(29 votes, average: 4.76 out of 5)
Loading...The Christians knew growing up had a very different understanding of “prophecy” in the Bible from the view adopted by professional biblical scholars. (I have been thinking about this because of my posts on Amos.) My sense is that most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians (certainly the latter) continue to have this non-academic view. It is that the prophets of the Bible – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Zechariah, and so on (there are seventeen prophets in the English Bible) – were principally interested in what was going to be happening in our day.
At the time when I became familiar with this view, that meant that prophets were interested in what would happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, of course, it would mean that they were principally interested in what would happen in the 2010s. That in itself should give us pause. Do you mean they were *not* mainly interested in the 1970s and 80s?
The same can be said, obviously – far more so! – for Christian understandings of the book of Revelation, the one book of prophecy that is always, every generation, every decade, every year, every day, is being interpreted as predicting things happening, finally, NOW!!! Christians have read Revelation that way since, well, since the book of Revelation was written. It is talking about what is happening to us NOW, in the 14th century! Or NOW, in the 19th century! Or NOW, in the 20th century! Or NOW, in 2016.
I should stress that the NOW is not the one and only interpretive point of reference for the Hebrew Bible prophets for the conservative Christians who take this particular approach. The other point of reference is…
THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don’t belong yet, you (literally) don’t know what you’re missing! JOIN! Every dime of members’ fees goes to charity!
I’m re-reading Elaine Pagels’ Revelations and her interpretation supports your view that John of Patmos was making “prophecies” based on what was going on between the Romans and the Jewish people at that time and that John of Patmos was angry at the Pauline Christians who split from the Jews who kept Jewish law and followed Jesus as their Messiah. I find that prophecies make far more sense when they are examined in the time they are written rather than as warnings for whatever narcissistic generation thinks those prophecies are relevant to them.
Frank Kermode, in his classic literary study, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, thinks we hold on to this prophetic, apocalyptic view of reality because it gives us a way to impose a meaningful structure on what would otherwise be perceived as chaos. Every generation becomes special when they perceive themselves as living in the ‘end times’ and the troubles they encounter can be chalked up to the decadence and corruption before the inevitable salvation to come. Kermode thought this view so persuasive in our culture that even non-religious people have absorbed it and what makes it seemingly impervious to the disconfirmation of failed prophecies.
Growing up in a fundamentalist home in the 70’s, bombarded with strict views of Christianity, I remember facing each day with an overwhelming fear of the rapture. I vividly remember arriving home from school one day (7 or 8 years old) expecting to find my mother in the kitchen preparing lunch. Instead, I found an empty home. I fell to my knees and started crying, knowing that Jesus had come to take my family and that I (a lowly sinner!) had been left behind. A few moments later, my mother emerged from the back yard where she had been hanging laundry.
There was even an old reel-to-reel movie shown regularly in our church with a song that said, “I wish we’d all been ready.”
My point is, I agree. Each generation seems to consume itself with that idea that THEY are the chosen generation. Although it’s not a unique tactic, it’s unfortunate that the idea of the end times is used to leverage religious views.
Wow! I had the same experiences back then. I was tormented by the rapture as a child. Looking back now it all seems cultish and pschologically damaging to children (and maybe adults too). I’m thankful ever day for Dr. Ehrmam and other modern scholars that have allowed me escape the fundamentalist chains.
And that’s precisely why I for one think Bart should be nominated for sainthood – he is doing the world a lot of good in that his life’s work is defusing a great deal of very damaging human psychology. 🙂
This doesn’t just happen with the Old Testament–Revelation was also primarily about events and people in the author’s lifetime, and things he expected to happen in the near future. Nostradamus was writing veiled poetic metaphors of European politics, not predictions of distant future events in lands he couldn’t imagine. But because they were so vague, so poetic, it’s easy to pick out things that correspond with our times–just as you can with works of unabashed fiction written long ago. People don’t change. What was true then is true always. Just the external details vary.
For what it’s worth, the New Testament is full of warnings against false prophets. Pity more Christians don’t heed those warnings.
Excellent, Bart!
OT, but I just got to wondering about this.
