Why should I respect the Bible?

Great Debates
41

Oh, horsefeathers. The statement “[INSERT NAME OF MAJOR ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN CITY HERE] will fall and be sacked” is about one step up, in terms of prophetic vagueness, from “There will be conflict in the Middle East”. Every city in the A.N.E. has been overrun, sacked, pillaged, suffered periods of decline, etc. The fact that Tyre was a major city made it all the more likely that it would someday be sacked–which it has been, several times in its history.

The fact remains that Tyre did not fall in the time and manner which Ezekiel predicted–it fell, and was sacked, and was rebuilt, centuries later. That Tyre would someday fall to someone, given the realities of Middle Eastern politics for about the last six or ten thousand years, approaches certainty.

The United States is in a very different cultural and geopolitical situation. We aren’t one of many nations and city-states crammed together on the main invasion route between two centers of world civilization; we’re a large, continental nation-state with our only immediate neighbors both militarily weaker than us and largely friendly to us. Warfare has changed in many ways as well–if Chicago or New York are destroyed by human agency, it won’t be by horse-riding barbarians from central Eurasia or the Arabian deserts, it will likely be by high-tech weapons of mass destruction of some kind.

I’m not really sure if your grasp of American history is any better than your grasp of Ancient Near Eastern history. You do realize that my Inauguration Day “prophecy” is, by any reasonable and normal reading of what I said, completely inaccurate, right?

42

From the OP (remember that??)

Well, the only numbers I have are from my 1996 World Almanac, but it lists Christianity at 32.4% of the world’s population, Islam at 17.1%, and Hinduism at 13.5%. Maybe you meant the two largest religions besides Christianity?

From Duck Duck Goose

Well, I don’t see much respect in America for religious texts besides the Bible. My WAG is that 90+% of Americans couldn’t tell you what religion reveres the Vedas, which feels that the Tripitika contains most of the core beliefs… hell, I’ve got a B.A. in Religious Studies and I can’t even recall if Shinto has any sort of canon. How can people respect something they don’t even know exists? It seems that if people as a whole did respect other texts besides the Bible, they’d do some research. Oh, and maybe stop trying to get the Ten Commandments posted everywhere they can. :rolleyes:

From red_dragon60

Well, maybe some of you wacky Mahayanan Buddhists do. I’ll be spokesman for the Theravadans and say, “Bodhiwhatsva?”

Wow, if that wasn’t a tremendous waste of time and an extreme display of nitpickery, I don’t know what is. I mean, fighting ignorance is one thing, but you just fucking suck, Quix! [Mods–I apologize for the Pit-like sentiments, but this dickhole really deserves it]

Quix

43

If they are put down in Holy Scripture, most everyone has heard of them. So if someone goes out and fulfills a prophecy that he’s heard about most of his life, what he’s really doing, isn’t he, is simply following instructions?

Prophecies that come true even when the people at the center of them are unaware of them are more likely to be true prophecies. The same goes for prophecies about natural phenomena like a storm or an earthquake striking some city. Only Divine Revelation could account for such a prophecy. Is there any such prophecy in the Bible?

44

capacitor wrote:

And you know who’s responsible for most of the bannings and burnings of the bible? Christians! The Catholics banned all but the Latin translation of the Bible, for example, and many modern English-speaking Fundamentalist Christians view all English translations other than the King James Version as heresy (including Jack Chick).

45

This is a very valid point jab1. But if you look at the players in the prophecy concerning Tyre (above) they are Phoenecians, Babylonians, Macedonians, and Muslims. They didn’t exactly have a reason to try to fulfill the prophecies as they were not concerned with them. Also, the prophecy was not fulfilled by one person but a group of people over history so that coersion is tossed out the window.

How about the prophecy that Ashkelon would become desolate and then reinhabited by the Jews.

This prophecy was written around 621 B.C. In 1270 A.D., Sultan Bibars destroyed it. The first part of the prophecy was fulfilled 1800 years after it was written by a man who had no concern for, and probably no awareness of, this prophecy! Between then and the 20th century, Ashkelon was deserted, except for a turkish garrison in the seventeenth century.

The second part of the prophecy was fulfilled by the state of Israel 700 years after the first part was fulfilled. The city was reinhabited by the Jews and was rebuilt into a garden city. They rebuilt Ashkelon because it was in a great location.

Also, consider all the prophecies concerning the Diasapora and the regathering of the people of Israel. The Jews were the ones who were persecuted for thousands of years. They were the ones that had to keep moving from one country to the next. When they became a state in 1948, the impetus towards that moment had been an over-drive persecution of the Jews. They did what had to be done considering the circumstance but were not doing it to fulfill the prophecies.

