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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Unto Us a Child is Born
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I would agree, and also make the point here that it's rather like some of the attempts I've seen to reconcile apparent discrepancies in the Gospel accounts.
I'm not saying there isn't scope for exercises of that kind, but a lot of them seem to miss the point by a country mile.
We could start another thread or a tangent on the whole issue of predictive prophecy. It would appear from the Book of Acts that the first Christians expected such things - and one assumes that was an expectation they derived from the more 'charismatic' end of their Jewish heritage.
But it seems to me that we miss the point somewhat if we start trying to 'map' various details across from Daniel 11 or from other apparently forecasting or foretelling passages onto historical accounts of the Maccabees or the rise of the Roman Empire or whatever else.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: you seem to think that the Book of Isaiah HAS to have had a single author simply because the Apostle John appears to treat it as if it did.
No, I think so because if it does not, it impugns the integrity of what Isaiah says. To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author. To concede otherwise, would totally justify Martin 60 's scepticism and that of other similar views. At least with Martin, there is intellectual honesty. He completely dismisses the whole supernatural deal.
If it could be proved rather than assumed that there were several Isaiah voices, then it challenges the whole basis of faith in the NT as well where he is so often quoted. To give an airy wave and say these things do not matter is to not understand the implications involved.
Eutychus : I would be interested to know, incidentally, where Daniel is a 'little' bit wrong.
[ 12. December 2017, 18:33: Message edited by: Jamat ]
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author.
No, I don't think it is - I think it's merely a confirmation that John (and the early Church leaders who "authorised" the Gospel for publication) believed that Isaiah wrote the whole book. And, in any case, both Scriptures quoted precede the time of Jesus and so can still be adduced as prophetic proof of Jesus' Messiahship, irrespective of the author. The focus of the passage in John is the content of the prophecies and what they say about Jesus, not the identity of their author which is very secondary.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
It doesn't undermine Isaiah's integrity in any way, shape or form.
What seems to have happened with the prophets is that there were 'schools' of them. So you'd have an 'original' or founder if you like, with disciples writing pseudomonously thereafter.
As Baptist Trainfan says, the authorship is a secondary issue.
You seem to want to reduce everything to black and white, binary terms. Unless someone is a full-on fundamentalist literalist like you are or else sceptical of the whole supernatural / interventionist aspect, then you accuse them of lacking intellectual honesty.
It's intellectually honest to ask questions. That's what I'm doing, not falling back on the tired old tropes of US backwoods flavour fundamentalism that has somehow taken root in New Zealand.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
To me, John 12 : 38-41 is textual confirmation that the book of Isaiah DOES have one author.
No, I don't think it is - I think it's merely a confirmation that John (and the early Church leaders who "authorised" the Gospel for publication) believed that Isaiah wrote the whole book. And, in any case, both Scriptures quoted precede the time of Jesus and so can still be adduced as prophetic proof of Jesus' Messiahship, irrespective of the author. The focus of the passage in John is the content of the prophecies and what they say about Jesus, not the identity of their author which is very secondary.
Thank you, you confirm my point. When I say textual confirmation I mean that one part of the Bible reinforces and confirms another as you would expect of inspired writing. The fact that John 12 has another primary focus does not affect this in the least.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: It's intellectually honest to ask questions. That's what I'm doing, not falling back on the tired old tropes of US backwoods flavour fundamentalism that has somehow taken root in New Zealand.
No one minds honest questions but you are not merely asking questions, you are questioning received truth by implying that somehow in this new age of understanding, that it is ok to fundamentally apply new criteria to make Christianity more inclusive. If you do not take a stand somewhere you will find it all, 'slip sliding away'.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
The confirmation supplied by John is of the prophetic relevance to Christ, in his eyes, of what Isaiah (the book) is saying, and that is what is important.
It is not ipso facto confirmation of the authorship of Isaiah - any more than Jude 14-15 proves that the First book of Enoch should be in the Christian canon, or that the fact that the NT writers quote the Septuagint prove that it is the definitive translation of the OT.
It is clearly not the intent of John to prove the authorship of Isaiah in that passage, and to insert significance where the author intended none is again, I would argue, more disrespectful of the text than it is respectful.
==
PS: On Daniel, I have chapter 11 in mind but I qualified my observation and would need more time to look into it. Also, you are wrong to assert that Martin rejects all supernatural intervention, it's just that his admissible field for it is far narrower than yours. Just how narrow is something I'm trying to find out from him.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
implying that somehow in this new age of understanding, that it is ok to fundamentally apply new criteria to make Christianity more inclusive.
New criteria to make Christianity more inclusive have been applied since at least the Council of Jerusalem, and arguably since the Pentateuch. If you'd been in the US at the time of the civil war, would you have been advocating slavery on the basis of your argument, and if so, do you think you would have been right to do so?
The whole beauty of the Gospel is that its message can and should be reinterpreted for every nation tribe people tongue and age.
Accepting that is not a rejection of the Gospel or the Scriptures but embracing the challenges they throw up and allowing ourselves to be borne by the Spirit into the world.
Refusing to accept that leads not just to fundamentalism but to extremism and I believe, ultimately, violent extremism of one form or another. quote:
If you do not take a stand somewhere you will find it all, 'slip sliding away'.
I put it to you in the light of this statement that fear and not rational thinking is your primary motivation here, and I'd challenge you to think long and hard about just what you might be afraid of slip sliding away.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I'm not denying any revealed truth whatsoever.
I'm not denying the Trinity, the Deity of Christ nor the Deity of the Holy Spirit.
Nor am I challenging the inspiration or authority of scripture.
All I have done is questioned and challenged your very woodenly literal approach to some of these things and your highly selective application of them according to a particular highly conservative evangelical framework which is a subset of Christian belief.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Good luck with trying to determine the width of Martin's 'admissible field' ...
FWIW my reading of Martin's position is that it's not as far 'left' as Spong's or the more radical liberal theologians, rather it's a somewhat hyperbolic and very Martin-ish application of some ideas from Process Theology mixed up with some quirkiness of his own ...
But he does seem to have moved away from traditional ideas of an interventionist God.
That said, Martin's God still seems to be 'there' and uniquely revealed in Christ ... But beyond that it's difficult to pin anything down.
In fairness to Jamat, I can understand why he feels I'm 'wavering' but that's not how I see it. I'd like to think that my faith can bend in the breeze rather than snapping when the wind blows.
There's something very brittle and quite fragile about the faith in the way Jamat articulates it. I'm not saying his personal faith isn't strong, but I do think that there are red herrings and rather unhelpful ideas in there both of how inspiration works and how that affects our approach to and reading of scripture.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Eutychus
The last word: Science can never have that. Only the most recent. Sorry, what could you live with should it prove to be true? That Isaiah was real and started off the eponymous book? Which remains to be proven. That it was redacted by priests for at least 200 years? Which is as certain as one can rationally get. Even the first verse is a redaction, even if only by a real Isaiah.