Think of Jews in Jesus’s time and shortly before, who expected a coming Messiah, but *didn’t* believe in “God’s Kingdom on Earth,” with its “general resurrection.” Nor did they believe the Messiah would be the Son of Man, coming in the clouds. They believed he’d be either a great warrior King or a remarkable High Priest.
Given that, they certainly wouldn’t have expected him to die *as part of fulfilling his Messianic role*. But would they have thought he’d have a long reign as King or tenure as High Priest, but age like other people, and *eventually* die? Or would they have thought he’d be taken up bodily into the heavens, and made semi-divine?
The mainly thought he would die as an old and very successful king.
Or, as I sure you have heard it said before: “Text with context is pretext!”
Right! But I think you mean “without” context!
Thank you for the correction!
Great point! As an Evangelical, I agree with this post. I ignore the “prophecies being fulfilled now” books (especially in regards to the minor and major prophets in the Old Testament; they tend to stretch things and get ridiculous at times). It is more common among Fundamentalists it seems. Luckily, I was not taught that the prophets were speaking of our day, but to put their text into context. In regards to the Book of Revelation, I have been leaning more towards Amillennialism in recent years, however that could change as my studies progress. I am interested to see your post on Messianic prophecies in the OT prophets as I obviously believe there were prophecies concerning Jesus. In regards to the prophetic books, when do you date Daniel? I lean towards an earlier date, but I’ve read some lean more towards a later date.
Daniel is almost certainly mid-second c. BCE
Posts like this one are what make this blog so enjoyable. I shared this post with my wife, who is a mathematician and not nearly as interested in CIA as I am, and she must have said “my God, that’s so true!” five times. So enjoy it when you share your scholarship as though you were frustrated with a fundamentalist at a dinner party.
Hello Dr. Ehrman:
Interesting!
One point that I would like to add. You included “Daniel” in your list of prophets. The rabbis have debated this issue. For example one source [excerpts] mentions the following points.
“On the one hand, the Talmud does explicitly state that Daniel was not a prophet. On the other hand, when the Talmud states that only “48 prophets and 7 prophetesses prophesied to Israel,” the sages disagree as to whether Daniel is included in that list or not.”
Daniel, however, used the language of “visions” to describe his experiences, even after he saw angels and received knowledge through them, as we can see from the following verses from the Book of Daniel:
“Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in the vision of the night” (2:19).
“In the first year of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream . . .” (7:1).
“. . . and the visions of my mind terrified me” (7:15).
So while it is true that Daniel had visions, they were on the level of ruach ha-kodesh, divine inspiration. Therefore, the book of Daniel was made part of the biblical section of Ketuvim, the Writings or Hagiographa, and not the Neviim, Prophets.
Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed discusses this issue [prophecy/prophets] in greater detail.
Thank you for your thoughtful blog.
Michael Alter
Yes, Daniel is not included among the “Prophets” (Nebi’im) in the Hebrew Bible; it is only considered a “prophet” in Christian Old Testaments.
Thanks, Dr Ehrman. Makes absolute sense. Two questions
1. What are your views on the book of revelation in this context. I understand it is not in the same category as the OT prophets but it is still used by evangelicals as in some ways being linked to prophets like Daniel etc and speaking to events soon to occur
2. Why in your view are people in ministry (at least the ones I have been exposed to) using the books of prophecy so as to suggest that they speak to our day.
1. Revelation is also speaking to events of its own day 2. Preachers often say otherwise because they believe that all history is coming to a climax with us, in our own time, since these are the days all history was looking forward to.
Thank you
I guess they desperately want the bible to be relevant to their lives, when really it’s not.
I think John of Patmos did foresee future events and probably could have gotten a Golden Globe future prophecy award, but his Greek was pretty bad and so maybe it just came out all wrong in his wording. He came pretty close on some future predictions (minus a few minor fuzzy vision discrepancies) like the one about a nasty seven-hill city being in the “to be destroyed” memo from above, but instead ending up morphing into the “major center of Christianity” a few centuries later. Also, my guess is that this resulting orthodoxy lady probably didn’t look quite as hot as the beast-riding woman John saw in his Rev 17 vision, but other than that …
Just goes to show that you can’t totally rely on perfect accuracy from those Mediterranean Island “shrooms”.
