"A prophecy, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, signifies
a prediction of future events, which could not have been foreseen
by human sagacity, and the knowledge of which was supernaturally
communicated to the prophet. It is clear, therefore, that in
order to establish the claim of anticipatory statement, promise,
or denunciation, to the rank of a prophecy, four points must be
ascertained with precision; namely, (1.) what the event was to which
the alleged prediction was intended to refer; (2.) that the prediction
was uttered in specific, not vague, language before the event;
(3.) that the event took place specifically, not loosely, as predicted;
(4.) and that it could not have been foreseen by human sagacity. * * *
"It is probably not too much to affirm that we have no instance in the
prophetical books of the Old Testament of a prediction, in the case of
which we possess, at once and combined, clear and unsuspicious proof
of the date, the precise event predicted, the exact circumstances of
the event, and the inability of human sagacity to foresee it.
"The state of the case appears to be this: That all the Old Testament
prophesies have been assumed to be genuine inspired predictions; and,
when falsified in their obvious meaning and received interpretation,
by the event, have received immediately a new interpretation, and been
supposed to refer to some other event. When the result has disappointed
expectation, the conclusion has been, not that the prophecy was false,
but the interpretation was erroneous. It is obvious that a mode of
reasoning like this is peculiar to theological inquirers. * * *
"In justification of this idea of a double sense, he (Dr. Arnold)
continues: 'The notion of a double sense in prophecy has been treated
by some persons with contempt. Yet it may be said that it is almost
necessarily involved in the idea of prophecy. Every prophecy has
according to the very definition of the word, a double source;
it has, if I may venture so to speak, two authors, the one human,
the other divine.... If uttered by the tongue of man, it must also,
unless we suppose him to be a mere instrument (in the same sense as a
flute or a harp), be colored by his own mind. The prophet expresses
in words certain truths conveyed to his mind; but his mind does not
fully embrace them, nor can it; for how can man fully comprehend the
mind of God? Every man lives in time, and belongs to time; the present
must be to him clearer than the future.... But with God there is no
past, nor future; every truth is present to him in all its extent,
so that his expression, if I may so speak, differs essentially
from that which can be comprehended by the mind, or uttered by the
tongue of man. Thus every prophecy as uttered by man (that is, by an
intelligent and not a mere mechanical instrument), and at the same
time as inspired by God, must, so far as appears, have a double sense;
one, the sense entertained by the human mind of the writer; the other,
the sense infused into it by God.' We must confess our amazement at
the obvious and extreme unsoundness of this whole passage. Not only
does it painfully remind us of the double meaning so often and so
justly charged upon the Pagan oracles--but it assumes the strange
and contradictory improbabilities: first, that God was unable to
convey his meaning to the mind of the prophet; secondly, that he
infused this meaning into the words which were uttered, although
he could not infuse it into the mind of the man who uttered them;
and thirdly, that we can see further into the mind and meaning of
God than those to whom he spoke; that they in expressing the ideas
which he had put into their minds, mistook or imperfectly conceived
those ideas,--but that to us is given to discover a thought which
those words contained, but did not express, or which, if they did
express it, they were not understood by the writer to express. Now,
either the ideas which God wished to communicate were conveyed to
the mind of the prophet, or they were not; if they were so conveyed,
then the prophet must have comprehended them, and intended to express
them correctly--for it is monstrous to suppose that God would infuse
ideas into a man's mind for the purpose of being communicated to
the public; which ideas he yet did not enable him to communicate;
and then all the above confused subtleties fall to the ground. If,
on the other hand, these ideas were not so conveyed to the prophet's
mind, then it must have been the words and not the ideas which were
inspired, and God used the prophet simply as a flute (a supposition
scouted by Dr. Arnold) and we are thus driven to the equally monstrous
supposition that God used words which did not convey his meaning,
even to the very favored individual to whom and through whom he
spoke." (Greg's "Creed of Christendom," pp. 76, 92.)
"We have already had ample proof that the Jewish writers not only did
not scruple to narrate past events as if predicting future ones--to
present history in the form of prophecy, but that they habitually
did so. The original documents from which the books of Moses were
compiled, must have been written, as we have seen in the time of the
earliest kings, while the book of Deuteronomy was not composed, and
the whole Pentateuch did not assume its present form till, probably,
the reign of Josiah; yet they abound in such anticipatory narrative--in
predictions of events long past. The instances are far too numerous
to quote." (Greg's "Creed of Christendom," p. 86.)
"There is not throughout the whole Bible any word that describes to
us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call
poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which latter times
have affixed new ideas, was the Bible word for poet, and the word
prophesying meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of
playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.
"We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns--of prophesying
with harps, with psalteries, with cymbols, and with every other
instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of
prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression
would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people
contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word.
"We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied, but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets
were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,
and this was called prophesying."--Thomas Paine on the Prophecies.
"There is no reason to think that a prophet ever received a
revelation which was not spoken directly and pointedly to his own
time. (Ency. Brit. "Bible.")
"It is plain, however, that the whole work (the Pentateuch) is not
the uniform production of one pen, but that in some way a variety of
records of different ages, and styles have been combined to form a
single narrative. Accordingly, Jewish tradition bears evidence that
Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Joshua the book named after him, Samuel
the book of Judges, and so forth. As all Hebrew history is anonymous,
a sure sign that people had not yet learned to lay weight on questions
of authorship, it is not probable that this tradition rests on any
surer ground than conjecture." (Ency. Brit., "Bible.")
"I have now fully and fairly analyzed and exposed many of the most
important prophecies or pretended prophecies of the whole Bible,
I have shown that very few of them are real prophecies at all; that
those which are real prophecies, very few ever have been, or ever
can be fulfilled; that the very few which seem to have been fulfilled
were written after the occurrence of the events claimed to be their
fulfilments, and that, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, none of
these prophecies ever have been, or ever can be, of any service to
the world. And thus fall all the prophetic props of priestcraft. Not
one of them can bear the test of fair examination." (Kelso's "Bible
Analayzed.")