Wait a minute—another interpretation of Daniel 9? We recently explored one Christian interpretation here. If several interpretations are possible, this is clearly a malleable text, which doesn’t give much confidence in any clear and unambiguous prophecy in the Bible.

In fact, it’s worse than that. This has been fertile ground for imaginative Christians for two millennia, and many conflicting ideas have arisen. For a long list of scholars and amateurs who weighed in with their interpretation of the evidence, go here and search for “List of Historicist Biblical Expositors.”

(For the first post in this series, go here.)

Christian interpretation #2

This is the Dispensationalist interpretation (which gets into the rapture, premillennialism, Revelation as prophecy, and so on). I summarized Daniel 9:24–7 in a previous post, so go there if you need a refresher on the steps in that prophecy.

With this interpretation, start the clock with the Decree of Artaxerxes to rebuild the Temple given to Nehemiah in 444 BCE (Nehemiah 2:1–8). If we count ahead as before using 7 weeks + 62 weeks (–444 + 483 + 1 = 40 CE), the final week would be 40–47 CE. This is obviously too late to align with any popular dates associated with the death of Jesus.

The clever (or desperate) solution is to declare a “prophetic year” to be twelve 30-day months, creating a 360-day year. Supporters defend this by pointing to several verses where round numbers are used (42 months are equated with 1260 days, for example).

If this is correct, our years have been too long. They need to be scaled by 360 (days in a “prophetic year”) divided by 365.25 (days in a Julian year). Our 483-year jump is now only 476 years, and the final week begins in 33 CE. If we say that Jesus died in this year, we have the Anointed One dying at the right time (again assuming that we can add 7 weeks to the 62 weeks).

But what about that final week? Proponents of this hypothesis imagine an unspecified amount of time before this Tribulation Period starts, though the prophecy says nothing about this. If we allow this, however, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE can explain the reference to destruction. But that has its own problems: the “ruler who will come” who destroyed the Temple is the one in the final week, so the Tribulation must’ve already happened in the first century, which means no rapture or tribulation in our own future.

Some proponents go so far as to imagine that this prophecy accurately predicts the crucifixion to the day. To those prophecy enthusiasts, I ask if anyone decoded the puzzle before the event. If it’s clear to you, some of the smart Jews of that time must’ve figured it out. They had almost five centuries, after all.

And what about Jews today? Daniel is their holy book, too. Are they convinced by this claim that Jesus is prophesied within Daniel? If not, I wonder what possible use this undecipherable prophecy could’ve had.

(For a detailed slap-down of this claim of to-the-day accuracy, I refer you to Sandoval.)

But this interpretation don’t work so good either

The first Christian interpretation of Daniel didn’t work, and this one is also full of problems.

Problem 1: We still have the initial verse saying that the atonement is at the end of 70 weeks. Christian theology says that the death of Jesus is the atonement, but this interpretation of Daniel demands that the final week is still in our future.

Problem 2: The “prophetic year” is nonsense. The Jewish calendar alternates between 29- and 30-day months, giving a 354-day year, and it has a complicated mechanism that adds months to keep it in sync with the solar year. Yes, there are Bible verses that give time spans of days that, if precise, would point to a 30-day month. No, there is no reason to think that a special, grossly wrong calendar was ever used. Do those who argue for the prophetic year use it to calculate the millennium as only 985 years? Do they scale time periods used in other prophecies? Consistency, please.

Problem 3: A floating final week isn’t what the prophecy says. There was no gap after the 7 weeks; why imagine one after the 62 weeks (I mean, besides that you’re trying to shoehorn the facts into your presuppositions)?

And most of the problems from the previous attempt apply as well. It makes no sense of the 7 week/62 week distinction, there is no justification for picking this start date out of the alternatives, and it ignores the evidence in Daniel that the final week was roughly 171–164 BCE.

Looking back to Daniel chapters 11–12, the prophecy discussed earlier, we saw the same idea of half of a 7-year period. Clearly, chapter 9 is yet one more interpretation of the same time period, and we need to bring in Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid mustache-twisting villain of the Maccabean Revolt.

Reinterpreting the end as being during this time makes a lot more sense of the text. We’ll explore that interpretation in the final post in this series.

 To surrender to ignorance and call it God
has always been premature,
and it remains premature today.
— Isaac Asimov

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/27/14.)

Image credit: DominÖ, flickr, CC

This is post #1000!

This blog has had over 2.5 million views and a quarter of a million comments, and it recently had its sixth anniversary. Thanks for your readership!

