Jack Kinsella is the editor of The Omega Letter Digest, which is a website that, for just $10 per month, offers readers a steady diet of biblical inerrancy nonsense and right-wing political views. He does offer prospects a seven-day free trial subscription, but after that, it is a pay-as-you-go enterprise, which solicits additional contributions from subscribers and hawks software and peddles books through Amazon.com, even though a click of a "why subscription based?" icon at the bottom of some pages brings up a statement claiming that money is necessary to operate the site and that "(w)e don't take advertising and we don't try to sell you anything." Despite this claim, clicking other icons will take readers to the software and Amazon sites, where orders can be placed, and the Omega-Letter homepage has a double icon at the bottom left that will take readers to a page where one can subscribe to Hallindseyoracle.com, a site that offers various books for sale, and just below this icon is another one that will take readers to Olive Tree Ministries, where one can subscribe to a newsletter that appears to specialize in "Messianic prophecies" and "Israel-related" fulfillments, which will help readers "understand current events from a biblical and prophetic perspective." The "perspective," of course, is simply the spin that the writers put on biblical prophecies that were never intended to have any reference at all to events contemporary to our time. This site also offers an assortment of books, videos, DVDs, and other products. All three sites have their Paypal, credit-card, and electronic check icons to separate readers from their money, yet the Omega site claims that it has to charge a subscription because it doesn't advertise or "try to sell you anything."

One has to wonder about the intellectual level of those who subscribe to these sites.

Kinsella and the others involved in these projects are obviously caught up in the naive belief that turmoil in the Near East is signaling an imminent return of Jesus. In "Special Report: The Year of the Countdown," Kinsella recycled the worn-out, frequently discredited claim that Ezekiel 4:1-8 contains an incredibily accurate prediction of the restoration of Israel in 1948, which then began a "countdown" to the return of Jesus. (I have linked readers to Kinsella's articles, but those who click the link will be taken to a page that notifies them that this article is available only to those who subscribe to his website.) Jack Kinsella believes that this return is so imminent that he, as we will see, ended his article with an admonition to "keep looking up." He began the article with the claim that "most of the major prophetic fulfillments of the last days can trace their genesis to the same point in history--on or near the year 1948." The first half of the article rambled on about the last days prophesied in Matthew 25 and the "mark of the beast," which Kinsella, of course, believes is presently being fulfilled by the miniaturization of transistors and computer chips. I will get back to this nonsense later, but first I want to dismantle Kinsella's recycled claim that Ezekiel accurately predicted the date of Israel's restoration. As I usually do, I will use the headers Kinsella and Till to help readers follow who has said what.

Kinsella:
And finally, we return to Israel. In Leviticus 26:3, 7-8, the Bible says that the army of Israel would have a supernatural power to prevail during times of conflict. Leviticus says that 5 people would be able to chase away 100 people, and that 100 would be able to chase away 10,000.

Till:
I like for readers to have before them whatever texts on which a biblical inerrantist--and especially the prophecy-fulfillment type--is basing claims like this one. I will emphasize an important section of this passage that Kinsella skipped over in his citation above.

Leviticus 26:3 If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, 4 I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land. 6 And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land. 7 You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.

As readers can see, Kinsella conveniently skipped three verses in this passage. I will show the significance of those verses later, but first I want to point out that Kinsella has also tried to apply this passage to a time and situation for which it was never intended. If readers will flip back to chapter 25 in the book of Leviticus, they will see that a section began here that gave instructions to the Israelites concerning what they were to do after they crossed into Canaan and what Yahweh would do for them. The verses that Kinsella cited above are a part of that broader context.

Leviticus 25:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: 2 Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for Yahweh. 3 Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield....

This text claims that these were words that Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai concerning what the Israelites were to do when they entered the land that Yahweh was giving them. At the time, the Israelites were still about 40 years from crossing into Canaan, so when he tries to apply this text to a reentering of the land some 3,500 years afterwards, Kinsella is putting a spin on the text that he is obligated to prove. He can't just assert that the text was referring to a restoration of Israel thousands of years later; he must show that this was what the text referred to. I defy him to quote the language of the text that even suggests that this was its intended meaning.

Anyone who will take the time to read from the verses I just quoted above down to 26:3ff, which Kinsella is trying to apply to AD 1948, he should see that the entire passage was giving instructions that the Israelites were to follow when they entered the land that Yahweh was giving [snicker, snicker] them. Notice, for example, that Leviticus 26:5-6, which Kinsella conveniently skipped, said, "(Y)ou shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land. And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land." There are five separate promises made in this text that clearly show that this could not have been a prophecy about modern Israel, unless Kinsella wants to admit that the prophecy obviously failed.

You shall... live securely in the land: Even before the day that Israel declared its independence in 1948, it has been rocked with continual turmoil and terrorists attacks. Since that could hardly be regarded as "liv[ing] securely in the land," this verse either was not referring to what would happen in Israel in AD 1948 or else what it prophesied has failed to materialize. I suspect that the second alternative will be unacceptable to Kinsella and his deluded sycophants, so let him explain why verses 7-8 were prophecies of events in the Israel of AD 1948, but the two verses just before them weren't. By what principle of hermeneutics and literary interpretation did Kinsella arrive at such an idea as this?

You shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid: Is Kinsella so uninformed about modern history of Israel that he could actually claim with a straight face that Israelis have been able to "lie down" since 1948 without being afraid? If so, he needs more help than I can give him, because Israelis live in daily fear of terrorist activities that continually threaten their lives.

I will remove dangerous animals from the land: I suppose there could have been dangerous animals in the land of Canaan before the Israelites went in to possess it 3,500 years ago, but I doubt that dangerous animals in the land were any big problem for Israelis to worry about in 1948. The reference to "dangeous animals" that didn't exist in the Palestine of 1948 is evidence that this passage was referring to the land that was contemporary to those times and not to modern Israel.

No sword shall go through your land: I suppose that Kinsella could argue in a literal sense that this has been fulfilled, but terrorist bombing and the shooting of Israeli citizens by their Palestinian enemies would certainly mean that figurative swords have repeatedly gone through the land and still continue to do so. Is Kinsella willing to say that this part of the prophecy failed?

I will grant peace in the land: How could anyone say that this prophecy has been fulfilled in modern Israel? The Israelis have enjoyed no peace from the time that they took possession of Palestine in 1948. Hence, we see that Kinsella has been playing the popular "smorgasbord" game of Christians, who pick and choose from the Bible what appeals to them and reject the rest. Kinsella was rather flagrant about this in his article, because he omitted all references to verses in Leviticus 26 that show that this passage couldn't possibly be construed by any reasonable person as an accurate prophecy of Israel's restoration in 1948.

As I continue my rebuttal of Kinsella's article, I will be saying more about his misapplication of Leviticus 26:7-8, but to cut his next "argument" off at the knees, I first want to notice that military victories over vastly superior enemy forces is not at all unusual.

In 490 BC, an Athenian army that was outnumbered three to one by Persian forces won an overwhelming victory at Marathon. On October 25, 1415, a numerically superior French army, having an estimated 30,000 soldiers, was defeated by just 5,000 English archers and 900 soldiers in the battle of Agincourt. Such victories over great odds is no indication at all that a god was fighting with the outnumbered forces. Tactical strategies accounted for these victories, so unless Kinsella can prove that the god Yahweh actually did fight for the Israelis, he has nothing to support his case but argumentation by assertion.