Daniel 2: I agree. It portrays history. It isn't necessarily a foretelling prophecy, except in the story. Which is in two languages, lacks continuity and contains repetition indicating multiple sources and/or editors. It is an (eschatological) apocalypse, common from Persia to Rome from 300 BCE.
I'd LOVE it to be foretelling prophecy, for the seer Daniel to be real and not just a mythical folk hero for the Jews facing Antiochus IV Epiphanes around 170 BCE. How old would it have to be to be truly prophetic? To reveal things that could not have been known? The Greeks had been on the rise for nearly two centuries while Rome expanded next door to them. By 170 BCE Rome was an obvious contender in the wings. But OK, if we go with, what, a generous 1% probability that only a real Daniel wrote the book starting around 600 BCE, it's miraculous with regard to Greece and Rome. But not much. It wouldn't take transcendent immanent, big clever, practically omniscient God much to extrapolate them without lifting a practically omnipotent finger. Except at Belshazzar's feast.
Daniel 9: Taken as 69 (=62+7) – all driven by Jeremiah's 70 year Exile prophecy (Jer. 25:12) - x 7 = 483 years. To make that tie up with Christ's death in 30-33 one has to use 'prophetic years' (Revelation 12:6, 14 (cf. Dan 7:25; 12:7)) of 360 days to get back to the warrant given to Nehemiah in 445(a) odd to rebuild the temple. All very Dispensationalist.
And I can accept it. All. Whether it was written around 200 or 600 BCE. As miraculous revelation from God of His intent. Because again, He doesn't have to do anything. Nothing intrusive, coercive, nasty. Un-Christlike. All He had to do was ensure that Nehemiah got the warrant and that was followed through, and incarnate ( 483 x 360 ) / 365.25 = 476 = 445(a) + 30 odd years later. Despite there being a perfectly good... historical-critical solution* that avoids prophecy. He didn't have to passively see a future that didn't exist by magic. He couldn't have worked it out like 500 years of Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greco-Roman dominance, it's too detailed. He had to intervene, minimally. Fine.
*62 'weeks' (428 if 'prophetic', 434 if not) from 605/4 or 539/8 or 458/7 or 445/4 giving us 177/6 or 171/0, 111/0 or 105/4, 30/29 or 24/3 and 17/6 or 11/0 BCE in which the 605/4 – 434 one in eight permutation gives us the 'an anointed one... cut off'; high priest Onias III's murder. Montgomery's “dismal swamp” of critical exegesis indeed! Rationalistically it's the only answer.
Agabus' prophecy of famine in Acts 11: Here again God does not have to do magic or be nasty. Merely be big and not even that clever. If the rains failed in Uganda, not just Ethiopia or just the latter for several years and also the Med, the Cura Annonae would eventually fail: There would be no wheat from Campania, Sicily, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt. You can see the graph in God's den with a Note-It saying 'Tell Agabus'.
The reliability of the Incarnation and nowt else: As you've been saying for a year now, you don't understand why I accept the Incarnation and necessary intervention around it, including for the first and second circles of the Church and not the post-hoc claims made for the OT including by Jesus Himself. Me neether! But I do. Deism+ Says it all really. As I keep saying, it doesn't matter how we got the story. It's the greatest story ever told. Still. And always will be. Epitomized by divine-human compassion and courage, i.e. compassion and courage in an ignorant man that can only be explained by the divine.
The "not-by-human-agency" example outside Christ hole: There are none of any significance. Jesus' second cousin and step-dad are inside Christ as far as I'm concerned. Inner first circle.
Horse and cart: Big horse, small cart.
I see no expense to the historic faith so far.
Gamaliel - you're next.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Ok, let me don't my cricket whites and leg shield things and make sure my cricket box is in place, then I'll come out to bat.
For those who study form, I tend not to 'do the math' and work from the the premise that different rules apply to apocalyptic literature (and ancient literary genres in general).
So I'm no longer hung up on the predictive elements - although I don't rule them out entirely as a possibility.
Anyhow, I'll be out to bat once I've done some work and overdue admin.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Eutychus : I would be interested to know, incidentally, where Daniel is a 'little' bit wrong.
While I was waiting for Martin to reply (I'll have to get back to you later), I dug out Baldwin's commentary and poked through it a bit more. I must say (again) I find her style difficult and even more so in French.
Having defended the early dating of Daniel to the hilt, for Daniel 11:40-45 Baldwin says (my back translation): quote:
if one takes the view that the text is dealing with historical events, it is erroneous. But if... it is prophecy [of future end-time events], the problem disappears
In other words, she says that up till then Daniel has been prophesying things about Antiochus (and this just shows how inspired he is and how accurate God's foretelling is) and from that point on he is only prophesying things about the end-time Antichrist, because the details (specifically, the conquest of Egypt and the battle between the sea and the glorious holy mountain never happened and Antiochus died in Syria and not in Palestine) no longer fit the known facts.
Earlier, she justifies her position, specifically on Daniel 11, that it's all predictive, written before the fact, thus: quote:
The church has lost its assurance about predictive prophecy. Christian thought has been so overrun by down-to-earth, rationalistic humanism that it tends to ridicule any assertion that sees in the Bible anything more than very vague references to future events... God, however... can certainly legitimately declare that he "long ago announced... things to come" (Is 44:7)"
I think there are double standards in play here. Only historical prophecy that can be argued to contain accurate elements is offered as proof of its legitimacy, and any deviation from accurate historical prophecy is ruled out from this test as referring to as yet unverifiable events; in this view, prophecy is legitimate because it's predictive, except all the bits of it that aren't.
That's like saying all milk in the supermarket is full milk and proving it by disregarding all skimmed milk, or something. It's bothersome, anyway.
Baldwin talks about the "telescoping" of prophecy whereby prophecy can refer both to near future and eschatalogical future events and I would be ok with that, but suddenly changing horses mid-stream just because the historical record doesn't match up, as she seems to do in Dan 11, strikes me as a bit, well, dispensationalist.
[ 13. December 2017, 11:19: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Gamaliel, my first attempted spin:
quote:
Hmmm ...
I don't want to get into a Process Theology tangent...
Ah go on.
quote:
...but if God is God then surely he 'knows the end from the beginning.'
So it sounds way off kilter to me to suggest that God couldn't have known of Cyrus (or anyone else) in advance.
As omniscient he surely knows what might have been as well as what has been and what will be or what might be...
The first and last sentences, yes, but the middle? How could He have known that? By what... magic?
quote:
I get told off for speculating as to what other Shipmates might mean or what might motivate them, but I submit that what may be hacking people off from time to time is the way you use the M word - 'magic' - in a way that can sound a tad smug.
'You haven't caught up with me yet,' type of thing.