The book of Daniel is the story of a Judean nobleman taken into captivity in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. If it was actually written in the sixth century, as it claims, it does a remarkable job of predicting the future.

Nebuchadnezzar’s frightening dream

Daniel is an advisor to Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar and is called in to interpret a disturbing dream. The king is admirably skeptical: he demands that his wise men tell him the meaning of the dream without telling them what the dream was. If they have the wisdom to interpret the dream, they must surely have the wisdom to know what it was.

Good for you, O king—we could do with more of that skepticism today.

Of the king’s advisors, only Daniel is up to the challenge. In chapter 2, we learn that the king had dreamed of an enormous statue with gold head, silver chest, bronze loins, iron legs, and feet of iron plus clay. The statue is then destroyed by a huge rock.

Daniel tells him that the statue shows the future succession of kingdoms. Gold represents Babylon, and the subsequent kingdoms become baser (gold to silver to bronze to iron) and more powerful. Finally, they will be swept away by the rock of God’s kingdom.

The four beasts

Daniel then has his own vision, a dream of four beasts (chapter 7). We see the beasts in succession, and, like the succession of metals, they represent the future kingdoms. The first is a lion with eagle wings (though we might call it a griffin, that also describes a cherub), then a bear, then a leopard. The final beast has iron teeth and is the most terrifying and destructive. It initially had ten horns, which represent ten kings, but then three were replaced by a new little horn that spoke boastfully. Again, all is swept away in the end.

It’s not too hard to map these symbols onto the history of the Middle East. (My primary skeptical source for this analysis was “The Failure of Daniel’s Prophecies” by Chris Sandoval—thorough and highly recommended.)

In Babylon—remember, that’s the context of the story—the cardinal directions are represented by animals. The lion is the south (Babylon), the bear north (Media), and the leopard east (Persia). That leaves the west for the dragon (Greece).

Mapping this onto Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Babylon is gold, silver Media comes next, bronze Persia is next, and the iron Greek Empire under Alexander the Great is last. The feet of iron and clay represent the four weaker successor states to Alexander’s empire. The most important of these to Daniel’s story are the Seleucid Empire in Syria and the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt.

The ten horns appear to be ten kings of the Seleucid Empire, starting with Alexander (356–323 BCE) and ending with Antiochus IV Epiphanies (215–164 BCE). Antiochus is the boastful little horn that replaced three other horns, which are three relatives killed to allow Antiochus to take the Seleucid throne.

And now it gets interesting …

Daniel has a final vision (chapter 11), describing the various wars between the kings of the north and south—that is, the Seleucid (Syrian) and Ptolemaic (Egyptian) kings, respectively. The account becomes more detailed as Antiochus Epiphanes—a “contemptible person” (Dan. 11:21)—takes power in 175 BCE. The ebb and flow of the power struggle is accurately described, including a battle where a Roman fleet prevented his victory over Egypt.

Judah was part of the Seleucid Empire at this time, and a Jewish force took advantage of the king’s absence in Egypt to capture Jerusalem. Antiochus retaliated by killing 40,000 Jews, enslaving an equal number, outlawing Jewish worship, and establishing an altar to Zeus in the Jewish temple on which pigs were sacrificed. This “abomination of desolation” (Dan. 11:31) happened in 167 BCE.

Prophecy looking forward or history looking back?

Could this accurate history have been written from the vantage point of the sixth century BCE? If so, Daniel lost his mojo at this point, because the “prophecy” then falls apart. Daniel says that Antiochus would once more attack Egypt, winning this time, and return to camp in central Palestine. And then, like the stone that destroyed the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Michael the Archangel would open a bigly can of whoop-ass on the world that would make Noah’s Flood look like rain on a picnic. The good and wicked from all of history would go to their appropriate afterlives, and the world would end.

From the abomination until the end of the world in mid-164 BCE would be three and a half years.

But it didn’t work out that way. Antiochus didn’t fight Egypt again but took part of his army to address troubles in the east, leaving another force in Palestine to stamp out the Maccabean Revolt. Incredibly, this Jewish uprising against the mighty Seleucid empire was eventually successful, and the Hasmonean dynasty ruled a semi-autonomous and then fully independent Judea for about a century. Antiochus died of a sudden illness in 164.

Conclusions

Daniel “predicted” Alexander the Great, the four successor states, and the pitiless response by Antiochus in 167 BCE, but then he imagined a nonexistent victory over Egypt, missed Judah’s successful revolt, and raised a false alarm about the end of the world.