Kinsella:
On May 15, 1948, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded Israel. The combined populations of these countries was at least 20 million at the time, versus less than a million Israelis.

Till:
Actually the population of Israel at that time was only 600,000, but that is only a minor discrepancy compared to Kinsella's distortion of what happened when Israel declared independence in 1948. He would have us believe that a nation outnumbered 20 to one was able to defeat the Arab legions, but that is far from an accurate picture of what really happened. First of all, the Israelis received more help from foreign volunteers than they did from their god Yahweh. Of the thousands of foreign volunteers recruited by the Israelis, many of them were veterans of World War II, so this gave them the advantage of troops experienced in battle, which the Arabs didn't have. Israel also obtained B-17 bombers from the United States, an acquisition that gave them air supremacy. Kinsella conveniently failed to mention any of this. He would have his readers believe that the Israelis won because they had Yahweh fighting on their side.

The five Arab nations that Kinsella mentioned above did invade Israel, but he also failed to mention that the two superpowers of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as other countries, immediately recognized the independence of Israel and put pressure on the Arabs to withdraw. On May 29, 1948, Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet delegate to the UN, denounced the Arabs in a speech to the Security Council.

This is not the first time that the Arab states, which organized the invasion of Palestine, have ignored a decision of the Security Council or of the General Assembly. The USSR delegation deems it essential that the council should state its opinion more clearly and more firmly with regard to this attitude of the Arab states toward decisions of the Security Council (Official Records of the Security Council, SA/Agenda/77, May 29, 1948, p. 2).

When the United Nations threatened to censure them for aggression, the Arab nations withdrew, so this was not a case of a puny Israeli army defeating an army of millions of Arabs. It was a simple matter of political pressure from the superpowers that ended the war. For the sake of argument, however, let's just assume that a vastly outnumbered Israeli army did engage and defeat a superior Arab army. What would make that any different from the Greek victory at Marathon or the English victory at Agincourt or Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo? An abiding failure of prophecy-fulfillment fanatics is that they see what they want to see in Near Eastern events. Any time that a person of any prominence at all in the Near East sneezes, prophecy-fulfillment fanatics will scream, "Prophecy fulfillment!"

Kinsella:
When the war was over, not only had Israel driven off the invaders, but she expanded her territory by over fifty percent.

Till:
I just showed that Kinsella's interpretations of the events of that time are gross distortions of what really happened. Israel did not "drive off" the invaders; the UN threat to censure the Arab states drove them off. As for the expansion of territory, this was negotiated after the cease fire, when Israel gained territory through UN partitioning. If Kinsella really believes the distortions he is posting on his website, he seriously needs to research Near Eastern history of that period.

In that conflict, by the way, Israel suffered 6,373 casualities, which was one percent of its population of 650,000. Perhaps Kinsella can explain to us why Israel would have suffered such relatively high casualties if Yahweh was fighting on its side. After all, the Bible claims that the Israelites, at Yahweh's biding (Num. 31:1-3), invaded Midian and killed all of the males without suffering a single casualty.

Numbers 31:48 Then the officers who were over the thousands of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, approached Moses, 49 and said to Moses, "Your servants have counted the warriors who are under our command, and not one of us is missing.

If Yahweh could have kept an army of 600,000 (Ex. 12:37) completely from harm in the invasion of an enemy nation, why couldn't he have kept the Israeli army from suffering such heavy casualties during the 1948 war? Well, the answer is obvious to any reasonable person. The Israelis had no divine help in that war. If they really did have Yahweh fighting for them, they should have gotten another god to help them.

When I was in Bible college, my international relations instructor was fired because he said in class that during wars God is on the side that has the most guns. What he said is basically true, but as I noted above, the weaker sides sometimes are victorious over the stronger, but those victories are always due to superior battle strategies and tactics. One has to be simple minded to think that the weaker armies sometimes win because God is on their side. If an omniscient, omnipotent deity were really fighting on one side during a war, that army, like the Israelite army that defeated Midian, would suffer no casualties at all.

Kinsella:
The 1967 war lasted only six days and left Israel in control of Jerusalem for the first time in 2000 years.

Till:
And this proves what? Israel suffered 115 casualties in just the battle for the Golan Heights and 777 dead and 2,586 wounded altogether. Is that any way for an omniscient, omnipotent god to fight on the side of his "chosen people"? What happened to the shield of protection under which he led the Israelite army in biblical times?

Anyway, I am glad to see Kinsella admit that Jerusalem was out of Israel's control for 2,000 years, because that admission is itself recognition of the failure of another biblical prophecy, which prophecy-fulfillment fanatics rarely mention, because Yahweh had promised that Jerusalem would forever remain in Judean control for the sake of David, who had always obeyed Yahweh.

When the northern kingdom [Israel] split from the southern kingdom [Judah], presumably at Yahweh's biding, he promised that in appreciation of David's righteousness, he would always keep Judah intact.

1 Kings 11:34 Nevertheless I will not take the whole kingdom away from him [Solomon] but will make him ruler all the days of his life, for the sake of my servant David whom I chose and who did keep my commandments and my statutes; 35 but I will take the kingdom away from his son and give it to you--that is, the ten tribes. 36 Yet to his son I will give one tribe, so that my servant David may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put my name.

Repeated promises were made to keep Jerusalem always intact for David's sake. When Abijam turned out to be a king "who walked in all the sins of his father" (1 Kings 15:3), Yahweh nevertheless "gave him a lamp in Jerusalem" to establish Jerusalem, because David had always done right "in the eyes of Yahweh" (vs:5-6). Reference to this promise was made again when king Jehoram of Judah also turned out to be a bad egg.

2 Kings 8:19 Yet Yahweh would not destroy Judah, for the sake of his servant David, since he had promised to give a lamp to him and to his descendants forever.

A lot more could be said about the repetition of this promise in the Old Testament, but overkill isn't necessary. Suffice it to say that Yahweh clearly promised to keep Jerusalem and Judah permanently in the possession of David's descendants, but eventually Judah fell to Nebuchadnezzar, the Judeans went into captivity, regained their homeland during the reign of Cyrus of Persia, but then lost it again. By Kinsella's own admission, the Jews lost control of Jerusalem for over 2,000 years, so he has inadvertently made a comment that shows that instead of being a book of amazing prophecies, the Bible is a book full of dismal prophecy failures.

Kinsella:
The 1973 Yom Kippur War was over in a couple of weeks.

Till:
Yes, it was, but the cost was 2,688 dead. If I were an Israeli official, I wouldn't want Yahweh fighting for me in the next war.

At this point, Kinsella turned to trying to prove that the restoration of Israel in 1948 was predicted in biblical prophecy. In so doing, he appropriated an absurd prophecy-fulfillment claim that has been discredited numerous times. Some inerrantists have presented this same prophetic flapdoodle on the Errancy internet list, so it wasn't at all new to me. Those inerrantists went into hiding as quickly as their fulfillment claims were refuted, and I suspect that Kinsella, who has already gone into hiding after declining my challenge to debate this issue, will remain there. Readers will soon see just how ridiculous this "countdown" prophecy claim is.