Once in high school a classmate talked about how, as a child, she’d had nightmares about Jesus returning. Worldwide destruction, rolling dark clouds, lightening and a fiery abyss. I couldn’t imagine someone’s faith bringing them that much fear.
Somehow I managed to avoid this nonsense throughout my life as a Christian. Raised Catholic, I had no exposure to end times theologies that found great details in the Hebrew prophets about our day. My evangelical connections throughout my adult life were almost all amillienial, as was my undergraduate Bible education.
Good for me.
I had plenty of these as well when I was young, what I will call Tribulation nightmares.
If you’d been raised Southern Baptist like I was your childhood would have been total hell on earth. You’d been exposed to rapture movies at church, rapture preaching, weeklong nightly Bible studies of Revelation and Daniel and on and on. You’d been on pins and needles all the time wondering if you’d be left behind and doomed for 7 years of tribulation and then an eternity in hell.
Dr. Ehrman, how much of this do you think has to do with our need to find–as statisticians like to say–the signal in the noise? In other words, went we are handed conveniently ambiguous documents from a seemingly more enlightened golden age, do you notice that many people feel compelled to squeeze every drop of juice from that lemon as possible? For instance, look at how people do this with the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus or the so-called Bible Code that were so popular a while back. It wasn’t enough that the Torah had an explicit meaning within the text itself (the Peshat of the text, as Jewish exegetes call it). No, it also had to have some hidden meaning, buried within some esoteric code (the Sod of the exegetes). Human beings hate not knowing, to the point where they even look to anachronistic ancient prophecies for answers. Add to that the fact that we have a naturally myopic view of our own time, projecting onto it an exeggerated sense of importance within the historical scheme of things and you have the resulting projections of ancient prophecies onto modern times.
Yup!
any text taken out of context is a pretext to error…
Another fascinating post. But I am not sure about the use of the term narcissistic. Not only is it the most difficult English word to spell, it implies that something out of the normal range of human experience is going on – something pathological. I would put the tendency of people to read themselves into prophecy within the universal human practice of reading themselves not everything. We (falsely) see ourselves as ‘more developed’ than other species, and as the ‘point’ of evolution. We read poetry at our weddings and funerals as if Yeats, or Milton, or David Bowie (may he rest in peace) had been talking about us. Human use of shared literature, oral and written, to find personal relevance is so widespread in human culture that it should be named and described. As far as I know it does not have a name, but if it did Bart, you would be able to categorise the response to prophecy as a subset of a wider phenomena. In my own country, indigenous prophets have made extensive and spine-tingling use of the old Testement to find relevance to their own experiences. It is a wonderful experience to read their responses to prophecy, and see the way it was used to bring hope to dispossessed people. This of course does not make the interpretations ‘true’, but indicates rather the universal human understandings that the original writers were able to express. Imagne writing something which nired people thousands of years later, in a place then undiscovered, and in a language not yet developed!
Yes, I would agree it’s part of a larger human tendency. But I also think humans tend toward narcissism!! 🙂
I see a somewhat different, but to me equally absurd, approach to the Old Testament in Orthodox Christian writings: that the true meaning of the Old Testament can only be found in a proper understanding of the New Testament. How would you answer the Orthodox commentator who does not claim that the prophets predicted specific events per se, but that their meaning can only be understood in a Christian context?
I would say that it’s a rather anti-Jewish view!
“Everything was leading up to the time that really matters, the one I myself am experiencing. All events since the creation till now have been pointing to my day. Now is the time it is all coming to realization. MINE is the generation that matters.”
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
Jesus was a narcissist.
Or more likely the author and, perhaps, his audience.
Reading the Bible only in terms of what we think the authors might have meant in their own day and age strikes me as the same approach that today’s judicial originalists use when reading the U.S. Constitution: it can’t mean anything except exactly it meant the day it was written. Since many strongly disagree regarding what the authors meant just 230 years ago (with all kinds of historical records written in English), how can we pretend to understand what the authors meant in obscure texts written in ancient languages thousands of years ago? Is the Constitution a living document open to contemporary interpretation (based on today’s world) or are we ruled from the grave by men long dead? Likewise, can Biblical scriptures only mean what they meant when they were written ages ago, or are they living documents where prophecy and sayings are open to contemporary interpretation based on today’s events? Perhaps God might use the scriptures (even fulfill them) in ways the authors never foresaw?