What seems likelier—that the book was written in the sixth century BCE and correctly predicted the major events in that part of the world up to just after 167 BCE but then lost its touch when it predicted the end of the world a few years later? Or that it was falsely attributed to a respected sixth-century BCE patriarch and was instead written shortly after 167 to give encouragement to a beleaguered Jewish population? In fact, this kind of after-the-fact prophecy was common enough during that time to have a scholarly name: prophecy post eventum.

Continue with more on Daniel.

Other posts on prophecy:

• “Virgin Birth of Jesus: Fact or Fiction?”
•  “Isaiah 53: Another Failed Prophecy Claim”
• “Failed Prophecy: Psalm 22”
• “8 Tests for Accurate Prophecy and Why Bible Prophecies Fail”
• “Probability Proves Bible Prophecy (or Not)”
• “Betting on Biblical Prophecy? Chances Are You’ll Lose.”
• “Make Your Very Own Prophecy (That Actually Comes True!)”
• “The World Will End Soon! Again!”

The scientific theory is the modern equivalence of the prophecy.
— comment by MNb

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/19/14.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Christian apologists sometimes claim that the Bible records hundreds of prophecies and their fulfillment. Impressive, aside from the small problem that these claims don’t hold up.

For example, Micah’s prediction of a Bethlehem birthplace doesn’t fit the details of the life of Jesus. Zechariah’s prediction of a king entering Jerusalem on a donkey is likewise talking about someone besides Jesus. Zechariah’s anecdote of the payment of 30 pieces of silver has nothing to do with betrayal as in the Judas story.

But let’s not worry about that. Instead, imagine a Bible prophecy that came true. Let’s say that the Jews returning to Israel is a fulfilled prophecy. As evidence, apologists might cite verses such as these.

I will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you have been scattered—with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. (Ezekiel 20:34)

[In that day, the Lord] will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. (Isaiah 11:12)

I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. (Jeremiah 23:3)

The first question, of course, is the context of these verses. Conquest, exile, and repatriation are important topics in the Old Testament because they’re part of Israel’s history. The ten tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel were conquered by Assyria in 722 BCE and their inhabitants scattered. The southern kingdom of Judea was conquered by Babylon, and Jews were taken there as captives beginning in 605 BCE. After Babylon was conquered by Persia, exiled Jews returned home beginning in 538 BCE. Is this the re-gathering that these Old Testament books are talking about?

Some Christians don’t think so. They imagine instead that the Old Testament said that Jews will return to Israel and, sure enough, Israel once again became a Jewish state in 1948. Let’s ignore that the objection that the predictions listed above weren’t satisfied by the return from exile. How plausible is modern Israel as the fulfillment?

Not very. The “prediction” is vague—no time is mentioned. It’s also mundane—exiles have scattered and returned in many other situations, including the nation of Judea itself. It was also potentially self-fulfilling when Passover Seders within the Jewish diaspora worldwide concluded with the wish, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

See also: 8 Tests for Accurate Prophecy and Why Bible Prophecies Fail

But if National Enquirer-caliber predictions are all we’re looking for, they’re not hard to make.

You, too, can be a prophet!

To see how to create a record of correct prophecies, imagine a commodities broker who wants to attract new wealthy clients. He buys a mailing list of 1000 candidates who live in the rich part of town, and he makes up a fancy name for his proprietary technique of predicting the swing in commodity prices. To half of his candidates, he mails an introductory letter saying that he is able to take on a few select new clients. To prove his capability, he gives a free prediction: the price of gold will rise in the next month. To the other half, he predicts that the price will fall.

A month later, gold has either gone up in price or gone down, and he’s lost credibility with half his audience. No matter—to the other half, he mails another letter to remind them of his accurate prediction and gives another free prediction, this time about sugar (or natural gas or soybeans or pork bellies). To half, he says the price will rise, and to the rest, that it will fall.

And so on with a few more commodities. He discards the failures along the way. At the end of this process, he has 50 to 100 wealthy individual to whom he can say, correctly, that he has given them three or four accurate commodity swings in a row using his special method.

He has “predicted” the future by predicting in hindsight. The unskeptical potential clients don’t see the big picture.

You see the same thing in the days before a presidential election. There’s always the news story about the U.S. county with the longest streak of picking the winning president. Obviously, some county will be the most accurate, just like some path through a tree of random commodities predictions will be the most accurate.

With low standards like those that satisfy many Christian apologists, some of the many prediction-like verses in the Bible are bound to satisfy them.

And they wonder why the rest of us aren’t convinced.