Kinsella:
The Year 1948 marked the end of one Divine Countdown and the beginning of another. The first Divine Countdown dealt with the duration of Israel's Diaspora.

Till:
This is how Kinsella introduced his recycled claim that Ezekiel 4:5-6 predicted the exact time of Israel's restoration in 1948. I will now take that claim point by point and dismantle it.

Kinsella:
In Ezekiel 4:5-6, the prophet records the period determined by God as punishment for Israel's disobedience:

"For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year."

Till:
If readers will notice the bold-print emphasis that I have added to Kinsella's quotation of Ezekiel 4:5-6, they will see where this recycled prophecy-fulfillment claim begins to come apart at the seams. As readers can see, Kinsella--or rather the source from which he borrowed this fulfillment claim--interprets it to mean that Yahweh was telling Ezekiel how long the Judeans would be in Babylonian captivity, but in actuality, this passage was referring to two separate captivities, the captivity of the house of Israel or the northern kingdom, and the captivity of the house of Judah. Two separate time periods were clearly identified in this text, so the most sensible interpretation of the passage is that Ezekiel was writing about two different captivities, the captivities of Israel (the northern kingdom) by Assyria, which occurred in 734 and 722 BC, and the captivity of Judah, which occurred in 597 BC, when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar, and again in 587 when Babylon captured Jerusalem a second time. Israel's captivity by Assyria is recorded in 2 Kings 15-17, and Judah's captivity by Babylonia is recorded in 2 Kings 24-25 and Jeremiah 52. To the Hebrew mentality of this era, the Jews were Yahweh's chosen people, so if they were taken captive, this had to have resulted from something they had done that was causing Yahweh to punish them, but Isaiah, whose "ministry" covered the time of the northern kingdom's fall to Assyria, prophesied that the punishment would end and a remnant of Israel would be preserved and brought back from captivity.

Isaiah 10:12 When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. 13 For he says: "By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I have removed the boundaries of peoples, and have plundered their treasures; like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones. 14 My hand has found, like a nest, the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing, or opened its mouth, or chirped." 15 Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood! 16 Therefore the Sovereign, Yahweh of hosts, will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory a burning will be kindled, like the burning of fire. 17 The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day. 18 The glory of his forest and his fruitful land Yahweh will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when an invalid wastes away. 19 The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down. 20 On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. 21 A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. 22 For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. 23 For the Lord GOD of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in all the earth. 24 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD of hosts: O my people, who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they beat you with a rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. 25 For in a very little while my indignation will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction. 26 Yahweh of hosts will wield a whip against them, as when he struck Midian at the rock of Oreb; his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it as he did in Egypt. 27 On that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck.

Another of Isaiah's prophecies of Israel's return is in 35:8-10.

35:8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of Yahweh shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Another prophecy by Isaiah that Israel (the northern tribes) would be brought back from captivity can be found in 52:3ff, but for brevity's sake, I won't quote it. The important point to notice is that the captivity of the house of Israel happened well over a century before the house of Judah was taken into Babylonian captivity, so Isaiah could not have been talking about the Judean captivity. By Ezekiel's time, the prophecies that Israel (the northern kingdom) would be returned had not been fulfilled, and to complicate matters, Judah, the southern kingdom had been taken into captivity too. Ezekiel 4:1ff, then, was just another prophetic attempt to predict that Yahweh would bring his people out of captivity. The only difference was that Ezekiel had two captivities to predict an end to rather than the one that Isaiah had prophesied. Kinsella's recycled fulfillment claim errs in that it added together the "days" for the punishment of the house of Israel and the "days" for the punishment of the house of Judah to get a total of 430 "days," which he then twisted to make both punishments begin with the captivity of the house of Judah. One doesn't have to be an expert in hermeneutics to see the error in the fulfillment claim that Kinsella is trying to peddle to his gullible website subscribers. It is tragic that we live in a society so gullible that charlatans like him can make a living peddling religious nonsense.

If, then, we accept the one-day-equaled-one-year formula stated in Ezekiel 4:6, the meaning of the prophecy becomes that Israel (the northern kingdom) would be in captivity for 390 years, and Judah (the southern kingdom)would be in captivity for 40 years. When I come to the part of Kinsella's article where he tried to make the 390 + 40 "days" (years) extend to AD 1948, I will show that there is good reason to believe that Ezekiel 4:5 originally said 150 days (years) rather than 390, and readers will see that this really throws a big monkeywrench into Kinsella's fulfillment claim.

Kinsella:
Babylon was later conquered by Cyrus in 539 BC. Cyrus allowed the Jews to leave Babylon and to return to their homeland. But, only a small number returned. The return had taken place sometime around 536 BC,

Till:
Where does Kinsella get 536 BC as the date of the return of the Judeans to their homeland? As Kinsella correctly stated, Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC, but that same year he issued an edict that allowed the Judeans to return to Jerusalem.

Ezra 1:1 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order that the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom, and also in a written edict declared: 2 "Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. 3 Any of those among you who are of his people--may their God be with them!--are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel--he is the God who is in Jerusalem; 4 and let all survivors, in whatever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem."

If Cyrus issued this edict in the first year of his reign over Babylon, which would have been 539 BC, why does Kinsella think that the Judeans didn't return home till three years later? Aside from just parroting something that he has read without bothering to check it for accuracy, the Bible itself does not support the 536 BC date, because there is no scripture that I know of that indicates that the Judeans waited three years after Cyrus's decree to begin their return to Jerusalem. Indeed, there are reasons to think that the Judeans left right after they had received permission to return. After Ezra recorded the decree of Cyrus, he certainly indicated a departure that was much sooner than a three-year delay. The decree stipulated that the people [Babylonians] were to assist the Judeans with contributions of gold,silver, goods, animals, and other valuables.

Ezra 1:5 The heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites--everyone whose spirit God had stirred--got ready to go up and rebuild the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem. 6 All their neighbors aided them with silver vessels, with gold, with goods, with animals, and with valuable gifts, besides all that was freely offered. 7 King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of Yahweh that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. 8 King Cyrus of Persia had them released into the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. 9 And this was the inventory: gold basins, thirty; silver basins, one thousand; knives, twenty-nine; 10 gold bowls, thirty; other silver bowls, four hundred ten; other vessels, one thousand; 11 the total of the gold and silver vessels was five thousand four hundred. All these Sheshbazzar brought up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

Are we to suppose that it took three years for "everyone whose spirit God had stirred" to get ready to go up to Jerusalem? Are we to suppose that these Judeans took three years to gather the gifts from their neightbors and then leave? This passage is reminiscent of something that allegedly happened at the time of the exodus from Egypt, when the Egyptians gave the Hebrews gifts of silver, jewels, and gold (Ex. 12:35), and the exodus legend claims that the Israelites left Egypt on that "selfsame day" (Ex. 12:17, 41, 51). If the exodus from Egypt had taken place so quickly, why did the Judeans in Babylonian captivity take so long to leave? Perhaps Kinsella can tell us.

There is, in fact, a passage that implies that the Judeans were in their homeland by the seventh month.

Ezra 3:1 When the seventh month came, and the Israelites were in the towns, the people gathered together in Jerusalem.

