Public theology and prophecy data: Factual evidence that counts for the biblical world view

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2003 by Newman, Robert C, Bloom, John A, Gauch, Hugh G Jr

(8) Manageable effort. The work needed to draw a definitive conclusion should be manageable. There are personal differences, of course, in interests and priorities. Ideally, those individuals with interest and leisure to pursue virtually all of the available data could obtain comprehensive materials, whereas those persons better served by a more manageable subset of the data could also obtain definitive results because its evidential weight is great. Otherwise, however significant a proposed inquiry might be, the required work might just be too much.

These eight criteria can also be used to define first-tier and second-tier evidence. A prophecy dataset constitutes first-tier evidence if each prophecy meets the first four criteria for admissibility and also the dataset as a whole meets the remaining four criteria for relevance. But a given prophecy constitutes second-tier evidence if it fails somewhat to meet one of the criteria for admissibility. For instance, criterion 3 about proper chronology fails if no compelling empirical evidence proves that the prophecy predates its outcome. However, even if no copy of a prophecy older than its outcome has yet been found to provide this definitive evidence, there may yet be independent lines of circumstantial evidence that converge on an earlier traditional dating that predates the outcome, so there is a plausible or even probable case for meeting the chronology criterion. Likewise, the prophecy that a long-inhabited city will remain forever deserted after being destroyed is quite unusual since most such destructions are quickly and repeatedly followed by reconstructions, but it is impossible to observe a perpetual desolation with final certainty until the end of the age has already come. A long-term continuing desolation could still count as second-tier evidence here.

Let us now look at our sample of prophecy data, organized under the categories of prophecies about Israel, about the surrounding nations, and about Israel's messiah.

II. PROPHECIES ABOUT THE NATION OF ISRAEL

Some of the most striking predictions in the Bible concern the future of Israel. These are not prophecies that the Jews would seek to fulfill, however, as they speak of exile and dispersion.

1. Hosea 3:4-5. The early chapters of Hosea contain an acted parable predicting the sociological conditions that the Jews experienced during their dispersion from the second to the twentieth centuries AD. Briefly, God commanded the prophet Hosea to marry Gomer, an unfaithful woman. They had several children, but then Gomer left Hosea for a less restrictive lifestyle. After Gomer was reduced to prostitution to support herself, God commanded Hosea to renew his marriage with Gomer, so that their relationship would picture God's continuing love toward Israel in spite of Israel's unfaithfulness to him.

A strange feature in this portrayal of God and Israel is a "many days" period of isolation before Hosea resumes full marriage relations with Gomer. Just as Hosea keeps Gomer from conjugal relations with himself or anyone else, so God will isolate Israel for "many days" from both their self-chosen kings and idolatrous practices, and from God-given kings and his established forms of worship. However, this quarantine will not last forever: Hosea looks forward to God's eventual reestablishment of full relations with Israel. A translation of the key passage (Hos 3:4-5) follows.3