing it, Peter
went on to say, "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of
the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb
is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing
that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his
body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit
on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the
resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades,
nor did His flesh see corruption." Allegedly, Paul made the same
application of the passage in Acts 13:35-36.

So there we have it. Luke said  that Peter and Paul said the
statement had to refer to Jesus on the grounds that David's body
had been buried and had seen corruption. Wow, with proof like that
what can I say? Well, I can say the same thing I would say or Mr.
Jack-son would say if either of us should be approached by a
representative of a non-Christian religion citing anything as
vaguely written as this as proof that his holy book contained the
prophecy of a resurrection. I would tell him I wanted to see
details so specific that they could not be misinterpreted--not just
vague generalities or remote possibilities--before I could accept
the statement as an undeniable prophecy.

For one thing, there is some question in scholarly circles about
what the psalmist meant by _corruption_: "Neither wilt thou suffer
thy holy one to see corruption." In Hebrew, the word here was
_shahath,_ which literally meant _pit_ or _grave,_ and was so
translated much more often than _corruption_ was used. The KJV
rendered the word _corruption_ only four times (Job 17:14; Ps.
16:10; 49:9; Jonah 2:6), and even then all good KJV reference
Bibles will have footnotes by the word _corruption_ to inform the
readers that it could mean _pit._ Many later versions have used
_pit_ in all of these places except Psalm 16:10, and there are
indications that _corruption_ is retained here only because the
Septuagint, which Peter and Paul quoted, had translated the verse
to convey the idea of decay or corruption.  The New American Bible
retains corruption but with this footnote:

To undergo corruption: some commentators render this: "to see the
grave," understanding this to mean that God will not let the
psalmist die in the present circumstances. But the Hebrew word
"shahath" means not only "the pit," "the grave," but also
"corruption." In the latter sense the ancient Greek version
rendered this passage, and it was thus quoted by St. Peter (Acts
2:25-32) and St. Paul (Acts 13:35-37), both of whom interpret this
as referring to Christ's resurrection.

This situation certainly shatters any illusion of "specific
details" that inerrantists might stubbornly claim for this famous
"resurrection prophecy." Specific details are simply not there.
Even what little claim for specificity can be made for the word
_corruption_ seems to rest entirely upon an arbitrary translation

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 003>

decision that was made by the Septuagint translators, and biblical
scholarship is keenly aware of faultiness in this ancient
translation.

Despite the influence of the Septuagint, some translations have
used _pit_ or equivalents in this passage rather than _corruption_.
The RSV rendered the verse like this: "For thou dost not give me up
to Sheol, or let thy godly one see the Pit." The NRSV translated it
the same except for using "faithful one" for "godly one" and
substituting modern equivalents for _thou_ and _thy._  The
Jerusalem Bible  also used "pit," so there are sound reasons for
believing that the psalmist meant no more than what the footnote in
the  New American Bible said: Yahweh would not let him die and go
into his grave in the present circumstances he was writing about.

As long as this possible meaning exists, Psalm 16:10 does not
contain details specific enough to be considered a "valid"
prophecy. Peter's and Paul's reasoning principle that they applied
to this verse is therefore flawed, because David certainly did "see
the pit (grave)" in the sense that he was buried. They both
acknowledged that in their sermons. As already noted, Peter said
that David "both died and was buried" (Acts 2:29). Paul said that
David "fell asleep and was laid with his fathers" (Acts 13:36). So
they both admitted that David "saw the pit." On what grounds, then,
can anyone argue that Psalm 16:10 is specific enough in language
and details to qualify as prophecy? To say, "Well, Peter and Paul
thought it was a prophecy, so that's good enough for me," would be
a flagrant resort to question begging. One cannot prove prophecy by
assuming prophecy. Besides that, we don't even know if Peter and
Paul really thought that Psalm 16:10 was a prophecy of the
resurrection. All we actually know is that Luke said  that they
said  it was a prophecy.

Before leaving this "prophecy" to languish in the infamy it
deserves, we should look at something else in the RSV and NRSV
accounts quoted above. They both used the present tense rather than
the future tense found in the Septuagint, KJV, ASV, and other
translations. They did so because the statement was written in the
present tense in He-brew.  Young's Literal Translation of the Holy
Bible  rendered the verse like this: "For Thou dost not leave my
soul to Sheol, Nor givest thy saintly one to see corruption." So
the tense of the original supports the alternate interpretation of
this verse suggested by the NAB footnote: the writer was merely
expressing confidence that God would not let him die in his present
circumstances.

To argue that Hebrew had no future tense doesn't solve anything as
far as this passage is concerned, because Hebrew writers relied on
past tense when they wanted to convey the certainty of the future.
Young explained this in the introduction to his literal translation:

The Hebrew writers often express the "certainty of a thing taking
place" by putting it in the "past" tense, though the actual
fulfillment may not take place for ages. This is easily understood
and appreciated when the language is used by God, as when he says,
in Gen. xv.18, "Unto thy seed I have given  this land"; and in
xvii.4, "I, lo, my covenant is  with thee, and thou hast become  a
father of a multitude of nations." ... Again in 2 Kings v.6, the
King of Syria, writing to the King of Israel, says: "Lo, I have
sent unto thee Naaman, my servant, and thou hast recovered him
from leprosy" (original emphasis).

This peculiarity of the Hebrew language should drive the final nail
into the coffin of this marvelous resurrection prophecy that Peter
and Paul seemed so excited about. If the certainty of the Messiah's
resurrection at some time in the future had been the clear
intention of the psalmist, he would surely have said, "For Thou
hast not left my soul to Sheol; Neither hast Thou suffered thy holy
one to see corruption (the pit)." The fact that he didn't state it
this way, along with all the other problems noted in this passage,
is sufficient grounds to reject the claim that it was a prophecy of
Jesus's resurrection.

Imaginary prophecy fulfillments like this one abound in the New
Testament. In Matthew 13:35, for example, we are told that Jesus
taught his disciples in parables in order to fulfill a prophecy
that had said, "I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter
things hid-den from the foundation of the world." Without this
statement from Matthew, however, no one reading the original
passage in Psalm 78:2 would ever think that it was intended to be a
prophecy: "Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears
to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will
utter dark sayings of old, things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us." The psalmist then proceeded to
give a running, seventy-verse account of Hebrew history, beginning
with the covenant made with Jacob and ending with the selection of
David to be king. There is nothing in the context to suggest that
the writer thought he was prophesying. The last part of the
statement in question even differed substantially from the way
Matthew quoted it. The psalmist pro-posed to utter sayings that had
been "heard and known" that "our ancestors have told us," but in
Matthew's application of the verse, Jesus had presumably uttered
"things hidden from the foundation of the world," an appreciable
variation to say the least. The important thing, however, is that
the psalmist obviously intended his remarks to have an immediate
application to a contemporary audience and situation. His parable
statement, then, became a "prophecy" only because Matthew
capriciously made it a prophecy.

The same is true of the greater part of the prophecy "fulfillments"
boasted of in the New Testament. A careful study of the original
contexts will cast serious doubts on the efforts of the New
Testament writers to construe them as prophecies. In Matthew 2:18,
for example, we are told that Herod's decree to kill all male
children under two in and around Bethlehem fulfilled a prophecy of
Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be
comforted, Because they are no more." If, however, one reads this
statement in its original context in Jeremiah 31 and the two
preceding chapters, he will see that the passage was addressing the
problem of Jewish dispersion caused by the Babylonian captivity.
Time and time again, Jeremiah promised that the Jews would be
recalled from captivity to reclaim their land. Finally, in the
verse quoted by Matthew, he said, "Thus says Yahweh: `A voice was
heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for
her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because
they are no more'" (31:15). That Jeremiah intended this statement
to apply to the dispersion contemporary to his times is evident
from the verses immediately following, where he promised a return
of those who had been scattered: "Thus says Yahweh: `Refrain your
voice from weeping, And your eyes from tears; For your work shall
be rewarded, says Yahweh, And they [Rachel's children] shall come
back from the land of the enemy. There is hope in your future, says
Yahweh, that your children shall come back to their own border"
(vv:16-17). If verse 15 (the weeping verse) was indeed a prophecy
of Herod's massacre, why would the rest of the passage, which
promised the re-turn of Rachel's children, not also be prophetic?
Indeed, it would have to be, wouldn't it? Yet there is no claim in
Matthew's gospel account that the children slaughtered under
Herod's edict were ever brought back to their border, which would
have necessitated a restoration to life. Hence, in this case,
Rachel's "work" was never "rewarded," and these children of hers
never "came back." Aside from this, _children_ was obviously being
used by Jeremiah in a figurative sense to mean the descendants of
Rachel, adults as well as children, and not to designate literal
children only, as would have to be the case if events in Matthew 2
are to be interpreted as fulfillment of a "prophecy." The
conclusion, then, is inescapable: Jeremiah 31:15 was a prophecy of
Herod's massacre only because Matthew distorted it into one.

Aside from this problem with Matthew's claim of prophecy

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 004>

fulfillment in Herod's massacre of the innocents, we have good
reasons to suspect that no such event ever even happened. None of
the other gospel writers mentioned it nor did any secular historian
con-temporary to the times. Except for Matthew's reference to it,
history is strangely silent about this exceptionally barbaric act,
and in some cases the silence is significant enough to cast serious
doubt on Matthew's claim that it happened. The Jewish historian
Josephus chronicled the reign of Herod in Book 18 of  Antiquities
of the Jews.  In doing so, he made no apparent attempt to whitewash
Herod's character. He related, for example, Herod's execution of
John the Baptist, an event related by three of the gospel writers,
but he said nothing about the massacre of the children at
Bethlehem, which would have undoubtedly been the most heinous crime
that Herod committed. If the atrocity actually happened, as Matthew
claimed, for a historian of the era to omit it in detailing the
life of the political ruler who ordered it would be comparable to a
modern historian writing about Adolph Hitler but omitting any
reference to the massacre of the Jews that happened under his
dictatorship.

To say that history is silent about Herod's massacre of the
innocents is not to say that the story is at all unusual. Parallel
versions of it are so common in the folklore of ancient societies
that mythologists have even assigned a name to the story and call
it the dangerous-child myth. Space won't allow a review of all
these myths, but the Hindu version is worth looking at, because it
is strikingly parallel to Matthew's story. According to Hindu
literature, Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu, was
born to the virgin Devaki in fulfillment of prophecy and was
visited by wise men who had been guided to him by a star. Angels
also announced the birth to herdsmen in the nearby countryside.
When King Kansa heard about the miraculous birth of this child, he
sent men to "kill all the infants in the neighboring places," but a
"heavenly voice" whispered to the foster father of Krishna (who,
incidentally, was a carpenter) and warned him to take the child and
flee across the Jumna river. (In this Hindu legend, we can
recognize many parallels to the infancy of Jesus other than the
dangerous-child element.) In  Bible Myths and Their Parallels in
Other Religions,  author T. W. Doane cited a work by Thomas
Maurice,  Indian Antiquities , vol. 1, pp. 112-113, which described
an "immense sculpture" in a cave-temple at Elephanta that depicts
the Indian children being slaughtered while men and women
apparently representing their parents are standing by pleading for
the children (p. 167).

A study of pagan mythology would establish similar parallels in the
stories of Zoroaster (Persian), Perseus and Bacchus (Greek), Horus
(Egyptian), Romulus and Remus (Roman), Gautama (the founder of
Buddhism), and many others, because various pieces of the
dangerous-child myth can be found in the stories of all these pagan
gods and prophets. All of these myths antedate, usually by many
centuries, Matthew's account of the massacre of the children at
Bethlehem. Krishna, for example, was a Hindu savior who allegedly
lived in the sixth century B. C., so when a study of ancient world
literature shows that an unusual event like the slaughter of the
innocents seemed to have happened everywhere , reasonable people
will realize that it probably happened nowhere  or, at best, that
it happened only once and was subsequently plagiarized. Since the
story occurs many times before Matthew's version of it, we can only
conclude that no such event happened in Bethlehem as Matthew--and
only Matthew--claimed. Just like that, then, fundamentalists who
put so much stock in prophecy-fulfillment find one of their
"fulfillments" vaporizing right before their eyes.

