(November 17, 2019 at 12:32 pm)Vicki Q Wrote: Understanding the meaning of apocalyptic prophecy in Judaism is generally done retrospectively. The original prophecy set isn't meant to be precise. That's not how apocalyptic prophecy works.
In other words there is no actual prophecy -- just post hoc confirmation bias looking for pattern matches between some text and certain events.
In the year I spent in formal theological training I was taught that prophecy is written for future generations and makes no sense to contemporaneous readers -- it only makes sense in light of its fulfillment much later. Which is just another way of saying what you stated here. We even allowed for "multiple fulfillments", "partial and complete fulfillments", and "literal and spiritual fulfillments".
A great example of this is the claims of the gospel authors that certain OT passages predicted Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection -- something that Jewish scholars find by turns hilarious and infuriating. Those passages weren't about Jesus, and in many cases weren't even intended as prophecy. But they can flogged into service like everything else in the scripture.
