Pages 11-14: summer 1993

THE MYTH OF PROPHECY FULFILLMENT.
by Farrell Till

At The Skeptical Review, we consider articles like the foregoing 
one [by Bobby Liddell -- shy david] to be an excellent source of 
materials detrimental to the biblical inerrancy cause. They are 
incredibly superficial, naively simplistic, and consistently 
illogical. We reprint them as often as we do in order to give 
our readers a sampling of the best that fundamentalists have to 
offer in defense of their belief that the Bible is "the inspired 
word of God."

[Bobby Liddell description deleted- shy david]

In Liddell's article, for example, he parroted the old 
fundamentalist claim that prophecy fulfillment confirms that the 
Bible is God's inspired word, a claim that neither Liddell nor 
any other Bible fundamentalist can ever prove. As quoted in "An 
Example of 'Prophecy Fulfillment,'" (TSR, Spring 1993, p. 4), 
Liddell's comrade in arms, Wayne Jackson, has cited three 
criteria of valid prophecy: (1) proper timing, (2) specific 
details, and (3) exact fulfillment. When all of these are 
applied to the examples of prophecy fulfillment that Liddell 
cited in his article, they all fall short of satisfying the 
criteria.

Liddell referred to Daniel's prophecy of "kingdoms and peoples 
then unknown and unable to be known to him or any other man by 
ordinary knowl- edge." Well, just what was this prophecy that 
has so fired Liddell's enthusiasm? According to the story, 
Daniel was called into the royal court to interpret a dream in 
which Nebuchadnezzar had seen a "great image" whose head was of 
fine gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly and thighs 
of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet partly of iron and 
partly of clay.  In the dream, the king had also seen a stone 
that "was cut out without hands," which struck the image and 
broke it into pieces. The pieces became like chaff and were 
carried away by the wind, but the stone that broke the image 
into pieces grew into a great mountain and filled all the earth 
(Dan. 2:31-35).

It sounds just like another typically obscure biblical vision, 
but not to worry, because Daniel was on the scene to give us a 
divinely inspired interpretation. He explained that the image 
represented four kingdoms. Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, 
but after the demise of the Babylonian empire would arise an 
inferior kingdom, represented by the breasts and arms of silver; 
then after that would appear a third kingdom symbolized by the 
belly and thighs of brass; and finally would come a fourth 
kingdom of iron that would be "partly strong and partly broken," 
as symbolized by the feet that were part iron and part clay. 
This fourth kingdom would break in pieces and be divided 
(2:36-43).

Daniel concluded his interpretation by prophesying that "in the 
days of these kings [of the kingdoms arising from the fragmented 
kingdom of iron] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which 
shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to 
other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these 
kingdoms, and it shall stand forever" (v:44). To Bible 
fundamentalists, of course, this kingdom was the church, so they 
have had to force an interpretation of Daniel's dream 
interpretation to make it appear that an amazing prophecy 
fulfillment occurred in the birth of Chris- tianity.

Here is how fundamentalists have tried to mold history into 
fitting Daniel's interpretation of the dream. The Babylonian 
Empire was the head of gold (which I won't argue with, because 
Daniel made this much of his interpretation quite clear); the 
Medo-Persian Empire was the breast and arms of silver; the 
Grecian Empire under Alexander the Great was the belly and 
thighs of brass; the Roman Empire was the legs of iron with the 
feet part iron and part clay. "So, aha!" fundamentalists 
rhapsodize. "The kingdom of God was established in the days of 
the Roman Empire, just as Daniel had prophesied."

Well, excuse me, but just where did Daniel say that the kingdom 
of God would be established in the days of the Roman Empire? He 
simply said that it would be established in the days of "these 
kings" [of the fragmented kingdom of iron]. Wayne Jackson's 
second criterion of "valid prophecy" is specific details, so if 
Daniel was prophesying by the guidance of an omniscient, 
omnipotent deity, why didn't he specifically say that after 
Nebuchadnezzar would arise the Medo-Persian Empire, after which 
would come the Grecian Empire under a ruler named Alexander the 
Great, after which would arise the Roman Empire? Then he could 
have told us that "in the days of the kings of the Roman Empire 
the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom that will never be 
destroyed." Armed with that kind of specificity, the 
fundamentalists really would have had something to crow about, 
but, as it is, they have nothing but speculation to go by in 
determining that these were the specific kingdoms that Daniel 
meant.