A visitor to the home of 
Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr
noticed a horseshoe on the wall. 
“Can you, of all people, 
believe it will bring good luck?”
“Of course not,” said Bohr,
“but I understand it brings luck 
whether you believe it or not.”

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/22/14.)

Image credit: Chris Gladis, flickr, CC

We’re looking at pastor John Hagee’s breathless new book, Four Blood Moons. For the introduction and a summary of the three terrifying instances of “blood moons” that Hagee claims have already happened in history, see part 1.

What does Hagee see in our future?

The focus of Hagee’s book is the four blood moons beginning with Passover 2014 (April 14) and ending with Sukkot 2015 (September 28). Yes, the date for this prediction has come and gone, but I’d like to revisit this ludicrous “prophecy” to hold Hagee’s feet to the fire as well as see what a modern prophecy looks like.

Let’s see if Hagee’s frantic warning is worthy of concern.

Problem 1

Hagee’s claim that “a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015” was a pretty safe bet. The same is true for his ominously nonspecific subtitle, “Something is about to change.” Find any 18-month period in the last century where you couldn’t cobble together some argument for a “world-shaking event” somewhere. The time period is too wide and the claimed event too imprecise for this to be an interesting prophecy. It’s amazing that the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe who Hagee says is “literally screaming at the world” can’t be more specific.

Maybe instead of his prophet hat, Hagee grabbed a dunce cap.

Given enough vague predictions of unspecified terrible things, eventually something will stick. Another Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster? Another Banda Ache or Haiti earthquake? Another 9/11 attack or influenza pandemic or world war? Sure, those are possible. But applying Christian mysticism obviously doesn’t help show the future if Hagee’s argument is an example.

Problem 2

Wouldn’t the eclipses need to be visible in the Promised Land? The four coming up beginning in 2014 won’t be (though there may be a glimpse of the last one). The same was true for previous instances—few of the “blood moons” were visible in Israel.

What good is a blood moon if God’s chosen can’t see it?

Problem 3

Did anyone notice these celestial fireworks in the past? God was screaming, after all. Did anyone in Israel notice that it was spooky to have had blood moons in other parts of the world (though not Israel) after the Six-Day War was already over? Did they conclude that God was speaking?

If these earlier blood moon events happened without notice, God’s screaming is pretty feeble.

Problem 4

I challenge Hagee to go back further in time. There are four additional tetrads (instances of four consecutive lunar eclipses) that lined up with Jewish festivals since the birth of Jesus. Tell us, Dr. Hagee, what monumental events in the history of the Jewish people do those coincide with?

Many Christians know of the First Jewish-Roman War (66–74 CE), during which the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. 1.1 million Jews were killed, according to Josephus. Two other lesser-known wars, the Kitos War (115–117 CE) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE) were also fought with the Romans. Surely one or all of these are represented in God’s prior tetrads?

Of course not. The dates of the four tetrads that Hagee doesn’t want you to know about are 162, 795, 842, and 860. Like the Holocaust, God apparently didn’t think that these wars merited a magical light show.

Problem 5

What could God possibly be saying with this? What could the message be to the Jews exiled from Spain? “Something bad already happened”? Yeah, I bet that was helpful. How could you possibly get any useful information from such a nonspecific and tardy message? And how does the independence of Israel fit in, since this is clearly a good thing?

Apparently, blood moons mean, “Something bad will happen! Or is happening! Or maybe it’s something good. Or maybe it’s already happened. Or something.”

Tell God I said thanks.

Hagee delights in taking a pre-scientific view of nature, like the Normans who interpreted Halley’s comet to presage the death of English King Harold and the success of William of Normandy. How is Hagee’s thinking useful? How can anyone in the twenty-first century take it seriously?

The world will end!

In Hagee’s brief video introduction, he has yet more nutty stuff to say. He quotes Mark 13:24–6 as somehow relevant to what we’re going to see during the upcoming four blood moons phase:

But in those days, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.” At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

He wants to say that the world will end and Jesus will return, but not in any measurable way—y’know, just in case. He tap dances away from any accountability by omitting an important part. Actually, the quoted bit in Mark goes like this:

“the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

Stars falling from the sky? That’s something you wouldn’t miss. I can see why Hagee would delete mention of anything specific that will hang around to embarrass him in 2015.

Hagee finds another verse relevant. Luke 21:28 says, “your redemption draws near.” Of course, four verses later, Jesus says, “This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Oops—that didn’t happen! At least Hagee will be in good company if his own prophecy fails.

