Yazzo ja Ateiti: Vanhaan kysymykseen vastaus

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Osta englanti-suomi sanakirja tai pyydä vanhempiasi suomentamaan.

"Säälittävää tollanen"

hevoinen.cjb.net kirjoitti:

Mitä sinä nariset oikein?
Osta englanti-suomi sanakirja tai pyydä vanhempiasi suomentamaan.

"Säälittävää tollanen"

Osaan kyllä englantia, mutta jos kysyn sulta
suomeksi jotain, niin oletan myös, että vastaat
SUOMEKSI.

Tosin taas se nähtiin, etteivät hihhulit osaa
sanoa mitään omin sanoin, vaan aina pitää lainata
ja lainata ja kaiken lisäksi niin pitkiä
VIERASKIELISIÄ pätkiä, joista sen itse asian
löytäminen onkin työn ja tuskan takana.

Kopioinpa tähän nyt koko tekstin ja oletan, että
omahyväisestä asenteestasi huolimatta osoitat
selkeästi ne kohdat, joita minun tulee lukea.


The Old Testament

Steel-Belted Tyre

--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
On the Tyre Prophecy of Ezekiel

J. P. Holding



[A Debate About Tyre] [Who Are "They"? (26:12)]
[Many Nations (26:3)] [Fishnets (26:4-5)]
[Submerged, Buried? (26:9-10)] [Never Found
Again? (26:14, 19)] [Lost? (26:21)] [Appendix:
Farrell Till on Tyre]


One of my earliest Internet projects was a
thorough rebuttal to a thoroughly stubborn
atheist on America Online who styled
himself "Snakepiper." Some of you are probably
familiar with this character, and I referred to
him in my AJINOD Preface; some of you may even
have seen the debate between himself and another
Christian on this subject in summer of 1996. I
entered the debate late, and indirectly, but had
a good deal of fun nonetheless!

Snakepiper basically claimed that none of the
prophecies of this chapter were successfully
fulfilled. Even when defeated, he refused to
accept what I told him was a much more defensible
position, that the prophecies were written after
the events in question. (As an update,
Snakepiper's latest diatribe towards me simply
further evidenced what I said of him in my
Preface - he has no knowledge whatsoever of Bible
languages, archaeology, history, or customs; all
he used to back up his points were encyclopedias,
dictionaries, photos off the Net, and his own
personal opinions. So, if you should run into
Snakey somewhere on AOL, be mindful of his
notable lack of education in these areas. Also be
mindful of his desperate attempts to sidestep
arguments with trivialities - in particular, in
his last two message sets he wasted a great deal
of time accusing another Christian in the debate
of setting up a second AOL account and posing as
me! Hey, Snakey - does this prove that G.B. and I
are not the same person?)

With that stated, let us move to the specifics of
the Tyre prophecy:




Issue #1 - Who Are "They"?
"They will plunder your wealth and loot your
merchandise.." (NIV)
This verse is pivotal to many of the arguments of
each side. Our side would say that the "they" in
v. 12 refers back the "nations" in v. 3-5, and
were represented by Alexander the Great, who did
the things described in v. 12, thus fulfilling
the prophecy. Skeptics and other critics,
however, say that the "they" in v. 12 refers to
the elements of Nebuchadnezzar's forces in verses
7 and 11. Nebbie never did the things ascribed
to "they," in verse 12 - he failed to take Tyre
at all - so the prophecy, it is said, was not
fulfilled.

Snakepiper refused repeated requests to produce a
Hebrew-based exegesis of the passage, and instead
fuddled over how ridiculous it was in ENGLISH (!)
to "require the reader to IGNORE the plain &
obvious immediate pronoun antecedents [in verse
7], which are specifically Nebuchadnezzar
for 'he', or Nebuchadnezzar & his troops
for 'they,' and INSTEAD jump back NINE VERSES for
the antecedent that will provide the desired
meaning to be forced." He then pointed out
that "this claim means that EVERY ENGLISH VERSION
has INCORRECT GRAMMAR." And such is the case
indeed; but it would violate the order of the
Hebrew text severely to bring it into line with
English grammar, and so it is preferable to leave
it as it is. (Snakepiper, however, is one of
those sorts whom I address in Inerrancy and Human
Ignorance - he finds it incomprehensible that God
should have provided, according to inerrantists,
inerrant originals, yet not preserved inerrancy
through copies and translations. Well, you
certainly cannot please everyone...)

However, even in English, it is perfectly clear
that the "they" in v. 12 can only refer to
the "nations" in v. 3. Let's see how this is so.

Verse 3: The nations are mentioned.

Verse 4: The nations are referenced as "they."

Verse 7: Nebbie is introduced, along with his
horses, chariots, horsemen, and army.

Verse 8: Says "HE will ravage your settlements on
the mainland...HE will set up siege works against
you (etc.)" At this point we see the
personification of Nebbie in his forces begin.
Obviously, Nebbie did not PERSONALLY do the
things described while his army sat by and sipped
coconuts.

Verse 9: says "HE will direct the blows of his
battering ram..." Same as above; unless we want
to argue that Nebbie only used his personal
battering ram which he didn't let anyone else use.
("MINE!!!")

Verses 10-11: "His horses will be so many that
they will cover you with dust. Your walls will
tremble at the noise of the war horses, wagons
and chariots when HE enters your gates as men
enter a city whose walls have been broken
through. The hoofs of his horses will trample all
your streets; HE will kill your people with the
sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the
ground." Here we see two more cases where
Nebbie's forces are personified under singular
references to himself.

Now the key verse:

Verse 12: "They will plunder your wealth and loot
your merchandise..." We may note that:

This is the first recurrence of "they" since
verse 4. That this is so is a strong literary
argument,even in English, that the subject of
the "they" in verse 3, the "nations," is also to
be identified with the actors in v. 12. Skeptics
would have us apply the "they" to the folks in v.
7. Aside from the fact that these folks have
already been subsumed under Nebbie's
pronoun, "HE," we may ask skeptics why they do
not refer "they" to much closer words which agree
in the plural sense and thus could be regarded as
antecedents - for example, the "horses, wagons,
and chariots" described in verses 10-11! (In
desperation, Snakepiper laughingly agreed with
me, and DID say that he would thereafter
apply "they" to the horses, wagons and chariots!
He never did explain how horses, wagons, and
chariots are going to (per v. 12) loot
merchandise, break down walls, demolish houses,
and throw the stones into the sea. I guess they
could give the horsies some little bags so they
can go looting and some hoof-compatible
sledgehammers so they can knock the walls down.
And I guess the horsies can load the rubble into
the wagons and chariots and dump it into the sea
from there. At any rate, perhaps realizing how
ridiculous this new position would be, Snakepiper
strangely "forgot" that he made this assertion
and later went right on back to applying the
antecedents to verse 7!)

Bottom line: The "they" in v. 12 does not refer
to Nebbie or his army. (For more on this, see our
special Appendix below.)




Issue #2 - Too Many Nations Spoil the Broth
Ezekiel 26:3 verse says that "many nations" will
be against Tyre. Babylon, Alex the Great, and the
Muslim crusaders are commonly cited as
fulfillment.

Alex T. Great's forces were put together from a
coalition of Greek city-states. Each of these was
an independent entity and acted as a nation unto
itself. Alex's dad, Philip 2, unified these city-
states and the regions of Thrace, Macedonia, and
Greece proper under his rule - giving Alex the
unified front he needed to go forth and conquer.
Nevertheless, this was a coalition composed of
many nations - and thus fulfills the prophecy.
Now I see some objecting: They were COALESCED
into ONE NATION - so the prophecy is NOT
fulfilled there. Well, we can go a little
further. According to the ancient historian
Arrian, author of "Anabasi Alexandri," (2.20.1-
2), Alex got some help in attacking Tyre. Having
no navy of his own to speak of, he got naval help
from his friends in Macedon and from the
Phoenician city-states Aradus, Byblos, and Sidon;
ships also came from Enylos, Soli and Mallos,
Rhodes, Lycia, and Cyprus to join in the fray and
help Alex overcome Tyre [Flem.Tyre, 58]. Each,
other than Macedon, was an entirely separate
nation from those in Alex's land forces: a sort
of ancient Gulf War Coalition! Thus, even if the
first aspect I have mentioned in not accepted as
a fulfillment, the second has to be - for it
involves, by the most conservative count now, 11
nations; by a larger allowance, 13 or more - and
either number certainly can be regarded as "many"
in any event.

Snakepiper's reply to this was rather interesting
and most amusing. He held that this
conglomeration of forces to form MANY
nations "conveniently ignores the analogy (v. 3)
of being LIKE THE SEA CASTING UP ITS WAVES" and
that the action described by Arrian "just gives
us ONE BIG wave, not a pattern of WAVE*S* PLURAL
which occur in the SEA as a STEADY SERIES of
hits." This is a terrifying example of
metaphorical ignorance! Presumably he would also
complain that the analogy does not fit because
the armies were not wearing blue-green uniforms
and white pointy hats! The point is that Tyre was
overwhelmed like one swamped by waves - it is not
an issue of how many times. (And if we really
want to get technical, since ancient armies
didn't generally fight at night, any rest that
the armies took between attacks on Tyre could be
seen as waves going back, and the attacks as
waves crashing over!)

We can add to this a number of other times over
its history that Tyre was attacked. Fleming
[Flem.Tyre, 52-122] lists no less than 14
separate attacks between Babylon and the
destruction of Tyre, with hostilities initiated
by parties as diverse as the Greeks, Crusaders,
and Muslims.




Issue #3 and #4 - Ezekiel 26:4-5 - A Bare
Rock/Fishnets!
They will destroy the walls and Tyre and pull
down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble
and make her a bare rock. Out in the sea she will
become a place to spread fishnets...
Note that verse 5 refers to "out in the sea," a
prophecy against the island Tyre. It is only the
mainland site that is to be scraped bare.

So was mainland Tyre scraped bare? According to
history, mainland Tyre's debris was used by Alex
to build a bridge out to Tyre. Now of course this
verse contains obvious hyperbole; no one can pick
up every grain of dust or every rock from a given
place. Microscopic particles remain, if nothing
else. But Alex's actions clearly scraped away the
mainland city for all practical purposes, thus
fulfilling the prophecy.

Was the island made a place to spread nets? Yes,
in two ways: The island, which was situated in
the midst of the sea, would become a place to
spread nets (to dry); or, the island would become
a situation point where fisherman would
congregate to spread their nets (to catch fish),
sort of like good old Rockall. We know that both
of these things have been done, so either way,
this tiny bit of prophecy has been fulfilled.