Admittedly, this verse doesn't say that this was the seventh month of the first year of Cyrus, but it is certainly reasonable to so understand it. Ezra dated the first chapter of his book with the first year of Cyrus's reign, and after telling of the assistance of their neigbors after those "whose spirit God had stirred" prepared to return to Jerusalem, Ezra gave a census in chapter 2 of those who were returning. After completing the census list, he then said what I just quoted above: "When the seventh month came, the Israelites were in their towns." If Ezra didn't mean the 7th month after Cyrus had issued his decree, the Holy Spirit was somewhat careless in having Ezra to date the passage so ambiguously.

Some proponents of the prophecy-fulfillment claim that Kinsella is trying to peddle will argue that since some 42,000 were in the group of Judeans that returned to Jerusalem, it could have taken as long as three years for them to complete the journey, but a seven-month journey to the homeland of the Judeans would certainly have been consistent with what Ezra said about how long it had taken him to make a journey from Babylon to Jerusalem in the company of a sizable entourage.

Ezra 7:6 (T)his Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that Yahweh the God of Israel had given; and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of Yahweh his God was upon him. 7 Some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants also went up to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. 8 They came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 9 On the first day of the first month the journey up from Babylon was begun, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the gracious hand of his God was upon him.

So Ezra, traveling with an entourage of "some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants" made a trip from Babylon to Jerusalem in just four months. If a group of this size could have completed the journey in four months, surely the 42,000 could have made the trip quicker than the three years postulated by Kinsella's fulfillment claim. Aside from this, there is another point that must be considered. As soon as the Judeans left Babylon, their captivity would have ended, so even if they did take three years to make the trip home, those would have been three years of freedom. Hence, their "punishment" would have ended in 539 BC. If not, why not?

Kinsella:
70 years after Judah lost independence to Babylon as Jeremiah predicted.

Till:
I will soon show that Kinsella's math is bad again, but first, let's notice that 70 is not 40. The fulfillment claim, based on Ezekiel 4:5-6, that Kinsella is trying to sell us said that Ezekiel was to "lie on [his] right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah" for "forty days, each day for a year" (v:6). Hence, the "prophecy" was that the house of Judah would be punished in captivity for forty years, not seventy.

So where did Kinsella, or rather those from whom he appropriated this fulfillment claim, get the 70 years? Well, as he himself stipulated above, he was referring to what Jeremiah had predicted, and Jeremiah did predict 70 years of captivity in Babylon (Jer. 25:11; 29:10), so who was right about the duration of the "punishment" (captivity) of the house of Judah, Ezekiel or Jeremiah? Maybe Kinsella can tell us.

Even Jeremiah's prediction of 70 years of captivity turned out to be incorrect. As noted above, Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem in 597 BC, at which time he took the first wave of captives to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar became king in 605 BC and besieged Jerusalem in the eighth year of his reign.

2 Kings 24:10 At that time [Jehoiachin's brief reign] the servants of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. 11 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to the city, while his servants were besieging it; 12 King Jehoiachin of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself, his mother, his servants, his officers, and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign.

If Nebuchadnezzar became king in 605 BC and if he besieged Jerusalem in the eighth year of his reign, the siege would have happened in 597 BC, which agrees with what Babylonian records say about the siege, so if the captivity of the house of Judah began in 597 BC and if it ended in the first year of the reign of Cyrus in 539 BC, the Judean captivity lasted only 58 years. Even if we take Kinsella's date of 536 BC for the end of the captivity, that would extend the captivity only three more years, and 61 would not be 70. Some proponents of this prophecy-fulfillment claim that the Judean captivity began in 605 BC. This date is based on Daniel's claim that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in "the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim" (Dan. 1:1), which would have been 605 BC, but there is no evidence, either biblical or extrabiblical, to support this claim.

The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem is well documented by both biblical records and the Babylonian chronicle. Except for the rankest of fundamentalists, who want the book of Daniel to be "inerrant," scholars agree that Jerusalem was sieged by Babylon the first time in 597 BC and that the events of that time hardly allow for a siege of Jerusalem in 605 BC.

Jehoiakim was made vassal king of Judah by Pharaoh Necoh (2 Kings 23:34). He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for 11 years (2 Kings 23:36). According to undisputed chronology, Jehoiakim's reign began in 609 BC and lasted till 598 BC. If, as Daniel 1:1 claims, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in Jehoiakim's third year, this siege would have been in 606/605 BC, but there is no supporting evidence that such a siege took place. The biblical record claims that Jehoiakim was a vassal of Egypt during the initial years of his reign and that he taxed the people in order to pay tribute of gold and silver to Pharaoh Necoh (2 Kings 23:35), so the biblical record doesn't support the claim of a siege during the third year of Jehoiakim, which would have been 605 BC.

Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC at Carchemish, which would have been the third or fourth year of Jehoiakim (depending on whether his years on the throne were calculated by an accession or first-of-the-year formula), and in the scroll that Jehoiakim burned (35:23), Jeremiah prophesied in the fifth year of Jehoiakim (36:9) that "the king of Babylon" would "certainly come and destroy this land" (36:29). If Nebuchadnezzar had already besieged Jerusalem and taken captives in Jehoiakim's third year, why was Jeremiah prophesying two years later (in Jehoiakim's fifth year) that the Babylonian king would come and destroy the land?

When Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC at Carchemish, which was about 400 miles from Jerusalem, the vassalage of Judah passed to Nebuchadnezzar without any actual Babylonian military action against Jerusalem. Jehoiakim then served Nebuchadnezzar for three years (2 Kings 24:1), but in 601 BC, the Egyptians had regrouped and won a battle against the Babylonians. Apparently Jehoiakim was emboldened by the Babylonian defeat to rebel against Babylon, and this prompted Nebuchadnezzar to send bands of Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite troops (now incorporated into his army by virtue of his having defeated the Assyrians) against Judah (2 Kings 24:2). This would have happened in Jehoiakim's eighth year, but keep in mind that the biblical record claims that Jehoiakim reigned 11 years.

Three years later, Nebuchadnezzar "came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged" (2 Kings 24:10). At this time, Jehoiakim had died, and his son Jehoiachin was reigning (24:6-8). As noted above, Jehoiachin "went out to the king of Babylon" with his mother, servants, princes, and officers, and surrendered to "the king of Babylon" (24:12). Notice that this verse explicitly states that this happened in the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar).

As noted above, Nebuchadnezzar was involved with the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605 BC, which was also the year that his father Nabopolassar died. When word of his father's death reached him, Nebuchadnezzar rode across the desert to take the shortest route possible to reach Babylon and secure his claim to the throne. He took the throne on September 6, 605 BC, so where are the records that would confirm that somehow between Nebuchadnezzar's preoccupation with the Egyptians at Carchemish, his return to Babylon, his accession to the throne, securing his claim, etc., he found time to take captives in Judea? There is no record of Nebuchadnezzar's having besieged Jerusalem in 605 BC after securing his throne. If Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem after securing his throne on September 6, 605 BC, he would have had to return to the area of Carchemish and move his army 400 miles southwest before the end of the year. There are serious problems with Daniel's claim that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim (605 BC). Other biblical and extrabiblical records do not corroborate the claim, so there is every reason to suspect that Daniel, which is riddled with historical inaccuracies (another article for another time), simply erred in saying that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim.

