# Are there any valid prophecies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 16, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248 "2011-07-16T15:14:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/21 "2011-07-16T20:01:53Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Can you apply this principle to the prophecy of Isaiah 45? I would agree if Isaiah made five hundred different prophecies about the (differing) name of a future King of Persia who would liberate Israel, but the fact is he only said it about one name, Cyrus. > > His ratio for correct “guesses” to attempts is 1:1. Your reasoning that its just guesses is not persuasive to me at this point, (examining Isaiah 45) because your theory requires a large number to one, like, 100 guesses to 1 hit. No. The point is that most of people who made prophecies that did not pan out have been forgotten. If, however, a prophet gets lucky, people are impressed and the prophecy is remembered, perhaps, as in this case, for many centuries after the prophesied event. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/22 "2011-07-16T20:07:13Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > How about [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Isaiah)? > > Really, from what I have heard (admittedly I’m no expert) this is pretty much the standard scholarly view of the Book of Isiah. I sometimes cite Wikipedia, but before I do I check the articles for problems. Red Flags include: No mention of other views in a controversial subject. Use of a “it can’t be true because that would mean he is a prophet” as a reasoning attempt to prove the book wasn’t written when it claims it was. An expert from the university of Abilene trumps Wikipedia. > **[ChristianCourier.com | Church of Christ magazine investigating religious...](https://christiancourier.com/articles)** > > Church of Christ magazine investigating religious doctrine, Christian evidences, and ethical issues. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/23 "2011-07-16T20:10:18Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > No. The point is that most of people who made prophecies that did not pan out have been forgotten. If, however, a prophet gets lucky, people are impressed and the prophecy is remembered, perhaps, as in this case, for many centuries after the prophesied event. The claim is not relevant unless it is shown Isaiah made multiple attempts to name the king of persia. He only made one attempt. The existence of a thousand forgotten erroneous prophets is not evidence against Isaiah, it is evidence against themselves. Most-were-wrong-so-all-are is fallacious reasoning. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/24 "2011-07-16T20:34:16Z")
[http://www.biblecentre.org/commentaries/ar\_27\_ot\_isaiah.html](http://www.biblecentre.org/commentaries/ar_27_ot_isaiah.html) “The Jewish author Flavius Josephus writes (Jewish Antiquities XI 1.1-2) that the Persian king Cyrus read Isaiah’s utterances concerning him with astonishment and thereafter gave the command for the return of the Jews (Ezra 1:1-4).” Any explanation for how that happened, if they changed it after the fact? ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/25 "2011-07-16T20:48:02Z")
Isaiah’s biggest fulfilled prophecy is not Cyrus. It is the failure of the Assyrians to destroy Jerusalem which happened, according to the historical account in Isaiah, because a big Assyrian army miraculously dropped dead. At the time he was talking about that, it was apparently very non-obvious that the kingdom of Judah would not get destroyed completely like the kingdom of Israel / Samaria previously. E.g. a lot of Judean government officials are said to have fled to Egypt instead of waiting for defeat. Isaiah 34 is a fulfilled prophecy of complete destruction of the nation of Edom. That area now seems to be called “Negev desert”. He also made a bunch of more low key predictions, e.g. Isaiah 19:19-20. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/26 "2011-07-16T20:49:06Z")
> [@David42](#): > > An expert from the university of Abilene trumps Wikipedia. > > [Christian Courier](http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1462-the-acu-commentary-and-the-unity-of-the-book-of-isaiah) Actually, if you read the webpage, that person is responding to the claim of the guy from the guy from the Abilene Christian University Press, whose book, “The Transforming Word One Volume Bible Commentary” claims “The authors of the book of Isaiah in its present form were addressing a small Jewish community in and near Jerusalem in the mid- to late-fifth century BCE”, by making the claim that Isaiah is a unitary book. But the view reflected in that website, first, starts with the assumption that the book of Isaiah is prophetic and that the bible is literally true, and second, when it talks about