46

I’ve heard this “there’s prophecies so it must be God” before… not only from Christians but from Muslims…

Exhibit A:
http://www.mohammedi.freeserve.co.uk/judgement.html

That site contains so-called “signs before the day of judgement”… and many of them have “come true”
here are a few I picked out:

“Rain will be acidic or burning” OH MY GOD!

“The people of Iraq will receive no food and no money due to oppression by the Romans.” EEEK

“Female singers and musical instruments will become popular.” UH OH

“When the shepherds of black camels start boasting and begin to compete with others in the construction of taller buildings.” OH ALLAH SAVE US NOW

“The conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims.” THAT CAN’T BE COINCIDENCE!

hopefully you see my point… these are “the word of God” even more directly than the Bible because Muslims assert that not a single word or syllable has changed in the Qur’an since it was sent directly to the prophet muhammed 1400 years ago… And these prophecies are “coming true”!

I’m sure you could find similiar fulfilled prophecies in many if not all other religions as well, point it is doesn’t prove squat

47

Kaje,

Link was interesting but most of the interpretations given were pretty loose. But keep in mind two things: 1) Mecca, at the time of Mohammed, had many Jews and Christians, and Biblical stories are repeated in the Koran with a few modifications, and 2) Mohammed was illiterate and did not write the Koran. It was recited for years before it was actually penned down. As for the conquest of Constantinople, I don’t know too much about the prediction but it seems that the Muslims had a reason to make sure this “prophecy” was fulfilled. See jab1’s last post above.

The reason I believe the Bible’s prophecies over the other prophecies made throughout history is because the Bible’s prophecies were fulfilled in all details. The prophecies were not vague and generic as people have been claiming here. Many prophets wrote in detail about events that happened over thousands of years in the natural course of history.

A nice quote by Thomas Urquhart:
“[The prophecies] contain what I may call prophetic pictures. They do not merely indicate one feature among the many after-characteristics of peoples and of countries: they describe one feature after another till their condition is fully portrayed. With the fulfillment of one, or perhaps two, of these it might be imagined that chance had had to do, but, as one after another is added, the suspicion becomes more and more unreasonable, till, before the accumulating evidence, it is swept away completely and forever.”

48

Like, maybe, interpreting a statement like “This city will be completely and finally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar” to mean “This city will be sacked, but never completely and finally destroyed, by various people other than Nebuchadnezzar (who himself will never in fact take the city) centuries after Nebuchadnezzar dies”?

49

From what I’ve read (http://www.islamzine.com/quran/quranh.html for instance), the Qur’an was written as it came to Muhammed. Not by him, but said by him to scribes who wrote it down and then those scribes recited back to Muhammed what they wrote so at to ensure absolute accuracy.

50

You keep ignoring the fact that the Bible says clearly “many nations” will be involved in the destruction of Tyre. The statement, as you said it, is not in the Bible. There were several parts to this prophecy. Nebuchednezzar fulfilled, in whole, his part. He broke through the gates and destroyed the mainland city. He used battering rams, as predicted. He broke down the towers. Alexander threw the remnants of the mainland city in to the sea to reach the island city. He conquered the island city. The muslims destroyed all of Tyre. It is now a place for the spreading of nets. Nothing has been built in its place (the modern village is not on the same location) and the ruins of the city are in the sea somewhere. You do not want to accept prophecies so you are trying to twist what they said. You’re insisting that the prophecy said Nebuchednezzar would be the only one involved although anyone so inclined can read Ezekiel 26:3: “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.” The prophecy is clear no matter how much you wish to puddle it.

51

Wow, got it right on the head! Mahayana here!

52

Nebuchadnezzar was an emperor, a “king of kings”. His armies even included mercenaries from Greece. Jeremiah speaks of “all these nations…[which] serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”. The prediction in Ezekiel 26 is simply that Nebuchadnezzar, with his imperial army (including contingents from many subject and vassal nations) will completely destroy Tyre. Not only did Nebuchadnezzar fail to fulfill this “prophecy”, no one else has fulfilled the prophecy either. The “prophecy” says Tyre “will never be rebuilt”, yet Tyre has been rebuilt many times, and in fact it’s still there today. The “prophecy” says that Tyre “will never again be found,” yet archaeologists have excavated artifacts from just about every period in Tyrian history. Other cities have in fact been destroyed or declined so completely that we can’t even find their ruins-- Tartessus or Agade or the capital of the Mitanni Empire–but not Tyre.

53

MEBuckner

I didn’t know mercenaries count as a whole nation. Look at the second part of Ezekiel 26:3, “as the sea causes its waves to come up.” Here’s a quote from John C. Beck: “Because a characteristic of waves is that they come in succession with their destructive force due to their repetition and continuous pounding, this author understands Ezekiel to be reffering to a succession of invaders extending over a prolonged period of time.”

