"Failed prophecies" in the Bible, the fall of Babylon, and the formation of the canon of Scripture
People sometimes ask about "failed prophecies" in the Bible, either in reference to the fall of Babylon in the Old Testament, or Jesus and his Second Coming that is somehow connected to the destruction of the Temple in Matthew 24 (which fell in 70 CE), or the fall of Rome and Second Coming in Revelation. For example, both Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50–51 contain oracles against Babylon predicting a calamitous fall of the city at the hands of the Medes (Isa 13:17; cf. Jer 51:11). Some of the lines are very similar:
"Hence, wildcats shall dwell there with hyenas, and ostriches occupy it; Never again shall it be inhabited or settled, from age to age. As happened when God overturned Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbors—oracle of the Lord—No one shall dwell there, no mortal shall settle there." (Jer 50:39-40 NABRE)
"And Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory and pride of the Chaldeans, Shall become like Sodom and Gomorrah, overthrown by God. It shall never be inhabited, nor dwelt in, from age to age; Arabians shall not pitch their tents there, nor shepherds rest their flocks there. But desert demons shall rest there and owls shall fill the houses; There ostriches shall dwell, and satyrs shall dance." (Isa 13:19-21)
Both Isaiah and Jeremiah have complex redactional histories, and historical-critical scholars date these oracles to ca. 550 BCE. But no calamitous overthrow of Babylon occurred: Babylon peacefully surrendered to the Persian king, Cyrus, in 539/8. By then Persia had already conquered the Medes. (Though, Guy Couturier mentions that Xerxes I laid Babylon waste in 482 following a rebellion, New Jerome Biblical Commentary [1990], 297.)
"Babylon" becomes a codename for Rome in the New Testament (1 Pet 5:13), with Rev 18:2 clearly drawing upon Isaiah/Jeremiah:
"Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a haunt for demons. She is a cage for every unclean spirit, a cage for every unclean bird." (Rev 18:2)
Just as God would vengefully repay the Babylonians for what they did to Judah in the 6th century, so would he repay the Romans for what they were doing to Christians in the first century CE. (There is a theory, not widely accepted, that Revelation is an expansion of an earlier Jewish or Jewish-Christian apocalypse in which Babylon referred to Jerusalem, not Rome.) Revelation was written in the expectation that Jesus would return soon. The Roman Empire slowly collapsed over centuries, especially after Constantine transferred the imperial capital to Byzantium in 330. The city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410. Jesus did not return or the world end.
Revelation is a book of apocalyptic literature, a genre that rose in 2nd-century BCE Judaism (1 Enoch and Daniel, principally). It evolved out of post-exilic prophecy, such as 3 Isaiah (= Isaiah 56–66), Ezekiel 38–39, and Joel 3–4. With the Jewish people having returned to the promised land, these prophecies shifted away from the historical crises of the 8th and 6th centuries to an eschatological End of Days, when God would bring justice to the earth: "We find here the increasing tendency in the postexilic period to understand earlier prophecy as referring not to specific crises such as the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, but to the end of all history" (John J. Collins, NJBC, 301). The concept of resurrection of the dead (e.g., Daniel 12:1-3) arises around this time, perhaps in direct response to Jewish martyrdom by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (e.g., 2 Maccabees 7). The Torah promised long life to those who obeyed God's commandments, but now following them meant death: therefore, there must be a resurrection.
The influential biblical scholar Brevard S. Childs introduced in 1970 the concept of "canonical criticism," which in certain ways challenges the regnant historical criticism. He argues that "the addition of eschatological oracles to prophetic books played an important role in the 'canonical shaping' of the biblical text. Oracles were preserved without reference to their original situation, because all prophecy was now referred to the end-time" (ibid., 302). Another influential Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann (The Prophetic Imagination, 1978), argues that the enduring message of the biblical prophets is applicable to unjust social structures and governments in any age. This approach is highly compatible with liberation theology (e.g., Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 1971). Across Christian denominations (and no doubt in many synagogues), countless sermons have been preached on this theme of prophetic/apocalyptic critique of oppression.
In each case, pious people experienced the scandal of the apparent failure of God's promises, but then the renewed hope of restoration later: the delayed but still inevitable coming of the Messiah and Day of the Lord (in both Jewish and Christian perspectives). The very concept of Messiah (God's chosen, "anointed" agent) arose in Second Temple Judaism in response to the blatant, catastrophic failure of the promise to David that his sons would rule in Jerusalem forever (e.g., 2 Samuel 7:10-16). If scholars like Childs and Brueggemann are right, then the reinterpreting of "failed prophecies" is not a problem for much later readers of the Bible but rather at the very heart of the formation and creation of the Bible itself as a canon of Scripture.
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