I do think that you and I are close and running on somewhat parallel tramlines, though.
However, where we differ is on the possibility of supernatural intervention and agency.
Aye, 'magic', it's a shocking rock in the pond. For God to have known Cyrus was going to be born, by name, 200 years in advance, rationally means one of two things. Either the future has already happened or God would guarantee it. Nano-manage it. The latter is infinitely more likely but still all but an infinitesimally unlikely possibility of supernatural intervention and agency – as there certainly isn't any now and hasn't been for nearly two thousand years of even that calibre - compared with a risibly demonstrable late date for (deutero-)Isaiah 45.
quote:
I agree wholeheartedly with Eutychus's comments on IVP commentaries and the like. They seem quite scholarly and to take into account modern discoveries and textual criticism etc etc - but then they suddenly seem to switch a gear when it comes to sacred-cows such as the predictive aspects of OT prophecy.
Aye. Funny that. They run out of intellect and faith at the same time. I don't have much of either to lose.
quote:
These days I tend to be comfortable with late dates for Isaiah and Daniel with the various Christological elements being things that the early Church 'discerned' or interpreted in a Christological way - if you like.
I don't see how that undermines the Church's claims, although if I were Jewish I'd obviously have a bone to pick ...
On the apparently future predictive elements such as are found in the whole Dispensationalist schema and the tendency to map these across to contemporary events, I gave up on all that a long time ago ...
Completely agreed.
quote:
How the Parousia will pan out is beyond my pay-grade as they say.
Or anybody else's, assuming it hasn't already been fulfilled since the first Christian Pentecost and is yet to be for each and every one of us after death for the next hundred thousand years.
And you can't go wrong with Thomas Stearns.
Mustard seed:
quote:
Sorry to double-post, but my point, of course is that as the Second Person of the Trinity, Very-God of Very-God, Jesus would have been well aware that there smaller seeds worldwide than the mustard seeds 1st century Jews were familiar with...
How would Jesus have been very well aware of smaller seeds worldwide prior to His resurrection? Apart from as a reasonable clever man? As I keep asking all over, is it orthodox to say that the Son of Man was congruent, isometric, commutative with trans-infinite, pre-eternal God the Son? That He repressed a human mind with all of His Person? Or that His nature was perichoretic with it. We can't say any more than that can we?
quote:
Good luck with trying to determine the width of Martin's 'admissible field' ...
FWIW my reading of Martin's position is that it's not as far 'left' as Spong's or the more radical liberal theologians, rather it's a somewhat hyperbolic and very Martin-ish application of some ideas from Process Theology mixed up with some quirkiness of his own ...
But he does seem to have moved away from traditional ideas of an interventionist God.
That said, Martin's God still seems to be 'there' and uniquely revealed in Christ ... But beyond that it's difficult to pin anything down.
Nicely summated.
My admissable field includes the Gospels with caveats like yours: Matthew Christianized Jewish texts. It's Red Letter at core. But has ever decreasing circles of lesser orders of magnitude import.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Hang on a sec', I've yet to get my cricket pads and box in place (reaches between crotch in an ungainly and unseemly fashion ... ruffle, rustle, ruffle ...) ah ... that's better that's adjusted it ...
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
In the meantime, I've been hiding behind Eutychus's batting. He's a more experienced batsman than me.
He may have heard a polite ripple of applause run around the ground after his last innings.
Ok - my attempt to block Martin's spin.
I'll let the umpire decide on whether I do so or whether he sends the bails flying off the stumps.
I suppose my starting premise is that God knows everything, past, present and future - 'the end from the beginning' - and as has been quoted from Isaiah 44:7 - he can 'call forth' that which is to come:
http://biblehub.com/isaiah/44-7.htm
I don't see why we have to see that in 'micro-managerial' terms. If God is omniscient then he'd know Cyrus before he was born, just as he can work out what Martin60 is trying to say in some of his more obscure posts and also knows exactly why I can act like such a wally at times ...
He knows and understands it all.
That's my starting point.
Now, that doesn't mean I have to understand the apparently predictive elements in Isaiah, Daniel, the Gospels or - unlike Jamat - the Book of Revelations - in a fundamentalist kind of way.
If there are rational reasons for accepting late dates and redactions, I'm open to do so. Just as, even though I'm no expert, I know enough about apocalyptic literature not to take it as literally as Jamat appears to do. Rather, I take it in an allegorical and illustrative or aphoristic sense.
Again, that's another fundamental principle.
So, God knows everything. One principle.
Apocryphal and prophetic literature has to be handled differently to other types of writing and in keeping with its genre. Second principle.
Equally, when you look at the way the NT authors handled OT texts it's pretty obvious that they didn't do so according to the neat schemas deployed by the more conservative scholars with special pleading and acrobatic tricks they use to try and make things 'fit'.
Liberal and radical scholars bring other problems to the table. We can deal with them during another innings.
Jamat says that we should expect complete and utter dove-tailing and spot-on detail when it comes to inspired writings.
Why? Who says?
How on earth does it impugn the integrity of Isaiah or John's Apostleship if the book that bears Isaiah's name had multiple authors?
Sections of it may very well have been written by Isaiah the son of Amoz. That doesn't mean that other sections were written later or added by pseudonymous prophets in his 'school'.
I can remember being told as an earnest young evangelical that Isaiah was like a mini-bible and that its format and structure followed that of the Bible itself - with 39 opening chapters (like the 39 books of the Hebrew or OT scriptures) dealing with judgement on idolatrous humanity. Then the final 27 chapters (like the 27 books of the NT) brought a message of hope ...
All very nice, all very neat, but even as an earnest young evangelical I found this explanation rather bizarre. Like as if the actual number of chapters has significance in and of itself.
People like patterns. We like to make sense of things.
The 19th century wasn't the first to see people poring over the scriptures and making connections between this, that and the other that they then developed into interpretative grids and schemes.
But that's when this tendency flourished and we see its effects in certain strands of evangelicalism today.
Not to mention marginal groups like the JWs.
It's an approach that is fundamentally flawed, as well as fundamentalist.
Again, I'm no expert. I've read some liberal material, I've read plenty of conservative material, I've read some Jewish material. I hang around on these boards and I speak to people in real life.
And those are my conclusions so far.
So, have I hit the ball and blocked it? Knocked it for six? Knocked it outside the pavilion or has it sent my stumps and bails flying or is it LBW or a knock in the box?
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And now a word from our sponsor.
Daniel 10 (KJV) Prologue to Daniel 11
1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel...
536 BCE, the 3rd year of Cyrus being king of Babylon and Daniel from 539.
Daniel 11
1 Also I in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I, stood to confirm and to strengthen him.
Who? No such person. But it must be the same year or so. 536/5 BCE.