Matthew also saw prophecy fulfillment in the birth of Jesus at
Bethlehem. When the wise men inquired about the birth of the king
of the Jews, Herod called the chief priests and scribes together
and asked where the Christ would be born:

So they said unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is
written by the prophet: `But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah; For out of you shall
come a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel'" (2:5-6).

The place where this was written was Micah 5:2, which we should
look at to get a sense of how New Testament writers sometimes
distorted Old Testament scriptures to suit their needs:

"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the
thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One
to be Ruler in Israel."

As we will soon notice, the differences are important enough to
show that Matthew tampered with the text to make it fit the
situation he was applying it to.

For the moment, let's notice that Matthew's application of the
statement was typical of his writing style. No contemporary event
seemed too insignificant for him to see prophecy fulfillment in it.
This fact doesn't seem to faze Bible fundamentalists. If Matthew
said it, that's good enough for them. What they seem completely
unable to understand, however, is that just because this is good
enough for them doesn't mean that it's good enough for people who
use logic to determine what should or should not be believed.
Matthew, for example, saw fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 in the flight
into and return from Egypt of Joseph's family, (2:15). And what
does Hosea 11:1 say? "When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
and called my son out of Egypt." The context of this statement
shows very clearly that Hosea intended this statement as a
reference to the Israelite exodus from Egypt. Bibliolaters can talk
from now until doom's-day about the "double intention" of some
prophecies, and the truth will still remain: if Matthew had not
imaginatively applied this statement to Jesus, no one would have
thought it referred to anything but the Israelite exodus.
Matthewstretched and distorted Old Testament scriptures in this
way, yet bibliolaters expect us to swoon over his claim that the
birth of Jesus in Bethlehem fulfilled Micah 5:2.

The "Bethlehem" in Micah 5:2, rather than being a town, was very
likely intended as a reference to the head of a family clan. What
many people who stand in awe of this allegedprophecy fulfillment
don't know is that a person named Bethlehem was an Old Testament
character descended from Caleb through Hur, the firstborn son of
Caleb's second wife, Ephrathah (I Chron. 2:18; 2:50-52; 4:4).
Young's Analytical Concordance , p. 92, identifies Bethlehem as
this person in addition to its having been the name of two
villages, one in Zebulun and the other in Judea.

An examination of the Micah 5:2 "prophecy" in context indicates
that it was indeed a reference to the clan rather than the town:
"But you, Bethlehem _Ephrathah,_ though you are little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One
to be Ruler in Israel." The fact that the Bethlehem in this verse
was described as "little among the thousands  of Judah" casts
serious doubt on Matthew's application of the statement. In a
region as small as Judah, one could hardly speak of a town as one
of "thousands," yet in terms of a Judean clan descended from
Bethlehem of Ephrathah, it would have been an appropriate
description for an obscure family group that hadn't particularly
distinguished itself in the nation's history. The NIV translates
that part of the verse like this: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans  of Judah...." Similar
renditions are made by the RSV, NRSV, NAS, NAB, the Jerusalem
Bible, and other translations, all agreeing that Micah referred to
a family clan rather than a town.

Even more damaging to Matthew's application of the verse is the
Septuagint translation, the version that Matthew and other New
Testament writers most often relied on when quoting OT "prophecies":

And thou, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah , art few in number to be
reckoned among the thousands of Judah: yet out of thee shall one
come forth to me, to be a ruler of Israel (Brenton Translation).

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
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Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 005>

In his quest for prophecy fulfillments, Matthew most often quoted
the Septuagint version of the alleged prophecy, but in this case,
he obviously didn't. "Bethlehem, house of Ephratha came out
"Bethlehem, land of Judah." The word house was often used in Hebrew
to signify a family or a clan as in "the house of Judah" or "the
house of David." It was never used in the sense of "land" as
Matthew applied it here. It would also be rather strange to call an
insignificant village a "prince of Judah," as Matthew did, yet not
at all inappropriate to refer to the head of an undistinguished
clan descended from Caleb as a prince. Notice also that the
Septuagint described this Bethlehem, "house of Ephratha" as
something that was "few in number," another indication that a small
clan was intended rather than a _single_ town. So why in this
instance did Matthew deviate from his habit of quoting the
Septuagint and make the textual changes that are evident in his
rendition of this verse? The fact that he did raises the distinct
possibility that Matthew intentionally distorted the original
statement to make it better suit his purpose of wanting it to
appear to be a reference to the town of Bethlehem rather than a
family clan. It is on "evidence" just as flimsy as this that
bibliolat-ers make their outrageous claim of marvelous prophecy
fulfillments in the life of Jesus.

In my debate with Bill Jackson, he cited the birth of Jesus in
Behlehem as an exam-ple of prophecy fulfillment. After I had
pointed out to him many of these same problems, he said, "Till may
not like it or see it (the prophecy fulfillment alleged), but
Matthew did and the chief priests and scribes of Judaism could see
it" ( Jackson-Till Debate,  p. 20)! Such a response as this is
characteristic of inerrantists. They want to assume everything.
Just because Matthew "said" that the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem
fulfilled Micah 5:2, they assume that it has to be true, that
Matthew could not have been mistaken. Just because Matthew said
that the chief priests and scribes said  that Bethlehem of Judea
would be the birthplace of the Messiah, inerrantists assume that
they really did say this. They discount completely the possibility
that Herod never made any such inquiry of the chief priests, that
Matthew just made it up in order to give his story more
credibility. What kind of objectivity is that, especially in the
light of the evidence I have cited to show that Matthew often
distorted OT scriptures to make them fit his needs?

In the New Testament, such distortion was commonplace in the
frantic quest for prophecy fulfillment. In a long list of
complaints, a psalmist lamenting treatment accorded him by his
enemies said that when he was thirsty they gave him vinegar to
drink (Psalm 69:21), and centuries later the writer of John's
Gospel would have us believe that Jesus could not die on the cross
until this "prophecy" was fulfilled: "... Jesus, knowing that all
things are now finished, that the scripture might be accomplished,
saith, I thirst" (Jn. 19:28). In response, he was given vinegar
from a sponge; then he said, "It is finished," bowed his head, and
died.

Biblical scholars have found no Old Testament references to anyone
who was given vinegar to quench his thirst except in the passage
above (Psalm 69), so it is considered the scripture that Jesus
"fulfilled." To say the least, however, the problems in accepting
the event as fulfillment of a prophecy are enormous. For one thing,
a contextual examination of the alleged prophecy indicates that the
psalmist was writing about his own personal misery, that he  had
sunk deep in mire (v:2), that he was weary of crying (v:3), that
he  was hated by enemies more numerous than the hairs of his head
(v:4), that he had borne reproach and shame (v:7), etc., etc., etc.
Furthermore, the plaint of this distressed psalmist included also
(in the same verse that mentioned the vinegar) a reference to gall
that he was given for meat when he was hungry. So if it was
necessary for Jesus to be given vinegar on the cross to fulfill
this scripture, why did he not have to be given gall too? By what
logic is half of the verse prophecy and the other half not?

An even greater problem concerns the character of this psalmist. If
he was in any way intended to be a Christ figure, how do we explain
the difference in the attitude he displayed toward his enemies and
the one that Jesus displayed to his? Everyone knows the famous
spirit of forgiveness that Jesus demonstrated before and during his
crucifixion, yet this "Christ-figure" psalmist was quite the
opposite. He asked God to blind his enemies (v:23), to make their
habitation desolate (v:25), to add iniquity to their iniquity
(v:27), and to blot them out of the book of life (v:28). It seems
strange indeed that God would have chosen a person as spiteful and
vengeful as this man to serve as a prophetic figure of the
forgiving Jesus.

This same psalm provides other examples of the extremes that some
New Testament writers resorted to in trying to make prophecies of
simple statements that were never intended as prophecies. The
disciples of Jesus saw his expulsion of money changers from the
temple (Jn. 2:13-17) as fulfillment of verse 9, "Zeal of your house
has eaten me up," and the Apostle Paul considered Jesus's desire to
please not himself fulfillment of the last part of the same verse,
"The reproaches of them that reproached you are fallen upon me"
(Romans 15:3). Thus, an act of violence and a spirit of
acquiescence were divergently considered fulfillments of a single
verse of "prophecy." The only comment that this deserves is that
these prophetic fulfillments existed only in the arbitrary and
capricious opinions of the "inspired" New Testament writers who
made the original statements prophecies in the first place.

As noted earlier, this remarkably prophetic psalmist, in his
distress, entreated God to punish his enemies with various
afflictions. "Let their habitation be desolate; let none dwell in
their tents," was one of his vindictive requests (v:25). When the
apostles assembled in Jerusalem to select a successor to Judas,
Peter referred to this same verse as having been fulfilled when the
field that Judas had purchased with "the reward of his iniquity"
was left cursed and abandoned: "Let his habitation be made
desolate, and let no man dwell therein" (Acts 1:18-20). Suddenly, a
statement that the psalmist had made in reference to his "enemies"
in general, all  of them (plural), was made to appear as if he had
referred to only one person. "_Their_ habitation" became "_his_
habitation," and the adverb _therein_ was substituted for _tents_
as a convenient reference back to _habitation_. With that kind of
license to change scriptures to fit the situation, just about
anyone could make any statement into a prophecy. Where, for
example, this same psalmist said, "I am become a stranger to my
brethren, and an alien to my mother's children" (v:8), we could
make this a prophecy of Jesus's rejection by his own brothers as
recorded in John 7:3-5. "I am weary with my crying" (v:3) was
fulfilled (we could say) when Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus
(Jn. 11:35), and, of course, when the Apostle Peter struck Ananias
and Sapphira dead (Acts 5:1-10), that fulfilled verse 28: "Let them
be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written with the
righteous." These applications would be no more far-fetched than
those that "inspired" writers made of other verses in this psalm.

Most other so-called prophecy fulfillments of the New Testament
cannot survive contextual analysis any better than those just
noted. Upon examination, they show flaws so obvious that only the
very credulous can accept the tenuous claims that they are
fulfillments of prophecy, yet some of them are widely considered
remarkable examples of divine foresight. Possibly the best example
of these is Matthew 1:23 where it was claimed that an angel's
announcement to Joseph that his betrothed wife Mary would give
birth to a child conceived by the Holy Spirit was done to fulfill a
prophecy spoken by Isaiah: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child,
and bear a Son, and they shall call his name Immanuel." In the
original context, however, Isaiah made this statement as a sign to

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 006>

Ahaz, king of Judah, that an alliance recently formed against him
by Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the king of Israel, would
not succeed in defeating him. The Lord (Yahweh), as he was prone to
do in those days, had sent Isaiah to reassure Ahaz that the
alliance would not prevail. Isaiah begged Ahaz to ask for a sign
that his prophecy was true. Finally, Isaiah said to him, "Hear now,
O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but
will you weary my God also? Therefore Yahweh Himself will give you
a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and
shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:13-14). Hence, the context
clearly shows that this so-called prophecy was made not to foretell
the birth of Jesus some 700 years later but the birth of a child to
_that_ time and _that_ situation. How could a birth that would
happen 700 years later, after Ahaz was dead and the battles had
long since been fought, have been a sign to him that the
Syrian-Israelite alliance would fail? The premise is too absurd
even to contemplate.

THE DOUBLE-APPLICATION DODGE

To deal with contextual problems like the one in Isaiah's
virgin-birth prophecy, bibliolaters have invented the
double-application doctrine. "Yes, the prophecy in Isaiah did refer
primarily to an immediate situation," they admit, "but it contained
also, as did many other prophecies, a double-entendre that, in this
case, makes it applicable to the birth of Jesus too." Contextual
evidence, of course, necessitates their admission that prophecies
such as this one were indeed intended for the times in which they
were made, but if inerrantists are going to claim a
"double-application" of Isaiah 7:14, they have a responsibility to
do more than just claim. They must also prove. If Isaiah really had
a double-meaning in mind, then who was the virgin of that
generation who gave birth to a son? That is a legitimate question,
because if Isaiah meant virgin in the strictest sense with
reference to a woman who would give birth 700 years later, then he
had to mean virgin in the strictest sense for the woman of his time
who would bear a son. If not, why not?

