Are there any valid prophecies?

Great Debates
61

I, the perpetual fence sitter, bound to reason the best he can, am about to conclude by the device of Ockham’s Razor, (not quite the “simplest is best” explanation many make it), and also in view that: the scholars pro or con are useless in this subject, because each makes an unwarranted presumption that prophecy either exists or does not exist in order to prove the same, and after any fallacious reasoning of the scholars is ignored, their further claims tend to be equally valid.

But Ockham’s razor is not evidence, it is a principle of reasoning.

Wikipedia’s article, not in dispute, is much greatly improved than a couple years ago for Ockham’s Razor. Anyone who has not seen it should pay a visit. I have argued myself hoarse (figuratively) in other forums suggesting some of the same ideas regarding application of Ockham’s razor.

But before Ockham’s razor is applied, I have a couple issues yet unresolved:

Since Ockham’s razor may fully lead the reasoning person to a conclusion that Isaiah 45 was written after the fact, any and all evidentiary arguments, which are always superior to Ockham’s razor if they exist, must be disposed of.

I see two un-disposed-of evidentiary arguments. I’ve mentioned one before.

If Isaiah 45 and associated “second Isaiah” text is redacted after the fact, why are not all necessary “corrections” made to make the prophecies fit the facts afterwards?

For instance, it has been mentioned previously that Isaiah 47 also prophecies that Cyrus would “destroy” Babylon, but he didn’t, at least by the most common meaning of english “destroy.”

Why didn’t the redacters correct this as well?

Second evidentiary avenue unexplained:

For this I suggest all interested persons visit http://www.blueletterbible.org/ or searchable bible of your choice. Search for the phrase “Holy One of Israel.”

You will find that “Holy One of Israel” is a phrase mostly used in Isaiah. It seems to be his trademark, so to speak. I believe it appears dozens of times in Isaiah, maybe once in Ezekiel, twice in Jeremiah, and thrice in Psalms.

As a known tendency, the prophets spoke what had been said before, meaning Psalms, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel’s highly disproportionate seldom occurring instances may be seen as tribute to Isaiah–worth repeating, but hey, since I’m not Isaiah I’m not gonna go very far with it… Therefore these instances can be explained.

Yet there is another, in 2 kings 19:22 (and the few preceding verses, for context) where Isaiah in person says the words “Holy One of Israel.”

This means that the authorship of 2 Kings must also be called into question. If the author of Kings is solid, this means that the second portion of Isaiah, referred to as 2nd Isaiah, bears Isaiah’s ‘trademark,’ and being in the nature of an evidentiary proof, supports the argument that Isaiah is all of one authorship. “Holy One of Israel” occurs about as frequently in “1 Isaiah” as in “2 Isaiah.”

If either of these proofs do not pan, out, this fence-sitter thinks its about time to conclude, by Ockham’s razor, that there is about a 99% likelihood that relevant Isaiah was written after the fact. The fence sitter reserves 1% due to the idea that Ockham’s razor is not a substitution for any available evidence but a very good reasoning device in the absence of evidence, and figures that best with a not-quite-entirely rebutted presumption that book of Isaiah’s identity is what it says it is.

But not quite yet. Dopers, what say you to the fence sitter’s final two issues unresolved?

62

Well, for a group of ten people to average a 40-year lifespan, they have to collectively live 400 years. If half of them die at birth, the remaining five still have to make up those 400 years, so the survivors have to average 80 years apiece among themselves.

I suppose three could live to 100 and the remaining two live to 50… any combination that adds to 400.

63

His question does not separate survivors from those who die at birth. The correct answer is average 40 years.

64

You are confusing mean with median there. If it costs $15,000 in fixed costs (rent, utilities, taxes, food) to live in a given community, and the sole employer has nine employees whom he pays $15,000 a year, while rejoicing in a $1,000,000 annual income himself, the mean income of those ten people is $113,500, implying everyone has beaucoup discretionary income. But the median, and the mode, better tell the truth; it is $15,000.

