Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Bucky Ball]

The "prophecy" of the OT was their equivalent of a fox opinion piece, lol.  If those godless suburbanites didn't stop being so damned godless, civilization was going to crumble and the foreign invaders would stream in through the borders and take all the women and jobs.

-and they did, but they left flyover country relatively unscathed..because there simply wasn't anything worth taking.  Thus, flyover countries views became very well represented after the fact as the default survivor.

That's actually very true ... The ancient role of a prophet in Hebrew culture was to interpret the words or will of their god to the people OF THEIR OWN DAY. NOT to predict the future. (That's Hollywood's idea of the role of a prophet). 

So you often hear fundies talking about "prophesy", and how various prophesies were a 'foretelling", or prediction of the future, and indeed they count them up as "proof" that Jebus or whatever HAS to be true, as the "prophecy" came true. 

In fact Leviticus forbade fortune telling and divination, ("Let no one be found among you who practices divination, reads omens etc etc" .... so we know it was an abomination to even think in these terms for many/most centuries in Hebrew culture. With the rise of Apocalypticism, around the turn of the millennium, this changed somewhat, and is evidenced in many Christian writings, including the gospels, as they adopted the notions absent in ancient Israel, but coming into popular view with the Essenes. In terms of Hebrew culture, and the "telling of or prediction of" the future, was unknown, and forbidden, and not at ALL a view of the major prophets themselves. However in the the new view, certain "hidden meanings" or "pesherim" began to be looked for, in the practice of Midrash. The name for this is called "pesher", (or seeking a "hidden meaning"), which was not even known to the original speaker/writer, but only "revealed" later
to certain believers. Originally, the (plural) "pesherim" were only fully revealed to the Son of Righteousness, (the leader of the Essenes), and the idea was first found and fully understood after scholars read the Dead Sea scrolls, and was a sub category of "Midrash", (or study of the texts). 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsou...15650.html

Thus we see that "prophesy" as fortune telling as began to be practiced in Judaism around the First Century, (and picked up by Christians and the gospel writers), really was a very late invention and never a classical part of Hebrew scripture, or understanding, either interpretation, or intention, and certainly was not the function of the ancient office of "prophet", in Hebrew culture, who was to be a "mouthpiece" to the people of their own day, and not Madame Zelda with her crystal ball.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/r...html#proof