Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 3
The teacher chooses six prophecies specifically to avoid the objection, “history written in the form of prophecy”; how persuasive is his appeal to manuscript dating (e.g., Isaiah copies around 200 BC) and the “centuries after” fulfillment, and where do you feel the tension between faith and historical argumentation?
Another way to ask: How convincing is his argument that the prophecies were written before the events, based on manuscript dates like Isaiah around 200 BC? Where do you feel the pull between trusting by faith and relying on historical proof?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
Based on the speaker’s teaching, his strategy is persuasive because it anchors the prophecies to manuscripts that predate the events by centuries, making “written after the fact” hard to claim. The tension he acknowledges is that skeptics can question authorship dates, but he argues the time gap still remains too large to dismiss.
- He chose prophecies where “nobody could possibly claim… written after the event happened,” because fulfillment came “so many centuries after.”
- He notes a key manuscript point: “we have a copy of Isaiah that goes back to 200 BC,” so it must be at least that old.
- He argues skeptics won’t reasonably date Isaiah/Jeremiah “later than 300 BC,” yet Babylon remained inhabited long after.
- He says Babylon was inhabited “for at least a thousand years afterwards,” ruling out “history written as prophecy.”
- He repeatedly stresses: “This was long, long after this book had been written… circulated… It took that long for it to be fulfilled.”