the Dead Sea Scrolls, it’s sort of building a strawman. It says, > [@](#): > > The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, that contain an Isaiah manuscript, argues against the Deutero-Isaiah theories. For example, chapter 40 (allegedly the commencement of Second Isaiah), begins on the very last line of a column which contains chapter 38, verse 9, through chapter 39, verse 8. Noted scholar Oswald T. Allis observed: “Obviously the scribe was not conscious of the alleged fact that an important change of situation, involving an entire change of authorship, begins with chapter 40” (1950, 40). > > The New Testament quotes more from the book of Isaiah than all other prophecies combined. There are 308 quotations from, or references to, Isaiah in the New Testament, and these involve forty-seven of the sixty-six chapters. The prophet is cited by name twenty-one times, and all three of the so-called divisions are credited to him. > > For example, in John 12:37-41, the apostle quotes from both Isaiah chapter 53 and chapter 6 in the same breath, citing Isaiah as the author of both passages, even joining the two quotations together by saying, “Isaiah said again . . .” (12:39). It is impossible to deny the unity of Isaiah without reflecting upon the integrity of the New Testament record. The problem with that is that the people who argue for deutero-Isaiah say that Isaiah was in its modern form by the 4th century BCE, before the time either the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of John were written. So, if they want to disprove it by dating, they need to find a pre 4th century source that attributes deutero-Isaiah to the writer of Isaiah. What it comes down to is that biblical scholarship is divided into two camps…there’s faith based scholarship and academic scholarship (and when I’m using those terms, realize that “faith based” scholars can teach at universities and “academic” scholars can be religious). But when I use those terms, I mean, there are those people who, when they study biblical texts, start with the assumption that they’re divine, and then there are those, who make up the mainstream of academia and religious studies departments, who look at biblical texts like historic documents. And this divide becomes important in terms of dating because of how things like biblical prophecy is dealt with. For example, Luke 19: 41-44 > [@](#): > > As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Now, for the “faith based” people I talked about earlier, that is an example showing that Jesus is God because he made a prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem that came true. In other words, he must have been speaking divinely. For the mainstream of academic scholarship, that’s a clue to the dating of the Gospel of Luke. It’s basically, "Well, the writer of the Gospel of Luke has Jesus saying that Jerusalem was destroyed, so therefore the Gospel of Luke must have been written after Jerusalem was destroyed, and he’s giving a divine reason for their destruction, which is that they failed to accept Jesus. So, there’s just the two schools of thought, one starting with the assumption that prophecies have to be true, and one starting with the assumption that they don’t. ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/27 "2011-07-16T20:49:58Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > In Isaiah ch. 65, the author is talking about the recreation of Jerusalem, he mentions that “No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; for the child shall die one hundred years old.” At the time that this was written, assuming that the facts in ancient Israel were similar to those in other ancient civilizations, infant mortality would be close to fifty percent and average lifespan in the range of forty years. Today in Israel infant mortality is down to [three per thousand](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met_y=sp_dyn_imrt_in&idim=country:ISR&dl=en&hl=en&q=infant+mortality+in+israel) and average lifespan is [81.6 years](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:ISR&dl=en&hl=en&q=israel+average+lifespan). While these may not match exactly what the prophecy in Isaiah says, the trends in both cases are clear and it’s reasonable to think that infant mortality will reach zero and average lifespan 100 in the near future. (Also while the prophecy specifically references Jerusalem, the ancient Jews always understood such references to Jerusalem as encompassing the whole nation.) I don’t understand the prophesy (or what you mean by referencing it). Thousands of years ago, a prophesy was made that Jerusalem would be rebuilt (when? just anytime in the future…?) and that after that happened all babies would survive and live to be 100 years old (again, at some point after the many thousands years later re-building?). And this hasn’t happened yet, and frankly probably never will (100% survival coupled with 100% living to 100 is a pipe dream, at best), but it does correlate with worldwide trends towards lower infant mortality and longer lifespans, and you admit it won’t happen, and hasn’t happened, and so, it therefore false. But this is an example of a prophesy that has been fufilled? Huh. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/28 "2011-07-16T20:50:36Z")