The truth is that evidence to prove a double-application theory
isn't so easy to come by. In this case, we have nothing--absolutely
nothing--but Matthew's unsubstantiated word that the birth of Jesus
fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy. Isaiah said nothing in the context of
the original passage to imply a double intention, and none of the
other gospel writers in recording the circumstances of Jesus's
birth in any way related the event to Isaiah's prophecy. This
latter fact seems particularly significant in the case of Luke
whose gospel account included many more details about both the
annunciation of the birth and the actual event itself than did any
of the others. Mark and John, in fact, were completely silent about
the birth. Doesn't it seem strange, then, that this remarkable
"prophecy fulfillment" would have been treated with silence by
three of the four "inspired" writers who recorded the life of
Jesus? Only Matthew mentioned it, and that is the sum total of the
proof we have that Jesus's birth fulfilled Isaiah's "prophecy."

MATTHEW'S CREDIBILITY

"Well, isn't it enough that Matthew identified the fulfillment?"
bibliolaters will demand. "How many times does God have to say a
thing before we can believe it?" Thereby, they simplistically
overlook an issue that is central to the controversy. That issue is
not whether Matthew declared Jesus's birth a fulfillment of the
prophecy (obviously he did) but whether in so doing God was
speaking through him. There are good reasons for doubting that he
was.

First of all, Matthew was notorious for seeing prophecy fulfillment
in just about everything, even the most trivial events. To return
to an example already mentioned, let's notice again that he even
saw prophecy fulfillment in the flight of Joseph and Mary into
Egypt to save their child from Herod's edict. When they returned to
Israel, this fulfilled, so Matthew claimed, what the Lord had
spoken through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called My Son" (2:15).
This "call out of Egypt" refers to Hosea 11:1, where it was said,
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My
son." As I said, the original statement was obviously a reference
to the Hebrew exodus from Egypt and therefore became a prophecy
pertaining to Jesus only in Matthew's wild imagination. It is about
as convincing as Matthew's claim that Joseph took his family to
Nazareth to fulfill the prophecies that said Jesus would be called
a Nazarene. Apparently, it didn't take much for Matthew to see
prophetic connection.

Matthew's credibility is also impeached by major discrepancies
between his gospel account and the three others:

Matthew said that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, who died in
4 B. C. (2:1). Luke said that Jesus was born during the Syrian
governorship of Quirinius, who was not even appointed to the
position until 6 A. D. (2:2).

Matthew indicated that the centurion went in person to ask Jesus to
heal his servant who was near death (8:5-13). Luke said that the
centurion stayed at home and sent elders of the Jews to ask Jesus
to heal the servant (7:2-10).

Matthew said that Jairus reported his daughter dead when asking
Jesus to go heal her (9:18-25). Both Mark (5:23) and Luke (8:42)
said that she was still alive but dying.

Matthew said that Jesus healed two blind men as he was going out of
Jerico (20:29). Both Mark (10:46) and Luke (18:35) indicated there
was only one man who was healed, and Luke said that it was done
when Jesus "drew nigh unto Jerico."

Matthew said that Jesus, in sending his disciples out to preach,
told them to take no necessities with them, not even a staff
(10:10). Mark, however, said that Jesus allowed them to take staffs
(6:8).

Matthew said that the women present at Jesus's crucifixion beheld
him "from afar" (27:55-56). John disagreed in some particulars with
the identities of these women and said that they stood "by the
cross of Jesus" (19:25).

Matthew disagreed with all the other writers in many details
concerning the resurrection: who exactly went to the tomb, the time
that they went, what they found upon their arrival, when and where
Jesus was first seen after his revivification, and a host of other
conflicting details.

This widespread disagreement among the gospel writers in effect
discredits them all, but the only matter we need be concerned with
at this point is that the discrepancies most assuredly give us
reason to question Matthew's reliability as a chronicler.
Someone--or possibly even all four of them--was wrong in the way
the gospel story was told, and as far as we know, without any
reliable evidence to exonerate him, it could have been Matthew as
easily as any of the others. How then can we be sure that Matthew
was right in saying that the birth of Jesus fulfilled Isaiah's
famous Immanuel prophecy? All we have is the word of an imaginative
zealot who at best had a questionable knowledge of Old Testament
scriptures. Even the law of Moses, as brutal and demanding as it
was at times, required agreement between at least two witnesses
before prosecutable offenses could be established (Deut. 17:6), and
in concluding his second epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle
Paul implied that the tradition should be applied to settle
internal problems in the church (13:1). With reference to the
fulfillment of Isaiah's virgin-birth "prophecy," however, we don't
even have the agreement of two witnesses. We have only Matthew's
unconfirmed word, and we don't even know if he was really the one
who wrote the gospel story that bears his name. This is hardly
compelling evidence.

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<Part 007>

Even if we concede the personal honesty and integrity of Matthew,
we would still have to reject his testimony in the matter of the
virgin birth, because it is at best hearsay. The only person who
could have possibly known that Jesus was born of a virgin would
have been Mary herself, but we have no personal testimony from her.
She wrote no books--at least not any that Christians consider
"canonical"--and left no affidavits, so we have exactly nothing by
way of evidence from the only person who was in a position really
to know whether she was a virgin at the time of Jesus's birth. By
all recognized rules of evidence, then, Matthew's testimony can
carry no logical weight because of its hearsay nature.

PROPHETIC CHICANERY

More damaging than all of these holes in Matthew's claim, however,
is clear textual evidence that Isaiah did not consider his
statement in 7:14 to be a prophecy of some distant event. As noted
earlier, so that Ahaz would have a sign that the Syrian-Israelite
alliance would fail, Isaiah predicted the birth of a child who
would be named Immanuel. For this to have been a "sign" in the
biblical sense of the word, it would have had to have had some
application to contemporary events. Jewish scholars who read the
Tanach (Hebrew Bible) in the original language have had no
difficulty recognizing that contemporary application. Shmuel
Golding, editor of  Biblical Polemics , published by the Jerusalem
Institute of Biblical Polemics, has explained that verb-tense
problems alone in this passage make it impossible for people who
are knowledgeable in Hebrew to accept it as a prophecy of a
distantly future event:

In Hebrew the verse reads in the present tense _is with child_ and
not as according to the Christian Bible _will conceive and bear a
child._ In Hebrew it states she is  pregnant, not will be
pregnant. In fact, the Catholic Bible (Isaiah 7:14) reads as
follows: _The maiden is with child and will soon give birth to a
son._ Jesus was not born until seven hundred years after this sign
was given, which could not be described as "soon." The text reads
"is with child," so how could this woman be kept pregnant for seven
hundred years until Jesus arrived ("Who Changed God's Diapers?"
[pam], p. 1)?

That Isaiah did have in mind a child who would be born to a
contemporary mother is made plain by a statement that followed on
the heels of the birth prediction: "Curds and honey He shall eat,
that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before
the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the
land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings" (vv:
15-16). To say that this statement had reference to a child who
would be born 700 years later reduces everything the prophet said
to nonsense, for what possible consolation could it have been to
Ahaz to know that 700 years after he was dead the land whose two
kings he hated (Syria and Israel) would be forsaken?

Furthermore, Isaiah did not say that the birth would be a
miraculous event, as Matthew's application of the statement would
require it to be. The popular misconception that Isaiah was
predicting a _virgin_ birth results from a faulty translation of
the Hebrew word _`almah_, which merely meant "maiden" or "unmarried
female." _Bethulah_ was the Hebrew word that signified a woman who
was sexually pure; this was the word used in such passages as
Deuteronomy 22:13-24 where sexual purity was obviously under
consideration. The other word (_`almah_) was used in such passages
as Genesis 24:43 where, although translated _virgin_ in many
English versions, reference to the sexual purity of the woman
wasn't necessarily intended. If, then, Isaiah had meant to imply
that the child in his prophecy would be miraculously conceived, he
would have surely used the Hebrew word that unequivocally meant
virgin.

Viewed in these linguistic perspectives, the prophecy loses much of
the mystique that has traditionally surrounded it, because there
would have been nothing particularly amazing about an unmarried
female giving birth to a child. It happens all the time. But it
loses even more of its resplendence when we consider textual
indications that Isaiah intentionally arranged circumstances to
guarantee a birth that could be seen as "fulfillment" of his
prophecy. Isaiah 8:1-4 tells how Yahweh intended to take "faithful
witnesses," Uriah, the priest, and Zechariah, the son of
Jeberechiah, to record as Isaiah went in to a prophetess who
conceived and bore a son. In effect, he was covering all of his
bases. He had predicted the birth of a child to an unmarried
female, so now he was making sure that one would be born. And it
was in this type of duplicity that Matthew saw divine involvement!

As incredible as it may seem, there is even more to question in
this wonderful virgin-birth prophecy. After saying in his prophecy
that the child to be born would be called Immanuel, Isaiah named
the son borne by the prophetess not Immanuel, as he had predicted,
but Maher-shalal-hash-baz (8:3). It was as if he wanted both to
fulfill and to invalidate the prophecy!

The fact that this child was given a name other than Immanuel has
led some Bible apologists to argue that he was not the one
predicted in Isaiah's prophecy. But even if they could
unequivocally prove this argument true, which they cannot, that
would do very little to restore Isaiah's credibility as a prophet,
because Jesus, who presumably fulfilled the prophecy in at least a
secondary sense, was not named Immanuel either. No record exists of
Jesus ever having been called Immanuel by his contemporaries. Those
who in later times applied the name to him, and still continue to,
have done so only in labored attempts to make Matthew's statement a
valid interpretation of prophecy. So of what value is a
"double-sided" prophecy that has been shown to have serious flaws
on both sides?

The argument of bibliolaters not withstanding, there is convincing
evidence that Isaiah did intend his son born of the prophetess to
be seen as fulfillment of his prophecy. First, Isaiah, although
naming his son Maher-shalal-hash-baz, did after the child's birth
refer to him as Immanuel while warning that the Assyrian king in
overthrowing Syria and Samaria would also subdue Judah and "fill
the breadth of Your land, O Immanuel" (8:5-8). So at least once the
child of that generation was called Immanuel, and, as previously
noted, that is once more than Jesus, in his lifetime, was ever
called by the name. As a matter of fact, the name was used only
three times in the entire Bible, twice (as just noted) in Isaiah
and the third time when Matthew quoted Isaiah's "prophecy." This is
hardly sterling proof of prophecy fulfillment.

Further proof that Isaiah considered his son Maher-shalal-hash-baz
to be the fulfillment of his prophecy is seen in a close
examination of context. When he made the prophecy to Ahaz (as a
sign that the Syrian-Israelite alliance would not prevail), he also
promised that "before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and
choose the good, the land that you dread (Syria and Samaria) will
be forsaken by both her kings" (7:16). This same prediction
(prophecy, sign, whatever) was repeated after the child
Maher-shalal-hash-baz was born: "For before the child shall have
knowledge to cry, `My father,' and, `My mother,' the riches of
Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the
king of Assyria" (8:4). Both statements are identical in substance;
both show also that Isaiah intended his prophecy to apply to a
political situation of his day rather than to some event in the
far-flung future. And, more important for the moment, the context
of the passage gives sufficient reason to believe that the child
who was named Maher-shalal-hash-baz instead of Immanuel was
contemporarily considered a fulfillment of the prophecy. Why Isaiah
did not name the child Immanuel is a mystery, but stranger
mysteries than that are recorded in the Bible.

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Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 008>

With reference to what was said about the period before the child
would know "to refuse the evil and choose the good" (Is. 7:16),
inerrantists have another problem. If this was indeed a reference
to the son who would one day be born to the virgin Mary, does this
mean that there was a time in the childhood of Jesus when he didn't
know the difference in good and evil? If not, why not? And if so,
then how could this be? Jesus was the incarnate "Word of God" (Jn.
1:1,14), who was in the beginning with God (v:2), who made all
things and without whom "nothing was made that was made" (v:3). If
all of this is true, how could there have been a time in the life
of Jesus when he didn't know "to refuse the evil and choose the
good"?