I know that Daniel 1:1 says that Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem at this time, but as the texts I explicated above show, Daniel's claim was inconsistent with the records in 2 Kings 24, as well as Jeremiah 52 and the Babylonian Chronicle, which is quoted in the text below.

This clay tablet is a Babylonian chronicle recording events from 605-594BC. It was first translated in 1956 and is now in the British Museum. The cuneiform text on this clay tablet tells, among other things, 3 main events:

• 1. The Battle of Carchemish (famous battle for world supremacy where Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated Pharoah Necho of Egypt, 605 BC.),
• 2. The accession to the throne of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldean, and
• 3. The capture of Jerusalem on the 16th of March, 598 BC.

We are going to compare the record of this Babylonian clay tablet, as translated into English by scholars, with the account recorded in the Bible. About the capture of Jerusalem the clay tablet reads:

"In the seventh month (of Nebuchadnezzar-599 BC.) in the month Chislev (Nov/Dec) the king of Babylon assembled his army, and after he had invaded the land of Hatti (Syria/Palestine) he laid seige [sic] to the city of Judah. On the second day of the month of Adara (16th of March) he conquered the city and took the king (Jehoiachin) prisoner. He installed in his place a king (Zedekiah) of his own choice, and after he had received rich tribute, he sent (them) forth to Babylon."

The article quoted above went on to compare this record from the Babylonian Chronicle to the biblical account in 2 Kings 24, which I have already cited. The two records essentially agree, but notice that the Chronicle says that Nebuchadnezzar invaded "the land of Hatti" at a time that would have been 599 BC in our calendar and after this invasion, he "laid seige [sic] to the city of Judah." Hence, the Babylonian Chronicle and 2 Kings 24 disagree with the claim in Daniel 1:1 that Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, which would have been 605 BC. As the text quoted from the chronicle shows, Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim's son, was the king of Judah at that time. Hence, the siege of "the city of Judah" after the invasion of "the land of Hatti" would have occurred in 598/597 BC. Inconsistency in biblical texts is not at all unusual, and Daniel's disagreement with the writers of 2 Kings 24 and Jeremiah 52 is just another example of those inconsistencies.

If Kinsella is going to claim that his prophecy-fulfillment scenario should be dated from 605 BC, he needs to give some kind of evidence besides his mere claim that his chronology is correct. At any rate, even if we date the captivity of Judah from 605 BC and end it in 536 BC, Kinsella could not find the 70 years he needs, because 605 - 536 = 69. Sixty-nine is hardly precise enough to support a claim that the date of Israel's restoration was accurately predicted to the very year.

Kinsella:
Because most of the exiles chose to stay in pagan Babylon rather than return to the Holy Land, the remaining 360 years of their punishment was multiplied by 7.

Till:
There are actually two claims in this sentence. First, Kinsella is claiming that God punished Israel because most of the Judeans remained in Babylon instead of returning to their homeland. I don't know how Kinsella determined that "most" of the exiles chose to stay in Babylon. I certainly know of no biblical passage that says this, but I really don't doubt that many of the exiles did stay in Babylon. After all, the captivity had lasted from 597 BC to about 538 BC for one group and from 587 to 538 BC for the second wave of captives. In other words, at least two entire generations had been born in Babylon and had grown up there, so they would have considered this their home just as children of immigrants today would prefer the country in which they were born and had grown up in if their parents and grandparents should return to their homeland. Kinsella and his like-minded cohorts apparently think that the failure of some of the exiles to return to Judah was a sin for which Yahweh brought punishment upon them, but that is a premise that they need to prove. I won't let them just assume it. Besides, what kind of god would punish an entire ethnic group because some of their ancestors had wanted to stay in the land of their birth? If Yahweh really did this, as Kinsella speculates, then he acted contrary to his decree that the "righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezek. 18:20).

There are some more problems with Kinsella's conjecture--or rather the conjecture that he has appropriated--that Yahweh decided to punish Jews in general because some of the exiles chose to remain in Babylon. Problem one: most 20th-century Jews chose to remain in the countries of their birth instead of emigrating to Israel in 1948, and even today, there are many more Jews living outside of Israel than in it. How, then, does Kinsella and his cohorts explain Yahweh's failure to continue the punishment of the Jews beyond 1948? After all, if Yahweh really did extend punishment of the Jews to AD 1948 because some of the Babylonian captives had refused to return to their homeland, why would he not punish modern Jews who chose to remain in other countries instead of returning to Israel? I guess consistency just isn't one of Yahweh's attributes. Anyway, according to Kinsella's "logic," Yahweh could not restore Israel until every single Jew living in other countries agreed to return to the homeland of their ancestors. There wouldn't be enough land to hold all of them if they should decide to do that. Problem two: Daniel was one of those who was responsible for God's sevenfold magnification of their punishment, because in the first year of his reign, Cyrus issued a decree allowing the Judeans to return to their homes, but Daniel 10:1 claims that Daniel had received a vision during the third year of the reign of Cyrus, so Daniel was evidently one of those who chose to remain in Babylonia. I wonder why Yahweh chose a disobedient reprobate like Daniel to write one of his "inspired" books.

A second claim in Kinsella's statement above was that "the remaining 360 years of [the Jew's] punishment" was multiplied by 7 "because most of the exiles had chosen to remain in Babylon." Before I look again at Kinsella's misapplication of Leviticus 26:7-8, I need to point out a problem with the 390 years of Ezekiel 4:5 that Kinsella has been crowing about. I mentioned that problem earlier, but now it is time to show that there is good reason to suspect that this passage in Ezekiel originally said that 150 "days" [years] rather than 390 had been appointed for the punishment of the house of Israel.

I hate to take the wind out of Kinsella's sails, but the 390 and 40 "days," which equaled 430 years in the one-day-equals-one-year formula, involve a point of controversy that I am sure he is completely unaware of. Most prophecy-fulfillment proponents don't bother to look farther than the ends of their noses when they are trying to find amazing prophecy fulfillments, but if Kinsella had done a little research rather than just recycled a prophecy-fulfillment claim that probably sounded impressive to him when he first encountered it, he might have discovered that there is a variation of the numbers in other versions of Ezekiel 4. In the Septuagint, for example, verses 4-6 read like this in Brenton's translation. I will emphasize in bold print expressions and numbers to which Kinsella should have given more attention than he did.

And thou [Ezekiel] shalt lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquities of the house of Israel upon it, according to the number of the hundred and fifty days during which thou shalt lie upon it: and thou shall bear their iniquities. For I have appointed thee their iniquities for a hundred and ninety days: so thou shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Israel. And thou shalt accomplish this and then shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Juda for forty days: I have appointed thee a day for a year.

Let's notice first that the Septuagint gave 150 days as the period of time that Ezekiel would "bear the iniquities" of the house of Israel and 40 days for the iniquities of the house of Judah, which totaled 190 "days" [years] that Yahweh had appointed for Ezekiel to bear their [Israel's and Judah's] iniquities. The Septuagint was a 3rd-century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, but most English translations were derived from the Masoretic Hebrew text whose earliest existing copies dated from about the 11th century AD. Hence, the Septuagint reading should be given serious consideration, since it was derived from Hebrew manuscripts that were much closer to the Hebrew "originals." Kinsella and his cohorts, then, should show us evidence that the 390 days of Ezekiel 4:5 was the original reading and not a variation that resulted from careless copying or deliberate editing. I will show later that there are good reasons to suspect that a deliberate editing of Ezekiel 4:5-6 was done after the 190-day reading resulted in a prophecy failure. Some editor(s), probably recognizing the failure, tried to gloss over it by tacking on 200 more days to push the fulfillment well beyond the postexilic period.