I think old documents can still be meaningful for people today, absolutely! But I don’t think that means that the authors were writing specifically to reveal secrets of our own day (rather than being concerned with their own times)
My point is that from a prophet’s perspective, maybe he was talking about events in his own day. However, unbeknown to the prophet, perhaps God means the prophecy for both that day and the future, i.e. a double meaning.
Wonderful Bart! 🙂
You write: “That’s the same level of respect we should give to the writings of ancient authors as well. We should read them in context.”
I of course agree with you that there are many advantages to reading the prophets in *their* context rather than in ours. And, I completely understand your frustration with those who would impute intention to an ancient author in utter disregard for his context. Still, I think, Bart, that in your earnestness you occasionally get carried away on this sort of thing. Despite the many and notorious excesses of too many “presentist” interpreters, there remain many good souls who do read scripture for devotional purposes and who apply the word to their present situation with little or no concern for or understanding of the situation addressed by the original author. Although this sort of “presentism” may offend the sensibilities of the historian, we need not therefore lump all such “presentist” interpretation in with the excesses of the Hal Lindsey’s of our fallen world. And, for the life of me, I can’t see an *a priori* reason to rule such modest devotional “presentist” readings out of bounds morally as you seem to do here with your unqualified “should’s”.
As for the narcissism, well, yes, many of us do feel a poignant need for attention to *our* anxieties, it’s true. Not all of us are as secure in our egos as the great and the learned, Bart:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYd7rPe7Eqs
Many thanks for your consideration, my friend! 🙂
Yes, I don’t object to people finding old writings highly meaningful to the present! Quite the contrary!!
Thanks, Bart! 🙂
“This narcissistic reading of texts seems to escape the notice of those who use this interpretive technique, but seems completely obvious to those who take a different approach. Here’s the reality. It is NOT all about us.”
This is not really a question, just an observation. I agree with you that Christians don’t really read the Bible: they tend to look in it for answers to their problems.
Fundamentalist or evangelical Christians insist that the Bible be accepted as literally true: a historical record of events. Yet they have a mythic interpretation of the Bible, in the first or primary definition of the word.
I’ve read some of the posts about your refutation of “mythicist” ideas.
Myths address human emotional and psychological needs, and have meaning, but are not “literally” true. (Though, Schliemann found Troy by reading the Iliad and the Odyssey.)
Fundamentalists treat the Bible in a mythic way, as the agency of a supernatural entity, yet insist that it’s literally true, but, at the same time, don’t really want it examined as a historical record.
Shakespeare’s plays have meaning, and we wouldn’t say they are “lies” or that Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar was not a “real” person or didn’t exist in history, though the words of his eulogy of Caesar in the play are not “literally true.” Or, because the “myth” or story of Jesus might have born some faint resemblance to pagan myths (or, not) it doesn’t follow that, therefore, the New Testament has no “truth” in it, no meaning.
When believers see “meanings” in the Bible, such as prophecies about present events, they are treating the Bible as an oracle. Of course, this isn’t rational or logical. For them, the oracle is speaking to us, and it is “all about us.”
More thoughts…
This is all well good for the traditional prophets, but when we get to Daniel, it’s not so simple. My understanding is that it was written in the second century BC. It is also talking about things happening in the author’s own time, but the reader is made to believe it was written during the babylonian exile. So for someone reading it during the author’s own time, they have no choice but to accept that a prophet 400 years ago actually was predicting things that were clearly happening now. Surely that would make people more open to the idea that a prophet could be looking into the distant future. Once people get into this kind of mindset, all the scriptures would be ripe for re-interpreting.
Excellent point about narcissism, Dr. Ehrman. Fundamentalists exhibit narcissism on such a grand scale and rarely ever see it. Much is seen as being all about themselves. You made a supporting point about this in your brief essay, here on the forum, regarding suffering.
On the occasions in which I’ve pointed this out to a proclaimer who holds similar thinking, the either ‘blank’ or ‘shocked’ look reveals that they’d never encountered the idea that what is being preached or proffered is troublingly narcissistic.