As for your discussion on Occam’s Razor, I agree in large part – which is why i said it was a presumption in favor of Deutero-Isaiah. For mind that does not insist everything be certain, a presumption can be a very useful thing. It serves as a starting point for one’s reasoning – I presume, for example, that Luke the Physician mentioned in Paul’s letters as one of his companions wrote the Gospel bearing his name and its companion book, Acts. I need not be certain of this fact, nor hold it as a tenet of faith – it’s a reasonable presumption. If it’s incorrect, one must mount evidence to refute it. A criminal trial begins with the accused presumed innocent; the burden of proof is on the prosecution, to prove him guilty, not on the defense, to prove him innocent. A law challenged in appellate court has the presumption of constitutionality; those claiming it is unconstitutional need to advance arguments sufficient to convince the judges they are right. Likewise the internal evidence of Isaiah 40-55 suggests that, unlike the small-kingdom setting of the first 39 chapters, they were written by someone in exile for the comfort and strengthening of the faith of his fellow exiles.

I am going to disgree strongly with you, David, on one point, though – the predictive element in Biblical prophecy is distinctly secondary to its main purpose. It does not foretell so much as it “forthtells” – it tells forth God’s message, “in His own words” (though of course from the mouth or pen of the prophet, but speaking as His messenger or agent, saying what He supposedly wishes them to say. (That “supposedly” is not disbelief on my part, but a polite nod to the fact that not all our fellow Dopers share that belief system.)

65

Still the number is right:D If we were truly concerned with mathematics in this thread, I might not have answered as quickly and thought it over first. I always have to review that median/mean/average stuff.

Ockham;s razor is not a starting point in reasoning. It is a tool to use when either a) there is no evidence b) the evidence cannot be decided between. As for extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim–I think many confuse this. It does not mean God himself has to appear as the evidence to tell us prophecy is real. The evidence can indeed be mundane, but if it proves something extraordinary happened, then it is by that nature, “extraordinary evidence.” If the age of Isaiah were established to a certainty to be before the events it predicts or appears to predict, I’d be pressed to believe a predictive prophecy happened.

We agree more than you think, indeed,“forthtelling” is the bulk of a prophet’s task. But this thread focuses on the predictive element. A debate wouldn’t be too interesting that prophets repeated what went before, except for those needing an education in a prophet’s job. We could all stand around taking turns saying “yep, yep,” though.

66

Ummm…the fence sitter has another, maybe better example of his first problem. If indeed we are going to presume the redaction theory is the answer to explain this “prophecy,” I must ask why, if the redacters were bent on making this false appearance, why did they not redact “Cyrus” to “Cyrus the Great,” having that information available after the fact? it only makes sense that they would.

67

To clarify the point which yoyodyne was, perhaps, too wittily making: People don’t live any longer now than they ever did. Nowadays, if you can survive accidents, war, famine, and acute disease, you’ll live to between seventy-something and a hundred-something (the latter only if you’re very lucky) before dying of old age. In the time of Isaiah, if you survived accidents, war, famine, and acute disease, you’d live to between seventy-something and a hundred-something (the latter only if you’re very lucky) before dying of old age. The difference in average lifespan between then and now is entirely due to progress we’ve made against accidents, war, famine, and acute disease: We’ve made basically no progress at all against death by old age. So the trend is not towards life expectancy being about 100; the trend is towards it being about 80. Which we’ve already almost achieved, and which we can be expected to not exceed until we make a breakthrough that we’ve been trying for for millennia. Is it possible that someday we will make that breakthrough? Sure. But now we’re engaging in the same optimistic guesswork that Isaiah himself was engaging in.

68

You mean, why didn’t the people who combined Isaiah with Deutero-Isaiah add “the Great” to Cyrus’s name? It calls him “The Lord’s anointed”.

69

because that’s his English title that was not used in ancient Babylon? :smiley:

Anyway, so even if Deutero Isaiah is a pseudepedigraphic, what do you suppose was so special about the name “Isaiah” that its alleged partisan-of-Cyrus author would have wanted to use it? And that brings us back to the undoubted Isaiah’s single most important prophecy that (per the book of Isaiah, at least) got fulfilled during his life in full view of his community, namely Judah being saved from Assyrian invasion. See my post 25.

RE Isaiah 47, it doesn’t say anywhere that the disappearance of Babylon should happen at the time of Cyrus - maybe it disappearing centuries later would still count. Or, even better, maybe some of the bad things named will happen at one time and the rest later.