Hagee also says, “the sun and the moon will eclipse at the same time.” This isn’t possible in our reality, and Hagee doesn’t say how this is supposed to happen (no, I’m not going to buy the book to try and find out).

Other prophets

Eager followers can be pretty lenient, and many Christians seem determined to avoid learning from past failures.

Other failed prophets have been able to bounce back, from Christians like Harold Camping and Hal Lindsay, to psychics Jeanne Dixon, Edgar Cayce, and Sylvia Browne. Browne was way off even in her prediction about her own age at death.

I wrote my first novel about the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 in Los Angeles. This was in the early years of the Pentecostal movement. A nutty church was creating waves, and a reporter went to check it out. Someone in the church predicted terrible destruction, and that story appeared on the front page of the LA Times on the very day of the Great San Francisco earthquake and fire.

Given enough tries, a few random predictions will stick.

If a god is screaming at the world and no one hears it,
is he really making any sound at all?
— commenter wtfwjtd

If John Hagee is mooning the world and we call him out on it,
does he still make a ton of money?

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/7/13.)

Image credit: Stiller Beobachter, flickr, CC

I enjoy writing books, but the marketing part isn’t my strength. I sit at the feet of the master when I marvel at the work of John Hagee. He declared in 2013 that the world would soon end and that only his book Four Blood Moons had the details. (Why didn’t I think of that?)

Of course, that didn’t happen. I’m sure he knew it wouldn’t happen. But why let that stop you? The Bible makes predictions that didn’t come true, so Hagee was applying a proven formula. If I could just get past my darned compulsion for honesty, who knows what I might accomplish?

In his book trailer, Hagee said:

I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard. That he has been sending signals to planet earth, and we just haven’t been picking them up. . . . God is literally screaming at the world, “I’m coming soon.” The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.

What the hell is he talking about?

The phrase “blood moons” is taken from Joel 2:30–31: “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Hagee interprets “blood moons” simply as lunar eclipses, since the moon in total eclipse usually looks dark red.

Hagee’s four blood moons refer to eclipses at the start of the Jewish festivals of Passover and Sukkot (also called the Feast of Tabernacles), twice each, all in a row.

You might think that this is an incredible coincidence, but remember that these two holidays start on the day of a full moon by definition, and lunar eclipses can only happen during full moons. There are 2.3 lunar eclipses per year out of 12.4 full moons per year. (If more than two lunar eclipses per year sounds high, remember that they don’t last long. If the eclipse is happening during the day in your part of the world, you obviously won’t see it.)

That any particular Passover or Sukkot begins with a lunar eclipse isn’t surprising, though four of these eclipsed holidays in a row is much less common.

Hagee puts on his prophet hat to interpret. He says that in the past five centuries, there have been three such coincidences, and each has happened during an important event in the life of Israel. He said, “This is something that just is beyond coincidental.”

Time for audience participation

See if you can guess what three events are most important in the life of Israel since the fifteenth century. Guess what God rearranged the heavens to tell us.

Got your answer? Let’s see how you did.

And the first instance of a blood moon is . . .

We start in Spain in 1492. For this date, Christian history typically points to the end of the eight-century-long expulsion of the Muslims from Christian Spain. This “Reconquista” ended with the fall of Granada on January 2, 1492.

But no, Hagee says that God was focusing on the expulsion of Jews from Spain. The Edict of Expulsion was issued on March 31, 1492, and it gave Jews four months to leave. An estimated 100,000 Jews or more were forced to leave.

One small problem is that Hagee’s first blood moon didn’t happen until almost a year later (Passover, on April 2, 1493).

Remember that the “four blood moons” take about 18 months to play out (starting with a Passover and ending two Sukkots later). So God’s celestial exclamation point took place in slow motion after the problem had already come and gone.

Example two

Next up is the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948. Okay, that sounds like a big development.

However, we have yet again the small problem that Hagee’s first blood moon didn’t happen until almost a year later (Passover, on April 14, 1949).

Example three

The last one was the Six-Day War, June 5–10, 1967. God must’ve been paying attention this time, because the first blood moon had already happened (on Passover, April 25, 1967).

But why this war? Since independence, Israel has had lots of conflicts. In particular, why not the Yom Kippur War in 1973? That war was a surprise, and there were more Israeli casualties.

And what about the Holocaust? How does this not make the list?! Israel lost less than 1000 dead and 4500 wounded during the Six-Day War. In the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed.

