On the Nature of Prophecy

The Bible Is MAN MADE!
MythVision Podcast, 5 Jan. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagHIjG5mnI

0:37 John J. Collins is from Yale.

This is an old Protestant institution. These started out both Protestant and Fundie, but because that doesn't work together, they are tending to get less and less Fundie the last 100 years or 150 years, so as to remain away from Catholicism.

Ironically, he is from the Catholic confession or its Novus Ordo version himself ...

1:04 If God speaks straight to you, right now, and someone reads your words 2000 years from now, some things will be very hard to understand from only that.

Plus, some things are, by the questioner, considered "hard to understand" rather than "God speaking straight" because he was misinformed that God wasn't speaking straight (for instance about six days).

2:38 "why do people write supposed revelations in this kind of style"

He is presuming from the outset that God didn't reveal.

Which is sth he has no access to.

2:50 "that's very unusual in the Bible"

A Roman Catholic Bible has 73 books, 1184 chapters.

Of these, 680 chapters are history. Including the "God spoke to Moses and said" chapters, and including the few apocalyptic chapters in Daniel which is mainly a biography, and excluding the biographical parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

This means roughly a bit more than half the chapters are straight forward history.

The apocalyptic / prophetic genre is much more rare.

264 chapters. 264 / 1184 = less than 1/4.

3:12 "think of them trying to figure things out"

Why?

The essay writers in the Bible are Solomon, Jesus Syrach, perhaps one or two more, and obviously St. Paul and a few other epistle writers.

Plus, divine inspiration means, the essay writers also were not fumbling about. They were not "trying to" figure things out, they were getting them right.

4:08 Why did God not make it clearer who the Antichrist was? Apocalypse 13:18.

In recent current events, there are five prominent persons who had the gematria.

Kurz has stepped back, so SEBASTIAN in ASCII is not very relevant any more.
Ratzinger has died, so Βενέδικτος in Greek, BENEDETTO and PAPABENTO in ASCII are no longer relevant.

BERGOGLIO, V POUTINE / WLADIMIRA / VLADIMIRB, JRBIDENJR in ASCII, we still see them on the scene.

Why didn't God just state in personal names and dates who would be the Antichrist? Well, obviously that would in one way be open to abuse, parents naming children so as to make the prophecy happen with them, and in another way, supposing it were not abused, it would be more of a reason for, for instance, Vladimir Putin, to despair than if he's one of five, now narrowed down to one of three.

4:25 My answer to Collins' question : because that is what God told them.

5:27 Why would an epileptic fit be required?

If you seek a state in which God communicates to man, a state in man that is, why not go for the alpha state?

It often exists without any such connotation, obviously, but that doesn't preclude it is ideal, because it is a very receptive state.

6:46 The case in point is a huge setback for consensus of well funded experts.

The guys who told him he would be victorious had all eaten at his table. One man only stood out and foretold that dogs would lick his blood where he was slain.

7:30 One wonders, the 399 prophets who were wrong - were they stoned, as Moses required they should be?

8:19 The prophets didn't write it down, you said?

God speaking to Isaias (8:1) And the Lord said to me: Take thee a great book, and write in it with a man's pen. Take away the spoils with speed, quickly take the prey.
To Jeremias (30:2) Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, saying: Write thee all the words that I have spoken to thee, in a book.
To Habacuc (2:2) And the Lord answered me, and said: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables: that he that readeth it may run over it.

So, no. Some seem to have spoken more than written, like the case of Nathan (unless he completed the books of Samuel), Elijah and Elisha (unless they and Elisha's successor completed the books of Kings), but that was not a hard and fast rule.

10:06 No contradiction.

OT optimism for Gentiles = the Catholic missionaries to all of the nations.
OT pessimism for Gentiles = the time leading up to Armageddon.

11:05 There is a clear difference between making the Bible look as good as it is, and making it look better than it is.

I would say, any apologetic scholar should:
a) trust God and therefore God's word, the written form, the Bible (also the at first unwritten form, Tradition) to be good enough
b) show that.

11:15 Job's friends may indeed have wanted to lie for God, but they were first and foremost lying against Job.

11:27 At the end, yes, God doesn't like the men who had lied ... to themselves.

He actually doesn't decide whether their worst thing was lying for Him or against Job.

But statistically, I think they are more lying against Job, and Job's words about them lying for God are an attempt to get their motivation in the best possible light.