Tyre kept being rebuilt and destroyed between the time Nebuchednezzar made the first blow until the Muslim’s made the final one in 1291 A.D.

I would suggest you look over your link again:

The site of ancient Tyre is known. The ruins are gone. They are in the sea. The prophecy said the city would be “no more” but the site would be used for “spreading nets.” This is exactly what happened.

54

Mambo, I think you’re getting a little over-focused on undecidable details of interpretation, while neglecting what I took to be MEB’s main point, to wit:

*The statement “[INSERT NAME OF MAJOR ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN CITY HERE] will fall and be sacked” is about one step up, in terms of prophetic vagueness, from “There will be conflict in the Middle East”. Every city in the A.N.E. has been overrun, sacked, pillaged, suffered periods of decline, etc. The fact that Tyre was a major city made it all the more likely that it would someday be sacked–which it has been, several times in its history.

The fact remains that Tyre did not fall in the time and manner which Ezekiel predicted–it fell, and was sacked, and was rebuilt, centuries later. That Tyre would someday fall to someone, given the realities of Middle Eastern politics for about the last six or ten thousand years, approaches certainty. *

In other words, the fact that the prophecy about the sacking of Tyre more or less came true is not an infallible sign of divine inspiration, unless you choose to believe that it is. After all, I’ve predicted some things that came true too, but I wouldn’t consider myself divinely inspired on that account. Similarly, there are members of other religions who will be happy to explain to you why the accuracy of the prophecies in the Vedas, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or various other holy books means that they’re divinely inspired, but I doubt you’d be willing to believe them.

There is also, of course, the issue of how to explain the numerous Bible prophecies that didn’t come true, as noted here:

In short: if your argument is that even a non-believer should demonstrate respect for the Bible (at least when talking to believers), because of its high historical and cultural significance, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to argue that we should show respect for the Bible because it’s demonstrably miraculously accurate to an extent that cannot possibly be accounted for except by divine inspiration—sorry, but you haven’t got a logical leg to stand on.

55

Back on Page One, you wrote the following. (I added the times and dates so they can be easily found again.)

You are aware that when using BC Dates, you must count backwards right? So you have claimed that Ezekiel “predicted” that King Nebuchednezzar would destroy Tyre two years AFTER it was done!

Yeah, that’s quite a prophecy, all righty. :rolleyes:

It’s also no great work of prophecy to say that a city will be destroyed repeatedly when it lies on a natural invasion route. It’s hardly any surprise at all that it should have been repeatedly invaded, destroyed and re-built in the past 4,000 years. At best, Ezekiel got lucky.

56

jab1,

The way I wrote it sounds bad. Ezekiel wrote his book between 592 B.C. and 570 B.C. I said 570 B.C. because it was the latest point he wrote any of the prophecies. Besides, Nebuchednezzar’s role was only in the beginning of the fulfillment. 1291 A.D. is a long long time from the 6th century B.C.

kimstu

Most of the prophecies you listed are considered end-times prophecies. I do not claim they have been fulfilled. I am saying that most of the prophecies have come true. When they have all come true, then the end is nigh.

Here’s another straightforward prophecy:

Well, that one pretty much came true in 1948. And that’s only one of the prophecies concerning the regathering of Israel. This prophecy was written 2500 years ago and it just came true. Israel had split into two nations in 926 B.C. and it wasn’t until 1948 A.D. that they were able to stop wandering from nation to nation.

In Isaiah’s prophecy (written by 704 B.C.) concerning the regathering, Isaiah wrote:

This prophecy says that Israel would be reunited in one day. On May 14, 1948, lo and behold, the State of Israel came to be in one day. Foreign control ended, Israel declared independence, and Israel was recognized by other countries all in one day. Isaiah said that the birth would take place before the labor pains. Only a few hours after Israel became a united nation again, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attacked the new nation. Isaiah’s writing indicated that the world would be perplexed by the events of the regathering. It would not be your run of the mill nation creation but one tha would get attention. Hmm.

57

Actually he said ABOUT 570 B.C. and as you know our determining of dates from back then is harrowing at best… nitpicking, while annoying, can be fine, but in this case I don’t think it really has any bearing

58

I had a long post all ready but it didn’t apply all that much and was erased but may turn up as a new thread if I have the time to put it together later.

ANYHOW

It’s pretty tough, if not impossible to respect a book itself, you can only respect the people, their beliefs, and that may include the book they believe.

(if that made no sense, you respect the book because you respect your friend…not because you agree with the book)

59

With that whole regathering thing… If it is to regather all the children of Israel, then why are there still plenty of Jews living in other places around the world?

60

Good question, Kaje. I’d also like to point out that Ezekiel said the re-formed Israel would be ruled by a king. It doesn’t say a thing about a Prime Minister.

Also, the Jews knew all about this “prophecy” and no doubt worked very hard trying to make it come true.