God was apparently also unmoved by any of the anti-Jewish pogroms. In Ukraine, for example, as many as a quarter million Jews were killed after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Let’s be clear, too, that the idea of “blood moon” = natural eclipse is Hagee’s invention. More importantly, the idea that eclipses occurring on Jewish holy days is meaningful in a cosmic sense is an invention. As is the idea of four in a row (instead of two or seven, say). The Bible mentions the moon turning to blood; it says nothing about four of them. “Four blood moons” is a marketing concept, not a biblical concept.

But we’ve just begun to laugh at Hagee’s expense, and there’s too much nutty stuff for one post.

To be continued.

When you get the urge to predict the future, 
better lie down until the feeling goes away.
— Forbes magazine (1978)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/6/13.)

Image credit: Lene Melendez, flickr, CC

Okay, this is the last post in this series.
Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (an old-earth Creationist ministry) claims that the Bible has thousands of fulfilled prophecies, and he gives us his top 13. Let’s continue our critique (part 1 here).
12. “Jahaziel prophesied that King Jehoshaphat and a tiny band of men would defeat an enormous, well-equipped, well-trained army without even having to fight. Just as predicted, the King and his troops stood looking on as their foes were supernaturally destroyed to the last man.”
2 Chronicles 20 tells of a great army approaching Judah. King Jehoshaphat prayed to God, and the prophet Jahaziel reported that God would deliver them. The next day, God caused the individual tribes within the opposing alliance to fight each other until they were all dead.
What is there to say except that it’s a fanciful story? Just like #11, this is a self-contained story with a prophecy. The dating problem is also similar: King Jehoshaphat reigned in the 9th century BCE, while the books of Chronicles document events up to Cyrus the Great allowing the Jews to return after his conquest of Babylon 539 BCE. They were probably written later still, in the 4th century BCE.
Half a millennium passes from event to documentation, and Ross wants us to credulously accept the story as true?
13. King Jeroboam of Israel (922–901 BCE) encouraged worship of deities other than Yahweh. A prophet told him that a future King Josiah of Judah (641–609 BCE) would burn the bones of Jeroboam’s wayward priests on their own altar. And that’s indeed what happened.
The prophecy is in 1 Kings 13:2, and the fulfillment is in 2 Kings 23:15–18. Here Ross is making the same mistake yet again: the two books of Kings were originally one book. It documents events up to the year 560 BCE, and it received its final editing at about that time. There is no prophecy if the prophecy and the fulfillment were edited at the same time.
Hugh Ross’s conclusion
Since the probabilities were stated without justification, I haven’t been critiquing them, but Ross has attached one to each prophecy, from one chance in 10⁵ to one in 10²⁰. They’re outlandish figures, both since they have no justification and because the natural explanation is so obvious, but that doesn’t stop Ross from computing the final probability.

Since these thirteen prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence for all thirteen is about 1 in 10¹³⁸.

Then he talks about how unlikely “the second law of thermodynamics will be reversed in a given situation” and concludes,

Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.

(This tangent about thermodynamics is intriguing but irrelevant.) The Christian who wants to accept this as true without considering an alternative view now has a compelling sound bite.

Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimates of probability for the chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited here.

There is no “chance fulfillment of the prophecies” when the natural explanation works fine, but I accept your challenge. 1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1 = 1 (rather than 1 in 10¹³⁸).
Ross wraps up by saying that, given that the Bible is so fabulously correct, the Bible’s 500 upcoming prophecies “will be fulfilled to the last letter.” Who can risk ignoring these upcoming events, missing out on the blessings of Jesus, and blah blah blah?
As I’ve researched each of Ross’s claims, I’ve been amazed at how elementary these mistakes are, and this is from a guy with a doctorate in physics. But perhaps I should be more accustomed to this. We see many scholars skilled in one field who ineptly jump into apologetics. William Lane Craig has two doctorates, and John Lennox and John Warwick Montgomery have three.
You say the Bible has a prophecy from God? First make sure that it avoids the childish mistakes that Ross makes here. Next, makes sure that the prophecy meets the straightforward criteria I explore here—criteria that you’d instinctively demand from any foreign religion or supernatural claim.
Thirteen certainly hasn’t been Hugh Ross’s lucky number. That he had to cite this many rather than offering just one compelling prophecy is a clue that even he thinks they won’t be convincing.
These 13 claimed prophecies have been a useful exercise in seeing what prophecies from a perfect holy book would not look like.

I won’t insult your intelligence
by suggesting you believe what you just said.
— William F. Buckley

Image credit: Wikimedia