> [@David42](#): > > [http://www.biblecentre.org/commentaries/ar\_27\_ot\_isaiah.html](http://www.biblecentre.org/commentaries/ar_27_ot_isaiah.html) > > “The Jewish author Flavius Josephus writes (Jewish Antiquities XI 1.1-2) that the Persian king Cyrus read Isaiah’s utterances concerning him with astonishment and thereafter gave the command for the return of the Jews (Ezra 1:1-4).” > > Any explanation for how that happened, if they changed it after the fact? Again, Flavius Josephus wrote after the book of Isaiah took its modern form, and he did the historian’s old trick of “making the story up”. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/29 "2011-07-16T20:50:41Z")
> [@David42](#): > > The claim is not relevant unless it is shown Isaiah made multiple attempts to name the king of persia. He only made one attempt. Would Josephus have taken note of the prophecies that did not occur, or just the ones that did? > [@](#): > > The existence of a thousand forgotten erroneous prophets is not evidence against Isaiah, it is evidence against themselves. Most-were-wrong-so-all-are is fallacious reasoning. How about someone who only buys one lottery ticket and wins, are they a prophet? ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/30 "2011-07-16T20:57:31Z")
> [@David42](#): > > An expert from the university of Abilene trumps Wikipedia. > > [Christian Courier](http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1462-the-acu-commentary-and-the-unity-of-the-book-of-isaiah) You mean the guy that wrote this: > [@](#): > > Was there ever a time when men and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time? Those who subscribe to the theory of evolution unequivocally answer, “No!” The standard evolutionary propaganda line is this: “Dinosaurs became extinct about seventy million years before man evolved.” > Unfortunately, many professing Christians have capitulated to this viewpoint…If one accepts the plain testimony of the Bible, with no compulsion to harmonize Scripture with evolutionary assertions, there is no doubt but that dinosaurs and humans were contemporary, as the following considerations indicate. > All of the basic “kinds” of living creatures were brought into existence in the same initial creation week. Moses wrote: “In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Exodus 20:11). This would include the dinosaurs (“terrible lizards”), and man as well. > Jesus affirmed that mankind has existed “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6); this certainly excludes the notion that dinosaurs became extinct millions of years before man appeared upon the planet. > Humanity was given dominion over all the lower creatures of the earth (Genesis 1:26). There is no reason to exclude dinosaurs from the scope of this passage. Who by the way is not “from the University of Abilene”, that renowned Bible College ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/31 "2011-07-16T20:58:47Z")
Let me put this another way. The definition for a **valid** prophesy would be something that was VERY SPECIFIC and was 100% fulfilled.\* And personally, I’ve never seen that happen, anywhere, ever. Not in the bible, not Nostradamus, not Sylvia Browne, nowhere. Really, upon inspection, nothing even really comes close. So I would have to say (absent any new information) that no, there are not any truly valid prophesies. \*and it really helps if you can PROVE it wasn’t written after the fact. ETA: also, if I make 100 prophesies, and one comes 100% true, that still doesn’t count. We are talking DIVINE KNOWLEDGE here people! It has to be 100% across the board, or at least damn close. Again, nothing. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/32 "2011-07-16T20:59:04Z")
> [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > I don’t understand the prophesy (or what you mean by referencing it). > > Thousands of years ago, a prophesy was made that Jerusalem would be rebuilt (when? just anytime in the future…?) and that after that happened all babies would survive and live to be 100 years old (again, at some point after the many thousands years later re-building?). And this hasn’t happened yet, and frankly probably never will (100% survival coupled with 100% living to 100 is a pipe dream, at best), but it does correlate with worldwide trends towards lower infant mortality and longer lifespans, and you admit it won’t happen, and hasn’t happened, and so, it therefore false. But this is an example of a prophesy that has been fufilled? > > Huh. :dubious: I agree it’s not the best example. The open endedness is slightly vague. Nevertheless, showing a trend toward fulfillment can add some ponts in that direction. I find it so unlikely that infant mortality would reach 0% that if it did, (and only in Jerusalem) I’ d cease any doubt that prophecy can occur. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/33 "2011-07-16T21:02:55Z")