2 And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.
Cambyses II 530–522 BCE,
(pseudo-)Smerdis / Bardiya 522,
Darius I September 522 BCE to October 486 (36 years) and
Xerxes I / Ahaseurus 486-465 followed by eight more (a minor prophetic oversight?)
3 And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.
Alexander the Great 336-323 BCE
4 And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those.
1. Ptolemy (Soter - Saviour), ruling Egypt, part of Syria and Judea (305-283/2 BCE)
2. Seleucus (Nicator - Victor), ruling Syria, Babylonia and territory east to India (305-281 BCE)
3. Lysimachus, ruling Asia Minor.
4. Cassander, ruling Greece and Macedonia.
5 And the king of the south shall be strong, and one of his princes; and he shall be strong above him, and have dominion; his dominion shall be a great dominion.
Ptolemies, and Seleucids. Seleucus I Nicator was Ptolemy I Soter's general who set himself up in Syria while Ptolemy was distracted.
6 And in the end of years they shall join themselves together; for the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement: but she shall not retain the power of the arm; neither shall he stand, nor his arm: but she shall be given up, and they that brought her, and he that begat her, and he that strengthened her in these times.
'the king's daughter of the south' was Ptolemy II Philadelphus' (285-247/6 BCE) daughter Berenice I Phernophorus ("Dowry Bearer") / Syra (275-246 BCE)
'the king of the north' was Antiochus II Theos (286-246 BCE)
'an agreement': They married in 252 BCE, ending the war he began with the south in 260 BCE influenced by his first wife Laodice I.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 'he that begat her', died in 247/6 BCE: 'neither shall he stand, nor his arm'.
'she shall not retain the power': Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History, 1869, pages 251 and 252: "On the death of Philadelphus [he that begat her], B.C. 247, Antiochus repudiated Bernice, and took back his former wife, Laodice, who, however, doubtful of his constancy, murdered him to secure the throne for her son Seleucus (II) B.C. 246 ... Bernice ... had been put to death by Laodice.".
7 But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and shall deal against them, and shall prevail:
Her immediate roots were her parents. A male branch from them was her brother: Ptolemy III Euergetes (Benefactor), eldest son of Philadelphus, invaded Syria in 245 BCE.
8 And shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the north.
9 So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land.
He dominated the north's king Seleucus II, whom he outlived, 'and he shall continue more years than the king of the north', who died in 226 BCE, until his death in 222 BCE.
10 But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his fortress.
His being the king of the north, Seleucus II, as is obvious from v.11 His sons were Seleucus III, who ruled only three years, 226-223 BCE, and then his brother Antiochus III, called "the Great," ruled 223-187 BCE
11 And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north: and he shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into his hand.
The KotS, Ptolemy IV Philopater (Beloved of His Father) defeated Antiochus III the Great, the KotN, 217 BCE
12 And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands: but he shall not be strengthened by it.
But he made a bad peace.
13 For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches.
In 205 BCE the KotS died, leaving his infant heir Ptolemy V Epiphanes (The Illustrious) (204-181 BCE) and Antiochus III the Great, KotN, returned in force, allied with Philip V of Macedon, with Jewish assistance according to Josephus:
14 And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south: also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall.
15 So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities: and the arms of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.
16 But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him: and he shall stand in the glorious land, which by his hand shall be consumed.
Egypt lost Judea at the 200 BCE Battle of Panium (Caesrea Philippi).
17 He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom, and upright ones with him; thus shall he do: and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her: but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.
Apparently 'upright ones' mean 'equal conditions, or marriage' in Hebrew. Antiochus III, KotN, gave his daughter Cleopatra I in marriage to Ptolemy V, KotS, to possess the south. That failed: Coele-Syria and Palestine were promised as a dowry, but not delivered.
18 After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him.
The isles are those off Asia minor, which he invaded 197-6 BCE and on in to Thrace (Bulgaria) and Greece, absorbing Hannibal in to his court, before being defeated by Roman general Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus at the 190 BCE Battle of Magnesia.
19 Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found.
“As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence. Antiochus mounted a fresh eastern expedition in Luristan, where he died while pillaging a temple of Bel at Elymaïs, Persia, in 187 BC.” Wiki
20 Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom: but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger, nor in battle.
Seleucus IV Philopator (son of Antiochus III, ruled 187-175 BCE): he sent the tax collector Heliodorus to seize the Jewish temple treasury, who returned and assassinated him.
21 And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Selecus IV's younger brother, ruled 175-164 BCE) – da-DAH! - the true heir Demetrius I Soter's (Seleucus IV's son, a hostage in Rome) uncle, seized the kingdom. "Antiochus [Epiphanes]...drives out Heliodorus, and obtains the throne, B.C. 176. He astonishes his subjects by an affectation of Roman manners" and "good-natured profuseness [flattery]." [/I]
22 And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.
He murdered the High Priest Onias III 175 BCE. This is NOT Messianic of Jesus.
23 And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.
He took out Galilee and Lower Egypt in 171 BCE, keeping the Romans onside.
24 He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.
25 And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.
26 Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him, and his army shall overflow: and many shall fall down slain.
27 And both of these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet the end shall be at the time appointed.
28 Then shall he return into his land with great riches; and his heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do exploits, and return to his own land.
168 BCE
29 At the time appointed he shall return, and come toward the south; but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter.
He met his match in a single elderly Roman ambassador named Gaius Popillius Laenas.
30 For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.
Chittim. Cypriot Larnaka. Under Roman control. He left Egypt and turned on the Jews.
31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.
167 BCE
32 And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.
Provoking the Maccabees in 167/6 BCE -
33 And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.
34 Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries.
35 And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.
-and beyond until 161 BCE
36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.
A reiteration of his blasphemious ways.
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
Never happened. A failed prophecy? Or one of the ultimate King of the North's modern Roman successor? Catholic Europe!! As per Adventist and Dispensationalist Protestant Millennialist interpretation of Revelation.
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.
42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.
44 But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.
45 And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.
Logically it's a failed prophecy as the final edit ran out between 167 and 164 BCE, when Antiochus died, within 40 years of Qumran.
Or, God foreordained (because He couldn't possibly passively see what hadn't happened could He? That would take real magic. OR all the future eternity of infinity has actually happened) 400 odd years of future history, micromanaging kings, their children, marriages and battles.
[ 13. December 2017, 16:54: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Signs of a misspent youth there, Martin?
I might be unusual but I've never felt inclined to speculate on the precise identities of the kings and powers listed in Daniel.
The statue with feet of clay and so on always struck me as a very general literary trope but was prepared to broadly go along with the traditional conservative theological take on it ...
With Daniel 11, I've never found the futurist interpretations particularly convincing.
More generally, I couldn't quite see the point of people living thousands of years ago predicting things that were supposed to happen thousands of years ahead and in our own time, say...
But that's the arbitrary way in which Dispensationalism works.
And yes, I know the proof-texta before anyone starts ...