In the most recent issue of the Atlantic there is a story about apocalypse in the context of the termination of massive, online multi-player video games.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/when-a-video-game-world-ends/423360/
For example, there is this statement about what an apocalypse means in our culture:
“…The third is what the Greeks intended apocalypse to mean: the revelation of knowledge through profound disruption, which is why the final book of the New Testament is called “Revelations” (composed, it is thought, to reassure Christians during their widespread persecution by the Roman emperor, Domitian). In other words, the apocalypse either is the end, looks like the end, or helps us understand the end.”
There are also some interesting accounts of the actual termination of particular video games when those who were still in the online group of players watched as it ended.
How do you react to this? Do video games have something to teach us about thinking about the apocalypse and why it has been such a mesmerizing idea to Jews and Christians over the centuries?
Some games are certainly manifestations of the apocalyptic views of the modern period!
Thanks for clarity and making “good” common sense. I have always said prophecy is is for profit, if you write about it; you will profit! Still awaiting the rapture…
I think this is a great point! I’m currently reading an analysis of Revelation by Elaine Pagels and it seems pretty obvious that the debacle described is reflective of the Roman Empire on Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple and NOT anything about 1980, 2010, etc. All I see when I read Revelation, however, is pretty much the book of Joshua being re-written in more modern times (with themes of Exodus and Genesis playing out of course)…as if the author was deliberately making the story of Joshua a prophetic story about HIS modern day experience! Is he to be believed? He is describing a visionary experience “in the spirit,” but it looks an awful lot like a re-packaged book. Arrogance or spirituality? What do you think?
Well, there is certainly a lot of war and destruction in both books! But I don’t think the author of Revelation was trying to write an update of Joshua per se, in a new idiom. His closest connections are to other Jewish apocalytpic literature of the time.
I think what I’m trying to say is that the actual chronology of events (regardless of where the imagery comes from) looks a lot like Joshua, up to and including the language surrounding Gog and Magog (they were numbered as “sands of the sea”) as well as the lake of fire for Hazor, the *leader* of all the enemy kings at the end. I’m just wondering if prophets were simply repeating the same stories over and over again, but with increasingly more recent imagery? And if so, how does that make them prophets? It’s interesting to me because Jesus said he was the completion of the Law and the Prophets. Maybe Revelation is considered prophetic because it has to repeat itself yet again cause there isn’t a “new” story to tell anymore?
Well, stories of war and enemies and suffering and ultimate triumph all do, at heart, tend to look very much the same….
All of your points about the prophets are well taken, but the point about reading the prophets in context is the most important. I am constantly told by my brother that these prophets are talking about our own day, especially the beloved Book of Revelation. Were it not ever written!! If I missed the point of how these early prophets affected late apocalypticism, then I apologize. Were they just precludes to the idea that God will bring doom on humanity for their sins?
They were the ideological matrix out of which apocalypticism emerged, as it altered some of the prophets’ basic views of the world and its relation to God. I’ll try to explain in future posts.
I understand that the prophets weren’t writing about a distant future, but the nature of the books were about foretelling events. Do you agree with that?
To *some* extent, but the events were in their own immediate future, and the prophets were far more interested in the present than the future.
Great post especially the idea about a “narcissistic” reading of texts. As you and your readers know, many Christians jerk Old Testament sentences out of context and contend that they apply to Jesus. Thomas Paine, in his “The Age of Reason” makes these points about this:
1. These prophecies may be about something else, for example the nation of Israel, other than Jesus.
2. These prophecies don’t ever mention the word “Messiah,” but usually refer to pronouns, such as “he” or “my,” or to common nouns, like “son,” and it is not clear to whom these pronouns and common nouns actually refer.
I might add that reading these prophecies in their context is quite a challenge and they are anything but clear, at least, to me. To read them as prophecies about Jesus takes some desire to see them that way.
Dr. Ehrman,
The apocalyptic concept of a millenium seems to be pretty popular these days as well. Can you speak to where this comes from–beyond the one-liner in Revelation? The early church fathers seemed to go back and forth on it, but Catholicism and Orthodoxy have ultimately landed in a position where the millenium is now–or the church age. Is it true that the expression “a thousand years” scripturally just refers to a really really really long time?
Dr. Ehrman, excellent post!