Issue #5 - Ezekiel 26:9-10 - Submerged and
Buried?
The relevant parts of these verses says:

...when I bring the ocean depths over you and its
vast waters cover you...I will make you dwell in
the earth below, as in ancient ruins...
So Tyre was to be submerged under water AND
earth. As we know, the rubble of mainland Tyre
was thrown in the water - so there's that part
submerged. But what of the island city? Another
Christian in this debate telephoned the National
Council on Tourism in Lebanon and made several
determinations showing that this prophecy has
been fulfilled - determinations he later
confirmed by visiting the area in question
personally:

In the first century of our era, according to a
contemporary writer, the two cities together had
a perimeter of more than 17 miles. But since then
the all invading sands have made even the sites
of the two cities unrecognizable; and even the
remains of the aqueduct (Roman), which might have
helped to rediscover the famous causeway, were
soon to vanish beneath the dunes.
But the mounting sands were not the only agency
to change the face of this area. The earliest
investigations on the spot led to the belief that
part of ancient Tyre was submerged: it seemed
likely that what was not under the sand or the
debris was under the water. The argument was:
what remains on the present peninsula of the
terrain of the old island city is not enough to
contain all that it in fact contained:
questions "of importance in any topographical
discussion" cannot be satisfactorily answered
unless it is admitted that "a very considerable
part of the island has disappeared into the sea
because of earthquakes". A lowering or flooding
of the Western part of the island might explain
in particular why nobody can now discover and
trace of the temple of Melqart...A passage was
much quoted from an account of a celebrated
twelfth-century journey, according to which, at a
stone's throw from the wall of the mediaeval
city, could be seen "ancient Tyre covered by the
waters of the sea; so that to view the towers and
public places and palaces under the waters, one
has but to take a boat." Today, the isthmus is
covered with dunes, here and there higher than
the city itself, though Alexander's causeway had
been nothing more than an earthen dyke. Even at
the end of the seventeenth century it was still
lower than either the island or the mainland; it
had not yet become high enough to obscure the
ancient coastline.
Snakepiper responded to this by calling the
damages outlined above "soil erosion and minor
flood damage"! Decide for yourself, readers, if
damage caused such as described above is "minor"!




Issue #6 and #7 - Ezekiel 26:19/14 - Habitat for
Humanity?/Built Again?
These two issues are closely related and should
be considered together. Let's look at the verses
in question:

14b You will never be rebuilt....
19b ...When I make you like a desolate city, like
cities no longer inhabited...
The KJV uses the weaker "built again" instead
of "rebuilt." I will use "built again," so that
no accusation can be made of me twisting the
meaning of the former, more modern word. For
reference, note that the name "Tyre" applies both
to the modern city and to a fishing village in
the area which is on the site of the ancient
mainland city.

The other Christian in the debate pointed out
that:

Ezekiel 26:5 states Tyre would become a rock for
the spreading of nets, implying fishermen would
live in the area.

Modern Tyre has approximately 60,000 inhabitants
and the village 14 to 16,000. They are not the
same legal entities. The modern city is three
miles south of the ancient mainland site. Tyre is
also a county, which includes both Tyres and the
surrounding communities. The very highest figure
is for the COUNTY of Tyre.

In reply Snakepiper noted that:

Damage to the city of Tyre HAS BEEN REBUILT, the
city is CURRENTLY INHABITED and ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
Today there are freeways and high-rise
buildings... (Tyre is) A BOOMING METROPOLIS.
Now v. 19, we should note, says that God will
MAKE the city desolate, like one that is
uninhabited. It does NOT say that He will KEEP IT
THAT WAY! Moreover, the verse says that the city
will be made DESOLATE, and LIKE one uninhabited.
Not plain uninhabited, but LIKE. Like in what
way? In the sense of DESOLATION. So even if the
area has been continuously inhabited - and this
is not provable, as far as the actual sites of
the city are concerned - this does not invalidate
the prophecy. At any rate, if people moved in,
whether in buildings, shacks, or pup tents; and
whether or not the area was again inhabited at
any point, by ANYBODY, whether Phoenicians, or
Greeks, or even Amway salesmen, is irrelevant.
The prophecy does not say that the area will be
forever uninhabited.

And what of Tyre being "rebuilt" or, as the KJV
puts it, "built again"? Obviously we have a
modern city named Tyre, and the fishing village.
Are these truly ancient Tyre "built again"?
Certainly not. But let's put an illustration
together to demonstrate.

Four men live in a neighborhood - we'll call them
Fred, Ed, Jed, and Ned.

One night, while all four are away, a fire starts
and burns all four of their houses to the ground.
Destruction is total and complete. Fortunately,
all four of our men have insurance, so they will
not be left homeless. However, each of them uses
the insurance money a little differently.

Fred liked his house, and the property. So he
builds a house from the SAME plan, on the SAME
site.

Ed liked his house, but hated the view. He builds
a house from the SAME plan, but on a DIFFERENT
site.

Jed liked the view, but didn't like the house
plan. He uses a DIFFERENT plan, but builds on the
SAME site.

Ned is a sociopath who hates everything, so he
uses a DIFFERENT house plan and builds on a
DIFFERENT site.

Question: Which of these men had their
house "built again"?

The answer is that none of them did - each of
these men built houses ANEW, not AGAIN. "Building
again" implies that something is left to build
UPON and used in the building process - a wall, a
foundation, even the memory of a specific design.
Atlanta after Sherman was built again. But there
was nothing left of Tyre to build upon, or
nothing that was left was used to build the new
settlements, either mainland or island, after
their respective destructions and attacks upon
them by the tides of time; and the design of the
old city (as we note below) was not in any sense
incorporated into the new Tyres. So Tyre has not
been "built again" in the new city or in the
fishing village.

I hear skeptics protesting already, so let's be
generous here. Let's take a more open view of the
four possibilities. Granting that minor changes
in the house plans do not make any difference
(like adding a sprinkler system, which our men
probably would do), but that major changes (like
in the number of rooms) do count, even at the
most generous stretch, only options 1 and 2 can
by any definition be said to be a case where a
house was "built again." 3 and 4 are
unquestionably houses built anew.

But which of these four fits Tyre? Let's see -

The modern city (Snakepiper's "BOOMING
METROPLIS") is on a DIFFERENT site, and has a
DIFFERENT design - Option 4. Nope. The fishing
village is on the SAME site, but has a DIFFERENT
design - option 3. Nope!

Therefore, the prophecy has remained fulfilled.
Even if we are EXTREMELY generous in our
definitions, Tyre has still not been built again,
because even the modern city (BOOMING METROPOLIS)
has reached nowhere near the relative importance
of ancient Tyre. Consider:

Ancient Tyre was an independent city-state.
Modern Tyre arose in 1766 AD and is a city that
is part of a larger country which governs it
(Lebanon).
Ancient Tyre was a major trade center for goods -
in importance, equal to Hong Kong today, a city
which was "immensely rich and exerted
considerable influence by virtue of its
involvement in international trade" [Crai.Zeke,
192]. Modern Tyre is a relative backwater,
described in 1915 by Fleming as a "petty town,"
and a "sorry shadow of the days when Tyre was the
mart of the nations and the mistress of the
seas." [Flem.Tyre, x, 132]Today Tyre survives
with tourism as a primary industry.
Ancient Tyre was a major power in the ancient
world, full of self-confidence [ibid., 193].
Modern Tyre has no power, and no pull in
international affairs.
In short, the cities share nothing but a name. In
design and in character, they are TOTALLY
different entities, and are nothing like ancient
Tyre. Modern Tyre "is connected with the Tyre of
history on location and name only." [ibid., x]
Also for the skeptic - even counting the highest
possible total of 160,000 in the area, where can
we get off calling modern Tyre a BOOMING
METROPOLIS? Would we call Tallahassee, FL, Macon,
GA, and Beaumont, TX "booming metropolises"? I
have lived in the first, and have passed through
the last two several times. They're not booming,
and they are NOT metropolises. But they're right
equal in size and population to modern Tyre!




Issue #9 - Ezekiel 26:21 - Lost and Found?
This final issue that I will consider hinges on
the meaning of the word "found" in this verse:

21 "...though thou be sought for, yet shalt thee
never be found again." (KJV)
Snakepiper really harped on this issue. He noted
that:

Tyre now occupies ALL of the original area on the
mainland AND the original island fortress. The
old island fortress is now a national park where
the ruins are preserved for tourists and
archaeologists, in stark contradiction to
Ezekiel's claim that though sought, (it) would
never be found again.
In saying this, Snakepiper totally misconstrued
what it means for something to be found. Let's do
another anecdote for example:

One night, very late, a fellow named Gerry was
finishing up his 200-page handwritten term paper
for Theology class. He didn't like computers, you
see, so he handwrote everything.
"Finished!" he cried. "Now for a soda break!"
So Gerry went to get a soda and came back to the
table. To his horror, however, the term
paper had disappeared! In it's place was a note:
HA HA! I am the Evil Term Paper Fairy! I have
destroyed your term paper! You can look for it
all you want, but it'll never be found! HA HA!
again!
ETPF, Esq.
What a blow! Gerry sunk to his knees and began to
sob. But wait - he smelled something strange!
Looking over at the fireplace, he could just make
out - yes, it was! The Evil Fairy had thrown his
term paper into the fire! He could just make out
a few scraps that the fire had not reached yet -
oh, bother! What was he to DO???? His term paper
was nothing but ashes!
Morning came, finding Gerry still sobbing. His
obnoxious neighbor, Kornsnake, stopped by for a
visit. "What are you blubbering about?" Kornsnake
belched, helping himself to the knockwurst in the
fridge.
"Look at THIS!" Gerry shouted, thrusting the
Fairy's note under Kornsnake's nose.
Kornsnake read the note disinterestedly. "So what
happened? I don't believe in fairies."
"My term paper ended up in the fireplace! It's
nothing but ashes now! Just LOOK!"
Kornsnake walked over to the fireplace and
looked. He recognized a few scraps of paper with
Gerry's handwriting on them in the cold ashes.
"Ha! That Evil Term Paper Fairy is a FRAUD!"
Kornsnake snorted.
"What are you saying?" Gerry asked, taken aback.
"Just LOOK yourself!" Kornsnake bellowed, taking
a handful of paper scraps and ashes and shoving
them in Gerry's face. "That fairy's note is a
LIE! See?? I just FOUND your term paper!!!"
What follows is an extremely violent scene
unsuitable for family tastes - but I think we get
the point. Finding the RUINS of Tyre (or any
city) is NOT the same as finding Tyre (or any
city) ITSELF. Indeed, would the skeptic propose
to tell those ancient Tyrians that they could
take comfort in Zeke's prophecy not being
fulfilled, since their city had been "found?" I
think not.