That being said, I personally am a lot more impressed with Isaiah 34 than with 47. Given what we know from history, any given city, no matter how big and powerful, will eventually disappear. But an inhabited region getting turned into an empty desert is, while not unheard of, not by any means a given. E.g. densely inhabited agricultural regions that we now call “France” and “Anatolia/Turkey” have remained fertile and inhabited for thousands of years. While region and nation called “Edom” is now an uninhabited desert.

70

As part of his name? I do not see how calling him the Lord’s Annointed helps. Who has proof of whether or not the Lord set him apart for annointing? In contrast, being more specific with his name looks to be stronger evidence.

71

Isn’t Isaiah 47 in the context of cyrus though?

If you’d like to propose Isaiah 34 as a debate topic, I’m all for it. I’d ask only that we conclude the discussion on Isaiah 45 first, to avoid confusion. I believe we are near disposing of Isaiah 45 at this point.

72

He also predicts that the Red Sea, the Nile and the Euphrates will dry up too, though. He’s got bad stuff happening to all of Israel’s neighbors. And the region that was then called Edom, while it isn’t all that fertile, isn’t currently uninhabited. Ma’an has a population of about 50,000, in Israel, about 46,000, Aqaba about 108,000, and Karak about 109,000. Southern Jordan isn’t as densely populated as Northern Jordan, but it’s hardly empty. Ancient Edom wasn’t the Negev, even though at various points Edom seems to have controlled parts of the Negev. It’s center was in the highlands east of the Negev.

73

Well, “the Great” isn’t part of Cyrus’s name. It’s not like Mr. and Mrs. the Great had a baby boy named Cyrus. It’s an epithet that was used by the Babylonians and Persians, but it really wasn’t used by the Jews. The main Jewish epithet for a king was messiah, and that’s right there at the beginning of Isaiah 45:

“The Lord says to his messiah Cyrus…”

74

The only instance anyone other than King Saul, the Davidic kings, and their descendants Zerubbabel and Jesus is called “messiah” (which literally means “anointed one”).

75

Ok, the fence sitter buys this argument, applying cultural relevance and seeing an equivalent between “the Great” and “messiah.”

This leaves the second evidentiary avenue remaining, which tends to show a unified pre-Cyrus Isaiah.

76

I buy this argument too, of course, not to favor either debater, but what they said.

77

Ooops I have made a mistake.

Since “Cyrus the Great” is not the only thing claimed in Isaiah 45 and merely one of many claims, there could be other unfulfilled claims that the redacters did not correct. I do not know of any that are not “too small to have been of notice” but before I conclude there aren’t I’m gonna go have another look and give any other claimers a chance to raise these.

Soon I hope we can move on to another supposed prophecy, perhaps Isaiah 34, which has no “scholars” offering their opinion evidence that it wasn’t what it claims to be–a document written by Isaiah.

78

well, lots of bad stuff eventually did happen to the neighbors. Frankly, bad stuff eventually happens to everybody given enough time. Dynasties change, cities get destroyed, cultures disappear and religions/deities get forgotten (cf. Isaiah 47 and the mocking of the Marduk cult).

In terms of Red Sea, Nile and Euphrates, well, maybe it ain’t over until it’s over? I think the Nile bit is sometimes attributed to some major historical drought (whether any of them ever truly “disappeared” the river I don’t know), but ultimately who is to say that there will never be a drought that will shut the rivers down for a long time? With the Red Sea, given a big enough earthquake any region near the sea (including Sinai) can get reconfigured in all sorts of ways that would have made no sense to unimaginative skeptics beforehand.

79

Sure, I suppose it’s possible that the Red Sea, Nile and Euphrates will all dry up sometime in the future, but that seems sort of like a chump’s game…if I predict “The Red Sea will be destroyed sometime in the future”, it becomes impossible to prove me wrong. I don’t know if I’d use that as evidence that the predictions are true, though.

80

Polycarp keeps correctly mentioning (although somewhat irrelevant to this particular O.P., but perhaps not entirely irrelevantly, i see) that a prophet’s main function is simply to state what is in accordance with the will of God.

With this in light, it may be appropriate to point out that some of what is taken as prophecy might not necessarily be meant to be predictive and may simply be observation.

He may have visited a city in his youth and remembered that it was ten miles from the desert, visited again when he was older, found the desert one mile away, and realized that deserts move, thus, “this place is going to be a desert.”

I’m not suggesting that there is an easy way to tell the difference.