> [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > Let me put this another way. > > The definition for a **valid** prophesy would be something that was VERY SPECIFIC and was 100% fulfilled.\* And personally, I’ve never seen that happen, anywhere, ever. Not in the bible, not Nostradamus, not Sylvia Browne, nowhere. Really, upon inspection, nothing even really comes close. So I would have to say (absent any new information) that no, there are not any truly valid prophesies. > \*and it really helps if you can PROVE it wasn’t written after the fact. in considering the age of documents, the first presumption is that it is what it says it is. Some documents are false, so this is of course rebuttable. In the case of Isaiah, we have outside corroboration from Josephus that it wasn’t written after the fact. But of course a witness closer in time to the supposed writing dates would be better yet. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/34 "2011-07-16T21:08:51Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > The problem is, that part of Isaiah…Isaiah 40-55, is usually called “deutero-Isaiah”. It’s written differently than the rest of Isaiah, and common belief among biblical scholars, at least those who aren’t religious fundamentalists, is that it was written sometime in the 6th century BC, during the Babylonian exile, when Cyrus the Great was around and threatening Babylon. (And actually, it isn’t an accurate prediction. Isaiah 47 says that Babylon will be destroyed, but Cyrus didn’t destroy the city, and took it without much violence.) could it be that the “biblical scholars” are fitting their evaluations to their agenda? Let’s say if they think that you cannot prophesy the name of Cyrus centuries before he shows up, then you start coming up with arguments why that “impossible” thing never happened. Here is a straightforward counter-argument to the style difference argument. The book of Isaiah is a collection of oracles recorded by Isaiah over a span of many decades (over his life). We would expect that if a single modern author called John Doe were to write three books when he is 20, 40 and 60 years old, the style of writing and even vocabulary would be quite different reflecting the changing personality of the author and linguistic/stylistic changes in society. Nevertheless, if these writings were collected into a single text called “the Book of Doe” you wouldn’t want to use textual criticism to claim that there were three different authors. In the case of Isaiah, presumably he was not writing by himself but rather was recording the oracle. And almighty God is not limited by style and vocabulary habits as much as human writers are :eek: Now, I wouldn’t categorically argue that Isaiah was not in fact written by several people in several eras since I see no compelling evidence for that. But neither do I see any compelling evidence against the single author hypothesis, other than the refusal of certain “academic” researchers to accept the possibility of valid prophecy. Intelligent people need to learn how to say “there are things that I don’t know and have no way of finding out any time soon” when appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/35 "2011-07-16T21:11:02Z")
> [@David42](#): > > The claim is not relevant unless it is shown Isaiah made multiple attempts to name the king of persia. He only made one attempt. > > The existence of a thousand forgotten erroneous prophets is not evidence against Isaiah, it is evidence against themselves. Most-were-wrong-so-all-are is fallacious reasoning. No, the point is that all that one correct prophecy by one person shows is that one person got lucky once. It does not show either that prophecy (people miraculously knowing the future) is real in general, or that this particular correct prediction was more than blind luck. And of course, as other have explained to you, given the time at which deutero-Isaiah was actually written, he did not need all that much luck, and certainly not a miracle, to make that prediction anyway. ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/36 "2011-07-16T21:12:37Z")