I will come back to this later, but first I want to remind everyone that the text in Ezekiel clearly spoke of two punishments: the iniquity of the house of Israel and the iniquity of the house of Judah. Hence, there were two separate "iniquities" that Ezekiel was to bear: (1) the iniquity of the house of Israel for 150 or 390 days (depending on which reading is accepted as the intended one), and (2) the iniquity of the house of Judah for 40 days. Two separate time periods are clearly identified in the text, so the most sensible interpretation of these references is that Ezekiel was writing about two different captivities, the captivities of Israel (the northern kingdom) by Assyria, which occurred in 734 and 722 BC, and the captivity of Judah, which occurred in 597 BC, when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar, and again in 587 when Babylon captured Jerusalem a second time. As I explained above, Israel's captivity by Assyria is recorded in 2 Kings 15-17, and Judah's captivity by Babylonia is recorded in 2 Kings 24-25 and Jeremiah 52, so Kinsella is distorting the obviously intended meaning of the text when he adds 390 and 40 to get one continuous period of 430 years. He can't even prove that Ezekiel 4:5-6 originally said 390 "days" [years] instead of 150, as the Septuagint version reads.

Why is it reasonable to suspect that the Septuagint reading of 150 days was the likely number that Ezekiel originally used in reference to the iniquity of the house of Israel? Well, by Ezekiel's time, the prophecies of Isaiah that Israel (the northern kingdom) would be returned had not been fulfilled, and to complicate matters, Judah, the southern kingdom had been taken into captivity too. Ezekiel 4:1ff, then, was just another prophetic attempt to predict that Yahweh would bring his people out of captivity. If, then, we accept the one-day-equals-one-year formula stated in Ezekiel 4:6, the meaning of the prophecy becomes that Israel (the northern kingdom) would be in captivity for 150 (or 390) years and Judah 40 years. The date of the final Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom was 722 BC, but there was an earlier, partial deportation in 734 BC (see 2 Kings 15:29ff). If 150 is subtracted from 722 (the year of the most extensive deportation), that would bring us to 572 BC. In 597 BC, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar and a partial deportation of Judah occurred at that time (2 Kings 24), and a later, deportation occurred in 586 BC, so if 40 is subtracted from 586 BC, this would bring us to 546. If 40 is subtracted from 597 BC, that would bring us to 557 BC. Hence, if the 150 days is accepted as the more likely number that was originally in Ezekiel 4:5, this would have Ezekiel prophesying that the two captivities would end at about the same time.

That "Ezekiel" was so prophesying is consistent with the circumstances in which this book was written. The writer of Ezekiel claimed to be an exile living near Babylon.

Ezekiel 1:1 In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. 2 On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), 3 the word of Yahweh came to the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of Yahweh was on him there.

Here is an example of the confusion that has resulted from a garbled text that was likely caused by frequent editing and revising. If the heavens were opened to Ezekiel in "the thirtieth year," this would have been the 30th year of what? If it was the "fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin," as verse two says, it could not have been the 30th year of the exile, because, as we noticed above, Jehoiachin surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar in the eighth year of the latter's reign (2 Kings 24:12) and was taken to Babylon (2 Kings 24:15). As also noted above, the eighth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar would have been 597 BC. Hence, the "thirtieth year" of verse 1 cannot be the thirtieth year of the captivity unless this is a part of Ezekiel that has been corrupted through the frequent editing and revising that mainstream scholars have recognized is characteristic of the book in general.

This, however, is incidental to my point. "Ezekiel" claimed to be an exile living near Babylon, and throughout his book, either he or his redactors made frequent references to the return of Jews from the many lands into which they had been scattered. I have already shown that Ezekiel 4:1-8 is one such example of this interest. The others are too numerous to quote, but the passage below is typical of the belief of that time that Yahweh would gather "his people" back from all of the nations where they had been dispersed.

Ezekiel 34:11 For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14 I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

One would have to be completely devoid of literary interpretation skills not to see that passages like this were promising a return of all the Jews from the lands they had been taken to and not just a return of the Judean captives in Babylon. The recurrence of this theme in Ezekiel makes it likely that 4:5 originally fixed the length of punishment for the house of Israel at 150 rather than 390 "days" [years]. In other words, the Septuagint translators, working in the third century BC, very likely were using a Hebrew text of Ezekiel that used 150 "days" [years] in 4:5. Thus when Ezekiel predicted that the punishment of the house of Israel would last 150 years [days] and that, contrary to what Jeremiah thought, the punishment of the house of Judah would last 40 years [days], he was predicting, as noted above, that repatriation of the two houses would happen about the same time. As time passed, however, it became obvious that the exiles from the house of Israel had not been gathered back to their homeland within the 150 years predicted by Ezekiel, so a later editor changed the 150 days to 390. That time, however, has long passed too, and the exiles of the house of Israel or the northern kingdom remain the lost tribes of Israel. Hence, rather than being an example of amazingly accurate prophecy fulfillment, Ezekiel 4:5-6 is an example of a prophecy that failed miserably.

Kinsella:
The reason [why punishment was multiplied by seven] is explained in [the] Bible's book of Leviticus. (Leviticus 26:18, 26:21, 26:24 and 26:28). In Leviticus, it says that if the people did not repent while being punished, the punishment would be multiplied by 7. And, by staying in pagan Babylon, most exiles were refusing to repent.

Till:
I have already commented on Kinsella's misapplication of the first part of Leviticus 26 One of my points in those comments was that Kinsella is merely speculating when he says that "staying in pagan Babylon" was a refusal to repent. Did Daniel, the author of one of Yahweh's "inspired" books," refuse to repent when he stayed in Babylon? Are all of the modern Jews who have chosen to live outside of Israel refusing to repent? These are little problems with Kinsella's prophecy interpretation that probably never occurred to him, but to give him a fair hearing, let's look now at the other verses in this chapter that he just cited.

Leviticus 26:18 And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins.

Leviticus 26:21 If you continue hostile to me, and will not obey me, I will continue to plague you sevenfold for your sins.

Leviticus 26:24 (T)hen I too will continue hostile to you: I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins.

Leviticus 26:28 I will continue hostile to you in fury; I in turn will punish you myself sevenfold for your sins.

I use the New Revised Standard Version because I think its modern language is easier to understand than the KJV, which Kinsella apparently uses. However, even if I used the KJV myself, I would have quoted the verses above from the NRSV, because they make clear something that Kinsella is apparently unaware of. The KJV says that Yahweh would punish the Israelites "seven times" for their sins, but the NRSV says that Yahweh would punish them "sevenfold." This translation recognizes that the word times is not in the Hebrew text, so literally the verses quoted above were saying that Yahweh would punish or strike or plague the Israelites seven[fold] for their sins. The idea of multiplication of a time period is simply not present in the text. As I will show, that is something that Kinsella and his like-minded cohorts are reading into it.