When we say that something has been "found," and
it is severely damaged, to the point of
destruction or unusability, we only say that it
has been "found" in an ironic sense - or when we
are playing a cruel joke. When speaking of
cities, like, say, Macchu Picchu or the Anasazi
settlements, being still in reasonable form as a
city, they MAY be taken as "found" in the sense
that the skeptic desires. But ancient Tyre, with
its rubble and rubbish scattered to the
figurative winds and disassembled to the point
where archaeologists are cataloging individual
bricks, can no more be "found" than poor Gerry's
term paper. Tyre has not been found, only its
ruins have been; and those ruins, despite the
best efforts of all the king's horses and all the
king's men, will never, ever, ever, not even with
Super Glue, put the city of Tyre back together
again.




Sources
Crai.Zeke - Craigie, Peter. Ezekiel.
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983.
Flem.Tyre - Fleming, Wallace B. The History of
Tyre. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1915.




Appendix: Till on Tyre, or Tyred of Till
It has recently been brought to my attention that
one of my favorite people for skeptic-baiting,
Farrell Till, has deigned to open his mouth on
this issue of Tyre - in particular, the matter of
the shift in pronouns in verse 12 noted in the
first section of this essay. An article on this
subject appeared in the first 1997 issue of The
Skeptical Review and was written by the Grand
Poobah Till himself in response to a fellow named
Hogan. I'm going to respond to those parts of
Till's item that touch upon the issues we have
discussed above and that we have not already
addressed. We will see that as usual much of what
Till has to say is reliant upon skeptical-
chauvinistic presumptions of modern ways of doing
things upon ancient peoples and their literature -
except, of course, where it serves Till's
purposes better to do otherwise.

Till proposes to refute the assertion that "they"
in verse 12 refers to a plural antecedent by
comparing it "to another passage in Ezekiel that
is strikingly similar in structure." Other than
blathering about his 30 years of teaching (non-
ANE) college literature, Till argues by assuming
that this is simply a matter of Ezekiel having
made a careless mistake in pronoun-antecedent
agreement of the sort common in writing. And the
parallel passage he cites as an example? It is
Zeke's 29:18-20, which he quotes as follows:

Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused
his army to serve a great service against Tyre;
every head was made bald, and every shoulder
rubbed raw; yet had he no wages, nor his army,
from Tyre, for the service that he had served
against it. Therefore thus says Yahweh God:
`Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall
carry off her multitude, and take her spoil, and
take her prey; and that will be the wages for his
army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his
recompense for which he served, because they
worked for me....
Till believes here that because Zeke has
consistently used the masculine singular pronoun
in the above (he, him, his) to refer to Nebbie,
his shift "for no grammatical reason" to "they"
in the last recorded sentence indicates that
Zeke "inadvertently shifted to a plural pronoun,
even though grammatical consistency should have
required him to use the singular pronoun, as he
had done throughout the text."

Well, there's a big problem with using this
passage: Unlike the other passage in question,
Nebbie is highlighted ALONG WITH his army
throughout the above in a way that the army is
not highlighted in the previous passage. During
the Tyre prophecy, as we have noted, Nebbie's
army is personified under singular references to
Nebbie himself. That is not what is happening
here: The army is allowed to have its own
identity, in order to emphasize that "every head
was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed
raw" - a simple, hyperbolic way of expressing how
much trouble the army had to go to against Tyre.
Three times (or maybe even four, depending on how
you want to count) in the above passage Nebbie is
paired with his army in a way that alludes to
them as separate entities, and this gives a more
than adequate reason for the use of "they" in the
last sentence - a "he/they" parallel is
established throughout the passage, and the last
sentence is simply another example of such a
pairing. (One doubts that Till will pull his
usual "quote the English versions" shebang here:
The NIV reads this as, "I have given him Egypt as
a reward for his efforts because he and his army
did it for me..." - which simply follows the
parallelism as it should.)

After this, Till pulls the usual skeptical-
chauvinism shebang, accusing Zeke of careless
writing "because no effective writer would
separate a pronoun from its antecedent with that
much verbiage, especially when there were so many
words like horses, horsemen, men, wagons, and
chariots in between that could be confused as the
antecedent of they," along with the also-standard
blather asking "why an omniscient, omnipotent
deity didn't do a better job of verbally guiding
his 'inspired' agent." This is no more than
Till's typical blather which assumes that modern
English rules of writing hold court upon Ancient
Near Eastern literature: The "Grand Dragon" has
spoken again! But to close, we will note a rather
glaring inconsistency - Till, as usual,
DOES "play by the rules" of ancient language and
literature when it suits him!

One of the points raised by Hogan reads: "If
Farrell can explain what Ezekiel meant when he
wrote about the `many nations' that would come up
against Tyre, then perhaps I would admit defeat."
Till says that he does have an explanation --
"based on the fact that the Hebrew language had
no future tense." What's this? We can appeal to
the rules of Hebrew grammar when it suits us, eh?
Let's just see how Till's attempt bears out for
the heck of it:

Thus, Ezekiel did not actually say, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come
up against you." Instead, he said, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and have caused to come up against
thee many nations" (Young's Literal Translation
of the Holy Bible). In the absence of a future
tense, which was characteristic of Semitic
languages, future action

jomo kirjoitti:

Osaan kyllä englantia, mutta jos kysyn sulta
suomeksi jotain, niin oletan myös, että vastaat
SUOMEKSI.

Tosin taas se nähtiin, etteivät hihhulit osaa
sanoa mitään omin sanoin, vaan aina pitää lainata
ja lainata ja kaiken lisäksi niin pitkiä
VIERASKIELISIÄ pätkiä, joista sen itse asian
löytäminen onkin työn ja tuskan takana.

Kopioinpa tähän nyt koko tekstin ja oletan, että
omahyväisestä asenteestasi huolimatta osoitat
selkeästi ne kohdat, joita minun tulee lukea.


The Old Testament

Steel-Belted Tyre

--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
On the Tyre Prophecy of Ezekiel

J. P. Holding



[A Debate About Tyre] [Who Are "They"? (26:12)]
[Many Nations (26:3)] [Fishnets (26:4-5)]
[Submerged, Buried? (26:9-10)] [Never Found
Again? (26:14, 19)] [Lost? (26:21)] [Appendix:
Farrell Till on Tyre]


One of my earliest Internet projects was a
thorough rebuttal to a thoroughly stubborn
atheist on America Online who styled
himself "Snakepiper." Some of you are probably
familiar with this character, and I referred to
him in my AJINOD Preface; some of you may even
have seen the debate between himself and another
Christian on this subject in summer of 1996. I
entered the debate late, and indirectly, but had
a good deal of fun nonetheless!

Snakepiper basically claimed that none of the
prophecies of this chapter were successfully
fulfilled. Even when defeated, he refused to
accept what I told him was a much more defensible
position, that the prophecies were written after
the events in question. (As an update,
Snakepiper's latest diatribe towards me simply
further evidenced what I said of him in my
Preface - he has no knowledge whatsoever of Bible
languages, archaeology, history, or customs; all
he used to back up his points were encyclopedias,
dictionaries, photos off the Net, and his own
personal opinions. So, if you should run into
Snakey somewhere on AOL, be mindful of his
notable lack of education in these areas. Also be
mindful of his desperate attempts to sidestep
arguments with trivialities - in particular, in
his last two message sets he wasted a great deal
of time accusing another Christian in the debate
of setting up a second AOL account and posing as
me! Hey, Snakey - does this prove that G.B. and I
are not the same person?)

With that stated, let us move to the specifics of
the Tyre prophecy:




Issue #1 - Who Are "They"?
"They will plunder your wealth and loot your
merchandise.." (NIV)
This verse is pivotal to many of the arguments of
each side. Our side would say that the "they" in
v. 12 refers back the "nations" in v. 3-5, and
were represented by Alexander the Great, who did
the things described in v. 12, thus fulfilling
the prophecy. Skeptics and other critics,
however, say that the "they" in v. 12 refers to
the elements of Nebuchadnezzar's forces in verses
7 and 11. Nebbie never did the things ascribed
to "they," in verse 12 - he failed to take Tyre
at all - so the prophecy, it is said, was not
fulfilled.

Snakepiper refused repeated requests to produce a
Hebrew-based exegesis of the passage, and instead
fuddled over how ridiculous it was in ENGLISH (!)
to "require the reader to IGNORE the plain &
obvious immediate pronoun antecedents [in verse
7], which are specifically Nebuchadnezzar
for 'he', or Nebuchadnezzar & his troops
for 'they,' and INSTEAD jump back NINE VERSES for
the antecedent that will provide the desired
meaning to be forced." He then pointed out
that "this claim means that EVERY ENGLISH VERSION
has INCORRECT GRAMMAR." And such is the case
indeed; but it would violate the order of the
Hebrew text severely to bring it into line with
English grammar, and so it is preferable to leave
it as it is. (Snakepiper, however, is one of
those sorts whom I address in Inerrancy and Human
Ignorance - he finds it incomprehensible that God
should have provided, according to inerrantists,
inerrant originals, yet not preserved inerrancy
through copies and translations. Well, you
certainly cannot please everyone...)

However, even in English, it is perfectly clear
that the "they" in v. 12 can only refer to
the "nations" in v. 3. Let's see how this is so.

Verse 3: The nations are mentioned.

Verse 4: The nations are referenced as "they."

Verse 7: Nebbie is introduced, along with his
horses, chariots, horsemen, and army.

Verse 8: Says "HE will ravage your settlements on
the mainland...HE will set up siege works against
you (etc.)" At this point we see the
personification of Nebbie in his forces begin.
Obviously, Nebbie did not PERSONALLY do the
things described while his army sat by and sipped
coconuts.

Verse 9: says "HE will direct the blows of his
battering ram..." Same as above; unless we want
to argue that Nebbie only used his personal
battering ram which he didn't let anyone else use.
("MINE!!!")

Verses 10-11: "His horses will be so many that
they will cover you with dust. Your walls will
tremble at the noise of the war horses, wagons
and chariots when HE enters your gates as men
enter a city whose walls have been broken
through. The hoofs of his horses will trample all
your streets; HE will kill your people with the
sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the
ground." Here we see two more cases where
Nebbie's forces are personified under singular
references to himself.