CONTEMPORARY FAILURE

On the subject of strange things, what could be stranger than this?
Isaiah made the prophecy to assure King Ahaz that the
Syrian-Israelite alliance would not prevail against him, yet the
Bible record shows that the alliance not only succeeded but did so
overwhelmingly. Second Chronicles 28 reports that Ahaz's idolatrous
practices caused "Yahweh his God" to deliver him "into the hand of
the king of Syria" (v:5). (This king was the Rezin of Isaiah 7:1.)
The Syrians "carried away of his a great multitude of captives" and
took them to Damascus (v:5). Simultaneously, the Israelites
attacked Judah under the leadership of Pekah (the same Pekah of
Isaiah 7:1), and in one day 120,000 "valiant men" in Judah were
killed and 200,000 "women, sons, and daughters" were "carried away
captive" (vv:6-8). The battle casualties included Maaseiah, Ahaz's
son; Azrikam, the governor of the house; and Elkanah, who was "next
to the king" (v:7). If these results were Isaiah's idea of Syrian
and Samarian failure, one wonders what kind of drubbing the
alliance would have inflicted had Isaiah prophesied its success.

Furthermore, Isaiah's assurance that Assyria would be Yahweh's
instrument in defeating the alliance (Isaiah 8:4-8) failed to
materialize too. When the Edomites (Samarians) struck Judah a
second time and "carried away captives," Ahaz sent "to the kings of
Assyria to help him" (2 Chron. 28:16-17). In response,
Tilgath-Pilneser, king of Assyria, "came to him, and distressed
him, but strengthened him not" (v:20). As a prophet, then, Isaiah
seems to have struck out all the way around. In fairness to him,
however, it should be noted that Assyria's role in the conflict was
reported with different results in 2 Kings 16, where Ahaz also
fared a little better than reported in 2 Chronicles 28.
Nevertheless, these discrepancies in the two accounts are more of
an embarrassment to bibliolaters than a benefit, because such
variations in the Bible record place on inerrancy believers the
added burden of trying to explain why "inspired writers" would give
contradictory reports of the same events.

There is yet a final absurdity to notice in this wonderful
Messianic prophecy. With the Syrian-Israelite alliance posing a
threat to Judah, Isaiah was sent to Ahaz to prophesy that the
alliance would fail. After doing so, he said in his very next
breath that Yahweh would bring the king of Assyria against Judah
and that he would desolate the land (7:17-25). Imagine, if you can,
the absolute absurdity of this. The prophet came, in effect, to
say, "Don't worry; Syria and Samaria will not defeat you. Assyria
will." What kind of consolation was that supposed to be? It was as
if in our day the people of our country, fearing an attack from
Russia, should be told by a prophet, "Fear not; Russia will not
defeat you. China will." Yet, despite this flaw and the many others
noted, millions of people consider this "prophecy" a remarkable
example of divine foresight. In reality, the only remarkable thing
about it is that so many intelligent people could have been duped
into believing that it was remarkable.

JESUS CHRIST: STUNT RIDER

As noted earlier, no event was too trivial for Matthew to see
prophecy fulfillment in it, and one of his silliest
prophecy-fulfillment claims concerned the so-called triumphal entry
of Jesus into Jerusalem shortly before his betrayal and
crucifixion. The story was related by all three synoptic-gospel
writers, but Matthew's version differs significantly from Mark's
and Luke's. Mark and Luke simply had Jesus riding into Jerusalem on
a colt to the cheers and hosannas of the multitudes (Mark 11:1-10;
Luke 19:28-40). Matthew, however, had to build it into a dramatic
prophecy-fulfillment:

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethpage, at the
Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go
into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a
donkey tied, and a colt with her . Untie them  and bring them  to
me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, `The Lord needs
them .' And he will send them immediately." This took place to
fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, "Tell the
daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, mounted
on a donkey, and on a colt , the foal of a donkey."

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought
the donkey and the colt , and put their cloaks on them , and he sat
on them  (21:1-7, NRSV).

There are two conspicuous points of difference in Matthew's version
of this event and Mark's and Luke's: (1) Matthew had Jesus riding
BOTH a donkey and her colt; Mark and Luke had Jesus riding only a
colt, and (2) Matthew saw it as fulfillment of a prophecy; Mark and
Luke said nothing at all about prophecy fulfillment being involved.

I won't address the familiar fundamentalist "explanation" of the
numerical inconsistency that says, "Well, if there were two
donkeys, then there had to be one." Inerrantists invariably resort
to this dodge to "explain" numerical discrepancies in the Bible.
Did the gospel writers appear to disagree on the number of people
who went to the tomb on the morning of the resurrection? Well, no
problem! John simply chose to tell about one of them (Mary
Magdalene); Matthew chose to tell about two (Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary); Mark chose to tell about three (Mary Magdalene, Mary
the mother of James, and Salome). If, however, there were several
who went, as Luke indicated, then there is no error, because if
there were several, then there was one, exactly as John said, and
there were two, exactly as Matthew said, etc. Although this
argument apparently satisfies diehard fundamentalists who are going
to believe in Bible inerrancy regardless of what evidence to the
contrary may exist, it offers no sensible explanation as to why the
omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit would inspire John to write an
infallibly perfect account of the visit to the tomb that mentions
only one person, but on different occasions the same omniscient,
omnipotent Holy Spirit would inspire Matthew, Mark, and Luke to
write infallibly perfect accounts of the same story that all differ
in the matter of who went to the tomb. After the first "perfect"
gospel story had been written, what could have been going through
the Holy Spirit's mind on these subsequent occasions that made him
decide that this point had to be changed, not just once but three
times? That is a confusing matter, to say the least.

As I said, however, my purpose is not to analyze quibbles that
fundamentalists resort to in their frantic efforts to preserve the
inerrancy doctrine, but to expose flaws in their
prophecy-fulfillment argument, and there are plenty of them in
Matthew's claim that Jesus's alleged act of riding two donkeys into
Jerusalem fulfilled prophecy. As to Matthew's reference to two
donkeys rather than just the one that Mark and Luke mentioned, I
will simply ask how Jesus managed to ride two donkeys. Was this a
type of stunt riding like we see in circuses and rodeos where the
rider stands with one foot on separate horses? If so, what was the
purpose of the theatrics? Was it to demonstrate that he could
perform not just miracles but feats of physical dexterity too?

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 009>

In my oral debate with H. A. "Buster" Dobbs in Portland, Texas, he
suggested that the text could mean nothing more than that Jesus
rode one donkey while touching the other or that he rode one for a
while and then switched to the other. However, this doesn't seem to
be what Matthew meant. He clearly said that the disciples brought
the donkey and her colt to Jesus, "laid their clothes on them , and
set Him [Jesus] on them " (v:7). So Matthew was obviously saying
that in some way the disciples set Jesus on both of the animals.

There is a far more sensible explanation for the discrepancy in
Matthew's version of this story and the other synoptic accounts
than the far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios that Bible
inerrantists resort to. Unfamiliar with the structure of Hebrew
poetry, Matthew simply misunderstood the parallelism in the
original statement of Zechariah, so this resulted in a misquotation:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just, and
having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt,
the foal of an ass (Zech. 9:9, ASV).

Parallel emphasis was used extensively in Hebrew literature, and
that was all that Zechariah was doing in this text. The ass was a
colt, the foal of an ass, and this was all that Zechariah meant.
Certainly, he did not mean for his readers to understand that this
king (whoever he was) would ride on both an ass and her colt, as
Matthew interpreted the statement to mean. (Incidentally, this
mistake constitutes implied proof that whoever wrote the gospel of
Matthew was non-Jewish and therefore unfamiliar with a Hebraic
literary form that the real apostle Matthew would probably have
known had he been the actual writer.) The misinterpretation
resulted in an absurdity that is missing from Mark's and Luke's
versions of the story, because they correctly understood the
original statement.

There are far too many examples of parallel emphasis in the Old
Testament to look at all of them, but a few will illustrate how
ridiculous it is to attribute divine inspiration to a writer who
was unable to recognize how it was used. Zechariah himself used it
frequently. "And it came to pass in the fourth year of king
Darius," he wrote, "that the word of Yahweh came unto Zechariah in
the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Chislev " (7:1, ASV).
Obviously, the ninth month was Chislev, and Chislev was the ninth
month; the two were the same. Elsewhere, he wrote, "And they of
Jerusalem shall yet again dwell in their own place, even in
Jerusalem " (12:6, ASV). Their own place was Jerusalem, and
Jerusalem was their own place. The two were the same.

This technique was by no means stylistically unique to Zechariah;
it occurred throughout the Old Testament. Here are just a few of
many examples that could be cited:

And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to
perform, even the ten commandments  (Deut. 4:13, ASV).

Yahweh hath rent the kingdom out of thy hand, and given it to thy
neighbor, even to David  (1 Sam. 28:17).

Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee,
and portray upon it a city, even Jerusalem , and lay siege against
it (Ezek. 4:1-2).

In each case, it is easy to see that the statement introduced with
"even" is parallel to the statement before it. The two are the
same. It was simply a Hebraic literary device employed to
emphasize. Had the Greek author of "Matthew" understood this, he
would not have misinterpreted Zechariah's statement and put Jesus
into the absurd posture of riding into Jerusalem on two donkeys.

The fact that Matthew made this error and the fact that neither
Mark nor Luke in telling the same story claimed that the event
fulfilled prophecy are sufficient to discredit the claim that this
was a prophecy fulfillment. After all, both Mark and Luke also
attributed prophecy fulfillment to certain events in the life of
Jesus, as well as Matthew did, so if the triumphal entry was indeed
a fulfillment of something a prophet had predicted, wouldn't they,
writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have known this and
so informed their readers? Wouldn't they have been just as
interested as Matthew in letting their readers know that Jesus had
fulfilled the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testaent? To say no
in answer to these questions would be to say that Mark and Luke
and  the Holy Spirit lacked common sense.

Besides all these problems with Matthew's claim that the "triumphal
entry" fulfilled prophecy, there is the contextual one. When
Zechariah's statement is examined in context, it becomes evident
that Matthew, as he did in so many other instances, ignored
original intention and pulled an Old Testament verse out of context
to make it appear that an event in the life of Jesus fulfilled
prophecy. As noted in a verse from Zechariah (7:1) quoted above,
the prophet claimed that inspiration from Yahweh had come to him in
the "fourth year of king Darius." This would have been during the
postexhilic era when the Jews were concerned with rebuilding
Jerusalem and their sacred temple. Much of what Zechariah wrote was
intended to inspire confidence in the people who had set themselves
to completing a difficult task. The chapter in which Zechariah
wrote of a king riding on an ass, even a colt, the foal of an ass,
predicted a general humiliation of the surrounding nations who were
traditionally hostile to Israel. The prophet predicted that Yahweh
would destroy Tyre and that she would be "devoured by fire" (v:4).
The Philistine strongholds of Ekron, Ashkelon, and Ashdod would be
cut off and become uninhabited (vv:5-7). Through the prophet,
Yahweh promised to "camp around [his] house" (v:8) so that armies
could no more pass through (v:8).

It was within this context that Zechariah spoke of Zion's king who
would come riding on an ass, even a colt, the foal of an ass,
because, quite naturally, in times of oppression and adversity a
Hebrew prophet would predict the coming of a deliverer to save
Yahweh's people. So this statement was made to instill confidence
in the people of that generation, to assure them that they would
succeed in their task and that Yahweh would protect them from their
adversaries. To apply this to a man who would not live until five
centuries later is to misapply it as flagrantly as did Matthew in
twisting Isaiah 7:14 to make it appear that it was speaking of a
woman who would bear a son 700 years in the future. Such was the
desperation that New Testament writers were driven to in their
attempts to prove that Jesus was the Messiah the prophets had
spoken about.