Regarding the narcissistic part -I grew up with a religious group who think since 1874 the words of Jesus in Matt. 24 and 25 along with the prophets speaking end times belong to them and teach it as absolute doctrine. Thanks to the internet their doctrine has develop possibly destructive building cracks to who know where it will lead.
In regard to Revelation for people to say that it applies only to Rome and the Jews, I can’t help but go back to Rev. 20 that seem to speak beyond that. Unless it is all symbolic it seems to speak about 1,000 years in the future no matter what generation we belong to.
Since most of today’s religions are based on proof text ideas and that the bible is our inerrant guide book in 2016, I really wish Dr. Ehrman (if you don’t have it already) you had a book that goes into depth about the historic facts of the development of biblical prophecies as it evolved through time and history to see if it does prove if the bible is in fact inerrant as a book directed by YHWH.
doctor Ehrman
have you done posts on jesus’ claim “this generation will not pass till all …”
“truly i tell you some standing here will not taste death until…”
have you done any books on jesus’ eschatology / have you covered jesus’ future predictions on this blog?
if yes, can you tell me what to search under?
Try looking up “apocalyptic” and “apocalypticism” on the blog.
Bart, are the Pharisees having perfect understanding of the 3rd day the main problem with accepting the guard story in Mathew as historical?
Do you believe the story of the guards was a lie that a Christian came up with in order to give evidence as to why the apostles could not have stolen the body of Jesus?
If it was a legend and not a lie, how do you think it’s evolution as a legend came about? I’m thinking that after the Pharisees claimed that the Apostles stole the body of Jesus, sometime afterwards a Christian thought “Wouldn’t Pilate have put guards there?”. He then told other about this, and another Christian came in a heard the “..pilate have put guards there part, and thought guards were there, after a while embellishments came and went with that and after some time we have the story as we have it today? What do you think of this theory?
I don’t think legendary accounts necessarily start out as lies. It’s hard to say *where* rumors start. But they start all the time without anyone necessarily trying to be deceptive.
What are your thoughts regarding prophecies from Ezekiel and Jeremiah, regarding the destruction of Tyre and also the destruction of Egypt?
I know Christians who believe that although some details don’t line up exactly (depending on one’s interpretation), nonetheless these writers did indeed foretell that Nebuchadnezzar would attack Tyre and Egypt, and both with some measure of success (Tyre survived but paid tribute, while Egypt suffered a defeat around 586BCE according to Josephus). They say that each prediction contains hyperbole, which is why some of the details don’t match up. Yet they claim that just predicting the general events themselves is miraculous, and evidence of divine inspiration.
My personal opinion is that this severely “weakens” the predictions, such that they sound more like predicting who will win the next football grand final. Not a particularly impossible feat on human terms. I also wonder what these Christians would have said had the details of the prophecies matched history exactly…
What are your thoughts on these two prophecies? (Ezek 26 & 29 mainly, although I think the Egypt one is referred to by Jeremiah as well, not sure which chapter)
Even if we only consider that they were predicting events in their own day, were their predictions in any way fulfilled? What do you make of it?
It’s always impossible to know if these are predictions written before the fact or postdictions written after the fact (meant to be read as pre-dictions).
I’m probably missing something here but weren’t most of the prophets written AFTER the fact? Writing in the 4th century BCE about something that occurred 200 years earlier, isn’t that how the writers tried to demonstrate that their “prophecies” are divinely inspired, etc.? The Ancients have done this forever, Homer, Virgil, etc., right down to the verbiage put into the mouths of their main characters.
Yes, that’ the ocmmon view among critical scholars.
While I was raised in an Evangelical church and family that put little to no stock in apocalypticism (the rapture, movie or concept, was considered unbiblical and few if any prophecies were interpreted as being about our day), *very* much stock was put in Biblical prophets having successfully prophesied about the coming centuries of their own nations.
As one beloved Sunday School teacher put it when trying to prove to us that the Bible was indeed the word of God, “the chances of all the OT prophecies coming true are about as likely as if you filled the entire state of Texas 4 feet deep in Oreos, and took ONE Oreo out of the entire lot, removed the cream, and buried it back in, then gave someone one chance to guess where it is.” (Apparently the needle in the haystack analogy wasn’t drastic enough – this one sure stuck with me all these years.)
