Many people believe that the predictions in the Bible have turned out to be true. The basic question is did the events occur before or after the predictions. Thomas Paine in his famous book Age of Reason proved conclusively that the events occurred first and then the predictions. Robert Ingersoll and Mark Twain did the same thing and also showed that many of these so called predictions never even came true. To provide a clear illustration of this, let us go back to the days of those two "great," but morally bankrupt, kings of Israel, David and Solomon.
In 2 Samuel 7, Nathan, who was King David's spiritual adviser, to whom the God of Israel spoke regularly, informed the king that God had always been in a tent since the exodus and would like a house (temple ) built for him (a strange request from the creator of the universe whose domain extended to a distance of untold light years wherein presumably he was not able to find a permanent residence). This was to be done for him by David's soon to be born son, Solomon. The God of Israel then stated that Solomon would be his (God's) son and that he (God) would be his father. The God of Israel promised further that a descendant of David would always occupy the throne of the kingdom of Israel and that this throne would last forever (v:13). He added that no matter how bad they were, his descendants would occupy this throne forever (vs:14-16).
This turned out to be a false prediction. Evangelical Christians claim that the prediction turned out to be true because the passages in Chapter 7 pointed to Jesus as this son of God. This interpretation is entirely out of context because the passage clearly indicated that the reference was to Solomon. The identity of this "son" was made even clearer in another passage where David told Solomon of God's appearance to him in the vision recorded in 2 Samuel 7.
1 Chronicles 22:6-10 Then he [David] called for his son Solomon and charged him to build a house for the LORD, the God of Israel. David said to Solomon, "My son, I had planned to build a house to the name of the LORD my God. But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have waged great wars you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood in my sight on the earth. See, a son shall be born to you he shall be a man of peace. I will give him peace from all his enemies on every side for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. He shall build a house for my name. He shall be a son to me, and I will be a father to him, and I will establish his royal throne in Israel forever.’"The son of David whose kingdom was to be established forever was clearly Solomon, so there are two important conclusions that are apparent regarding 2 Samuel 7: (1) The prediction of the everlasting Davidic dynasty and everlasting Kingdom turned out to be false, because the kingdom ended with the fall of Judah. (2) The prediction that Solomon would be the builder of the temple was a retroactive one. The temple was built first and then the story of Nathan's revelation was invented by a biblical writer probably around the 5th Century, B.C.E., about 400 years after Solomon's death.
We know that after the death of King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split into two parts: Israel with ten tribes, selected Jeroboam, an Ephraimite, to be its king, while Judah, with two tribes, selected Rehoboam, Solomon's son. This was supposedly predicted in 1 Kings 11, where the God of Israel talked to King Solomon and told him how annoyed he was at what the latter had recently done (vs:9-13).
Among Solomon's 1000 wives and concubines, there were many who worshipped other gods. This was the worst possible sin in the eyes of the God of Israel. Solomon began to build shrines to those gods in order to please some of his wives (1 Kings 11:1-8). In the opening chapters of 1 Kings, we see that the God of Israel, like a good father, had treated Solomon like his Number One Son, supposedly giving him great wisdom and wealth. He had previously promised that no matter how bad they were, his descendants would reign on the throne of Israel forever. He felt very annoyed at Solomon's lack of gratitude. He had given this spoiled brat Solomon everything. He then told this spoiled brat that he would punish him by taking away most of his kingdom from his son Rehoboam (11:9-11). He would leave Rehoboam with only one tribe, Judah, and give all of the other tribes to Jeroboam (vs:12-13). And so the kingdom, much like that of the Austria-Hungary Empire, would then be split into the two separate kingdoms, Israel and Judah. We see here that the God of Israel, by splitting the kingdom of Israel in two, in effect broke his promise to David that there would always be one kingdom of Israel, and a descendant of his, no matter how sinful, would occupy that throne. We see that it didn't happen.
In 1 Kings 12, we see a completely different explanation of why the united kingdom split into two separate kingdoms. It seems that the northern tribes were very upset over Solomon's harsh policies of forced labor. They asked Rehoboam if he was going to continue with those policies or not.. After consultations, first with his older advisers and then with the younger ones, he decided in favor of the latter who wanted him to be even harsher than his father. Ten tribes then revolted and made Jeroboam King of Israel, but Rehoboam remained King of Judah, which also included the Benjaminites .What is clear here is that it was Rehoboam's continuation of Solomon's policies that caused the split. All Rehoboam had to do in order to preserve the united kingdom was to abandon the forced labor policy of his father. The God of Israel had nothing to do with it. In effect, this is the sequence of events: (1) Rehoboam's policies resulted in the split. (2) The writers of Samuel and Kings and the rest of the Old Testament were always searching for theological reasons to explain human events. They knew that Solomon built temples dedicated to other gods and blamed him rather than Rehoboam for the breakup of the Kingdom of Israel. (3) In their writings, they decided to put the actual events after the supposed theological reasons for them, making it look like a prediction. In other words they attempted to explain the events of chapter 12 as a consequence of those of chapter 11 and thus retroactively put chapter 11 first.
There are many other examples of retroactive biblical predictions. As I have previously stated, most reputable Bible scholars recognize that many of the Old Testament scriptures were written around the Fifth Century B.C.E., 400 years after the events described above. The writers of the Bible had plenty of time to edit, rewrite, and move passages back and forth, attempting to truthify myths. When myths are repeated often enough with no cross examination and are accompanied by brainwashing and indoctrination, they are accepted by most people as facts. I call this process truthifiction, the ultimate in retroactive biblical prediction.
(Sol Abrams, 1759 Stuart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11229-2631
e-mail, HelioSol@aol.com)