I can go along with the 'telescoping' of prophecy to some extent and to some of them having a contemporary, mid-term and long-term application ... But that's more by way of 'application' or interpretation by the beholder as it were. The 'This is that ...' thing of Peter's Pentecost sermon, for instance.
Anyhow, how was my innings?
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Daniel 2: I agree. It portrays history. It isn't necessarily a foretelling prophecy (...)
I'd LOVE it to be foretelling prophecy, for the seer Daniel to be real and not just a mythical folk hero for the Jews facing Antiochus IV Epiphanes around 170 BCE. How old would it have to be to be truly prophetic? To reveal things that could not have been known? The Greeks had been on the rise for nearly two centuries while Rome expanded next door to them. By 170 BCE Rome was an obvious contender in the wings.
Assuming the identification of the Roman empire as the feet of clay of the statue could be inferred by a late writer of Daniel in much the same way we could predict China as an emerging superpower today (more on this in a minute), that still leaves the emergence of the kingdom unlike all other kingdoms during that empire, doesn't it? Jesus preaching the Kingdom is surely, at the least, a neat fit that the writer might have hoped for but could not reasonably predict? quote:
Daniel 9 [lots of numbers]
OK, you've convinced me to abandon numerology completely. All written out like that, it's ridiculous. Well, nearly... quote:
all driven by Jeremiah's 70 year Exile prophecy (Jer. 25:12)
Isn't that predictive (not the exact number of years, but a rough timespan)? Or are you going to tell me Jeremiah was edited after the fact too ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif) quote:
Agabus' prophecy of famine in Acts 11: Here again God does not have to do magic or be nasty. Merely be big and not even that clever. If the rains failed in Uganda, not just Ethiopia or just the latter for several years and also the Med, the Cura Annonae would eventually fail: There would be no wheat from Campania, Sicily, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt. You can see the graph in God's den with a Note-It saying 'Tell Agabus'.
That sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me.
In fact it also sounds exactly like Joyce Baldwin's argument here (back translation mine again): quote:
It is instructive to note that the corresponding section of Cambridge Ancient History volume VIII is entitled Rome and the Mediterranean 218-133 BC. Rome already overshadowed the Western Mediterranean before the end of the third century. No need for a supernatural prophet...
Just how the title of a 20th-century history book proves it was all obvious before the fact somehow escapes me (as does how this helps Baldwin's overall argument!). People now say the fall of the Berlin Wall and soviet communism was entirely predictable but it certainly didn't seem like it at the time. Everyone was completely bemused.
quote:
The reliability of the Incarnation and nowt else: As you've been saying for a year now, you don't understand why I accept the Incarnation and necessary intervention around it, including for the first and second circles of the Church and not the post-hoc claims made for the OT including by Jesus Himself.
Ah, I remember now. You think (to borrow from Daniel and you ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) ) that Jesus was a big rock of the supernatural that got dropped into our natural world with accompanying signs and wonders that spread out in decreasing circles across history like ripples in a pool. That's certainly pretty much how I see things going forward, I suppose my background means I have more trouble extending the same idea backwards into the OT.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Aye, 'magic'
It would be really helpful if you could stop using that word. quote:
it's a shocking rock in the pond. For God to have known Cyrus was going to be born, by name, 200 years in advance, rationally means one of two things.
My own, doubtless terribly wobbly, working theory of divine sovreignty is what I, doubtless terribly inaccurately, refer to as the quantum one.
I imagine God to have marked out some key milestones, as a minimum the beginnng, the middle (ie Christ) and the end - and perhaps at least some other vague 'nodes' along the way - but not to have staked out all the intervening events.
We can be assured that all the particles of history will travel through those three points, but (by virtue of the design and not by virtue of any incapability on his part) God does not foreordain and cannot foreknow all the intervening events; they exist in an unknown state until they are observed by the passage of time.
That's my eccentric, home-grown hermeneutic to reconcile divine sovreignty and free will. It also leaves room for at least some trustworthy predictive prophecy, about the milestones.
[ 14. December 2017, 07:55: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Gamaliel
Second body line up spin coming in.
I suppose my starting premise is that God knows everything, past, present and future - 'the end from the beginning' - and as has been quoted from Isaiah 44:7 - he can 'call forth' that which is to come:
...
I don't see why we have to see that in 'micro-managerial' terms. If God is omniscient then he'd know Cyrus before he was born, just as he can work out what Martin60 is trying to say in some of his more obscure posts and also knows exactly why I can act like such a wally at times ...
He knows and understands it all.
That's my starting point.
With that stance your batting is perfect. For that stance. Just like Eutychus' and Jamat's different stances. And mine of course. No bowling can possibly get any of us out.
As per Tillich's Existential Theology and overlapping Process Theology God cannot be omniscient in the theist way. Despite being the (trans-infinite, meta-eternal) ground of (infinite, eternal) being, He cannot know what does not exist without working out the simple stuff (empires, Claudius' famine) or making it so (the 70 year Exile, the Incarnation) and the synergies of the two.
A wide.
Now, that doesn't mean I have to understand the apparently predictive elements in Isaiah, Daniel, the Gospels or - unlike Jamat - the Book of Revelations - in a fundamentalist kind of way.
If there are rational reasons for accepting late dates and redactions, I'm open to do so. Just as, even though I'm no expert, I know enough about apocalyptic literature not to take it as literally as Jamat appears to do. Rather, I take it in an allegorical and illustrative or aphoristic sense.
Again, that's another fundamental principle.
Close. A pretty forward defensive block.
So, God knows everything. One principle.
I don't see how He possibly can know the outcome of a match dependent on true chaos in every batting and ball with indeterminate spin. Like the weather that accompanies the match.
Apocryphal and prophetic literature has to be handled differently to other types of writing and in keeping with its genre. Second principle.
The stumps of Daniel 2 are apocalyptic, eschatological; visionary, symbolic, cosmic, angelic, demonic, pseudonymous with bails of court tale, dream report, legend, aretalogy, doxology and midrash. Some wicket!
Equally, when you look at the way the NT authors handled OT texts it's pretty obvious that they didn't do so according to the neat schemas deployed by the more conservative scholars with special pleading and acrobatic tricks they use to try and make things 'fit'.
Liberal and radical scholars bring other problems to the table. We can deal with them during another innings.
Fair play. Look forward to the second test. I'm a liberal and radical Christian. In theory...
Jamat says that we should expect complete and utter dove-tailing and spot-on detail when it comes to inspired writings.
Why? Who says?
The text. Such a stance is impenetrable. But scores no runs.
How on earth does it impugn the integrity of Isaiah or John's Apostleship if the book that bears Isaiah's name had multiple authors?
One lie and it's ALL lies. That's why he's a YECist.
Sections of it may very well have been written by Isaiah the son of Amoz. That doesn't mean that other sections were written later or added by pseudonymous prophets in his 'school'.