So in short, I guess my question is how accurate is the dating method used for OT prophetic texts/how certain are we that many (all?) were written after the fact? I’d like to think it would be incontrovertible evidence for churches like my former one that the Bible isn’t as divine as all that, though given their track record , I’m sure they’d argue their way out of it somehow.
The problem isn’t (just) the dating of OT prophetic texts; the problem is that hte people writing (and, earlier, telling) stories of Jesus were doing so fully aware of what the OT prophetic texts said. If you know that the savior is to come from Bethlehem and then you tell a story that Jesus was born in Bethlehem… well, your knowledge may have affected how you told your story (as can actually be demonstrated — e.g. with Bethlehem!)
I agree… but what’s your sense on what the following passages were actually referring to?
1. What events are in view in Ezek 38 & 39? (Rev 20:8 seems to draw from it… but I assume it’s not referring to the same event Ezekiel was).
2. In Daniel 12:4, when is the “sealed time of the end” supposed to be? It’s written to imply it’ll be after Daniel’s time… was it referring to the actual time Daniel was written (2nd century BCE) as opposed to when it was supposed to have been written (6th century BCE)? In other words… something like “Daniel predicted these current 2nd century events four centuries ago”… This verse is used by fundies to justify their novel ideas… but I know Irenaeus shows it was used by second century gnostics too…
3. Revelation is unsealed (Rev 22:10)… is this proof that the early Christians saw Daniel as also unsealed by Jesus’ arrival (cf. Heb. 1:2, etc.)?
4. I hear the claim that 2/3 of the bible is prophecy (predictive)… is there any truth to this?
I’m out of town and so don’t have any books with me, so I can’t really answer these detailed questions 1-3. Do you have a good annotated Bible? These kinds of questions are almost always answered there. I’d suggest using hte HarperCollins Study Bible. On pt 4, no that is defnitely no where near being true.
Thanks. I don’t have that one, but I just ordered it on Amazon—so I will have it soon. Is that one better than the Anchor Bible?
The Anchor Bible is a series of commentaries; it is not an edition of the Bible with annotations. But it is far superior when it comes to giving in depth exposition of all the major issues, verse by verse.
I remember asking one of my dispensationalism-driven professors (back in the early 80s) how the people Jesus was addressing in Matthew 24 (if these even are the actual words of Jesus) could find comfort in an event that would take place 2000 plus years later. His answer, best as I can recall (there’s that memory issue thing again), was that these followers of Jesus took comfort on future believer’s behalf. In other words, they were unselfishly happy for rapture-eager believers today. Oh, that’s right, it is about them after all. I quickly learned I was burning up good money for pseudo-intellectual scholarship. I was also told that Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:34, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” was pointing to whatever generation it would be when Jesus returned. By the way, if anyone happens to run into a High Priest in Jerusalem somewhere still waiting for Jesus’ “coming with the clouds of heaven,” tell him he can take comfort as there is a great book by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins titled, “Perhaps Today: Living Every Day in the Light of Christ’s Return.”
My favorite one of all time is Jack Van Impe quoting Nahum 2:4… because after all, this clearly is being fulfilled in the busy streets of Los Angeles.
Jeremiah 29:11″ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
One of my friends think that this verse is referring to her. What can i say to her to give her a wake-up call?
Probably nothing.
Hi Bart,
I m wondering how did early Christians overcome the fact that Jesus didn’t return in their lifetime. How did Christianity continued to spread in the face of that fact? Hope you can recommend a book or an article on that subject. Thanks!
Lots and lots written on that. One very intriguing book is John Gager, Kingdom and Community. He argues that cognitive dissonance made the Christians *more* missionary once the anticipated end didn’t come.
Instead of visions, perhaps the disciples thought of the resurrection story when they looked back at these passages about “rising 3 days after death” and took it to be about Jesus. That Jesus was actually fulfilling these prophecies and they started preaching he had risen according to these passages. No visions needed?
It’s theoretically possible, but Paul’s pretty clear that he had a vision and that others did as well.
I see. When Paul mentions the people who saw Jesus like the 12 and James, do you think he got this from them directly? He knew people from the Jerusalem church and the “pillars”. He also mentions the 500 which places doubt on its historicity though.
I really don’t know where he got his information. I wish he had told us! And I wish whoever told him had told their *own* stories!