We’ve seen, in the previous posts in this series, that Fred Pearce’s argument for a divinely inspired Bible is little more than a tissue of self-referencing claims and uninformed ideas about Bible history. Today, we arrive at a classic argument, one which virtually every atheist who has even a cursory knowledge of Biblical scholarship can refute. Yes, folks, it’s the Argument from Prophecy!
Argument 9: Unique Prophecy
Fred reckons the Bible makes claims about future events, and that these claims have come true. If that’s so, it makes a good case for the idea of a supernatural force backing the writers of these prophecies. Unsurprisingly, however, Fred is completely wrong on this.
First off, some of the clearest prophecies in the Bible never did come true. Ebon Muse has examined a couple in detail at Daylight Atheism. Whilst is can be argued (as a couple of commentators at Daylight Atheism did) that these prophecies might just not have been fulfilled yet, that still makes them useless as evidence for divine inspiration.
Addressing the specific prophecies Fred refers to, though, we run into further problems. His first contender is Jesus himself, who, in Luke 21:24, predicts the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans:
“They shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles . . .”
Good work, there, Jesus! Jerusalem was indeed royally shat upon by the armies of Titus Flavius in 70 CE, so this must indeed have been a real-life, old-school prophecy. Hallelujah! But hang on a moment…
The Gospel of Luke is, along with Matthew and Mark, one of the Synoptic (“seen together”) Gospels, so called because they all display a high degree of stylistic and narrative coherence. Both Matthew and Luke draw heavily on Mark as a source, as well as a lost collection of Jesus’ sayings known as Q. The reason this fucks Fred’s theory is that Mark’s composition can be dated to 70CE or just after, meaning that Luke (and hence the prophecy) was written after the Romans ran their little demolition derby through the Israelite capital. In other words, it’s very easy for Luke to have Jesus predict these events, because Luke himself already knew they had happened.
Fred’s other big-hitter in the prophecy department is Jeremiah.
“For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah . . . and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it . . . Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth . . . Hear the word of the LORD, all ye nations . . . He that scattered Israel will gather him (Jeremiah 30:3; 31:8,10)
The Christadelphians score a big win with this one, don’t they? Jeremiah, writing in the 6th century BCE, successfully predicts the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, 1,878 years after the destruction of the Temple and more than 2,500 years after he jotted this prophecy down. Not bad. Except the Fred is letting his lack of scholarship show again…
Jeremiah, it can safely be said was not (as Fred claims) anticipating the 20th century dissection of Palestine. Instead, he was writing about a much more immediate threat: the rather worrying expansionist policies of neighbouring Babylon. Under King Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon was rather keen on occupying quite a lot of the Middle East, and they were particular intent on taking out the other big power in the region, Egypt. Get your atlas out – who was stuck smack in between the war-mongering Babylonians and their Egyptian nemeses? Why, it’s little old Judea, home to one Prophet Jeramiah…
Politically astute, Jeremiah was wise to the imminent Babylonian assault (Nebuchadnezzar had kicked the shit out of the rebellious Jews ten years previously), and, as a keen amateur performance artist, enacted various bits of street theatre (wandering about with a yoke around his neck, smashing clay pots, burying his belt) to try and convince the local authorities not to piss off their belligerent neighbours. During the siege of Jerusalem, when it was patently obvious that Nebuchadnezzar was properly ticked-off and was about to stomp all over Judah, Jeremiah changed his tune. As a morale booster, he started preaching the message that, try as the Babylonians might, they couldn’t keep a good miniscule Semitic nation down. “We’ll be back!” Jeremiah claimed, just as many other oppressed people have defiantly shouted in the past. As it turned out, he was right (sort of), the Jews did get to return to Jerusalem as vassals of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. But that shouldn’t encourage us to make any claims for successful prophecy. Jeremiah was a political activist, his message intended to supply hope to a beaten people. The fact that he turned out to be right is neither here nor there (although one wonders if he would have made it into the Biblical canon had his prophecies not come up trumps). In World War II, Winston Churchill confidently predicted victory for Britain when it looked as though we were going to be overrun by Nazis – do we ascribe divine backing to his speeches, just because he turned out to be right? Of course not, and neither should we assume any such inspiration for the crazy performance art of Jeremiah. In any case, we can safely say he certainly wasn’t prophesying the formation of 20th century Israel.
Argument 10: The Course of History
This is the exact same argument as number 9, using Daniel as the prophet. I’ve addressed the prophecies of Daniel before, so I’ll put this briefly: the Book of Daniel is an early example of the genre of historical fiction. Daniel, had he existed, would have lived and made his predictions in about 600 BCE. The story of his life was written in about 165 BCE. If Philippa Gregory had one of her Elizabethan characters predict the destruction of the World Trade Centre, would we immediately assume that Mary Boleyn was a prophetess (oh, and a real person, to boot)? Daniel makes accurate predictions because the author of his story had already seen them come true – it’s worth noting how vague and unfulfilled the prophecies become once you get past the mid-second century BCE. There was a good post about Daniel at A Time To Rend recently, so I’ll direct you there for further discussion.
Next time, we’ll face yet another series of subjective arguments based entirely on Fred’s personal worldview. Sorry to have to put you through that again, but I’ll try and make it as fun as I can.
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