He would swing with that being a lack of faith in the integrity of the MCC.
I can remember being told as an earnest young evangelical that Isaiah was like a mini-bible and that its format and structure followed that of the Bible itself - with 39 opening chapters (like the 39 books of the Hebrew or OT scriptures) dealing with judgement on idolatrous humanity. Then the final 27 chapters (like the 27 books of the NT) brought a message of hope ...
Had that stance myself.
All very nice, all very neat, but even as an earnest young evangelical I found this explanation rather bizarre. Like as if the actual number of chapters has significance in and of itself.
What?! Of COURSE they do. That's how the Holy Spirit of the triune ICC works!
People like patterns. We like to make sense of things.
Even if the sense isn't there. In the sensor and the sensed. Like the whisps and irregularities in the crease that make no predictable difference to the bounce.
The 19th century wasn't the first to see people poring over the scriptures and making connections between this, that and the other that they then developed into interpretative grids and schemes.
But that's when this tendency flourished and we see its effects in certain strands of evangelicalism today.
Not to mention marginal groups like the JWs.
It's an approach that is fundamentally flawed, as well as fundamentalist.
Yeah I played for such a side. We reckoned we were identifyingly playing in the C12th.
Again, I'm no expert. I've read some liberal material, I've read plenty of conservative material, I've read some Jewish material. I hang around on these boards and I speak to people in real life.
And those are my conclusions so far.
No walk of shame that.
So, have I hit the ball and blocked it? Knocked it for six? Knocked it outside the pavilion or has it sent my stumps and bails flying or is it LBW or a knock in the box?
A caretaker innings so far.
Daniel 11 intermission.
Signs of a misspent youth there, Martin?
Oh aye. On the WCG team for 20 odd, very odd, years. Jamat wouldn't have got on it.
I might be unusual but I've never felt inclined to speculate on the precise identities of the kings and powers listed in Daniel.
I majored in those minors. (Can't think of a cricketing metaphor!)
The statue with feet of clay and so on always struck me as a very general literary trope but was prepared to broadly go along with the traditional conservative theological take on it …
We had it all worked out until the EU got more than 10 nations.
With Daniel 11, I've never found the futurist interpretations particularly convincing.
The only explanation for the deviation from history from verse 40 was that the prophecy leapt from four hundred years to over two and a half thousand. Right out the ground. A Garry Sobers. When the crowd chanted "Six, six, six."!!!
More generally, I couldn't quite see the point of people living thousands of years ago predicting things that were supposed to happen thousands of years ahead and in our own time, say...
They did it unknowingly – Go thy way, Daniel - for US, because we were living in THE end time.
But that's the arbitrary way in which Dispensationalism works.
And yes, I know the proof-text[a]s before anyone starts …
Aye.
I can go along with the 'telescoping' of prophecy to some extent and to some of them having a contemporary, mid-term and long-term application ... But that's more by way of 'application' or interpretation by the beholder as it were. The 'This is that ...' thing of Peter's Pentecost sermon, for instance.
Ah, yer see?! So near yet so far. To a run.
Anyhow, how was my innings?
Head up back to the pavilion.
Now to nick that ball with the penny in me pocket for Eutychus' next innings.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Sorry, that last line were me, not Gamaliel.
I'll be more explicit about who said what in what order. I hope the non-italic, italic response works above.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I got it, Martin60 and the cricketing metaphors were well played.
I'm back at the pavilion and will emerge for a second innings as I don't think you've stumped me nor bowled me out yet nor that I've been LBW ...
Over to Eutychus.
You've not bowled him a googly on his response about Jeremiah's prophecy about the 70 years yet.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I got it, Martin60 and the cricketing metaphors were well played.
And served, at least for some of us, to make many of the recent posts in this thread even more incomprehensible than those that came earlier. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Seconded.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Swerve Eutychus!
The kingdom unlike all other kingdoms: If it isn't just wishful thinking then it's a platinum-iridium prophecy for sure. A prophecy of what God brought to pass in Christ and may yet bring to pass on Earth, if not, in heaven. Not a problem. Fits deism+ just fine.
Numerology: Aye, you can never be wrong with numerology as Dr. Matrix proved.
Jeremiah's 70 year Exile prophecy (Jer. 25:12) – Chapter 25 is said to be the last part of the authentic oracle by some, fine by me again. God revealing what He's going to do beyond just thinking stuff through (I know, I know*) is fine.
'sounds like 20-20 hindsight' p'tartoe: Simple foresight p'taytoe.
Baldwin: She ain't wrong. It was all obvious to big, big God to me. Rains failing in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi mean Rome starves within a year. Not in the same category as the collapse of communism, which was obvious only with human hindsight. God would have worked it out to the day in a Spirit Planck tick I'm sure(*).
Ripples: As Genesis(!!!) said in '76, Sail away, away…ripples never come back. Or go back. A great sci-fi fantasy concept mind! The decision to throw The Rock in the pond is forward from the beginning.
Impractical magic: My last refuge of it will be where God's passively seeing a future that hasn't happened without working it out (I know, I know*) or intervening is invoked. That WOULD be magic. Meaninglessly irrationally supernatural. Everything else is magical thinking - the fallacious attribution – claims - of causal relationships between actions and events, for which my use 'magic' has been shorthand.
Quantum milestones: I LIKE it. I only have to have the One. But I accept lesser ones, like the 70 year Exile. Agabus' famine doesn't make the milestone grade. No intervention but telling Agabus was necessary. Any knowing an unknowable, without making it happen (and why would you?), like naming Cyrus 200 years in advance, is not even an instance of the fingerpost.
* God doesn't have to ratiocinate. The rational answer to all questions is instantaneous in Him.
(Sorry Nick, you're not from the Commonwealth then?)
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Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Baldwin: She ain't wrong. It was all obvious to big, big God to me. Rains failing in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi mean Rome starves within a year. Not in the same category as the collapse of communism, which was obvious only with human hindsight. God would have worked it out to the day in a Spirit Planck tick I'm sure(*).
The odd thing is that Baldwin seems to be on the other side of the argument.
So you're saying that God is super smart so his foresight is better than ours, but that this doesn't equate to foreordaining (except for my quantum milestones)? Sounds no less plausible than numerology at a first glance.
quote:
Ripples: As Genesis(!!!) said in '76, Sail away, away…ripples never come back. Or go back.
Just for you. Sorry about the mistakes. Didn't rehearse or check the words.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I got it, Martin60 and the cricketing metaphors were well played.
And served, at least for some of us, to make many of the recent posts in this thread even more incomprehensible than those that came earlier.
Would you prefer us to frame them in basketball terms, or baseball?
Or, worse, American Football?
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Cricket is incomprehensible. It's part of the point and part of its charm.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
WOWWWWW!!! Fantastic Eutychus.