Now the key verse:

Verse 12: "They will plunder your wealth and loot
your merchandise..." We may note that:

This is the first recurrence of "they" since
verse 4. That this is so is a strong literary
argument,even in English, that the subject of
the "they" in verse 3, the "nations," is also to
be identified with the actors in v. 12. Skeptics
would have us apply the "they" to the folks in v.
7. Aside from the fact that these folks have
already been subsumed under Nebbie's
pronoun, "HE," we may ask skeptics why they do
not refer "they" to much closer words which agree
in the plural sense and thus could be regarded as
antecedents - for example, the "horses, wagons,
and chariots" described in verses 10-11! (In
desperation, Snakepiper laughingly agreed with
me, and DID say that he would thereafter
apply "they" to the horses, wagons and chariots!
He never did explain how horses, wagons, and
chariots are going to (per v. 12) loot
merchandise, break down walls, demolish houses,
and throw the stones into the sea. I guess they
could give the horsies some little bags so they
can go looting and some hoof-compatible
sledgehammers so they can knock the walls down.
And I guess the horsies can load the rubble into
the wagons and chariots and dump it into the sea
from there. At any rate, perhaps realizing how
ridiculous this new position would be, Snakepiper
strangely "forgot" that he made this assertion
and later went right on back to applying the
antecedents to verse 7!)

Bottom line: The "they" in v. 12 does not refer
to Nebbie or his army. (For more on this, see our
special Appendix below.)




Issue #2 - Too Many Nations Spoil the Broth
Ezekiel 26:3 verse says that "many nations" will
be against Tyre. Babylon, Alex the Great, and the
Muslim crusaders are commonly cited as
fulfillment.

Alex T. Great's forces were put together from a
coalition of Greek city-states. Each of these was
an independent entity and acted as a nation unto
itself. Alex's dad, Philip 2, unified these city-
states and the regions of Thrace, Macedonia, and
Greece proper under his rule - giving Alex the
unified front he needed to go forth and conquer.
Nevertheless, this was a coalition composed of
many nations - and thus fulfills the prophecy.
Now I see some objecting: They were COALESCED
into ONE NATION - so the prophecy is NOT
fulfilled there. Well, we can go a little
further. According to the ancient historian
Arrian, author of "Anabasi Alexandri," (2.20.1-
2), Alex got some help in attacking Tyre. Having
no navy of his own to speak of, he got naval help
from his friends in Macedon and from the
Phoenician city-states Aradus, Byblos, and Sidon;
ships also came from Enylos, Soli and Mallos,
Rhodes, Lycia, and Cyprus to join in the fray and
help Alex overcome Tyre [Flem.Tyre, 58]. Each,
other than Macedon, was an entirely separate
nation from those in Alex's land forces: a sort
of ancient Gulf War Coalition! Thus, even if the
first aspect I have mentioned in not accepted as
a fulfillment, the second has to be - for it
involves, by the most conservative count now, 11
nations; by a larger allowance, 13 or more - and
either number certainly can be regarded as "many"
in any event.

Snakepiper's reply to this was rather interesting
and most amusing. He held that this
conglomeration of forces to form MANY
nations "conveniently ignores the analogy (v. 3)
of being LIKE THE SEA CASTING UP ITS WAVES" and
that the action described by Arrian "just gives
us ONE BIG wave, not a pattern of WAVE*S* PLURAL
which occur in the SEA as a STEADY SERIES of
hits." This is a terrifying example of
metaphorical ignorance! Presumably he would also
complain that the analogy does not fit because
the armies were not wearing blue-green uniforms
and white pointy hats! The point is that Tyre was
overwhelmed like one swamped by waves - it is not
an issue of how many times. (And if we really
want to get technical, since ancient armies
didn't generally fight at night, any rest that
the armies took between attacks on Tyre could be
seen as waves going back, and the attacks as
waves crashing over!)

We can add to this a number of other times over
its history that Tyre was attacked. Fleming
[Flem.Tyre, 52-122] lists no less than 14
separate attacks between Babylon and the
destruction of Tyre, with hostilities initiated
by parties as diverse as the Greeks, Crusaders,
and Muslims.




Issue #3 and #4 - Ezekiel 26:4-5 - A Bare
Rock/Fishnets!
They will destroy the walls and Tyre and pull
down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble
and make her a bare rock. Out in the sea she will
become a place to spread fishnets...
Note that verse 5 refers to "out in the sea," a
prophecy against the island Tyre. It is only the
mainland site that is to be scraped bare.

So was mainland Tyre scraped bare? According to
history, mainland Tyre's debris was used by Alex
to build a bridge out to Tyre. Now of course this
verse contains obvious hyperbole; no one can pick
up every grain of dust or every rock from a given
place. Microscopic particles remain, if nothing
else. But Alex's actions clearly scraped away the
mainland city for all practical purposes, thus
fulfilling the prophecy.

Was the island made a place to spread nets? Yes,
in two ways: The island, which was situated in
the midst of the sea, would become a place to
spread nets (to dry); or, the island would become
a situation point where fisherman would
congregate to spread their nets (to catch fish),
sort of like good old Rockall. We know that both
of these things have been done, so either way,
this tiny bit of prophecy has been fulfilled.




Issue #5 - Ezekiel 26:9-10 - Submerged and
Buried?
The relevant parts of these verses says:

...when I bring the ocean depths over you and its
vast waters cover you...I will make you dwell in
the earth below, as in ancient ruins...
So Tyre was to be submerged under water AND
earth. As we know, the rubble of mainland Tyre
was thrown in the water - so there's that part
submerged. But what of the island city? Another
Christian in this debate telephoned the National
Council on Tourism in Lebanon and made several
determinations showing that this prophecy has
been fulfilled - determinations he later
confirmed by visiting the area in question
personally:

In the first century of our era, according to a
contemporary writer, the two cities together had
a perimeter of more than 17 miles. But since then
the all invading sands have made even the sites
of the two cities unrecognizable; and even the
remains of the aqueduct (Roman), which might have
helped to rediscover the famous causeway, were
soon to vanish beneath the dunes.
But the mounting sands were not the only agency
to change the face of this area. The earliest
investigations on the spot led to the belief that
part of ancient Tyre was submerged: it seemed
likely that what was not under the sand or the
debris was under the water. The argument was:
what remains on the present peninsula of the
terrain of the old island city is not enough to
contain all that it in fact contained:
questions "of importance in any topographical
discussion" cannot be satisfactorily answered
unless it is admitted that "a very considerable
part of the island has disappeared into the sea
because of earthquakes". A lowering or flooding
of the Western part of the island might explain
in particular why nobody can now discover and
trace of the temple of Melqart...A passage was
much quoted from an account of a celebrated
twelfth-century journey, according to which, at a
stone's throw from the wall of the mediaeval
city, could be seen "ancient Tyre covered by the
waters of the sea; so that to view the towers and
public places and palaces under the waters, one
has but to take a boat." Today, the isthmus is
covered with dunes, here and there higher than
the city itself, though Alexander's causeway had
been nothing more than an earthen dyke. Even at
the end of the seventeenth century it was still
lower than either the island or the mainland; it
had not yet become high enough to obscure the
ancient coastline.
Snakepiper responded to this by calling the
damages outlined above "soil erosion and minor
flood damage"! Decide for yourself, readers, if
damage caused such as described above is "minor"!




Issue #6 and #7 - Ezekiel 26:19/14 - Habitat for
Humanity?/Built Again?
These two issues are closely related and should
be considered together. Let's look at the verses
in question:

14b You will never be rebuilt....
19b ...When I make you like a desolate city, like
cities no longer inhabited...
The KJV uses the weaker "built again" instead
of "rebuilt." I will use "built again," so that
no accusation can be made of me twisting the
meaning of the former, more modern word. For
reference, note that the name "Tyre" applies both
to the modern city and to a fishing village in
the area which is on the site of the ancient
mainland city.

The other Christian in the debate pointed out
that:

Ezekiel 26:5 states Tyre would become a rock for
the spreading of nets, implying fishermen would
live in the area.

Modern Tyre has approximately 60,000 inhabitants
and the village 14 to 16,000. They are not the
same legal entities. The modern city is three
miles south of the ancient mainland site. Tyre is
also a county, which includes both Tyres and the
surrounding communities. The very highest figure
is for the COUNTY of Tyre.

In reply Snakepiper noted that:

Damage to the city of Tyre HAS BEEN REBUILT, the
city is CURRENTLY INHABITED and ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
Today there are freeways and high-rise
buildings... (Tyre is) A BOOMING METROPOLIS.
Now v. 19, we should note, says that God will
MAKE the city desolate, like one that is
uninhabited. It does NOT say that He will KEEP IT
THAT WAY! Moreover, the verse says that the city
will be made DESOLATE, and LIKE one uninhabited.
Not plain uninhabited, but LIKE. Like in what
way? In the sense of DESOLATION. So even if the
area has been continuously inhabited - and this
is not provable, as far as the actual sites of
the city are concerned - this does not invalidate
the prophecy. At any rate, if people moved in,
whether in buildings, shacks, or pup tents; and
whether or not the area was again inhabited at
any point, by ANYBODY, whether Phoenicians, or
Greeks, or even Amway salesmen, is irrelevant.
The prophecy does not say that the area will be
forever uninhabited.

And what of Tyre being "rebuilt" or, as the KJV
puts it, "built again"? Obviously we have a
modern city named Tyre, and the fishing village.
Are these truly ancient Tyre "built again"?
Certainly not. But let's put an illustration
together to demonstrate.

Four men live in a neighborhood - we'll call them
Fred, Ed, Jed, and Ned.

One night, while all four are away, a fire starts
and burns all four of their houses to the ground.
Destruction is total and complete. Fortunately,
all four of our men have insurance, so they will
not be left homeless. However, each of them uses
the insurance money a little differently.

Fred liked his house, and the property. So he
builds a house from the SAME plan, on the SAME
site.

Ed liked his house, but hated the view. He builds
a house from the SAME plan, but on a DIFFERENT
site.

Jed liked the view, but didn't like the house
plan. He uses a DIFFERENT plan, but builds on the
SAME site.

Ned is a sociopath who hates everything, so he
uses a DIFFERENT house plan and builds on a
DIFFERENT site.

Question: Which of these men had their
house "built again"?

The answer is that none of them did - each of
these men built houses ANEW, not AGAIN. "Building
again" implies that something is left to build
UPON and used in the building process - a wall, a
foundation, even the memory of a specific design.
Atlanta after Sherman was built again. But there
was nothing left of Tyre to build upon, or
nothing that was left was used to build the new
settlements, either mainland or island, after
their respective destructions and attacks upon
them by the tides of time; and the design of the
old city (as we note below) was not in any sense
incorporated into the new Tyres. So Tyre has not
been "built again" in the new city or in the
fishing village.

