Evidence for the Divine Inspiration of the Bible?

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patg said:
… Even if one somehow proved that Ezekiel included Alexander the Great in the prophecy against Tyre, they would still have to explain why the complete and everlasting destruction of the city did not happen. Although Alexander the Great did succeed in capturing the island part of the city, Tyre by no means ceased to exist after this conquest. In The History of Tyre, Wallace B. Fleming said this of the city’s defeat by Alexander:

Alexander then left the city which was half burnt, ruined, and almost depopulated. The blackened forms of two thousand crucified soldiers bore ghastly witness to the completeness of the conquest. The siege had lasted from the middle of January till the middle of July, 332 B.C. The city did not lie in ruins long. Colonists were imported and citizens who had escaped returned. The energy of these with the advantage of the site, in a few years raised the city to wealth and leadership again (Columbia University Press: New York, 1915, p. 64).

Tyre existed in the days of Jesus, who “withdrew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon” at one time during his personal ministry (Matt. 15:21), and it existed in the time of the Apostle Paul, who, returning from one of his missionary journeys, stopped there, found disciples, and tarried with them seven days (Acts 21:3). …
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You make a good point worth exploring. I’ll wait for your answers to my previous post before moving on to address your point. I like to leave no stone unturned, but also take it one stone at a time!

🙂
 
A lot of people think that Nostradamus had prophecies that came true. That doesn’t prove that his prophecies were divinely given.
 
the_Assyrian said:
One point is that the bible is made up of over 40 different authors, over thousands of years, and ALL being in agreement about the work/vision/will of GOD… this is quiet incredible since in other religions they might have “one” person as their author…

It is said the Old testament prophets where moved by either the WORD of GOD or the HOLY SPIRIT, again this is in agreement of where we are now, both in Word and Spirit…

Also what God foretold (in some cases upto thousands of years before) actually came to pass, we know this is real because it was recorded in oral traditon and writings of Jews and Gentiles and it being the history of the world and empires… e.g look at the propehcy of the book of Daniel and the kingdoms - this actually happened… consecutive kingdoms being Assyria/Medes and persians then Greek, the bible spells this out well before time.

Another argument is “faith”… do you believe what took place in the NT, actually happened? This is argument enough, since Christ is DIVINE. But if you dont believe him then believe on the base of the Miracles themselves is another point…

I hope this makes a start in answering your question… 🙂
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The Bible only has one clear message if you presuppose that before reading it. There are a lot of contradictions in the Bible. As for the prophecies in the book of Daniel, it is likely that the book of Daniel was written after these things happened and just said that they were prophecies.
 
JRKH said:
We, as catholics accept the divine inspiration of the Bible because the Church teaches that it is so. Not because the Bible says it is so.
Any book will be “self authenticating”. If we accept the Bible only, or primarily, because the Bible says so, then, by the same logic, we must accept the Koran and the Book of Morman because they too claim divine inspiration.

No - we know that The Bible is the inspired written Word of God, because the Church, which assembled the proper books under the guiance of the Holy Spirit says so.

Peace
James
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This whole argument is based on something that you cannot prove. You can’t prove that the church is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
 
LayingHands said:
Going along these lines I read somewhere that the Gospels of the Times were all placed UNDER a large table within a large hall…prayers were said and all the Bishops agreed that GOD would decide which books were to become the New Testament Bible…the hall was then locked…the next morning when it was unlocked the stacked, chosen Gospels were stacked on the Table…thereby, it was written that GOD chose the Gospel books and had placed them on the Table?! Have you ever heard of this…?
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This is not true.
 
PJM said:
***It seems to me that that there are least two evidences of indispuitable fact for this reality.
  1. The Life of Jesus Christ
  2. The fulfillment of Scripture OT in the NT ***
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I don’t understand how the life of Jesus can prove that a book is inspired. Also, the fulfillment of OT in the NT is debatable and could have been added into it.
 
spirit2534 said:
The other question is whether the Bible is literally true or not. If it was divinely true, then why would God not make it literally true as well? Please explain the Catholic perpective on this!
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Going by this logic, I would say it is more likely that the Bible ISN’T the word of God instead of insisting that everything in the Bible is true.
 
spockrates said:
Maybe I do. I’ll let you be the judge. To begin, please let me ask you this: If an omniscient God wanted to guide the writing of a volume of books, and He wanted to leave evidence within the pages of those books that He was the guide, what evidence do you think He would leave for you and I to discover? Wouldn’t He provide some information that only an all-knowing God would know and that no mere human being could possibly know?
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So any book can be guided by God? We wouldn’t be able to tell, so maybe God is behind Harry Potter?
 
hellopeople said:
A lot of people think that Nostradamus had prophecies that came true. That doesn’t prove that his prophecies were divinely given.
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Hello, Hello!

😃

True, that!

👍

I think the difference between Nostradamus’ predictions and Ezekiel’s predictions is that Nostradamus was often vague. His predictions can be interpreted many different ways and be said to apply to many different events in history. Which event was the actual one he was predicting is impossible to discern.

In contrast, Ezekiel’s prophecies are not unclear. He mentions the ancient city of Tyre by name. He describes the entire history of sieges against the mainland city and city on the island beginning with Nebuccadnezzar and ending with the final destruction of the city by the Mamluks.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyre,_Lebanon

Some think it remarkable that Nostradamus mentions Hitler by name. But the truth is that he did not get the German leader’s name right, but instead said his name would be Hissler–which, BTW, was a common name in Nostradamus’ time.

In contrast, we have Ezekiel getting Nebuccadnezzar’s name right, and Daniel getting the name of King Darius right even before Darius was born.

There are countless other examples which would take too much time to explore, here. But let me know if you want to look at any one example in detail.

🙂
 
Abu said:
As post #22 shows, Jesus of Nazareth did not write anything – He founded His Church on Simon Peter with primacy and infallibility. His followers wrote the New Testament and His Church infallibly declared which writings in both the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, and no others. These writings are without error.
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This is your belief…it doesn’t prove anything.
 
hellopeople said:
So any book can be guided by God? We wouldn’t be able to tell, so maybe God is behind Harry Potter?
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The difference between the books of the Harry Potter story and the books of the Old Testament is that the authors of the Old Testament books indicate that God spoke to them and quote Him word-for-word. “Thus sayeth the LORD,” is frequently found as an indicator that the prophetic writer is quoting God directly.
 
That a person is not believed to be a true prophet until he accurately predicts the future is an ancient Jewish tradition that began with Moses. He quotes God as saying this:

17 The LORD said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. 19 If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.”

21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

(Deuteronomy 18)

That’s the litmus test: If someone cannot predict the future with 100% accuracy 100% of the time, then God did not speak to him.
 
spockrates said:
The difference between the books of the Harry Potter story and the books of the Old Testament is that the authors of the Old Testament books indicate that God spoke to them and quote Him word-for-word. “Thus sayeth the LORD,” is frequently found as an indicator that the prophetic writer is quoting God directly.
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Same thing with the Koran. Do you accept the Koran as the word of God?
 
Cristian_B said:
And there are also the prophecies of Daniel and of Babylon and of Revelation and of the destruction of Jerusalem. There is too much evidence, in my opinion.
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Most biblical scholars think Daniel was written after the “prophecies” it talks about. As for revelation predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, do you mean what happened in 70 AD??..before revelations was written?
 
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