“A prophecy, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, signifies a prediction of future events, which could not have been foreseen by human sagacity, and the knowledge of which was supernaturally communicated to the prophet. It is clear, therefore, that in order to establish the claim of anticipatory statement, promise, or denunciation, to the rank of a prophecy, four points must be ascertained with precision; namely, (1.) what the event was to which the alleged prediction was intended to refer; (2.) that the prediction was uttered in specific, not vague, language before the event; (3.) that the event took place specifically, not loosely, as predicted; (4.) and that it could not have been foreseen by human sagacity. * * *

“It is probably not too much to affirm that we have no instance in the prophetical books of the Old Testament of a prediction, in the case of which we possess, at once and combined, clear and unsuspicious proof of the date, the precise event predicted, the exact circumstances of the event, and the inability of human sagacity to foresee it.

“The state of the case appears to be this: That all the Old Testament prophesies have been assumed to be genuine inspired predictions; and, when falsified in their obvious meaning and received interpretation, by the event, have received immediately a new interpretation, and been supposed to refer to some other event. When the result has disappointed expectation, the conclusion has been, not that the prophecy was false, but the interpretation was erroneous. It is obvious that a mode of reasoning like this is peculiar to theological inquirers. * * *

“In justification of this idea of a double sense, he (Dr. Arnold) continues: ‘The notion of a double sense in prophecy has been treated by some persons with contempt. Yet it may be said that it is almost necessarily involved in the idea of prophecy. Every prophecy has according to the very definition of the word, a double source; it has, if I may venture so to speak, two authors, the one human, the other divine.... If uttered by the tongue of man, it must also, unless we suppose him to be a mere instrument (in the same sense as a flute or a harp), be colored by his own mind. The prophet expresses in words certain truths conveyed to his mind; but his mind does not fully embrace them, nor can it; for how can man fully comprehend the mind of God? Every man lives in time, and belongs to time; the present must be to him clearer than the future.... But with God there is no past, nor future; every truth is present to him in all its extent, so that his expression, if I may so speak, differs essentially from that which can be comprehended by the mind, or uttered by the tongue of man. Thus every prophecy as uttered by man (that is, by an intelligent and not a mere mechanical instrument), and at the same time as inspired by God, must, so far as appears, have a double sense; one, the sense entertained by the human mind of the writer; the other, the sense infused into it by God.’ We must confess our amazement at the obvious and extreme unsoundness of this whole passage. Not only does it painfully remind us of the double meaning so often and so justly charged upon the Pagan oracles—but it assumes the strange and contradictory improbabilities: first, that God was unable to convey his meaning to the mind of the prophet; secondly, that he infused this meaning into the words which were uttered, although he could not infuse it into the mind of the man who uttered them; and thirdly, that we can see further into the mind and meaning of God than those to whom he spoke; that they in expressing the ideas which he had put into their minds, mistook or imperfectly conceived those ideas,—but that to us is given to discover a thought which those words contained, but did not express, or which, if they did express it, they were not understood by the writer to express. Now, either the ideas which God wished to communicate were conveyed to the mind of the prophet, or they were not; if they were so conveyed, then the prophet must have comprehended them, and intended to express them correctly—for it is monstrous to suppose that God would infuse ideas into a man’s mind for the purpose of being communicated to the public; which ideas he yet did not enable him to communicate; and then all the above confused subtleties fall to the ground. If, on the other hand, these ideas were not so conveyed to the prophet’s mind, then it must have been the words and not the ideas which were inspired, and God used the prophet simply as a flute (a supposition scouted by Dr. Arnold) and we are thus driven to the equally monstrous supposition that God used words which did not convey his meaning, even to the very favored individual to whom and through whom he spoke.” (Greg’s “Creed of Christendom,” pp. 76, 92.)

“We have already had ample proof that the Jewish writers not only did not scruple to narrate past events as if predicting future ones—to present history in the form of prophecy, but that they habitually did so. The original documents from which the books of Moses were compiled, must have been written, as we have seen in the time of the earliest kings, while the book of Deuteronomy was not composed, and the whole Pentateuch did not assume its present form till, probably, the reign of Josiah; yet they abound in such anticipatory narrative—in predictions of events long past. The instances are far too numerous to quote.” (Greg’s “Creed of Christendom,” p. 86.)

“There is not throughout the whole Bible any word that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which latter times have affixed new ideas, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.

“We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbols, and with every other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word.

“We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied, but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying.”—Thomas Paine on the Prophecies.

“There is no reason to think that a prophet ever received a revelation which was not spoken directly and pointedly to his own time. (Ency. Brit. “Bible.”)

“It is plain, however, that the whole work (the Pentateuch) is not the uniform production of one pen, but that in some way a variety of records of different ages, and styles have been combined to form a single narrative. Accordingly, Jewish tradition bears evidence that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Joshua the book named after him, Samuel the book of Judges, and so forth. As all Hebrew history is anonymous, a sure sign that people had not yet learned to lay weight on questions of authorship, it is not probable that this tradition rests on any surer ground than conjecture.” (Ency. Brit., “Bible.”)

“I have now fully and fairly analyzed and exposed many of the most important prophecies or pretended prophecies of the whole Bible, I have shown that very few of them are real prophecies at all; that those which are real prophecies, very few ever have been, or ever can be fulfilled; that the very few which seem to have been fulfilled were written after the occurrence of the events claimed to be their fulfilments, and that, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, none of these prophecies ever have been, or ever can be, of any service to the world. And thus fall all the prophetic props of priestcraft. Not one of them can bear the test of fair examination.” (Kelso’s “Bible Analayzed.”)