Aye, like numerology, I can never be wrong. Baldwin is trying to have her cake and eat it. I'm trying to eat it and have it.
Moments of Al Stewart there.
I won't stop smiling all day.
[ 14. December 2017, 14:24: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
(Sorry Nick, you're not from the Commonwealth then?)
No.
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Would you prefer us to frame them in basketball terms, or baseball?
Or, worse, American Football?
Cricket is incomprehensible. It's part of the point and part of its charm.
Perhaps, but that charm is totally lost on a forum discussion such as this one. And having sat through a meeting today where very other sentence from one participant was peppered with baseball-speak—all of which I understood just fine—I can assure you that is just as annoying.
While I haven’t posted in this thread in a while (for a variety of reasons), I have followed it with interest. Personally what I would prefer is that use of jargon that will be gibberish to many readers be avoided, that assigning idiosyncratic meaning to specific words—especially after having been told repeatedly that doing so gets in the way of discussion—be similarly avoided, and that the quote function be used so that conversations can be followed.
Apparently, that’s asking a lot in this thread.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Sorry Nick. From the beginning. Might I ask what your response to the OP is? Where you are on the spectrum? Me---Gamaliel-Eutychus-Yourself---Jamat ?
I'll rewind to your first responses to me, if I may.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Sorry Nick. From the beginning. Might I ask what your response to the OP is? Where you are on the spectrum? Me---Gamaliel-Eutychus-Yourself---Jamat ?
I'll rewind to your first responses to me, if I may.
Sure, Martin, but it may be tomorrow before I have a chance. Choir practice tonight, and family obligations in the meantime.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Thank you very much Nick.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
It is not ipso facto confirmation of the authorship of Isaiah - any more than Jude 14-15 proves that the First book of Enoch should be in the Christian canon, or that the fact that the NT writers quote the Septuagint prove that it is the definitive translation of the OT.
Whoa, that's crazy talk right there.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
What's crazy talk?
Are you saying those ideas are crazier than the idea that Isaiah must be a single author purely because John the evangelist apparently refers to him as one in passing? If not, what are you saying?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
Hmmm. I think my irony meter is on the blink. Mousethief’s post has sent it flicking up the scale.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I'm struggling to see how mousethief's comment could have been ironic given that the part mousethief italicised was posted in irony in the first place, rather than actually being asserted by anybody here.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Make allowances. He's American.
Seriously, though, he does seem to have missed your point.
The Orthodox do insist on the Septuagint, as I understand it, but their reasons for doing so are based on more than simple proof-texting - again, as I understand it. I think we all know that and Eutychus was simply citing an 'it'd be as if ...' example.
'It'd be like insisting on the Septuagint as the definitive text simply because the Greek translations are quoted in the NT.'
Yes, they are. But I rather get the impression that there's more to the Orthodox position than that and I don't think Eutychus was saying otherwise.
Whereas Jamat will seize on the apparent Johannine reference to Isaiah as a single author as proof positive that this was the case, 'because the Bible tells him so'.
This has to be case in his schema because the whole thing collapses if there are apparent discrepancies.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Whereas Jamat will seize on the apparent Johannine reference to Isaiah as a single author as proof positive that this was the case, 'because the Bible tells him so'.
This has to be case in his schema because the whole thing collapses if there are apparent discrepancies.
Presumably, by Jamat's reasoning, we're also required to believe that Malachi 3:1, which Mark quotes at the beginning of his gospel, is actually in Isaiah because Mark attributes it to Isaiah and not Malachi?
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Thanks for the clarification, Gamaliel. I had no idea I had, according to you, inadvertently taken in irony an Orthodox position on the LXX.
Stejjie: wait, what? ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Waiting to see an inmate in the secure psychiatric unit just now I turned to Acts 8:30-35 to see how the text dealt with this "predictive prophecy". And as so often, it doesn't quite say what I might have imagined:
quote:
So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. (...)
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.
I notice in particular that it is not recorded that Philip said anything about the authorship of Isaiah, neither that he confirmed or denied who the prophet was talking about, but simply that "starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus".
That's the kind of pragmatism I can get behind.
(I'll leave it to Martin to explain how Philip was translated to Azotus )
[ 15. December 2017, 09:28: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Stejjie: wait, what?
I think my irony meter is as bust as many other people's on this thread (will we get new ones when the new ship sets sail?) and my brain, which is hazy at the best of times, is in a pre-Christmas fog: so forgive me for not having a clue if you're being ironic or not.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Starting from here if I may Nick?
quote:
Nick: ...Martin, your assertion that they “made it all up” is just as much an assertion of belief or faith as an assertion that they correctly perceived the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets. Both depend on assumptions about the nature of the divine and about divine revelation, and neither can be proven.
True Nick.
I'll endeavour to open up, differentiate the closed fist of my rhetoric as a psychotherapist does a feeling. I maintain, dispositionally I'm sure, but also logically, in the rhetorical perichoretic mix of logic, fairness and feeling on which we all operate, that the proposition that the NT writers “made it all up” where they perceived or report Jesus perceiving the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets, is a critical starting point, a dialectical synthesis, a rigorous posit to be worked from. The alternative faith position isn't equal to that. It has work to do to overcome that. An analogy for me would be taking the induction of four billion years of the entirely material evolution of life from its inevitable, deterministic origin as a starting point to be overcome in favour of theistic evolution and Intelligent Design.
Faith in science, in rationality is not on an equal footing or in any way comparable with faith in God. They are not the same kind of faith.
That's ratio.
Fides: They were right. They correctly perceived the will or word of God in the writings of the prophets. And wrong. They came to the sufficiently right conclusion, the sufficiently right faith DESPITE making it up, misperceiving what isn't there. Because it is. Beneath. Way beneath. Occasionally it breaks the surface of the dark, bloody, ignorant waters. I see us resonating, yearning to the passive will, the intent of God, the will actively expressed in creation including incarnation, in the OT.
I know I'm failing again, descending in to mere undifferentiated rhetoric; I want to fail you better. How do you feel so far?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Apologies, Eutychus, I'd assumed it was common knowledge that the Orthodox insist on the Septuagint as their only canonical text.
See: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Septuagint
Which might explain Mousethief's reaction.
You'd inadvertently prodded his tail, perhaps.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Gamaliel: If I've understood that link correctly (and I'm prepared to be told otherwise), the content of the LXX and the manuscripts it was translated from is what the Orthodox accept as canon rather than the translation itself. My ironic point, as you correctly observed, was about the translation itself and in any case was not a swipe at the Orthodoxen.
Stejjie: I'm sorry. I had to go and look it up before catching your reference, so it was genuine surprise. Perhaps I should read my Bible (and actually read it) more.
[ 15. December 2017, 16:46: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Interesting ... yes, I think you've got that right, Eutychus but no doubt Mousethief can put us straight if you haven't ...