I hear skeptics protesting already, so let's be
generous here. Let's take a more open view of the
four possibilities. Granting that minor changes
in the house plans do not make any difference
(like adding a sprinkler system, which our men
probably would do), but that major changes (like
in the number of rooms) do count, even at the
most generous stretch, only options 1 and 2 can
by any definition be said to be a case where a
house was "built again." 3 and 4 are
unquestionably houses built anew.

But which of these four fits Tyre? Let's see -

The modern city (Snakepiper's "BOOMING
METROPLIS") is on a DIFFERENT site, and has a
DIFFERENT design - Option 4. Nope. The fishing
village is on the SAME site, but has a DIFFERENT
design - option 3. Nope!

Therefore, the prophecy has remained fulfilled.
Even if we are EXTREMELY generous in our
definitions, Tyre has still not been built again,
because even the modern city (BOOMING METROPOLIS)
has reached nowhere near the relative importance
of ancient Tyre. Consider:

Ancient Tyre was an independent city-state.
Modern Tyre arose in 1766 AD and is a city that
is part of a larger country which governs it
(Lebanon).
Ancient Tyre was a major trade center for goods -
in importance, equal to Hong Kong today, a city
which was "immensely rich and exerted
considerable influence by virtue of its
involvement in international trade" [Crai.Zeke,
192]. Modern Tyre is a relative backwater,
described in 1915 by Fleming as a "petty town,"
and a "sorry shadow of the days when Tyre was the
mart of the nations and the mistress of the
seas." [Flem.Tyre, x, 132]Today Tyre survives
with tourism as a primary industry.
Ancient Tyre was a major power in the ancient
world, full of self-confidence [ibid., 193].
Modern Tyre has no power, and no pull in
international affairs.
In short, the cities share nothing but a name. In
design and in character, they are TOTALLY
different entities, and are nothing like ancient
Tyre. Modern Tyre "is connected with the Tyre of
history on location and name only." [ibid., x]
Also for the skeptic - even counting the highest
possible total of 160,000 in the area, where can
we get off calling modern Tyre a BOOMING
METROPOLIS? Would we call Tallahassee, FL, Macon,
GA, and Beaumont, TX "booming metropolises"? I
have lived in the first, and have passed through
the last two several times. They're not booming,
and they are NOT metropolises. But they're right
equal in size and population to modern Tyre!




Issue #9 - Ezekiel 26:21 - Lost and Found?
This final issue that I will consider hinges on
the meaning of the word "found" in this verse:

21 "...though thou be sought for, yet shalt thee
never be found again." (KJV)
Snakepiper really harped on this issue. He noted
that:

Tyre now occupies ALL of the original area on the
mainland AND the original island fortress. The
old island fortress is now a national park where
the ruins are preserved for tourists and
archaeologists, in stark contradiction to
Ezekiel's claim that though sought, (it) would
never be found again.
In saying this, Snakepiper totally misconstrued
what it means for something to be found. Let's do
another anecdote for example:

One night, very late, a fellow named Gerry was
finishing up his 200-page handwritten term paper
for Theology class. He didn't like computers, you
see, so he handwrote everything.
"Finished!" he cried. "Now for a soda break!"
So Gerry went to get a soda and came back to the
table. To his horror, however, the term
paper had disappeared! In it's place was a note:
HA HA! I am the Evil Term Paper Fairy! I have
destroyed your term paper! You can look for it
all you want, but it'll never be found! HA HA!
again!
ETPF, Esq.
What a blow! Gerry sunk to his knees and began to
sob. But wait - he smelled something strange!
Looking over at the fireplace, he could just make
out - yes, it was! The Evil Fairy had thrown his
term paper into the fire! He could just make out
a few scraps that the fire had not reached yet -
oh, bother! What was he to DO???? His term paper
was nothing but ashes!
Morning came, finding Gerry still sobbing. His
obnoxious neighbor, Kornsnake, stopped by for a
visit. "What are you blubbering about?" Kornsnake
belched, helping himself to the knockwurst in the
fridge.
"Look at THIS!" Gerry shouted, thrusting the
Fairy's note under Kornsnake's nose.
Kornsnake read the note disinterestedly. "So what
happened? I don't believe in fairies."
"My term paper ended up in the fireplace! It's
nothing but ashes now! Just LOOK!"
Kornsnake walked over to the fireplace and
looked. He recognized a few scraps of paper with
Gerry's handwriting on them in the cold ashes.
"Ha! That Evil Term Paper Fairy is a FRAUD!"
Kornsnake snorted.
"What are you saying?" Gerry asked, taken aback.
"Just LOOK yourself!" Kornsnake bellowed, taking
a handful of paper scraps and ashes and shoving
them in Gerry's face. "That fairy's note is a
LIE! See?? I just FOUND your term paper!!!"
What follows is an extremely violent scene
unsuitable for family tastes - but I think we get
the point. Finding the RUINS of Tyre (or any
city) is NOT the same as finding Tyre (or any
city) ITSELF. Indeed, would the skeptic propose
to tell those ancient Tyrians that they could
take comfort in Zeke's prophecy not being
fulfilled, since their city had been "found?" I
think not.

When we say that something has been "found," and
it is severely damaged, to the point of
destruction or unusability, we only say that it
has been "found" in an ironic sense - or when we
are playing a cruel joke. When speaking of
cities, like, say, Macchu Picchu or the Anasazi
settlements, being still in reasonable form as a
city, they MAY be taken as "found" in the sense
that the skeptic desires. But ancient Tyre, with
its rubble and rubbish scattered to the
figurative winds and disassembled to the point
where archaeologists are cataloging individual
bricks, can no more be "found" than poor Gerry's
term paper. Tyre has not been found, only its
ruins have been; and those ruins, despite the
best efforts of all the king's horses and all the
king's men, will never, ever, ever, not even with
Super Glue, put the city of Tyre back together
again.




Sources
Crai.Zeke - Craigie, Peter. Ezekiel.
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983.
Flem.Tyre - Fleming, Wallace B. The History of
Tyre. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1915.




Appendix: Till on Tyre, or Tyred of Till
It has recently been brought to my attention that
one of my favorite people for skeptic-baiting,
Farrell Till, has deigned to open his mouth on
this issue of Tyre - in particular, the matter of
the shift in pronouns in verse 12 noted in the
first section of this essay. An article on this
subject appeared in the first 1997 issue of The
Skeptical Review and was written by the Grand
Poobah Till himself in response to a fellow named
Hogan. I'm going to respond to those parts of
Till's item that touch upon the issues we have
discussed above and that we have not already
addressed. We will see that as usual much of what
Till has to say is reliant upon skeptical-
chauvinistic presumptions of modern ways of doing
things upon ancient peoples and their literature -
except, of course, where it serves Till's
purposes better to do otherwise.

Till proposes to refute the assertion that "they"
in verse 12 refers to a plural antecedent by
comparing it "to another passage in Ezekiel that
is strikingly similar in structure." Other than
blathering about his 30 years of teaching (non-
ANE) college literature, Till argues by assuming
that this is simply a matter of Ezekiel having
made a careless mistake in pronoun-antecedent
agreement of the sort common in writing. And the
parallel passage he cites as an example? It is
Zeke's 29:18-20, which he quotes as follows:

Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused
his army to serve a great service against Tyre;
every head was made bald, and every shoulder
rubbed raw; yet had he no wages, nor his army,
from Tyre, for the service that he had served
against it. Therefore thus says Yahweh God:
`Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall
carry off her multitude, and take her spoil, and
take her prey; and that will be the wages for his
army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his
recompense for which he served, because they
worked for me....
Till believes here that because Zeke has
consistently used the masculine singular pronoun
in the above (he, him, his) to refer to Nebbie,
his shift "for no grammatical reason" to "they"
in the last recorded sentence indicates that
Zeke "inadvertently shifted to a plural pronoun,
even though grammatical consistency should have
required him to use the singular pronoun, as he
had done throughout the text."

Well, there's a big problem with using this
passage: Unlike the other passage in question,
Nebbie is highlighted ALONG WITH his army
throughout the above in a way that the army is
not highlighted in the previous passage. During
the Tyre prophecy, as we have noted, Nebbie's
army is personified under singular references to
Nebbie himself. That is not what is happening
here: The army is allowed to have its own
identity, in order to emphasize that "every head
was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed
raw" - a simple, hyperbolic way of expressing how
much trouble the army had to go to against Tyre.
Three times (or maybe even four, depending on how
you want to count) in the above passage Nebbie is
paired with his army in a way that alludes to
them as separate entities, and this gives a more
than adequate reason for the use of "they" in the
last sentence - a "he/they" parallel is
established throughout the passage, and the last
sentence is simply another example of such a
pairing. (One doubts that Till will pull his
usual "quote the English versions" shebang here:
The NIV reads this as, "I have given him Egypt as
a reward for his efforts because he and his army
did it for me..." - which simply follows the
parallelism as it should.)

After this, Till pulls the usual skeptical-
chauvinism shebang, accusing Zeke of careless
writing "because no effective writer would
separate a pronoun from its antecedent with that
much verbiage, especially when there were so many
words like horses, horsemen, men, wagons, and
chariots in between that could be confused as the
antecedent of they," along with the also-standard
blather asking "why an omniscient, omnipotent
deity didn't do a better job of verbally guiding
his 'inspired' agent." This is no more than
Till's typical blather which assumes that modern
English rules of writing hold court upon Ancient
Near Eastern literature: The "Grand Dragon" has
spoken again! But to close, we will note a rather
glaring inconsistency - Till, as usual,
DOES "play by the rules" of ancient language and
literature when it suits him!

One of the points raised by Hogan reads: "If
Farrell can explain what Ezekiel meant when he
wrote about the `many nations' that would come up
against Tyre, then perhaps I would admit defeat."
Till says that he does have an explanation --
"based on the fact that the Hebrew language had
no future tense." What's this? We can appeal to
the rules of Hebrew grammar when it suits us, eh?
Let's just see how Till's attempt bears out for
the heck of it:

Thus, Ezekiel did not actually say, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come
up against you." Instead, he said, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and have caused to come up against
thee many nations" (Young's Literal Translation
of the Holy Bible). In the absence of a future
tense, which was characteristic of Semitic
languages, future action

Oma Englannin kielen taitoni on työstäni johtuen
varmasti keskimääräistä parempi mutta vältän
silti vieraskielisiä tekstejä kun luen uskonnosta
kertovia asioita.

Miksikö? Yksinkertaisesti ettei sanoma
välttämättä avaudu vaikka kielen osaakin...
Uskonnollisissa teksteissä ja esim. ATK
kirjoituksissa on oma sanastonsa.

No Helppohan sitä on antaa linkkejä:)

jomo kirjoitti:

Osaan kyllä englantia, mutta jos kysyn sulta
suomeksi jotain, niin oletan myös, että vastaat
SUOMEKSI.