YAHWEH'S FAILED LAND PROMISE

On several occasions prophetic statements were made in the
Pentateuch about the land that Yahweh, the tribal god of the
Israelites, had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These were
clearly stated promises that Yahweh would give the land of the
Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites,
and Jebusites to the seed of Abraham. In Deuteronomy 7:17-24, for
example, Yahweh presumably made this emphatic promise:

"If you shall say in your heart, `These nations are greater than I;
how can I dispossess them?'--you shall not be afraid of them, but
you shall remember well what Yahweh your God did to Pharaoh and to
all Egypt: the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the
wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which Yahweh
your God brought you out. So shall Yahweh your God do to all the
peoples of whom you are afraid. Moreover Yahweh your God will send
the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves
from you, are destroyed. You shall not be terrified of them; for
Yahweh your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. And

Yahweh your God will drive out those nations before you little by
little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts
of the field become too numerous for you. But Yahweh your God will
deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until
they are destroyed. And he will deliver their kings into your hand,
and you will destroy their name from under heaven: no one shall be
able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them."

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 010>

The substance of this prophecy was repeated in such places as
Exodus 23:20-33; Deuteronomy 4:33-39, 7:1-2, and 31:1-8. In some of
these passages, the names of the "seven nations greater and and
mightier than you" to be driven out of the land were also specified
as they were above: the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites,
the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the Perizzites.

When Joshua assumed the leadership of Israel after the death of
Moses, the land promise was renewed in very specific terms:

After the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, it came to pass
that Yahweh spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' asssistant,
saying: "Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over
this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving
to them-- the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your
foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses . From
the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the
River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea
toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. No man
shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life ; as I
was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor
forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you
shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their
fathers to give them " (Joshua 1:1-6).

Just before crossing the Jordan, Joshua repeated the promise:

So Joshua said to the children of Israel, "Come here, and hear the
words of Yahweh your God." And Joshua said, "By this you shall know
that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail
drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the
Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites,
and the Jebusites : Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of
all the earth is crossing over before you into the Jordan" (Joshua
3:9-11).

There were no ambiguity problems in these land promises. The
language was about as detailed and specific as any prophecy could
be: _Yahweh would drive out all the inhabitants of the land of
Canaan and give it to the Israelites to fulfill his promise to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob._ To stress the emphatic nature of parts
of the land promises that Yahweh made to Israel, I have emphasized
in italics and bold print certain statements. So when all of the
passages I have quoted and listed are considered, we see that the
prophecies included all of the following:

Without fail , God would drive out of the land beyond the Jordan
ALL of the people then possessing it.

No man  among these people would be able to stand before the
Israelites all the days of their lives.

The Israelites would drive out the nations possessing the land and
utterly  destroy them and the memory of their name under heaven.
They were to make no covenants with the nations in this land or
show mercy to them (Deut. 7:2).

Every place  that the sole of their feet would tread upon, God
would give to them.

Their empire would stretch from the Red Sea unto the river
Euphrates and from the great sea (Mediterranean) to the going down
of the sun.

To circumvent obvious contradictions that result when Yahweh's
promises are compared to biblical history recorded later,
inerrantists contend that the land promises made to the Israelites
were conditional on their good behavior, but there is no support in
the Bible for that dodge. In Deuteronomy 9:3-6, another prophetic
passage relating to the land promise, specific notice was taken of
the fact that the Israelites of that generation were undeserving of
the land but that it would be given to them anyway for the sake of
the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:

Therefore understand today that Yahweh your God is He who goes over
before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them
down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them
quickly, as Yahweh your God has said to you. _Do not think in your
heart, after Yahweh your God has cast them out before you, saying,
`Because of my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess
this land'_; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations
that Yahweh is driving them out from before you. _It is not because
of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go
in to possess their land,_ but because of the wickedness of these
nations that Yahweh your God drives them out from before you, _AND
THAT HE MAY FULFILL THE WORD WHICH YAHWEH SWORE TO YOUR FATHERS, TO
ABRAHAM, TO ISAAC, AND TO JACOB_. Therefore understand that Yahweh
your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of
your righteousness, for you are a stiffnecked people .

So here is another clear statement. God was not giving the land to
the Israelites because of their righteousness; in fact, he
considered them a stiffnecked, undeserving people. (See also Exodus
33:1-6.) He was giving the land to them because of the
unconditional promise that he had made to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. Unless he did this, he would have reneged on a promise made
to the patriarchs with no strings attached (Gen. 12:7; 13:14-16).

The unconditional nature of Yahweh's land promise was restated in
Leviticus 26:42-45:

(T)hen I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and my covenant with
Isaac and my covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember
the land. The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy
its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them: they will accept
their guilt, because they despised My judgments and because their
soul abhorred My statutes. Yet for all that, when they are in the
land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor
them to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I
am Yahweh their God. But for their sake I will remember the
covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of
Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am
Yahweh .

So time and time again, it was specifically said that the
Israelites would be given the land of Canaan, regardless of their
own conduct , so that Yahweh could fulfill the promise that he made
to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Inerrantists who deny this are
denying biblical statements worded just as plainly as anything ever
said on the subject of creation, the resurrection, baptism, final
judgment, and other important Christian doctrines.

As proof that the land promise was dependent on the good behavior
of the Israelites, inerrantists like to cite Exodus 23:20-33 where
a conditional suggestion was attached to the promise: "But if you
indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an
enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries." In
emphasizing the IF in this verse, they overlook an important point.
If Yahweh said that he would fulfill the promises made to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob regardless of the wickedness of the generation
that went in to possess the land, he could not turn around later
and say that he would make good his promise only if the people were
obedient. That would put a contradiction into the scriptures that
the inerrantists would have to explain, because the land promise
could not have been both conditional and unconditional at the same
time. And clearly the passages cited earlier were unconditional in
promising the land to the Israelites.

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 011>

So after Yahweh had unconditionally promised to the Israelites that
they would be given the land beyond the Jordan, under Joshua's
leadership they went in to possess it, and initially the Bible
claims that they succeeded. The claim, in fact, was that Joshua
thoroughly and completely subdued the land:

So Joshua conquered all  the land: the mountain country and the
South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their
kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that
breathed , _AS YAHWEH THE GOD OF ISRAEL HAD COMMANDED_. And Joshua
conquered them from Kadesh Barnea as far as Gaza, and all the
country of Goshen, even as far as Gibeon. All these kings and their
land Joshua took at one time, because Yahweh the God of Israel
fought for Israel . And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him,
to the camp at Gilgal (Josh. 10:40-43).

In places, the Bible is almost boringly repetitious, but this
writing characteristic of the "inspired" spokesmen of God often
works to the advantage of those who seek to debunk the myth that
God verbally inspired the writing of the Bible. In this case, it
makes it easy to establish that a complete, unqualified fulfillment
of the land promises was claimed by the "inspired" men who wrote
the Old Testament. Consider, for example, the clearly stated claim
of the following passages:

But Yahweh said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid because of them (the
armies of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and
Hivites poised for battle against the Israelites, "FT"), for
tomorrow about this time I will deliver ALL of them slain before
Israel. You shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots
with fire." So Joshua and all the people of war with him came
against them suddenly by the waters of Merom, and they attacked
them. And Yahweh delivered them into the hand of Israel, who
defeated them and chased them to Greater Sidon, to the Brook
Misrephoth, and to the Valley of Mizpeh eastward; they attacked
them until they left none remaining . So Joshua did to them as
Yahweh had told him: he hamstrung their horses, and burned their
chariots with fire.

So Joshua turned back at that time and took Hazor, and struck its
king with the sword: for Hazor was formerly the head of all those
kingdoms. And they struck all the people who were in it with the
edge of the sword, utterly destroying them . _THERE WAS NONE LEFT
BREATHING_. Then he burned Hazor with fire.

So _all_ the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua
took and struck with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed
them , _AS MOSES THE SERVANT OF YAHWEH HAD COMMANDED_. But as for
the cities that stood on their mounds, Israel burned none of them,
except Hazor only, which Joshua burned. And all the spoil of these
cities and the livestock, the children of Israel took as booty for
themselves; but they struck every man with the edge of the sword
until they had destroyed them, and they left none breathing . _AS
YAHWEH HAD COMMANDED MOSES HIS SERVANT, SO MOSES COMMANDED JOSHUA,
AND SO JOSHUA DID_. He left nothing undone of all that Yahweh had
commanded Moses .

Thus Joshua took ALL this land: the mountain country, all the
South, all the land of Goshen, the lowland, and the Jordan
plain--the mountains of Israel and its lowlands, from Mount Halak
and the ascent to Seir, even as far as Baal Gad in the Valley of
Lebanon below Mount Hermon. He captured all their kings, and struck
them down and killed them  (Josh. 11:6-17). So Joshua took the
WHOLE land , according to all that Yahweh had said to Moses; and
Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their
divisions by their tribes. Then the land rested from war (Josh.
11:23).

So Yahweh gave to Israel ALL the land of which he had sworn to give
to their fathers ; and they took possession of it and dwelt in it.
Yahweh gave them rest all around, according to all that He had
sworn to their fathers. and not a man of ALL their enemies stood
against them; Yahweh delivered ALL their enemies into their hand.
_NOT A WORD FAILED OF ANY GOOD THING WHICH YAHWEH HAD SPOKEN TO THE
HOUSE OF ISRAEL. ALL CAME TO PASS_ (Josh. 21:43-45).

These statements are fully as clear as passages that proclaim the
virgin birth, the resurrection, the final judgment and other
important doctrines of Christianity. Yahweh gave unto Israel ALL
the land that he swore to give to their fathers, and the dimensions
of that land were clearly laid out in such passages as Exodus
23:20-33 and Joshua 1:1-6. Its borders extended from the Red Sea to
the sea of the Philistines, from the wilderness, to Lebanon, and to
the great river Euphrates. Furthermore, the fulfillment claims
state that the Israelites left none alive to breathe and that not a
man of all their enemies stood against them . Who were those
enemies? Time and time again, they were named in the land
prophecies: the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, the
Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the Perizzites. Yet after
audaciously claiming in the passages noted above that every aspect
of Yahweh's land promise had been fulfilled, the writer(s) turned
around and brazenly admitted that some parts of the land were not
conquered and some of the peoples in these lands were not driven
out:

Now Joshua was old, advanced in years, and Yahweh said to him: "You
are old, advanced in years, and there remains very much land yet to
be possessed . This is the land that yet remains: all the territory
of the Philistines and all that of the Geshurites, from the Shihor,
which is east of Egypt, as far as the border of Ekron northward
(which is counted as Canaanite); the five lords of the
Philistines--the Gazites, the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the
Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avites from the south, all
the land of the Canaanites , and Mearah that belongs to the
Sidonians as far as Aphek, to the border of the  Amorites; the land
of the Gebalites, and all Lebanon , toward the sunrise, from Baal
Gad below Mount Hermon as far as the entrance of Hamath; all the
inhabitants of the mountains from Lebanon as far  as the Brook
Misrephoth, and all the Sidonians--them will I drive out from
before the children of Israel: only divide it by lot  to Israel as
an inheritance, as I have commanded you (Joshua 13:1-6).

This statement flatly contradicts the claim in Joshua 11:23 that
Joshua "took the whole land, according to all that Yahweh had
spoken to Moses " so that the land had rest from war. All of the
territorial regions singled out in this passage as land that
remained to be possessed lay within the boundaries that were laid
out in Joshua 1:1-6 to specify the scope of the land that Yahweh
would give to the Israelites. So if Joshua had indeed taken "the
whole  land, according to all that Yahweh had spoken to Moses," as
claimed in Joshua 11:23, how could it be said later that "very much
land" remained to be possessed? Perhaps some inerrantist reader(s)
can answer this question. They are good at coming up with
far-fetched, how-it-could- have-been scenarios to "explain" obvious
contradictions in the Bible.