That multiplication was probably not meant in the Leviticus passages can be seen from the one time that the word more was used in Leviticus 26. This was in verse 18, where the KJV has Yahweh saying that he would punish the Israelites "seven times more for [their] sins." There is a word for more in the Hebrew text, but that word was yâcaph, which Strong defined like this.

3254. yacaph, yaw-saf'; a prim. root; to add or augment (often adv. to continue to do a thing):-- add, X again, X any more, X cease, X come more, + conceive again, continue, exceed, X further, X gather together, get more, give moreover, X henceforth, increase (more and more), join, X longer (bring, do, make, much, put), X (the, much, yet) more (and more), proceed (further), prolong, put, be [strong-] er, X yet, yield.

I am not expert enough in Hebrew to claim any expertise, but I did study it at the Bible college I attended and have reviewed it enough to understand that the KJV translation of Leviticus 26:18 may not capture the meaning of the Hebrew text as well as the NRSV and other versions. The definition of yâcaph above would certainly allow for the idea that Yahweh was simply saying that he would add or augment or increase or continue the punishment of the Israelites sevenfold. In other words, if one wants to read the text with a strictly literal eye, why couldn't the verse mean that if Yahweh punished the Israelites with a plague and yet they didn't repent, he would then send, say, another plague, a drought, a crop failure, a flood, a famine, a decimation of their flocks by wild beasts, and an enemy invasion. The example is hypothetic, but it is entirely consistent with what the verse says, because after Yahweh had punished the Israelites, he would have then sent seven more specific punishments upon them. Hence, he would have punished them sevenfold for their failure to repent. Let Kinsella tell us why the verse could not mean this.

If he does reply to this--and I don't think there is a chance in the world that he will--he may want to examine the following passages that also used the Hebrew word yâcaph.

Genesis 30:24 24 (A)nd she [Rachel] named him Joseph, saying, "May Yahweh add [yâcaph] to me another son!"

Deuteronomy 4:2 You must neither add [yâcaph] anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of Yahweh your God with which I am charging you.

Deuteronomy 12:32 You must diligently observe everything that I command you; do not add [yâcaph] to it or take anything from it.

2 Kings 20:5 "Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, Thus says Yahweh, the God of your ancestor David: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh. 6 I will add [yâcaph] fifteen years to your life.

Isaiah 38:5 "Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says Yahweh, the God of your ancestor David: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; I will add [yâcaph] fifteen years to your life.

Jeremiah 45:3 You said, "Woe is me! Yahweh has added [yâcaph] sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest."

I could quote several other passages, but these are sufficient to make the point that yâcaph in Hebrew often conveyed the sense of "adding." Kinsella has tried to make this same word mean multiply in Leviticus 26. I have checked two concordances, but I was unable to find even one place in the Old Testament where this word was translated with the English word multiply or any of its derivatives. Will Kinsella come out of hiding and address this issue?

Will pigs fly someday?

As I pointed out above, Leviticus 26 is in a broader context in which Yahweh was warning "his people" of dire consequences if they were disobedient after crossing into Canaan. Hence, Kinsella and his prophecy-fulfillment cohorts are flagrantly distorting the text when they try to apply it to events that were at that time far distant in the future. That, however, is just one distortion of the text. Any reasonable person who reads the verses above in context should see that they were warning of an increase in the intensity of punishment rather than the duration of punishment.

To see this, one has only to examine in context the verses that Kinsella cited as proof of his position. As I mentioned earlier, beginning with Leviticus 25, "Moses" related laws that Yahweh had presumably spoken to him on Mt. Sinai. These laws were primarily concerned with the usage of the land and other possessions that Yahweh was giving them at the end of their 40-year trek in the wilderness. Yahweh made all kinds of promises. If the people would do this, Yahweh would do that; if the people would do so-and-so, Yahweh would do this and that, but after the promise of blessings came the inevitable warning that if the Israelites did not toe the line, Yahweh would punish them severely.

We can clearly see this meaning if we look at the verses that preceded each verse that Kinsella cited. In showing the broader contexts, I will emphasize in bold print each verse that Kinsella cited so that readers can better see what they were referring to.

Leviticus 26:13 I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. 14 But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments, 15 if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant, 16 I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you; consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. 17 I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you. 18 And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins.

For verse 18, which contains the sevenfold warning, to be applicable to the refusal of some Judeans to return to their homeland after Cyrus had issued his decree, Kinsella would have to show that Yahweh had first brought terror upon those who stayed in Babylon and that they had been afflicted with fever that wasted their eyes and caused their lives to waste away, and so on, but Kinsella has no evidence that Yahweh ever brought any such punishments on the exiles who stayed in Babylon. The text above was directed to those who would go into Canaan, but it says nothing about those who would go into captivities. Its obvious meaning was that when the people who went into Canaan disobeyed Yahweh's commandments, he would punish them with various afflictions, which he would increase sevenfold if they then refused to repent. Notice, however, that the passage says nothing at all about a duration of time; it speaks instead of severity or intensity of punishment.

Overkill isn't necessary, so I will quote the entire passage in which the three other verses cited by Kinsella appear. Readers should easily see that the full context was saying that the punishments suffered would happen in their land and not in a land they would be exiled to and that the severity and not the duration of their punishments would be increased.

Leviticus 26:19 I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper. 20 Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. 21 If you continue hostile to me, and will not obey me, I will continue to plague you sevenfold for your sins. 22 I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted. 23 If in spite of these punishments you have not turned back to me, but continue hostile to me, 24 then I too will continue hostile to you: I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. 25 I will bring the sword against you, executing vengeance for the covenant; and if you withdraw within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into enemy hands. 26 When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven, and they shall dole out your bread by weight; and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. 27 But if, despite this, you disobey me, and continue hostile to me, 28 I will continue hostile to you in fury; I in turn will punish you myself sevenfold for your sins.

Notice that this passage very clearly referred to what would happen in "your land" and "your cities" and not to lands and cities to which they would be exiled. It was clearly a warning that the Israelites had better shape up after they entered the land or else Yahweh would bring famine, pestilence, plagues, and such like upon them. Not once, did the text speak of how many years these punishments would endure but always spoke of intensity. Thus, the warnings of a "sevenfold" punishment were obviously referring to severity or intensity and not to their duration. In other words, the passage was referring to specific punishments like pestilence, crop failures, attacks from wild animals, and so on that Yahweh would send upon the disobedient Israelites. By saying, "I will continue to plague you," the words that "Moses" put into the mouth of Yahweh obviously meant that he would increase sevenfold the kinds of punishments, and it cannot be pressed to mean that he would multiply sevenfold the length or duration of the punishments. If Kinsella will bother to check, he should see that no references are made anywhere to how long the duration of the punishments would be.

Clearly, this passage was warning that if the Israelites did not behave in their own land, they would be punished seven times for their sins, which was an expression that probably wasn't intended any more literally than when Jesus told Peter that he should forgive his brother not just seven times but seven times seven (Matt. 18:22). I suppose that Kinsella would understand this to mean that one could keep records and after he had forgiven someone 49 times, he could refuse to forgive him after that. In other words, seven was a number that denoted perfection or, in the case of Leviticus 26, severity or intensity. It is pure conjecture for Kinsella and his prophecy-fulfillment fanatics to claim that it denoted length or duration.