Tosin taas se nähtiin, etteivät hihhulit osaa
sanoa mitään omin sanoin, vaan aina pitää lainata
ja lainata ja kaiken lisäksi niin pitkiä
VIERASKIELISIÄ pätkiä, joista sen itse asian
löytäminen onkin työn ja tuskan takana.

Kopioinpa tähän nyt koko tekstin ja oletan, että
omahyväisestä asenteestasi huolimatta osoitat
selkeästi ne kohdat, joita minun tulee lukea.


The Old Testament

Steel-Belted Tyre

--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
On the Tyre Prophecy of Ezekiel

J. P. Holding



[A Debate About Tyre] [Who Are "They"? (26:12)]
[Many Nations (26:3)] [Fishnets (26:4-5)]
[Submerged, Buried? (26:9-10)] [Never Found
Again? (26:14, 19)] [Lost? (26:21)] [Appendix:
Farrell Till on Tyre]


One of my earliest Internet projects was a
thorough rebuttal to a thoroughly stubborn
atheist on America Online who styled
himself "Snakepiper." Some of you are probably
familiar with this character, and I referred to
him in my AJINOD Preface; some of you may even
have seen the debate between himself and another
Christian on this subject in summer of 1996. I
entered the debate late, and indirectly, but had
a good deal of fun nonetheless!

Snakepiper basically claimed that none of the
prophecies of this chapter were successfully
fulfilled. Even when defeated, he refused to
accept what I told him was a much more defensible
position, that the prophecies were written after
the events in question. (As an update,
Snakepiper's latest diatribe towards me simply
further evidenced what I said of him in my
Preface - he has no knowledge whatsoever of Bible
languages, archaeology, history, or customs; all
he used to back up his points were encyclopedias,
dictionaries, photos off the Net, and his own
personal opinions. So, if you should run into
Snakey somewhere on AOL, be mindful of his
notable lack of education in these areas. Also be
mindful of his desperate attempts to sidestep
arguments with trivialities - in particular, in
his last two message sets he wasted a great deal
of time accusing another Christian in the debate
of setting up a second AOL account and posing as
me! Hey, Snakey - does this prove that G.B. and I
are not the same person?)

With that stated, let us move to the specifics of
the Tyre prophecy:




Issue #1 - Who Are "They"?
"They will plunder your wealth and loot your
merchandise.." (NIV)
This verse is pivotal to many of the arguments of
each side. Our side would say that the "they" in
v. 12 refers back the "nations" in v. 3-5, and
were represented by Alexander the Great, who did
the things described in v. 12, thus fulfilling
the prophecy. Skeptics and other critics,
however, say that the "they" in v. 12 refers to
the elements of Nebuchadnezzar's forces in verses
7 and 11. Nebbie never did the things ascribed
to "they," in verse 12 - he failed to take Tyre
at all - so the prophecy, it is said, was not
fulfilled.

Snakepiper refused repeated requests to produce a
Hebrew-based exegesis of the passage, and instead
fuddled over how ridiculous it was in ENGLISH (!)
to "require the reader to IGNORE the plain &
obvious immediate pronoun antecedents [in verse
7], which are specifically Nebuchadnezzar
for 'he', or Nebuchadnezzar & his troops
for 'they,' and INSTEAD jump back NINE VERSES for
the antecedent that will provide the desired
meaning to be forced." He then pointed out
that "this claim means that EVERY ENGLISH VERSION
has INCORRECT GRAMMAR." And such is the case
indeed; but it would violate the order of the
Hebrew text severely to bring it into line with
English grammar, and so it is preferable to leave
it as it is. (Snakepiper, however, is one of
those sorts whom I address in Inerrancy and Human
Ignorance - he finds it incomprehensible that God
should have provided, according to inerrantists,
inerrant originals, yet not preserved inerrancy
through copies and translations. Well, you
certainly cannot please everyone...)

However, even in English, it is perfectly clear
that the "they" in v. 12 can only refer to
the "nations" in v. 3. Let's see how this is so.

Verse 3: The nations are mentioned.

Verse 4: The nations are referenced as "they."

Verse 7: Nebbie is introduced, along with his
horses, chariots, horsemen, and army.

Verse 8: Says "HE will ravage your settlements on
the mainland...HE will set up siege works against
you (etc.)" At this point we see the
personification of Nebbie in his forces begin.
Obviously, Nebbie did not PERSONALLY do the
things described while his army sat by and sipped
coconuts.

Verse 9: says "HE will direct the blows of his
battering ram..." Same as above; unless we want
to argue that Nebbie only used his personal
battering ram which he didn't let anyone else use.
("MINE!!!")

Verses 10-11: "His horses will be so many that
they will cover you with dust. Your walls will
tremble at the noise of the war horses, wagons
and chariots when HE enters your gates as men
enter a city whose walls have been broken
through. The hoofs of his horses will trample all
your streets; HE will kill your people with the
sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the
ground." Here we see two more cases where
Nebbie's forces are personified under singular
references to himself.

Now the key verse:

Verse 12: "They will plunder your wealth and loot
your merchandise..." We may note that:

This is the first recurrence of "they" since
verse 4. That this is so is a strong literary
argument,even in English, that the subject of
the "they" in verse 3, the "nations," is also to
be identified with the actors in v. 12. Skeptics
would have us apply the "they" to the folks in v.
7. Aside from the fact that these folks have
already been subsumed under Nebbie's
pronoun, "HE," we may ask skeptics why they do
not refer "they" to much closer words which agree
in the plural sense and thus could be regarded as
antecedents - for example, the "horses, wagons,
and chariots" described in verses 10-11! (In
desperation, Snakepiper laughingly agreed with
me, and DID say that he would thereafter
apply "they" to the horses, wagons and chariots!
He never did explain how horses, wagons, and
chariots are going to (per v. 12) loot
merchandise, break down walls, demolish houses,
and throw the stones into the sea. I guess they
could give the horsies some little bags so they
can go looting and some hoof-compatible
sledgehammers so they can knock the walls down.
And I guess the horsies can load the rubble into
the wagons and chariots and dump it into the sea
from there. At any rate, perhaps realizing how
ridiculous this new position would be, Snakepiper
strangely "forgot" that he made this assertion
and later went right on back to applying the
antecedents to verse 7!)

Bottom line: The "they" in v. 12 does not refer
to Nebbie or his army. (For more on this, see our
special Appendix below.)




Issue #2 - Too Many Nations Spoil the Broth
Ezekiel 26:3 verse says that "many nations" will
be against Tyre. Babylon, Alex the Great, and the
Muslim crusaders are commonly cited as
fulfillment.

Alex T. Great's forces were put together from a
coalition of Greek city-states. Each of these was
an independent entity and acted as a nation unto
itself. Alex's dad, Philip 2, unified these city-
states and the regions of Thrace, Macedonia, and
Greece proper under his rule - giving Alex the
unified front he needed to go forth and conquer.
Nevertheless, this was a coalition composed of
many nations - and thus fulfills the prophecy.
Now I see some objecting: They were COALESCED
into ONE NATION - so the prophecy is NOT
fulfilled there. Well, we can go a little
further. According to the ancient historian
Arrian, author of "Anabasi Alexandri," (2.20.1-
2), Alex got some help in attacking Tyre. Having
no navy of his own to speak of, he got naval help
from his friends in Macedon and from the
Phoenician city-states Aradus, Byblos, and Sidon;
ships also came from Enylos, Soli and Mallos,
Rhodes, Lycia, and Cyprus to join in the fray and
help Alex overcome Tyre [Flem.Tyre, 58]. Each,
other than Macedon, was an entirely separate
nation from those in Alex's land forces: a sort
of ancient Gulf War Coalition! Thus, even if the
first aspect I have mentioned in not accepted as
a fulfillment, the second has to be - for it
involves, by the most conservative count now, 11
nations; by a larger allowance, 13 or more - and
either number certainly can be regarded as "many"
in any event.

Snakepiper's reply to this was rather interesting
and most amusing. He held that this
conglomeration of forces to form MANY
nations "conveniently ignores the analogy (v. 3)
of being LIKE THE SEA CASTING UP ITS WAVES" and
that the action described by Arrian "just gives
us ONE BIG wave, not a pattern of WAVE*S* PLURAL
which occur in the SEA as a STEADY SERIES of
hits." This is a terrifying example of
metaphorical ignorance! Presumably he would also
complain that the analogy does not fit because
the armies were not wearing blue-green uniforms
and white pointy hats! The point is that Tyre was
overwhelmed like one swamped by waves - it is not
an issue of how many times. (And if we really
want to get technical, since ancient armies
didn't generally fight at night, any rest that
the armies took between attacks on Tyre could be
seen as waves going back, and the attacks as
waves crashing over!)

We can add to this a number of other times over
its history that Tyre was attacked. Fleming
[Flem.Tyre, 52-122] lists no less than 14
separate attacks between Babylon and the
destruction of Tyre, with hostilities initiated
by parties as diverse as the Greeks, Crusaders,
and Muslims.




Issue #3 and #4 - Ezekiel 26:4-5 - A Bare
Rock/Fishnets!
They will destroy the walls and Tyre and pull
down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble
and make her a bare rock. Out in the sea she will
become a place to spread fishnets...
Note that verse 5 refers to "out in the sea," a
prophecy against the island Tyre. It is only the
mainland site that is to be scraped bare.

So was mainland Tyre scraped bare? According to
history, mainland Tyre's debris was used by Alex
to build a bridge out to Tyre. Now of course this
verse contains obvious hyperbole; no one can pick
up every grain of dust or every rock from a given
place. Microscopic particles remain, if nothing
else. But Alex's actions clearly scraped away the
mainland city for all practical purposes, thus
fulfilling the prophecy.

Was the island made a place to spread nets? Yes,
in two ways: The island, which was situated in
the midst of the sea, would become a place to
spread nets (to dry); or, the island would become
a situation point where fisherman would
congregate to spread their nets (to catch fish),
sort of like good old Rockall. We know that both
of these things have been done, so either way,
this tiny bit of prophecy has been fulfilled.




