Motives of Credibility: Prophecies

The dating of the books of the Old and New Testaments is an inexact science. Yet, as I learned in my undergraduate religious studies courses at the University of Virginia, one of the most consequential criteria secular scholars use to date the books of the Bible is a curious one: prophecies. The reason is a bit paradoxical. If a book of the Bible foretells details about future historical events, these scholars conclude, then the book must have been written after those events transpired. Of course, this line of reasoning exposes a blatant presupposition that undergirds this entire academic discipline: prophecies don’t happen.

Take, for example, Jesus’ foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke:

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near…. For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (21:20, 23-24)

As we know from such ancient sources as Josephus’s The Jewish War, this is precisely what happened in A.D. 70, when the Roman general (and future emperor) Titus besieged and subsequently destroyed Jerusalem and took many of the captured survivors back to Rome as part of his victory procession. How could Jesus possibly have known this would happen? He couldn’t, many scholars surmise, and thus the Gospel of Luke must have been written after A.D. 70. (They say the same of the Gospel of Matthew, which describes the burning of Jerusalem and the demolition of the Temple.)

There are, however, problems with this line of reasoning. First, we must remember that the Gospel of Luke is the first in a two-part series with the Book of Acts, as nearly all biblical experts agree. Yet, as Protestant scholars D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo observe in An Introduction to the New Testament (2nd ed., 2005), Acts makes no mention of many key events in the years leading up to A.D. 70, such as the Neronian persecution, the deaths of SS Peter and Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem (which would be expected if the author were trying to demonstrate fulfilled prophecy!). Moreover, in Matthew 24:40 and Mark 13:18, Jesus expressly prays that the destruction of Jerusalem “may not be in winter,” which would be an odd thing to include if the events had already happened (the fall of the city actually occurred in summer). Furthermore, the language Jesus employs in His prophecy regarding Jerusalem draws heavily on the wording and imagery of judgment oracles found in the Old Testament (cf. Jer. 6:6-8, 52:4; Ezek. 4:1-3). Absent from the various Gospel accounts are the kinds of extended description or specific details we might expect if their authors were fabricating a story about Jesus’ prophesying (such as accurately predicting the season). In other words, there is a certain character to prophecy — predicting an unlikely event with some detail but not enough to make it appear ex post facto — that makes it difficult to wave off as a mere literary concoction.

Of course, if the Gospel of Luke (and the Gospel of Matthew, for that matter) was written prior to A.D. 70, it would open up the possibility that Jesus did indeed predict the destruction of Jerusalem. Taken together, the details He provides in the two Gospels are specific enough — armies surrounding and demolishing the city, massacring large numbers of Jews, and destroying the Temple — that they would be difficult for someone to conjure based on mere speculation. In fact, when Jesus made His statement approximately 40 years earlier, the Romans and their puppet king Herod Antipas were in firm control of Judea, and though there was periodic unrest, there was no indication of an impending widespread insurrection that could trigger the Romans’ razing Jerusalem.