Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Ian, you are back to your old "if" trick, plus calling your unproven
hypothesis a "fact". If these prophecies are vaticinio ex eventu, then
Jonathan and I are wrong, granted. But if they are genuine prophecies, or
simply predicitions based on Isaiah's reading of the politics of his time,
then Jonathan or I may be right. Your argument from one or perhaps two cases
of vaticinio ex eventu does not prove (though it might "suggest", the word
you correctly used earlier) that none of the Biblical authors could ever
make any predictions about the future. You also have a problem with dating.
For your evidence about 1 Enoch to be relevant, you have to date Isaiah 6-12
not too many centuries earlier, but in that case how did the author know the
facts (as he must do for vaticinio ex eventu) about what had happened in the
8th century BCE?

Peter Kirk


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Hutchesson [mailto:mc2499 AT mclink.it]
Sent: 06 February 2001 08:26
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: Re: Child theme in Isaiah 6-12


>> >The Shear-Jashub prophecies of 10:20-23 must refer to a relatively
distant
>> >future, a time when Israel will return after being struck down or exiled
>> >(see also 11:10-12).
>>
>> Aren't all these prophecies vaticinio ex eventu, as the status quo
suggests,
>> given 1 Enoch and Daniel?
>
>That's what the messianic belief is all about, Ian, as I claimed in a
>previous posting: the failure of biblical prophecy and the need felt to
>re-interpret it in view of its failure.

Jonathan,

I was talking about texts and the fact that those "prophetic" books we knew
for sure about were vaticinio ex eventu, and extrapolating from there. I
hadn't got on to beliefs. If we are dealing with vaticinio ex eventu, there
can be no "failure" in the prophecy. I can't see the connection between your
comments and the post you are responding to.


Ian