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The problem with modern Christian hardcore believers is that they incorrectly equate prophecy with scientific prediction (okay, they may really believe it's literally better than science). The prophets of the Bible (which we distinguish as Major and Minor prophets of the 'Old Testament') spoke of God's immediate terms of judgment and redemption with a contemporary (to their own time) focus, and were written and read for the chastisement and encouragement of those they knew as God's living people (which varied in extent over time). The prophets tended to reside in communities external to the main royal hubs, to retain objectivity, to keep history, and at times to courageously attempt to call out when the ruling family, tribal leaders, judges and people deviate from God's ways. At which point they warned of the immediate implications and consequences to their relationship with God and the nations around them. It's highly doubtful that these prophets had any idea people would try to construe their strong words as applicable in an era 3000 years into their future. When you read the passages, you should get the sense that whatever is referenced is already in motion, but also having open ended outcomes...see below for why. Most of what was assembled as the 'Old Testament' was pulled together around 700 BC during a captivity phase. One can have a fun time going through the Genesis, Judges, Kings and Chronicles finding names of scrolls that weren't included in the 'final' version of the Bible from that time.
This is the real baffler. Hebrew, as a language for rendering Divine Prophetic Truth, is not well suited for writing predictions or anything scientific or mathematical. It is very peculiar, especially for works purported to have been written predictively thousands of years into the future, for lacking a Future tense. It has two tenses, one tense for the 'open unfolding and open-ended' present and one for the 'it's all done and over with" past. The rest of the grammar is basically degree of emphasis, gender, active/passive, number. In contrast, the Bibilical Greek (New Testament 'Koine' or 'common' Greek), can dance all sorts of angles around time with it's rich range of 27 different tenses and the Greek language was used to create the foundations of math, geometry, and measured sciences upon which Western culture depends.
what happens when trying to translate Hebrew to Greek? Well, it's not easy. Generations of translators (70?) worked on the Septuagint in Alexandria, an amazing but imperfect achievement, influenced by he era's Platonism and Aristotle, etc. The Septuagint, the most commonly used translation of the 'Old Testament' Bible of the 1st Century (and for Centuries after), was a translation from Hebrew to Greek...and, all 27 tenses of Greek somehow got used. It took nearly all of the three Centuries to complete the Septuagint (name reflects the work of 70 scholars), before Jesus preached from it, and Jesus often finding rather unique interpretations applying directly to the present assembled people. The fun of cultural and linguistic translation again occurred, centuries later, in trying to compress and render subtile Greek (27 tenses) into Latin, a language with only 6 tenses (Present, Imperfect, Future, Perfect, Pluperfect, Future Perfect), which gave the Holy Roman Empire and civilization The Vulgate version of the Bible.
Just to drive the rigid 66 books of the Bible crowd nuts, that Septuagint of Jesus day included books now considered, to various degrees, non-canonical or 'Apocryphal', such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus Sirach, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremy (in the Vulgate this is chapter 6 of Baruch), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, Sosanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, Maccabees (1-4), 1 Esdras, and Psalm 151, and, in some versions Odes and the Prayer of Manasses. Bel and the Dragon is a good bedtime story, by the way, that seems to show how to debunk false supernatural claims.
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