> [@David42](#): > > I agree it’s not the best example. The open endedness is slightly vague. Nevertheless, showing a trend toward fulfillment can add some ponts in that direction. I find it so unlikely that infant mortality would reach 0% that if it did, (and only in Jerusalem) I’ d cease any doubt that prophecy can occur. I am really not trying to be mean here, but it isn’t just “not the best” example, it’s an awful one. The open-endedness makes it totally useless. “Showing a trend” is far from “being fulfilled”; not to mention the fact that the prophesy says (basically) “When Jerusalem is rebuild, no babies will die and everyone will live to 100.” Not, “Some time after Jerusalem is rebuilt (which could happen at any time after this is written, even thousands of years later!) there will be a trend towards longer lifespans and lower mortality worldwide, which may eventually culminate in every baby born living to 100.” I mean, it just isn’t the same thing! Jerusalem WAS rebuilt, and in all this time (it’s been awhile!) the prophesy hasn’t been fulfilled! So that’s it. Prophesy Fail. > [@David42](#): > > in considering the age of documents, the first presumption is that it is what it says it is. Some documents are false, so this is of course rebuttable. In the case of Isaiah, we have outside corroboration from Josephus that it wasn’t written after the fact. But of course a witness closer in time to the supposed writing dates would be better yet. The first presumption is absolutely **not** that it is what it says it is. Why should it be? And in fact, there is evidence that it was. I mean, I’ll give it to you that this is possibly true. But still, we’re stuck with one “maybe” and a whole bunch of “no’s”. It isn’t very convincing. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/37 "2011-07-16T21:18:34Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Again, Flavius Josephus wrote after the book of Isaiah took its modern form, and he did the historian’s old trick of “making the story up”. Let’s see, Josephus made it up to cover up the fact that Isaiah was made up. This is a rather broad, sweeping statement that historians make everything up. I need some proof that Josephus made it up. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/38 "2011-07-16T21:26:13Z")
I notice that both sides of the controversy over Isaiah employ circular logic. Some on the side claiming Isaiah is unified under one author have used “it is in the bible and therefore must be true” in part to prove their claim. While this is fallacious, other points they make are more solid. OTOH those with the three sections view use as part of their reasoning “prophecy cannot happen, therefore they had to be written afterwards.” This is the reverse of the above but equally fallacious. They likewise go on to make more legitimate points. Neither set of arguments seems conclusive to me. A disinterested person cannot answer the question “Is prophecy valid?” by starting out with a presumption either for or against it. All these experts seem worthless on that point. Does anyone know of an authority who does not make either presumption, for or against? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/39 "2011-07-16T21:27:23Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > could it be that the “biblical scholars” are fitting their evaluations to their agenda? Let’s say if they think that you cannot prophesy the name of Cyrus centuries before he shows up, then you start coming up with arguments why that “impossible” thing never happened. I don’t think it’s that so much as you have to decide whether you’re going to look at the topic objectively or as an advocate. If you’re going to make the argument that Cyrus’s name in the book of Isaiah isn’t an argument against a more recent dating, you have start with the assumptions that prophecies are real, that God exists, that the book of Isaiah is divinely authored, and so on. These are all assumptions that you really shouldn’t be making in academic study, and they’re not really assumptions we tolerate in other areas of academia. Historians of Rome don’t argue that Rome was successful against their enemies because they had the blessing of Mars, for instance. They look at the structure of Roman society and the Roman army, at the weapons and armor Romans used, and so on. You pretty much have to do it that way because otherwise you’re not coming to an understanding of things, you’re just engaging in special pleading. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248/40 "2011-07-16T21:31:39Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Let’s see, Josephus made it up to cover up the fact that Isaiah was made up. No, I didn’t say that. I said Josephus believed that the book of Isaiah was one book. Josephus wasn’t trying to cover anything up. He was trying to come up with a reason that Cyrus let the Jews go back to Jerusalem, and Cyrus being impressed with finding his name in the book of Isaiah seemed like a plausible reason to him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-valid-prophecies/589248.md?page=3)