Issue #5 - Ezekiel 26:9-10 - Submerged and
Buried?
The relevant parts of these verses says:

...when I bring the ocean depths over you and its
vast waters cover you...I will make you dwell in
the earth below, as in ancient ruins...
So Tyre was to be submerged under water AND
earth. As we know, the rubble of mainland Tyre
was thrown in the water - so there's that part
submerged. But what of the island city? Another
Christian in this debate telephoned the National
Council on Tourism in Lebanon and made several
determinations showing that this prophecy has
been fulfilled - determinations he later
confirmed by visiting the area in question
personally:

In the first century of our era, according to a
contemporary writer, the two cities together had
a perimeter of more than 17 miles. But since then
the all invading sands have made even the sites
of the two cities unrecognizable; and even the
remains of the aqueduct (Roman), which might have
helped to rediscover the famous causeway, were
soon to vanish beneath the dunes.
But the mounting sands were not the only agency
to change the face of this area. The earliest
investigations on the spot led to the belief that
part of ancient Tyre was submerged: it seemed
likely that what was not under the sand or the
debris was under the water. The argument was:
what remains on the present peninsula of the
terrain of the old island city is not enough to
contain all that it in fact contained:
questions "of importance in any topographical
discussion" cannot be satisfactorily answered
unless it is admitted that "a very considerable
part of the island has disappeared into the sea
because of earthquakes". A lowering or flooding
of the Western part of the island might explain
in particular why nobody can now discover and
trace of the temple of Melqart...A passage was
much quoted from an account of a celebrated
twelfth-century journey, according to which, at a
stone's throw from the wall of the mediaeval
city, could be seen "ancient Tyre covered by the
waters of the sea; so that to view the towers and
public places and palaces under the waters, one
has but to take a boat." Today, the isthmus is
covered with dunes, here and there higher than
the city itself, though Alexander's causeway had
been nothing more than an earthen dyke. Even at
the end of the seventeenth century it was still
lower than either the island or the mainland; it
had not yet become high enough to obscure the
ancient coastline.
Snakepiper responded to this by calling the
damages outlined above "soil erosion and minor
flood damage"! Decide for yourself, readers, if
damage caused such as described above is "minor"!




Issue #6 and #7 - Ezekiel 26:19/14 - Habitat for
Humanity?/Built Again?
These two issues are closely related and should
be considered together. Let's look at the verses
in question:

14b You will never be rebuilt....
19b ...When I make you like a desolate city, like
cities no longer inhabited...
The KJV uses the weaker "built again" instead
of "rebuilt." I will use "built again," so that
no accusation can be made of me twisting the
meaning of the former, more modern word. For
reference, note that the name "Tyre" applies both
to the modern city and to a fishing village in
the area which is on the site of the ancient
mainland city.

The other Christian in the debate pointed out
that:

Ezekiel 26:5 states Tyre would become a rock for
the spreading of nets, implying fishermen would
live in the area.

Modern Tyre has approximately 60,000 inhabitants
and the village 14 to 16,000. They are not the
same legal entities. The modern city is three
miles south of the ancient mainland site. Tyre is
also a county, which includes both Tyres and the
surrounding communities. The very highest figure
is for the COUNTY of Tyre.

In reply Snakepiper noted that:

Damage to the city of Tyre HAS BEEN REBUILT, the
city is CURRENTLY INHABITED and ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
Today there are freeways and high-rise
buildings... (Tyre is) A BOOMING METROPOLIS.
Now v. 19, we should note, says that God will
MAKE the city desolate, like one that is
uninhabited. It does NOT say that He will KEEP IT
THAT WAY! Moreover, the verse says that the city
will be made DESOLATE, and LIKE one uninhabited.
Not plain uninhabited, but LIKE. Like in what
way? In the sense of DESOLATION. So even if the
area has been continuously inhabited - and this
is not provable, as far as the actual sites of
the city are concerned - this does not invalidate
the prophecy. At any rate, if people moved in,
whether in buildings, shacks, or pup tents; and
whether or not the area was again inhabited at
any point, by ANYBODY, whether Phoenicians, or
Greeks, or even Amway salesmen, is irrelevant.
The prophecy does not say that the area will be
forever uninhabited.

And what of Tyre being "rebuilt" or, as the KJV
puts it, "built again"? Obviously we have a
modern city named Tyre, and the fishing village.
Are these truly ancient Tyre "built again"?
Certainly not. But let's put an illustration
together to demonstrate.

Four men live in a neighborhood - we'll call them
Fred, Ed, Jed, and Ned.

One night, while all four are away, a fire starts
and burns all four of their houses to the ground.
Destruction is total and complete. Fortunately,
all four of our men have insurance, so they will
not be left homeless. However, each of them uses
the insurance money a little differently.

Fred liked his house, and the property. So he
builds a house from the SAME plan, on the SAME
site.

Ed liked his house, but hated the view. He builds
a house from the SAME plan, but on a DIFFERENT
site.

Jed liked the view, but didn't like the house
plan. He uses a DIFFERENT plan, but builds on the
SAME site.

Ned is a sociopath who hates everything, so he
uses a DIFFERENT house plan and builds on a
DIFFERENT site.

Question: Which of these men had their
house "built again"?

The answer is that none of them did - each of
these men built houses ANEW, not AGAIN. "Building
again" implies that something is left to build
UPON and used in the building process - a wall, a
foundation, even the memory of a specific design.
Atlanta after Sherman was built again. But there
was nothing left of Tyre to build upon, or
nothing that was left was used to build the new
settlements, either mainland or island, after
their respective destructions and attacks upon
them by the tides of time; and the design of the
old city (as we note below) was not in any sense
incorporated into the new Tyres. So Tyre has not
been "built again" in the new city or in the
fishing village.

I hear skeptics protesting already, so let's be
generous here. Let's take a more open view of the
four possibilities. Granting that minor changes
in the house plans do not make any difference
(like adding a sprinkler system, which our men
probably would do), but that major changes (like
in the number of rooms) do count, even at the
most generous stretch, only options 1 and 2 can
by any definition be said to be a case where a
house was "built again." 3 and 4 are
unquestionably houses built anew.

But which of these four fits Tyre? Let's see -

The modern city (Snakepiper's "BOOMING
METROPLIS") is on a DIFFERENT site, and has a
DIFFERENT design - Option 4. Nope. The fishing
village is on the SAME site, but has a DIFFERENT
design - option 3. Nope!

Therefore, the prophecy has remained fulfilled.
Even if we are EXTREMELY generous in our
definitions, Tyre has still not been built again,
because even the modern city (BOOMING METROPOLIS)
has reached nowhere near the relative importance
of ancient Tyre. Consider:

Ancient Tyre was an independent city-state.
Modern Tyre arose in 1766 AD and is a city that
is part of a larger country which governs it
(Lebanon).
Ancient Tyre was a major trade center for goods -
in importance, equal to Hong Kong today, a city
which was "immensely rich and exerted
considerable influence by virtue of its
involvement in international trade" [Crai.Zeke,
192]. Modern Tyre is a relative backwater,
described in 1915 by Fleming as a "petty town,"
and a "sorry shadow of the days when Tyre was the
mart of the nations and the mistress of the
seas." [Flem.Tyre, x, 132]Today Tyre survives
with tourism as a primary industry.
Ancient Tyre was a major power in the ancient
world, full of self-confidence [ibid., 193].
Modern Tyre has no power, and no pull in
international affairs.
In short, the cities share nothing but a name. In
design and in character, they are TOTALLY
different entities, and are nothing like ancient
Tyre. Modern Tyre "is connected with the Tyre of
history on location and name only." [ibid., x]
Also for the skeptic - even counting the highest
possible total of 160,000 in the area, where can
we get off calling modern Tyre a BOOMING
METROPOLIS? Would we call Tallahassee, FL, Macon,
GA, and Beaumont, TX "booming metropolises"? I
have lived in the first, and have passed through
the last two several times. They're not booming,
and they are NOT metropolises. But they're right
equal in size and population to modern Tyre!




Issue #9 - Ezekiel 26:21 - Lost and Found?
This final issue that I will consider hinges on
the meaning of the word "found" in this verse:

21 "...though thou be sought for, yet shalt thee
never be found again." (KJV)
Snakepiper really harped on this issue. He noted
that:

Tyre now occupies ALL of the original area on the
mainland AND the original island fortress. The
old island fortress is now a national park where
the ruins are preserved for tourists and
archaeologists, in stark contradiction to
Ezekiel's claim that though sought, (it) would
never be found again.
In saying this, Snakepiper totally misconstrued
what it means for something to be found. Let's do
another anecdote for example:

One night, very late, a fellow named Gerry was
finishing up his 200-page handwritten term paper
for Theology class. He didn't like computers, you
see, so he handwrote everything.
"Finished!" he cried. "Now for a soda break!"
So Gerry went to get a soda and came back to the
table. To his horror, however, the term
paper had disappeared! In it's place was a note:
HA HA! I am the Evil Term Paper Fairy! I have
destroyed your term paper! You can look for it
all you want, but it'll never be found! HA HA!
again!
ETPF, Esq.
What a blow! Gerry sunk to his knees and began to
sob. But wait - he smelled something strange!
Looking over at the fireplace, he could just make
out - yes, it was! The Evil Fairy had thrown his
term paper into the fire! He could just make out
a few scraps that the fire had not reached yet -
oh, bother! What was he to DO???? His term paper
was nothing but ashes!
Morning came, finding Gerry still sobbing. His
obnoxious neighbor, Kornsnake, stopped by for a
visit. "What are you blubbering about?" Kornsnake
belched, helping himself to the knockwurst in the
fridge.
"Look at THIS!" Gerry shouted, thrusting the
Fairy's note under Kornsnake's nose.
Kornsnake read the note disinterestedly. "So what
happened? I don't believe in fairies."
"My term paper ended up in the fireplace! It's
nothing but ashes now! Just LOOK!"
Kornsnake walked over to the fireplace and
looked. He recognized a few scraps of paper with
Gerry's handwriting on them in the cold ashes.
"Ha! That Evil Term Paper Fairy is a FRAUD!"
Kornsnake snorted.
"What are you saying?" Gerry asked, taken aback.
"Just LOOK yourself!" Kornsnake bellowed, taking
a handful of paper scraps and ashes and shoving
them in Gerry's face. "That fairy's note is a
LIE! See?? I just FOUND your term paper!!!"
What follows is an extremely violent scene
unsuitable for family tastes - but I think we get
the point. Finding the RUINS of Tyre (or any
city) is NOT the same as finding Tyre (or any
city) ITSELF. Indeed, would the skeptic propose
to tell those ancient Tyrians that they could
take comfort in Zeke's prophecy not being
fulfilled, since their city had been "found?" I
think not.

When we say that something has been "found," and
it is severely damaged, to the point of
destruction or unusability, we only say that it
has been "found" in an ironic sense - or when we
are playing a cruel joke. When speaking of
cities, like, say, Macchu Picchu or the Anasazi
settlements, being still in reasonable form as a
city, they MAY be taken as "found" in the sense
that the skeptic desires. But ancient Tyre, with
its rubble and rubbish scattered to the
figurative winds and disassembled to the point
where archaeologists are cataloging individual
bricks, can no more be "found" than poor Gerry's
term paper. Tyre has not been found, only its
ruins have been; and those ruins, despite the
best efforts of all the king's horses and all the
king's men, will never, ever, ever, not even with
Super Glue, put the city of Tyre back together
again.