I didn't take your comment as a dig at the Orthodox but perhaps Mousethief did, hence his accusations of 'crazy talk'.
Unless I've misunderstood him.
He may have meant that insisting on the Septuagint as the only accurate translation was 'crazy talk' and missed the irony ...
He lives near one of the coasts 'from shore to shining shore' so that ought to mean that his irony-o-meter actually functions ...
(Cheap wise-crack apology ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) )
Anyhow, before he comes and puts us out of our misery one way or t'other, I'd echo your thanks to Stejjie for pointing out something I'd never noticed before.
You learn something new everyday.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
...Waiting to see an inmate in the secure psychiatric unit just now I turned to Acts 8:30-35 to see how the text dealt with this "predictive prophecy". And as so often, it doesn't quite say what I might have imagined:
...
That's the kind of pragmatism I can get behind.
(I'll leave it to Martin to explain how Philip was translated to Azotus )
Secure psychiatric units: They are fun places aren't they?
Acts 8 about Isaiah 53, aye, it says nowt one way or the other does it! As with all apologetics, they only work once you've made your mind up. Only a small minority of C1st Jews did and the rest couldn't see it, just like C21st ones.
I used to read it all with full conservative, historical-grammatical, sensus plenior; it was OBVIOUS it was about Jesus and if you couldn't see it, it was because the God of this world had blinded you.
Now I'm most intrigued as to what Isaiah thought he meant, although all previous references to a (suffering) servant are to Israel.
Any Jerusalem-Gaza road up, was Philip beamed up and down to Ashdod? Or did he, like Sir Robin in the Holy Grail, just bugger off? It all depends on how literal, how carried away one is disposed to be in translating 'herpasen' doesn't it?
(Summoning me from my lair, mutter, mutter)
[ 15. December 2017, 17:25: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
Martin, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. That pesky job-thing consumed the day yesterday, and some family needs consumed much of today.
Thanks for your post on "making it all up." That did help me understand where you’re coming from, and we may not be that far apart after all. Maybe.
Because it’s clear that our background and formation play a role in how we approach topics like this, maybe I should say something about mine. I have spent all of my 5 1/2 decades in the Reformed Tradition, specifically the American Presbyterian tribe of that Tradition. Particularly in my formative years, the influence of Barth and of Neo-orthodoxy was pronounced, and it still influences my thinking. This includes ideas of the transcendence of God (and being Reformed, the sovereignty of God as well, of course) and of a somewhat Christocentric approach to Scripture, both OT and NT—that the main thrust of Scripture is the self-revelation and redeeming action of the triune God, particularly in Christ. This is coupled with an understanding that Scripture is not static, but rather that God's self-revelation occurs as the church, the community of faith/Body of Christ, engages with Scripture through the action of the Holy Spirit.
To the extent I’ve explored and been influenced by traditions other than my own, it has almost always been in a Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran or Orthodox direction. Though I grew up and have lived surrounded by (American Southern) Baptists and Evangelicals, much of the perspective shared by those groups has been pretty foreign to me. I understand it, but it doesn't resonate with me. (I'll say, too, since you have raised it many times, post-modernism doesn’t resonate at all with me either. It's a framework I can't make work for me.)
As for the writings of the prophets, I think foretelling the future is a small and incidental part of what they were about. What they were about was calling Israel to be faithful to the covenant and, in terms Jesus would use, announcing the kingdom of God. To the degree they spoke of what was to come, it was to speak of God's redemptive activity.
So all of that said: I have absolutely no problem with the assertion that when Isaiah (whether he was one writer, three writers, or a community of writers—it makes no difference to the strength of the writing) wrote what is quoted in the OP, he was thinking of Hezekiah, Josiah or some other fairly immediate leader rather than of a future messianic leader.
But I can't ignore that the seeds of the Jewish understanding of an expected Messiah are in Isaiah, so it’s not totally a Christian gloss. And I can't ignore that both Jesus and the early church, drawing on pre-existing Jewish understandings, saw Isaiah (and others) as talking about Jesus. Jesus makes this clear in a provocative way in his sermon in the Nazareth synagogue. And, as you say, they were right.
Where I’d part company with you is in saying they "made it up." If they did, then it's a miracle (magic? ) that they got it right.
Instead, I’d compare it to art of any kind—painting, music, literature, etc.— where the viewer/hearer/reader brings his or her own self to the artistic experience and sees or hears things that the artist didn't (consciously) intend, but that are nevertheless there. I've known of and had too many experiences of this to discount it; indeed, I’ve known many times that the artist him- or herself saw or heard things afterward that were never consciously intended.
So, rather than "made up," I’d say "recognized" or "discerned," through the power of the Holy Spirit.
As for things like analyzing the prophets or apocalyptic literature for signs of the End Times or for identifying how long is left before the next Big Thing, the value of that is totally lost on me, and I think it’s a misuse of Scripture. I believe Jesus would rather us put that energy into faithful discipleship and living into the kingdom now, right where we are.
There’s my two cents.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Now I'm most intrigued as to what Isaiah thought he meant, although all previous references to a (suffering) servant are to Israel.
Well, you could go with Barth, who said the passage is about Israel and about Jesus, because the history of Israel as a chosen people, a prophetic voice (a light to the nations) and a suffering servant is a prefiguring of the Incarnate Christ.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Thank you VERY much Nick. For your forbearance with me. You are well worth the two cent wait: I'll buy that for a dollar.
When my cult came in from the cold it rapidly embraced neo-orthodoxy through the excellent C. Baxter Kruger, and so did I. Couldn't get enough. I downloaded everything he ever recorded and wandered and drove everywhere listening repeatedly. Until I trashed the car in a blizzard nearly nine years ago.
I agree, resonate with everything you say. Primus inter pares your very postmodern take on art. It's all loaded with unintended meaning anthropologically, culturally on up. All the way up to our reciprocal yearning with the Immanent Transcendent.
Please forgive me my utterly unnecessary ... violence. 'Passive' aggression. Impatience. Frustration. Fear. Anger. In ignorance, in weakness.
I still have to push my boat out in to the frightfully liberating chaos that we all make it all up existentially but I DO accept that our yearning resonates with God's and as above, so below. Our - in Isaiah, David - yearning crystallizes along planes of His intent. But it's so deft, so subtle, so evanescent (like the ice crystals in boiling water; they HAVE to be there), ambiguous, easy to rationalize away.
And because of this I see the Son of Man going through the same process, with 'only' His divine nature to carry Him in, through and above His savage enculturation.
Does that make any sense? Or do I only make sense when I'm mean?
[ 17. December 2017, 09:28: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
If that's your two cents, Nick, it's two cents (or two penn'orth) well spent.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
The conversation seems to have moved on, but I was attempting (clearly unsuccessfully) to make a joke feigning offense as an Orthodox at the idea that the LXX isn't the sole acceptable version of the OT.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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