Most of the rest of the book of Joshua and the better part of
Judges contradict all of the fulfillment claims that I have noted
above. Joshua 15:63 says, "As for the Jebusites , the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out ; but
the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem to this
day." Yet the Jebusites were specifically named as one of the seven
nations "greater and mightier than you" that would be utterly
destroyed. Joshua 16:10 says, "And they did not drive out the
Canaanites  who dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwell among the
Ephraimites to this day and have become forced laborers." But the
Canaanites were specifically listed as one of the seven nations
that would be utterly destroyed. Joshua 17:12-13 says, "Yet the
children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those
cities, but the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land.
And it happened, when the children of Israel grew strong, that they
put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them
out ." Yet the promise had clearly been that the Canaanites would
be utterly driven out, that no man would be able to stand against
the Israelites all the days of their lives. Making servants of them
can hardly be considered fulfillment of a prophecy declaring that
they would be "utterly driven out." In fact, it contradicts a
restriction already noted that expressly prohibited the Israelites
from making covenants with the inhabitants of their promised land.

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 012>

In Joshua 16:10; 17:12-13; Judges 1:1-5; 1:9; 1:21; 1:27-36; 3:1-6
and many other places, references are made to the people that the
Israelites could not drive out of the land, and many of these were
specific references to people from the "seven nations greater and
mightier than you" that Yahweh promised to drive out without fail .
But he didn't, and so the inerrancy champions have some serious
explaining to do. If  "Yahweh gave to Israel all  the land of which
He had sworn to give to their fathers" (Joshua 21:43-45) and if
"they took possession of it (the land) and dwelt in it" (Ibid.) and
if Yahweh "gave them rest all around, according to ALL that He had
sworn to their fathers" ( Ibid. ) and if "not a man stood of all
their enemies" ( Ibid. ) and if  "Yahweh delivered all their
enemies into their hand" ( Ibid. ) and if  "not a word failed of
any thing which Yahweh had spoken to the house of Israel" ( Ibid. )
and if  "ALL CAME TO PASS " ( Ibid. ), how could it have been that
some of the enemies of Israel were still in the land during the
time of the book of Judges and how could it have been that some of
the people of the "seven nations greater and mightier" than the
Israelites were still dwelling with them "to this day"?
Bibliolaters who boast that prophecy fulfillment proves the divine
inspiration of the Bible have a lot of explaining to do in the
matter of Yahweh's failed land promises.

FAILURE OF THE ETERNAL KINGDOM

Another glaring prophecy failure happened in the case of Yahweh's
promise to establish David's throne forever in an everlasting
kingdom that would never be destroyed. This, like the land prophecy
just discussed, was an unconditional promise stated in specific
language. Repeated several times in the Old Testament, it was first
made in 2 Samuel 7:11-16:

Also Yahweh tells you [David] that He will make you a house. When
your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set
up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will
establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I
will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his
father, and he shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will
chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of
men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from
Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your
kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall
be established forever.

Inerrantists will insist that this prophecy was fulfilled in
Christ, who in a figurative sense now sits on the throne of David,
but that interpretation presents too many problems. For one thing,
if this was a prophecy concerning Christ, why did Yahweh say, "If
he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and
with blows of the sons of men"? A cardinal doctrine of the New
Testament is that Jesus was completely sinless. Obviously, then,
the statement referred to the literal kingdom of David and to the
descendants of David who would be capable of committing iniquity.
In the same way that modern day zealots think that God is on the
side of America, the prophets of Israel naively believed that God
would see that the kingdom of Israel endured forever. Bible
fundamentalists like to point to "Messianic" prophecies like
Jeremiah 33:17, where it was asserted that "David shall never lack
a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel," and insist that
this prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus, a descendant of David who now
sits upon the spiritual throne of David. However, the very next
verse in this passage says, "(N)or shall the priests, the Levites,
lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me [Yahweh], to kindle
grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually." Is that passage now
being "figuratively" fulfilled? If so, in what sense? Certainly
there are no Levitical priests standing before the temple altar
today to offer burnt-offerings and meal-offerings to Yahweh
continually, and there haven't been for centuries. This whole
passage, which incidentally is in a section that was not in the
Septuagint translation, the version that the Holy Spirit presumably
directed New Testament writers to rely on (see "The Jeremiah
Dilemma,"  The Skeptical Review , Autumn 1990, pp. 6-10, 12), was
obviously written by someone who thought that Yahweh would ensure
the survival of the Israelite kingdom and religion forever.

That the promise to establish David's throne forever was understood
by the Old Testament writers in a strictly literal sense is clearly
indicated in such passages as 1 Kings 11:9-13:

So Yahweh became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned
from Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and
had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go
after other gods; but he did not keep what Yahweh had commanded.
Therefore Yahweh said to Solomon, "Because you have done this, and
have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded
you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to
your servant. Nevertheless I will not do it in your days, for the
sake of your father David ; I will tear it out of the hand of your
son. However I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give
one tribe to your son for the sake of my servant David, and for the
sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen ."

When time for the "fulfillment" of this statement came and the
impending division of the kingdom was announced to Jeroboam by
Ahijah the prophet, Yahweh again made it clear that at least part
of the kingdom had to be preserved in order to keep his promise to
David:

And he (Ahijah) said to Jeroboam, "Take for yourself ten pieces (of
the garment Ahijah had torn to pieces, "FT"), for thus says Yahweh
the God of Israel: `Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand
of Solomon and will give ten tribes to you (but he shall have one
tribe, for the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of
Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of
Israel ), because they have forsaken Me, and have worshiped
Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the
Moabites, and Milcom the god of the people of Ammon, and have not
walked in My ways to do what is right in My eyes and keep My
statutes and My judgments, as did his father David. "_However I
will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, because I have
made him ruler all the days of his life_ for the sake of My servant
David , whom I chose because he kept My commandments and My
statutes." But I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand and
give it to you--ten tribes. And to his son I will give one tribe,
that My servant David may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem
, the city which I have chosen for Myself, to put my name there. So
I will take you, and you shall reign over all your heart desires,
and shall be king over Israel. Then it shall be, if you heed all
that I command you, walk in My ways, and do what is right in My
sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments, as My servant David
did, then I will be with you and build for you an enduring house,
as I built for David , and will give Israel to you'" (1 Kings
11:31-38).

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
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<Part 013>

Of the reign of Abijam in the southern kingdom of Judah after the
division, it was said, "In the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam the
son of Nebat, Abijam became king over Judah. He reigned three years
in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Maachah the granddaughter of
Abishalom. And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he
had done before him; his heart was not loyal to Yahweh his God, as
was the heart of his father David. Nevertheless for David's sake
Yahweh his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, by setting up his son
after him and by establishing Jerusalem ; because David did what
was right in the eyes of Yahweh, and had not turned aside from
anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in
the matter of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15:1-5). Later, in the
reign of Jehoram, a king of Judah in the days of Elisha the
prophet, it was said that "he walked in the way of the kings of
Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done... and he did evil in
the sight of Yahweh" (2 Kings 8:18). So did Yahweh take the kingdom
away from Judah because of Jehoram's iniquity? No, the claim was
that Yahweh could not do this because of the promise to David. "Yet
Yahweh would not destroy Judah, _for the sake of his servant
David_, as He promised him to give a lamp to him and his sons
forever " (v:19). Presumably, Yahweh delivered Jerusalem from a
siege by the Assyrian king Sennacherib "for my servant David's
sake" (2 Kings 19:34). This statement was repeated in 2 Kings 20:6.

Obviously, then, the writer(s) of 1 and 2 Kings considered the
promise of an everlasting kingdom made to David to be both literal
and unconditional, because no matter how evil David's successors
were, the prophets made it clear that the kingdom had to be and
would be preserved "for David's sake." As long as Judah managed to
survive the threats to its sovereignty, its military successes
could be regarded as fulfillments of Yahweh's promise to David, but
after Judah ceased to exist as a sovereign kingdom the prophets and
writers of the Old Testament were caught with a lot of theological
egg on their faces. Yahwists ever since have tried to salvage
something from the mess they were left with by insisting that the
promise made to David concerned a spiritual kingdom and that Jesus
has provided the fulfillment of that promise. Such a view has two
major weaknesses:

ONE: It completely disregards all of the passages like the ones I
have just cited that show that the Old Testament writers and
prophets thought that the promise of an everlasting kingdom
referred to the literal throne of David.

TWO: It offers no explanation for the vacancy of David's throne
from the time of the captivity until the establishment of Jesus's
kingdom. Jeremiah said that David "shall never want a man to sit
upon the throne of the house of Israel," yet there were 600 years
between Zedekiah and Jesus when David did in fact "lack a man to
sit upon the throne of the house of Israel."

The point is that unconditional prophecies were often spoken in Old
Testament times and that the eternal establishment of David's
kingdom was one of those unconditional promises, just as the land
promise to the seed of Abraham was unconditional. Any figurative
application of the obviously literal promise to establish David's
throne forever or attempts to make it conditional on the conduct of
his descendant kings are nothing but dodges, just as any attempt to
make the land promise conditional on the good behavior of the
Israelites is only a desperate way of avoiding the embarrassment of
having to admit that the prophets of old were often wrong in their
predictions.

EZEKIEL'S FAILURES

Possibly the most pessimistic of the Old Testament prophets,
Ezekiel proclaimed impending doom upon everyone from Judah itself
to the enemy nations surrounding it. The failure of his prophecies
to materialize as he predicted makes a compelling argument against
the Bible inerrancy doctrine. In one of his doom's-day prophecies,
Egypt was to experience forty years of utter desolation:

Therefore, thus says Yahweh God: "Surely I will bring a sword upon
you and cut off from you man and beast. And the land of Egypt shall
become desolate and waste; then they will know that I am Yahweh,
because he said, `The River is mine, and I have made it.' Indeed,
therefore, I am against you and against your rivers, and I will
make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from Migdol to
Syene, as far as the border of Ethiopia. _Neither foot of man shall
pass through it nor foot of beast pass through it, and it shall be
uninhabited forty years_. I will make the land of Egypt desolate in
the midst of the countries that are desolate; and among the cities
that are laid waste, her cities shall be desolate forty years; and
I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them
through the countries" (29:8-14).

Talk about extravagant rhetoric, we certainly have it in this
passage. No such desolation has ever happened to Egypt; there never
has been a time in recorded history when Egypt was not inhabited by
man or beast for forty years, when its cities were laid waste and
desolate, when its people were all dispersed to foreign lands, etc.
Bible defenders, of course, resort quickly to figurative and future
applications, but their strategy just won't work. Future
fulfillments are excluded by patently clear references that Ezekiel
made to contemporary characters who were to figure in the
fulfillment: "Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of
Egypt, and prophesy against him" (29:2). Although Egypt still
survives as a nation, its rule by pharaohs ended long ago.
Furthermore, Ezekiel identified Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, as
the instrument Yahweh would use to bring about Egypt's desolation:
"Therefore thus says Yahweh God: `Surely I will give the land of
Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he shall take away her
wealth, carry off her spoil, and remove her pillage, and that will
be the wages for his army'" (29:19). Clearly, then, Ezekiel had in
mind a contemporary fulfillment of this prediction. As for
spiritual or figurative explanations of the prophecy, just what
events in Egyptian history were so catastrophic in the days of
Nebuchadnezzar and the pharaohs that they could justifiably be
considered a figurative desolation of forty years? Unless
bibliolaters can identify such a catastrophe, their figurative
interpretations must be regarded as just more attempts to sweep
aside another embarrassing prophecy failure.

Ezekiel just as rashly predicted the utter destruction of Tyre, a
prediction whose failure has become even more embarrassing to
bibliolaters than his doom's-day prophecy against Egypt:

Therefore thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I am against you, O Tyre,
and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea
causes its waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of
Tyre 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
spreading nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken," says
Yahweh God; "it shall become plunder for the nations. Also her
daughter _villages_ which are in the fields shall be slain by the
sword. Then they shall know that I am Yahweh."

For thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I will bring against Tyre from
the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with
horses, with chariots, and with horsemen, and an army with many
people. He will slay with the sword your daughter _villages_ in the
fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall
against you, and raise a defense against you. He will direct his
battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break
down your towers. Because of the abundance of his horses, their
dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the
horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates,
as men enter a city that has been breached. With the hooves of his
horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people
by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. They
will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will
break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will
lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the
water. I will put an end to the sound of your songs, and the sound
of your harps shall be heard no more. I will make you like the top
of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, you shall never
be rebuilt , for I Yahweh have spoken," says Yahweh God (26:3-14).

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
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<Part 014>

Ezekiel's tirade against Tyre continued through three chapters. His
prediction was that the city's destruction would be complete and
permanent: "The merchants among the peoples will hiss at you; you
will become a horror, and be no more forever " (27:36). So sure was
he of Tyre's eternal destruction that he repeated it: "All who knew
you among the peoples are astonished at you: you have become a
horror, and shall be no more forever " (28:19).

That this prophecy was never fulfilled can be verified with no more
difficulty than a trip to the public library. Ezekiel prophesied
that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre and that "you (Tyre) shall
never be rebuilt" (26:14) and "shall be no more, though you are
sought for, you will never  be found again" (26:21). History,
however, records the fact that Nebuchadnezzar not only didn't
destroy Tyre, he didn't even capture it.  The New Encyclopedia
Britannica  (Micropedia, Vol. 10, 1978) said this in reviewing the
long history of Tyre:

... and in 585-573 (B.C.) it successfully withstood a prolonged
siege by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II (p. 223).

In its summation of this same period of Tyrian history,  The
Encyclopedia Americana  (Vol. 27, 1984) says:

The neo-Babylonian conqueror, Nebuchadnezzar II, subjected the
island to a 13-year siege (585-572) without success (p. 331,
emphasis added).

Nebuchadnezzar did capture the mainland suburb of Tyre, but he
never succeeded in taking the island part, which was the seat of
Tyrian grandeur. That being so, it could hardly be said that
Nebuchadnezzar wreaked the total havoc on Tyre that Ezekiel
vituperatively predicted in the passages cited.

Even Ezekiel himself admitted the failure of this prophecy. Three
chapters after predicting the everlasting destruction of Tyre,
Ezekiel, as he often did in his prophecies, dated a long tirade
against Egypt: "And it came to pass in the twenty-seventh year, in
the first month, on the first day of the month, that the word of
Yahweh came to me..." (29:17). There is no general agreement on the
interpretation of Ezekiel's dating system, but at least we can use
it to determine when one prophecy was made with reference to
another. For example, his prophecy against Tyre was made in "the
eleventh year, on the first day of the month," (26:1). If, then,
the prophecy against Egypt in chapter 29 was made in the 27th year
(whatever that year was), this would mean that sixteen years
separated the prophecy against Tyre in chapter 26 and the one
against Egypt in chapter 29. Ezekiel's doom's-day prophecies
against the nations surrounding Judah were apparently motivated by
their delight in the fall of Jerusalem, which occurred in 587 B.
C., because he often mentioned this as the reason why Yahweh was
pronouncing judgment against them (25:3-4, 6, 8; 26:2). Obviously,
then, these doom's-day prophecies had to have been made after the
fall of Jerusalem in 587 B. C., so even if Ezekiel's prediction of
Tyre's destruction was made as quickly as the day after the fall of
Jerusalem, his prophecy against Egypt, which (as noted above) came
16 years later, could not have been made before 571 B. C. By then,
Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Tyre, which lasted from 585-572 B. C.,
was over, and Ezekiel would have known that his prediction had
failed.

His prophecy against Egypt did show a clear awareness that he had
botched his prediction that Nebuchadnezzar would decimate Tyre:

"Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to
labor strenuously against Tyre; every head was made bald, and every
shoulder rubbed raw; yet neither he nor his army received wages
from Tyre, for the labor which they expended on it . Therefore thus
says Yahweh God: `Surely I will give the land of Egypt to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he shall take away her wealth,
carry off her spoil, and remove her pillage; and that will be the
wages for his army '" (29:18-19).

This statement referred to Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Tyre as a
completed act, which of course by this time it would have been (as
the chronological analysis above clearly proves). That being true,
it necessarily follows that the book of Ezekiel could not have been
written, at least not in its entirety, until after the siege of
Tyre was over. To say the least, then, serious questions must be
raised about Ezekiel's credentials as a bona fide prophet. A
prophet who completed his book after  the facts he had prophesied
about! What kind of prophet was that? And, in Ezekiel's case, we
have a prophet who apparently didn't even have the good judgment to
go back and revise his predictions after unfolding events had
proven them wrong. Are we supposed to see this as compelling
evidence that the Bible was inspired of God?

Furthermore, Ezekiel's prophecy against Egypt frankly admitted
Nebuchadnezzar's failure to destroy Tyre. It plainly said that
Nebuchadnezzar and his army "had no wages" for their "labor"
against Tyre. As a result, Yahweh, according to this prophecy, had
decided to award Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as payment for his
services: "Therefore thus says the Sovereign Yahweh: Behold, I will
give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he
shall carry off her multitude, and take her plunder, and take her
prey: and that will be the wages for his army " (29:19). Strangely
enough, Ezekiel was admitting in this statement that his prophecy
against Tyre had failed, for if Nebuchadnezzar had taken the island
part of the city, he surely would have carried off its multitude,
taken its plunder, and taken its prey, and these would have been
his "wages." If one wonders why a man claiming divinely endowed
prophetic powers would make a prediction and then three chapters
later admit that his prediction had failed, I can only say what I
said before: stranger things than this can be found in the Bible.

Some bibliolaters have tried to mitigate the failure of Ezekiel's
Tyre prophecy by extending its scope beyond Nebuchadnezzar to
Alexander the Great, who did succeed in capturing the island part
of Tyre in 332 B.C. But this ploy won't work. Ezekiel clearly
identified Nebuchadnezzar as the avenging instrument that Yahweh
would use to bring about a total, everlasting destruction of Tyre.
If Alexander the Great was to be a part of the scenario, why didn't
Ezekiel name him too? After all, Ezekiel was a prophet, and
prophets can see into the future, can't they? Inerrantists delight
in pointing to 1 Kings 13:2 where a prophet allegedly mentioned
Josiah by name almost 300 years before he was born and to Isaiah's
alleged references to Cyrus by name over 100 years before he was
born, so if Ezekiel had meant for his Tyre prophecy to include
Alexander the Great as Yahweh's instrument of destruction, why
didn't he refer to him by name? If other "prophets of God" could
pull off amazing feats like these, why couldn't Ezekiel? Why would
the predictive talents of one inspired prophet of God have been so
consummately inferior to others'?

Even if bibliolaters could somehow prove that Ezekiel had intended
Alexander the Great to be a part of the prophecy against Tyre, they
would still have to explain why the complete and everlasting
destruction of the city did not happen as predicted. Most
assuredly, nothing comparable to the scope of destruction predicted
occurred at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, and although Alexander the
Great did succeed in capturing the island part of the city, Tyre by
no means ceased to exist after this conquest. In  The History of
Tyre , Wallace B. Fleming said this of the city's defeat by
Alexander:

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
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Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 015>

Alexander then left the city which was half burnt, ruined, and
almost depopulated. The blackened forms of two thousand crucified
soldiers bore ghastly witness to the completeness of the conquest.
The siege had lasted from the middle of January till the middle of
July, 332 B.C. The city did not lie in ruins long. Colonists were
imported and citizens who had escaped returned. The energy of these
with the advantage of the site, in a few years raised the city to
wealth and leadership again (Columbia University Press: New York,
1915, p. 64, emphasis added).

So Ezekiel predicted that Tyre would "be no more forever," but, to
the embarrassment of Bible inerrantists, it just didn't happen that
way. Tyre existed after Ezekiel in the days of Jesus, who "withdrew
into the parts of Tyre and Sidon" at one time during his personal
ministry (Matt. 15:21), and it existed in the time of the Apostle
Paul, who, returning from one of his missionary journeys, stopped
there, found disciples, and tarried with them seven days (Acts
21:3). In fact, Tyre still exists today, as anyone able to read a
map can verify. This obvious failure of a highly touted Old
Testament prophet is just one more nail in the coffin of the Bible
inerrancy doctrine.

OTHER FAILURES

Moses, in speaking of a prophet "like unto me" that Yahweh would
raise up, gave a simple, logical formula that anyone can use to
determine if a prophet was indeed speaking by inspiration of God:
"And if you say in your heart, `How shall we know the word which
Yahweh has not spoken?'-- when a prophet speaks in the name of
Yahweh, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the
thing which Yahweh has not spoken: the prophet has spoken it
presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him" (Deut. 18:21-22).
Thus, the Bible itself indicts Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah as
false prophets for uttering prophecies that did not come to pass,
and, as such, Moses said earlier in the passage just quoted that
they deserved death (v:20) rather than the irrational adulation
bibliolaters have accorded them.

These three, however, were not the only false prophets. The Bible
abounds with unfulfilled prophecies, as well as prophecies whose
outcomes were the exact opposite of what was predicted. I would
have to write a book to analyze all of them in detail, but these
are some of the more notable Old Testament examples of unkept
promises and prophecy failures:

Zedekiah to die in peace : In predicting Jerusalem's fall to
Babylon, Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah, the king of Judah,
would "die in peace":

"Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: `Go and speak to Zedekiah
king of Judah and tell him, "Thus says Yahweh, `Behold, I will give
this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn
it with fire. And you shall not escape from his hand, but shall
surely be taken and delivered into his hand; your eyes shall see
the eyes of the king of Babylon, he shall speak with you face to
face, and you shall go to Babylon.'"' Yet hear the word of Yahweh,
O Zedekiah king of Judah! Thus says Yahweh concerning you: `You
shall not die by the sword. You shall die in peace; as in the
ceremonies of your fathers, the former kings who were before you,
so they shall burn incense for you and lament for you, saying,
"Alas, lord!" For I have pronounced the word, says Yahweh' " (Jer.
34:2-5).

The prophecy was that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon and Zedekiah
would be captured and taken to Babylon but would "die in peace." So
what happened? Jerusalem was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for two
years and finally fell. Zedekiah and all his men of war fled the
city by night but were pursued and overtaken on the plains of
Jericho. Read what happened next:

But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and they overtook
Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. All his army was scattered from
him. So they (the Chaldeans) took the king (Zedekiah) and brought
him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and
he pronounced judgment on him. Then the king of Babylon killed the
sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. And he killed all the princes of
Judah in Riblah. He also put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king
of Babylon bound him in bronze fetters, took him to Babylon, and
put him in prison till the day of his death  (Jer. 52:9-11).

If this was Jeremiah's idea of "dying in peace," one can only
surmise how horrible Zedekiah's fate would have been had the
prophet predicted a dreadful death. Also, there is no indication
that incense was burned in memory of Zedekiah as Jeremiah had
predicted. Indeed, how could there have been with Judah defeated
and its people scattered abroad?

Josiah to die in peace : After Shaphan the scribe read to King
Josiah from "the book of the law" that had recently been discovered
in the house of Yahweh, Josiah sent emissaries to the prophetess
Huldah to inquire of Yahweh concerning Judah's fate for having
disobeyed the words of the book. Huldah predicted dire things for
Judah for having forsaken Yahweh, but she assured Josiah that he
personally would fare much better:

But as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of Yahweh, in
this manner you shall speak to him, "Thus says Yahweh God of
Israel: `Concerning the words which you have heard&Auml;because
your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before Yahweh when
you heard what I spoke against this place and against its
inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and
you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you,'
says Yahweh. "Surely, therefore, I will gather you to your fathers,
and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; and your eyes
shall not see all the calamity which I will bring upon this place "
(2 Kings 22:18-20, emphasis added).

Rather than dying in peace, as the prophetess here predicted,
Josiah was killed at Megiddo in a battle with Egyptian forces (2
Chron. 35:20-24). Struck by a volley from Egyptian archers, Josiah
said to his servants, "Take me away, for I am severely wounded ."
These were hardly the words of a man who was "dying in peace." He
was removed from his chariot and taken to Jerusalem, where he died
and was buried.