Sources
Crai.Zeke - Craigie, Peter. Ezekiel.
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983.
Flem.Tyre - Fleming, Wallace B. The History of
Tyre. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1915.




Appendix: Till on Tyre, or Tyred of Till
It has recently been brought to my attention that
one of my favorite people for skeptic-baiting,
Farrell Till, has deigned to open his mouth on
this issue of Tyre - in particular, the matter of
the shift in pronouns in verse 12 noted in the
first section of this essay. An article on this
subject appeared in the first 1997 issue of The
Skeptical Review and was written by the Grand
Poobah Till himself in response to a fellow named
Hogan. I'm going to respond to those parts of
Till's item that touch upon the issues we have
discussed above and that we have not already
addressed. We will see that as usual much of what
Till has to say is reliant upon skeptical-
chauvinistic presumptions of modern ways of doing
things upon ancient peoples and their literature -
except, of course, where it serves Till's
purposes better to do otherwise.

Till proposes to refute the assertion that "they"
in verse 12 refers to a plural antecedent by
comparing it "to another passage in Ezekiel that
is strikingly similar in structure." Other than
blathering about his 30 years of teaching (non-
ANE) college literature, Till argues by assuming
that this is simply a matter of Ezekiel having
made a careless mistake in pronoun-antecedent
agreement of the sort common in writing. And the
parallel passage he cites as an example? It is
Zeke's 29:18-20, which he quotes as follows:

Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused
his army to serve a great service against Tyre;
every head was made bald, and every shoulder
rubbed raw; yet had he no wages, nor his army,
from Tyre, for the service that he had served
against it. Therefore thus says Yahweh God:
`Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall
carry off her multitude, and take her spoil, and
take her prey; and that will be the wages for his
army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his
recompense for which he served, because they
worked for me....
Till believes here that because Zeke has
consistently used the masculine singular pronoun
in the above (he, him, his) to refer to Nebbie,
his shift "for no grammatical reason" to "they"
in the last recorded sentence indicates that
Zeke "inadvertently shifted to a plural pronoun,
even though grammatical consistency should have
required him to use the singular pronoun, as he
had done throughout the text."

Well, there's a big problem with using this
passage: Unlike the other passage in question,
Nebbie is highlighted ALONG WITH his army
throughout the above in a way that the army is
not highlighted in the previous passage. During
the Tyre prophecy, as we have noted, Nebbie's
army is personified under singular references to
Nebbie himself. That is not what is happening
here: The army is allowed to have its own
identity, in order to emphasize that "every head
was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed
raw" - a simple, hyperbolic way of expressing how
much trouble the army had to go to against Tyre.
Three times (or maybe even four, depending on how
you want to count) in the above passage Nebbie is
paired with his army in a way that alludes to
them as separate entities, and this gives a more
than adequate reason for the use of "they" in the
last sentence - a "he/they" parallel is
established throughout the passage, and the last
sentence is simply another example of such a
pairing. (One doubts that Till will pull his
usual "quote the English versions" shebang here:
The NIV reads this as, "I have given him Egypt as
a reward for his efforts because he and his army
did it for me..." - which simply follows the
parallelism as it should.)

After this, Till pulls the usual skeptical-
chauvinism shebang, accusing Zeke of careless
writing "because no effective writer would
separate a pronoun from its antecedent with that
much verbiage, especially when there were so many
words like horses, horsemen, men, wagons, and
chariots in between that could be confused as the
antecedent of they," along with the also-standard
blather asking "why an omniscient, omnipotent
deity didn't do a better job of verbally guiding
his 'inspired' agent." This is no more than
Till's typical blather which assumes that modern
English rules of writing hold court upon Ancient
Near Eastern literature: The "Grand Dragon" has
spoken again! But to close, we will note a rather
glaring inconsistency - Till, as usual,
DOES "play by the rules" of ancient language and
literature when it suits him!

One of the points raised by Hogan reads: "If
Farrell can explain what Ezekiel meant when he
wrote about the `many nations' that would come up
against Tyre, then perhaps I would admit defeat."
Till says that he does have an explanation --
"based on the fact that the Hebrew language had
no future tense." What's this? We can appeal to
the rules of Hebrew grammar when it suits us, eh?
Let's just see how Till's attempt bears out for
the heck of it:

Thus, Ezekiel did not actually say, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come
up against you." Instead, he said, "I am against
you, O Tyre, and have caused to come up against
thee many nations" (Young's Literal Translation
of the Holy Bible). In the absence of a future
tense, which was characteristic of Semitic
languages, future action

kun minun mielestäni jonkin pitkän tekstin
lainaaminen keskustelupalstalla puolustaa
paikkaansa. 99,9 % tapauksista pitkien tekstien
lainaaminen - myös raamatusta - on typerää ja
perusteetonta.

Tässä tapauksessa ymmärrän po. tekstin postaamisen
tänne; toivottavasti siitä ei kuitenkaan tule
tapaa.

Aiheeseen liittyen: tuolla alempana, kun joku
vähänkin asiaa tunteva (YazzO) kommentoi näitä
Ojasen, anteeksi Hevoisen, postaamia lainauksia
tai linkkejä, Hevoinen vetäytyy välittömästi ja
vetoaa tietämättömyyteen. En voi mitenkään
ymmärtää, miksi tuottaa keskustelunavauksia
aiheista, joista ei kykene keskustelua käymään.
Ymmärtämättömyyteni varmaan johtuu pyhän hengen
puutteesta tms...

Jos jumalattomat eivät kykene järkipuhetta
sulattamaan, niin eivätpä näytä jumalallisetkaan
kykenevän sitä suoltamaan.

. . . .

Pseudohippi kirjoitti:

kun minun mielestäni jonkin pitkän tekstin
lainaaminen keskustelupalstalla puolustaa
paikkaansa. 99,9 % tapauksista pitkien tekstien
lainaaminen - myös raamatusta - on typerää ja
perusteetonta.

Tässä tapauksessa ymmärrän po. tekstin postaamisen
tänne; toivottavasti siitä ei kuitenkaan tule
tapaa.

Aiheeseen liittyen: tuolla alempana, kun joku
vähänkin asiaa tunteva (YazzO) kommentoi näitä
Ojasen, anteeksi Hevoisen, postaamia lainauksia
tai linkkejä, Hevoinen vetäytyy välittömästi ja
vetoaa tietämättömyyteen. En voi mitenkään
ymmärtää, miksi tuottaa keskustelunavauksia
aiheista, joista ei kykene keskustelua käymään.
Ymmärtämättömyyteni varmaan johtuu pyhän hengen
puutteesta tms...

Jos jumalattomat eivät kykene järkipuhetta
sulattamaan, niin eivätpä näytä jumalallisetkaan
kykenevän sitä suoltamaan.

. . . .

...Hevoinenhan myönsikin esim.
päivämääräkeskustelussa vain suomentavansa
tekstit ja se siitä...

ihan oikeasti Raamattu selittää itse itsensä
parhaiten.

En nyt aivan ymmärrä, mikä tässä oikein mättää. Olet muuten ensimmäinen jonka tiedän, jollekka tämä asia tuottaa ongelmia, enkä ole ennen nähnyt tätä epäiltävän. Epäilen sinun olevan väärässä, jo pelkästään sen takia koska luulisin tälläisen asian tulleen jo kauan sitten esille.

Minä en tunne historiaa paremmin tai edes yhtä hyvin kuin tuo Holding, enkä ole hyvä tässä asiassa väittelemään. Mutta jos tämä asia on siis oikeasti mielessäsi kysymys edes vähäänkään, mailaa itse Holdingille (siellä jossakin se pyytää mailaamaan tälläisissä ongelmissa). Uskon että Holding kyllä pystyy siirtämään sivuun "täydellisen kriittisen ajattelun puutteen" ja keskustella järkevästi jos sinäkin teet samoin. Ja koska tässä asiassa on selvästi muutama iso asia jossa toinen sanoo tasan tarkkaan toisin kuin toinen, joten jos mielenrauhasi on yhtään järkkyvä, niin mailaappa hänelle ja ota selvää.

hevoinen.cjb.net kirjoitti:

En nyt aivan ymmärrä, mikä tässä oikein mättää. Olet muuten ensimmäinen jonka tiedän, jollekka tämä asia tuottaa ongelmia, enkä ole ennen nähnyt tätä epäiltävän. Epäilen sinun olevan väärässä, jo pelkästään sen takia koska luulisin tälläisen asian tulleen jo kauan sitten esille.

Minä en tunne historiaa paremmin tai edes yhtä hyvin kuin tuo Holding, enkä ole hyvä tässä asiassa väittelemään. Mutta jos tämä asia on siis oikeasti mielessäsi kysymys edes vähäänkään, mailaa itse Holdingille (siellä jossakin se pyytää mailaamaan tälläisissä ongelmissa). Uskon että Holding kyllä pystyy siirtämään sivuun "täydellisen kriittisen ajattelun puutteen" ja keskustella järkevästi jos sinäkin teet samoin. Ja koska tässä asiassa on selvästi muutama iso asia jossa toinen sanoo tasan tarkkaan toisin kuin toinen, joten jos mielenrauhasi on yhtään järkkyvä, niin mailaappa hänelle ja ota selvää.

"Olet muuten ensimmäinen jonka tiedän, jollekka
tämä asia tuottaa ongelmia, enkä ole ennen nähnyt
tätä epäiltävän. Epäilen sinun olevan väärässä,
jo pelkästään sen takia koska luulisin tälläisen
asian tulleen jo kauan sitten esille."

Surffaatko paljon ateistien sivuilla? Monella
niistä tämä nimittäin otetaan esiin. Jos et ole
käynyt katselemassa kyseisiä juttuja, niin on
hyvin ymmärrettävää, että et ole kuullut asiasta.
Jotenkin epäilen, että kristittyjen sivuilla
asiasta puhuttaisiin kriittisesti kovinkaan
paljoa. Vai mitä?

Tämä on tulkinta kysymys. Sinä tulkitset asian
erilailla kuin minä. Voihan olla mahdollista,
että olen täysin väärässä asiassa..

Ei mielenrauhani tästä järky. Ei tämä nyt NIIN
vakava asia ole. Kunhan nyt huvikseni lauon omia
näkemyksiäni. Paraneepa Lähi-Idän historian
tietämykseni kun joudun ottamaan asioista
selvää... :)