In reality, history has left Christian fundamentalists with too 
many em- pires for Daniel's prophecy to fit the mold that they 
want to cast it in, so they have had to restructure empires to 
fit their need. Actually, the empires and kingdoms that existed 
between Nebuchadnezzar and the Roman Empire were so unstable and 
factional that it is difficult to determine when one ended and 
another began. The Median Empire overlapped the Neo-Babylonian 
Empire that Nebuchadnezzar II ruled, and they were both absorbed 
by the conquests of Cyrus the Great, which gave rise to the 
Achaemenid or Persian Empire. The conquests of Alexander the 
Great, however, absorbed the Achaemenid Empire and gave rise to 
a worldwide (in terms of the then known world) Hellenistic 
Empire. So if the Median and Achaemenid (Persian) Empires are 
considered separate entities, as actually they were and (as we 
will see) Daniel apparently considered them, then the 
Hellenistic Empire of Alexander the Great should have been the 
fourth or iron kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 
Fundamentalists can't have this, however, because it doesn't 
make Daniel's interpretation fit the mold they need, so they 
conveniently consolidate these two and call them the 
"Medo-Persian Empire." That way, the Hellenistic Empire becomes 
the brass kingdom so that the Roman Empire can be the iron 
kingdom. Then, presto, just like that, they have an amazing 
prophecy fulfillment in Daniel's interpretation of 
Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

A flaw in this interpretation is the obvious fact that the 
writer of Daniel considered the Median and Persian kingdoms to 
be separate empires, because he had the Neo-Babylonian empire 
falling to "Darius the Mede" (5:30-31). This is historically 
inaccurate (just one of many historical inaccuracies in the book 
of Daniel), because reliable records of the time indicate that 
Cyrus the Great captured Babylon and ended the Neo-Babylonian 
kingdom. Nevertheless, the writer of Daniel told of a reign 
under "Darius the Mede" that preceded the reign of the Persian 
king, Cyrus the Great (6:28; 10:1). So if the writer believed 
that the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to the Medes and then the 
Medes fell to the Persians, then the fourth kingdom in Daniel's 
interpretation would have been Alexander's Hellenistic empire.

This is exactly how reputable Bible scholars interpret Daniel's 
interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Certain clues, which I 
will have to discuss later in a separate article, indicate that 
the book was written around the middle of the second century 
during the Maccabean wars chronicled in the apocryphal books of 
1 and 2 Maccabees. These wars occurred after the disintegration 
of Alexander's Empire into four separate kingdoms, so if the 
scholars are right in the dating of Daniel, this gives reason to 
believe that the writer intended the Hellenistic Empire to be 
the kingdom of iron, whose instability was symbolized in the 
dream by the feet made partly of iron and partly of clay.

In 323 B.C.E., Alexander the Great died in Babylon at the age of 
33, only seven years after he had conquered the Persian Empire. 
Almost immediately, his empire fragmented into separate 
political entities that were ruled by Alexander's generals. From 
312 to 64 B.C., the Seleucids, a dynasty estab- lished by the 
Macedonian general Seleucus, ruled a kingdom that extended from 
India to the Mediterranean Sea with its capital in Antioch of 
Syria. In opposition to Seleucid rule, the Greco-Bactrian 
kingdom arose in the far eastern sector of the old Hellenistic 
empire. The rule of the Ptolemies arose in Egypt and other 
southwestern territories of the old empire. By the third century 
B. C., nomadic Iranian tribes had begun to intrude on territory 
in the Seleucid kingdom. These intrusions began in the province 
of Parthia under the leadership of a chieftain named Arsaces, 
and slowly but surely new territories were gained from both 
Seleucia and Bactria, as well as remnants of the old Median 
Empire, until a distinctive Parthian Empire emerged under the 
leadership of king Mithradates. Eventually, the Parthian kingdom 
fell to Roman conquests from the west.

Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, however, 
recognized only two kingdoms between the head of gold (Babylon) 
and the legs and feet of iron, but when recognition is given to 
the existence of the kingdoms that arose from the fragmented 
Hellenistic Empire, we find that there were at least six 
separate kingdoms (Persian, Hellenistic, Seleucid, Bactrian, 
Ptolemaic and Parthian) between the Neo-Babylonian and the Roman 
Empires. Obviously, Liddell's application of Daniel's 
interpretation conveniently ignores a huge slice of ancient 
history so that he can have a "prophecy fulfillment" that will 
fit a pet theory of his.

Daniel's interpretation of the dream depicted the iron kingdom 
as one that would "crush and shatter all these [prior kingdoms]" 
but would itself become "a divided kingdom" (2:40-41) as 
symbolized by the feet that were part clay and part iron. In 
this sense, the Hellenistic Empire fits the description of the 
iron kingdom much more exactly than does the Roman Empire. 
Alexander the Great absorbed into his empire all of the 
territories in the NeoBabylonian, Median, and Achaemenid 
(Persian) Empires, but the Roman Empire came nowhere close to 
doing so. The Hellenistic Empire reached as far east as China, 
but the Roman Empire, whose territory was more western, fell far 
short of crushing and shattering all sectors of its predecessor 
empires. Furthermore, the rapidity with which Alexander's empire 
fragmented into the kingdoms mentioned above fits the 
description of the brittle feet of iron and clay much better 
than the Roman Empire whose disintegration was much slower.

This is exactly the way responsible scholars, who have no 
cherished fundamentalist beliefs to defend, interpret the book 
of Daniel. They see it as the effort of a second-century author 
to instill optimism in beleaguered Maccabean forces by making it 
appear that a sixth-century prophet had predicted that their 
struggle would eventually bring about the establishment of the 
long-awaited messianic kingdom.

So this brings us to the factor of "proper timing" in Jackson's 
criteria of valid prophecy. Bible fundamentalists like to think 
that Daniel was written in the sixth century B. C., shortly 
after the events that the book closes with during the reign of 
Cyrus the Great, who had conquered Babylon in 539 B. C. Few 
reputable Bible scholars, however, would fix the date that 
early, because the book exhibits signs of a much later 
authorship. Scholars cite the writer's obvious confusion about 
political events of the time that a contemporary author would 
have surely been familiar with, the linguistic style (especially 
the section written in Aramaic), and other factors too numerous 
to discuss in detail as evidence that the book was written at 
the extreme end of the Old Testament period (no sooner than the 
second century). If this is so, then the author would have known 
about the rise of empires that succeeded Nebuchadnezzar's. 
Since, in fact, the book even told of Babylon's absorption into 
the Persian Empire, there can be no doubt that the writer had 
first-hand knowledge of the emergence of a second kingdom after 
the demise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. If scholarship is right 
about a probable second-century B. C. authorship of the book, 
then the writer would also have known about the rise and 
disintegration of Alexander's Hellenistic kingdom. If that is 
so, then certainly the writer did not speak of "kingdoms and 
peoples then unknown and unable to be known to him or any other 
man by ordinary knowledge" as Liddell alleged in his editorial. 
In fact, there would be a high degree of probability that the 
writer was just another second-century believer in the imminent 
fulfillment of longstanding messianic promises, and so he was 
trying to put words into  a sixth-century prophet's mouth to 
make it appear that the messianic fulfillment that the writer 
expected to happen shortly had been foreseen by the prophet. 
There is certainly nothing in this likely scenario to get 
excited about.

[other debunked "prophesies" deleted- shy david]

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"I'd be a Christian-if it wasn't for Christians." - M. Ghandi