Jehoiakim's body to be desecreated : Jeremiah prophesied that the
body of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, would be desecrated after his
death:

Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah,
king of Judah: "They shall not lament for him, saying, `Alas, my
brother!' or `Ah, my sister!' They shall not lament for him,
saying, `Alas, my master!' or, `Alas, his glory!' He shall be
buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast out beyond the
gates of Jerusalem" (Jer. 22:18-19).

Jeremiah was so sure of himself on this point that he repeated the
prophecy fourteen chapters later:

Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: "He
shall have no one to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body
shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the
night. I will punish him, his family [seed, KJV and ASV], and his
servants for their iniquity; and I will bring on them, on the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on the men of Judah, all the doom
that I have pronounced against them; but they did not heed"
(36:30-31).

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 016>

So what happened to Jehoiakim? The answer depends on which Bible
writer you choose to believe. His death was recorded in 2 Kings
24:6, where it says that "Jehoiakim slept with his fathers." This
is a familiar Bible expression that was used to denote a peaceful
death and respectful burial. David slept with his fathers (1 Kings
2:10), and so did Solomon (1 Kings 11:43). Likewise did Jeroboam
and Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:20, 31), as did Baasha (1 Kings 16:6),
Omri (1 Kings 16:28), Asa (2 Chron. 16:13), etc. Whoever recorded
Jehoiakim's death in 2 Kings 24:6 was apparently unaware that his
body was desecrated, if indeed it ever was.

On the other hand, 2 Chronicles 36:5-6 states that Nebuchadnezzar
came against Jehoiakim, bound him in fetters, and carried him to
Babylon. Judging from the treatment Zedekiah was accorded when the
Babylonians bound him and carried him away to Babylon, one might
justifiably argue that his body probably was desecrated after his
death. Jeremiah, however, predicted that Jehoiakim's own people
would be his desecraters, that his own people would not accord him
lamentations appropriate for a king, that his own people would cast
his body "out beyond the gates of Jerusalem." How could this have
been done if he was carried away to Babylon?

Part of the desecration prophecy was that Jehoiakim would "have no
one to sit upon the throne of David" (36:30), but this too was
proven false. Upon Jehoiakim's death, his son Jehoiachin "reigned
in his stead" for a period of three months and ten days (2 Chron.
36:8,9; 2 Kings 24:6-8). Even more devastating than that are the
biblical genealogies that show Jehoiakim to be a direct ancestor of
Jesus (1 Chron. 3:16-17; Matt. 1:12). As noted earlier, Bible
inerrantists try to explain the failed throne-of-David prophecies
by assigning figurative meaning to them. Jesus, a direct descendant
of David, now sits on a spiritual throne of David in a spiritual
kingdom, so the inerrantists say, but if that is true, then a
descendant of Jehoiakim is now sitting on David's throne in
contradiction to a plainly spoken prophecy of Jeremiah. So emphatic
was Jeremiah about Jehoiakim's fate that he pronounced the same
prophetic curse upon him another time, using Jeconiah, or Coniah,
another name for Jehoiakim:

"Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol...? Thus says Yahweh:
`Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not prosper in
his days; _for none of his descendants shall prosper, sitting on
the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Judah_'" (Jer. 22:28-30,
emphasis added).

If inerrantist are correct in saying that the throne-of-David
prophecies have been figuratively fulfilled in Jesus's reign on a
spiritual throne in a spiritual kingdom, then it absolutely must be
that Jeremiah's prophecy that none of Jehoiakim's seed would ever
sit upon the throne of David was a false prophecy. Why do Bible
fundamentalists never refer to discrepancies like these when they
rhapsodize the wonders of prophecy fulfillment?

Jacob's name change : After Jacob had wrestled through the night
with a man presumed to be an angel, his name was changed from Jacob
to Israel: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,"
the angel said, "for you have struggled with God and with men, and
have prevailed" (Gen. 32:28). As clear as the angel's statement
was, however, the Bible continued after this event to refer to
Jacob by his original name rather than Israel. In the four
remaining verses of this chapter, he was called Jacob three times,
and Israel was used only once and that in reference not to him but
to his descendants. The next two chapters of Genesis use Jacob 16
times and Israel only once and that in an anachronistic reference
to the nation of Israel that didn't even exist at the time.

As if the inconsistency of this were later recognized, the prophecy
was repeated in Genesis 35:9-10, this time by God himself
(presumably): "Then God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from
Paddan Aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, `Your name is
Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore , but Israel
shall be your name.' So He called his name Israel." The statement
here from God's own lips was plain enough for anyone to understand:
your name shall not be called Jacob anymore. Apparently, it wasn't
plain enough for the writers of the Bible to understand, however,
because Jacob was still called Jacob after this. Through the rest
of Genesis, he was called Jacob at least forty times. The name
Israel, although appearing some, was used only occasionally. At the
time of Jacob's death, in fact, he was still being called by his
original name: "And when Jacob  made an end to charging his sons,
he gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the spirit, and
was gathered to his people" (Gen. 49:33). Even after his death, the
name Jacob was frequently used in referring to him, as any check in
a concordance will verify. He was referred to as Jacob eleven times
in the book of Exodus alone. Yet if we are to believe the Bible,
God himself appeared to Jacob twice before his death and said,
"Your name shall not be called anymore Jacob." So if we can't
believe God, whom can we believe?

Jerusalem to enjoy perpetual security : "Look upon Zion, the city
of our appointed feasts; your eyes will see Jerusalem a quiet home,
a tabernacle that will not be taken down. Not one of the stakes
will ever be removed, nor will any of the cords be broken" (Is.
33:20). The imagery of this prophecy, of course, was that of the
Hebrew tabernacle, a tent that was carried from encampment to
encampment during the wilderness wanderings from Egypt to Canaan.
It was an impermanent structure, so in describing Jerusalem as a
tabernacle "that will not be taken down" and whose stakes and cords
would never be "removed" or "broken," Isaiah was obviously
predicting that Jerusalem would become a continuous sanctuary for
the Jews. Had Jerusalem remained permanently in Jewish domain after
the Babylonian captivity and not experienced any catastrophes and
foreign occupations, bibliolaters would point to this passage as an
amazing example of prophecy. Such has not been the case, however,
because the history of Jerusalem has been a history of constant
struggle and subjugation. Only in recent times have the Jews
regained control of Jerusalem after a long period of foreign
domination, and even now that control is tenuous at best.
Certainly, one could not say that none of the stakes of it had ever
been removed from Jerusalem.

Jerusalem never to be entered again by the uncircumcised and
unclean :"Awake, awake; put on your strength, O Zion; put on your
beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for from now on
there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean
" (Is. 52:1, ASV). This verse is only the beginning of an entire
chapter that promised a permanent, perpetual deliverance of
Jerusalem and its people from foreign domination. To say that this
prophecy was ever fulfilled would require a blatant disregard of
known historical facts. Various armies from nations that did not
practice the rite of circumcision have since occupied Jerusalem,
and even today tourists and visitors from various cultures that
reject the rite of circumcision have free access to Jerusalem. The
"uncircumcised" pass in and out of the city each day.

Bible fundamentalists try to circumvent these problems by speaking
of "spiritual" and "figurative" or even "future" fulfillments of
this and similar prophecies like the one predicting the permanent
security of Jerusalem. This is a common ploy. When historical facts
contradict the prognostications of their cherished prophets,
bibliolaters turn to spiritual, figurative, or yet future
applications. Their equivocations, however, cannot survive the
scrutiny of contextual criticism. Examined in context, this and the
permanent-security prophecy of Isaiah, as well as many of his
others, seemed obviously intended to comfort a people weary of
foreign oppression. At least in the case of Isaiah 52:1, the
expression from now on  plainly denotes that this was so. The
expression means "from this time forth," so why would the prophet
have said, "from now on (this time forth) there shall no more  come
into you the uncircumcised and the unclean," if he were speaking of
something that would not occur until some time in the distant
future? _Thereafter_ would have been the appropriate word to use.

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED
Farrell Till
Copyright (C) Internet Infidels 1996. All rights reserved.
<Part 017>

Rather than a wondrous prophecy, then, we have in these words of
Isaiah only the extravagant rhetoric of an overzealous mystic who,
like most of his Hebrew contemporaries, fanatically believed in a
divinely ordained ethnic superiority of his people. We have had
3,000 years of history to show us just how misguided and
misdirected their ethnocentrism was.

WHAT ABOUT SPECIFIC DETAILS?

No discussion of Old Testament prophecies would be complete without
analyzing those which, all else being equal, did contain details
specific enough to be considered "valid" prophecies. In the article
cited earlier (p. 3), Wayne Jackson pointed to the prediction of
Sennacherib's assassination in 2 Kings 19:6-7 as an example of
"remarkable" prophecy ( Ibid. , pp. 2-3). This "prophecy" was made
by Isaiah after Hezekiah had received a message from the Assyrian
king threatening to destroy Jerusalem:

And Isaiah said to them, "Thus you shall say to your master, `Thus
says Yahweh: "Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard,
with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.
Surely I will send a spirit upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and
return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword
in his own land ."'"

As Jackson pointed out in his article, "(S)ome twenty years later,
he (Sennacherib) was assassinated by his own sons, who smote him
with the sword, while he was worshipping in his pagan temple"
(Isaiah 37:37-38). The assassination was also recorded in 2 Kings
19:37.

To inerrantists like Jackson, who are frantically looking for
something with which to prop up their inerrancy doctrine, this may
be a "remarkable" prophecy, but it loses its remarkableness when it
is analyzed in the context of its timing. In listing his criteria
of "valid" prophecy, Jackson said that it must also "involve proper
timing (i.e., significantly preceding the fulfillment)." In this
respect, Jackson's remarkable prophecy fails miserably. He may be
right in saying that Sennacherib was assassinated twenty years
after the context of events in which Isaiah's prophecy was written,
but how can we know that the prophecy was actually uttered at the
time attributed to it and not just written into that context after
the fact of Sennacherib's assassination? The book of 2 Kings could
not have been completed until approximately 150 years after
Sennacherib's assassination. We know this from specific
chronological details that are recorded in the book after
Sennacherib's death. Hezekiah was king of Judah at the time, and he
outlived Sennacherib by 15 years (20:6). Upon his death, Manasseh
his son reigned in his stead (20:21) for 55 years (21:1). Amon
reigned after Manasseh for two years (21:19), and then Josiah
reigned for 31 years (22:1). After Josiah, Jehoahaz was king for
three months (23:31), and then Jehoiakim reigned for 11 years
(23:36). His son Jehoiachin reigned for three months, after which
he was taken away captive by Nebuchadnezzar, who made Zedekiah king
(24:10-17). Zedekiah reigned for 11 years (24:18), and then he was
carried away to Babylon (25:6).

All of these reigns add up to 123+ years that transpired after
Sennacherib's assassination. The book of 2 Kings ends by stating
that Evil-Merodach, king of Babylon, "in the year that he began to
reign, released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison." This was in
the 37th year of Jehoiachin's captivity (25:27). If we subtract the
11 years that Zedekiah reigned between the time of Jehoiachin's
captivity until his release 37 years later, we have an additional
26 years to add to the 123 above. So the writer of 2 Kings
obviously did not finish this book until about 150 years after
Sennacherib's death. At the time, he was recording details about
the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, he knew the circumstances of
Sennacherib's death, so how do we know that he did not conveniently
write into the context of this story a "prophecy" that Sennacherib
would "fall by the sword in his own land" upon his return home?
What guarantees can Jacksonhe thinks it was (wants it to be).
Apparently, he doesn't understand that one doesn't prove anything
by arbitrarily declaring it to be what he wants it to be. If there
is proof that Isaiah actually referred to Cyrus of Persia by name
150 years before he was born, then let him show us the proof. But

ne doesn't prove anything by arbitrarily declaring it to be what
he wants it to be. If there is proof that Isaiah actually referred
to Cyrus of Persia by name 150 years before h