At any rate, anyone who continues to read on in Leviticus 26 will see that these were warnings of what would happen to the Israelites when they came into their own land if they did not obey Yahweh's laws. If Kinsella had bothered to read on, he should have seen that. Verse 31, for example, says, "I will make your cities a waste and will bring your sanctuaries into desolation." The next verse says, "And I will bring the land into desolation." Verse 33 did threaten that the people would be "scattered among the nations," but Yahweh then immediately returned to the land and what would happen to their land if they didn't shape up: "And your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste." The broader context of the verses that Kinsella cited shows that this entire chapter, as well as the one before it, was warning of the consequences of disobedience that the Israelites would suffer after they had crossed into Canaan.

In no way was this passage speaking in the sense of a literal seven. The concept was severity. If the Israelites didn't shape up after they had come into their land, Yahweh would punish them severely, and then if they didn't repent, he would punish them even more severely [sevenfold]. What is there in this passage that justifies picking four verses completely out of context and applying them to the captivities of the Israelites that would occur centuries later? And how does Kinsella get "years" out of this text in Leviticus? It simply says that Yahweh would punish them sevenfold for their sins; it doesn't say that he would multiple the length of their punishments by seven.

The sevenfold-punishment part of Kinsella's prophecy-fulfillment claim is pure assumption. There is, in fact, another scripture that implies that the Jews didn't think that Yahweh had some invariable law that required sevenfold punishment for disobedience. In a song of "deliverance" characteristic of his belief that better times were coming, Isaiah said that Yahweh was ending a double penalty for Israel's sins.

Isaiah 40:1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

Here is a passage that does speak of punishment in language that implies duration or a penalty "term" that Israel had served. Isaiah said that this had been a "double" penalty. If Isaiah had thought that sevenfold punishment was an invariable principle that Yahweh applied to sins, why didn't he say that Israel had served a sevenfold penalty for all her sins? Where exactly, then, did Kinsella get the idea that God was so angered by the refusal of some Jews to return to their homeland that he punished them by multiplying the length of their exile until AD 1948? If there is any truth to this assumption of his, then why didn't Yahweh extend their exile again when many Jews didn't return to their "homeland" when Israel was proclaimed a nation in 1948? How many Jews now live in the United States? In Canada? In France? In Italy? In Spain? In England? In Russia? In Poland? In various other countries? Why wasn't Yahweh ticked off that these Jews didn't return to their homeland when they had the opportunity? Just why did the refusal of some Jews in the 6th century BC to return to their homeland cause Yahweh to extend the length of their exile seven times, but when far many more Jews in 1948 didn't return to the Jewish "homeland," Yahweh didn't seem to care?

These are questions that I challenge Kinsella to answer, but I suspect that we will have to wait a long, long time to see any effort from him to reply to this rebuttal article.

Kinsella:
So, if you take the remaining 360 years of punishment and multiply by 7, you get 2,520 years.

Till:
This is where Kinsella's prophecy-fulfillment scenario gets even more ridiculous than the parts that I have dismantled above. First, he errs by assuming that Ezekiel 4:5-6 was predicting one extended period of punishment, but I have shown that this text was actually speaking of two periods of punishment, one for the house of Israel and one for the house of Judah. These were not periods where one began, then ended, and the second one began; they were periods that overlapped. All of this was established above, so I don't need to speak any further to this distortion of the text. Second, Kinsella assumed that the text in Ezekiel 4 originally assigned a period of 390 "days" [years] to the punishment of the house of Israel, but I showed that there are good reasons to think that 390 days resulted from a later revision of the text, which had originally assigned only 150 "days" [years] for the punishment of Israel. Third, after getting 430 years by adding Ezekiel's questionable 390 years for the house of Israel to his 40 years for the house of Judah, Kinsella then took Jeremiah's 70-year period of captivity for Judah rather than Ezekiel's 40-year prediction and subtracted 70 from 430 to get the "remaining 360 years of punishment" that he referred to immediately above. Since Ezekiel said that the punishment of the house of Judah would last for 40 "days" or years, Kinsella needs to explain why he didn't subtract 40 from 430 to get 390 "remaining years" of punishment. He has pulled a slick one that probably went right over the heads of his readers, because Bible fundamentalists aren't too sharp about checking the claims of spin doctors like Jack Kinsella. If a prophecy-fulfillment claim sounds good, they will accept it uncritically.

A fourth problem in Kinsella's statement above is his appeal to Leviticus 26 to justify multiplying by seven his 360 years, a formula that he obtained by flawed mathematics, to get 2,520 years. Let's notice now how Kinsella went further astray from the probable meaning of both Ezekiel 4 and Leviticus 26.

Kinsella:
That is 2,520 Jewish lunar years. 2,520 years x the 360-day lunar calendar works out to 907,200 days. Divide that by 365 and you come up with 2485.479 years.

Till:
A serious flaw in Kinsella's math is apparent to anyone who knows the real length of a solar year, which is actually 365.242 days and not 365. The fraction of a day has been compensated for by the addition of leap-year days in both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. The Julian calendar was based on a 365.25-day year, but over extended periods, this still caused seasons to drift; hence, the Julian calendar was replaced by the 365.242-day year of the Gregorian calendar to synchronize more perfectly the seasons with the sun. If we divide Kinsella's 907,200 days by 365.242, we will get 2,483.8326 solar years and not the 2485.479 in his scenario, and if Kinsella is going to claim amazing accuracy in the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy, he must be more exact in his calculations than he was in postulating the fulfillment on a 365-day year, because May 14, 1948, is a Gregorian date in a calendar based on a 365.242-day year. If Kinsella's calculations are otherwise correct--and, as I will show, they aren't--the nation of Israel would have had to have been restored 1.646 years or 19.75 months before May 14, 1948, in order to have an "exact" fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy" (as Kinsella is interpreting it). In other words, the "restoration" of Israel would have had to have happened around October 24, 1946, for Kinsella's fulfillment claim to have been exact and to the day.

Kinsella's scenario is typical of the kind of silly shenanigans that charlatans like him pull to deceive their gullible sycophants. Does it ever occur to any of them to ask why God didn't just say that the punishment of Israel and Judah would endure for 907,200 days rather than hiding his meaning in some kind of secret code that could be understood only by a select few (the "select few" being those like Kinsella who appoint themselves as experts on the meaning of biblical prophecies)?

To further dismantle this part of Kinsella's scenario, let's notice that even though the Jews used a lunar calendar, their calendar was based on a 365-day solar year. If Kinsella had bothered to research this subject instead of just parroting what he read in fundamentalist articles about prophecy fulfillment, he would have discovered this. Prophecy-fulfillment buffs try to make a distinction between solar years and so-called Bible or "prophetic" years by assigning 365 days to the solar year but only 360 days to a Bible or prophetic year. As Kinsella did in his article, they try to dazzle readers with their "expertise" by assuming that prophecies like Ezekiel 4, which speak of "years," meant so-called "prophetic years" of 360 days each. They then convert these alleged "prophetic years" to a specific number of days by multiplying the "prophetic years" by 360. Finally, they divide the number of days by 365 to get the number of solar years that would have passed to get to the time of the prophecy fulfillment. Hence, in the case of Ezekiel 4, Kinsella added (incorrectly, as I have shown above) the 390 years of Israel's punishment to the 40 years of Judah's punishment to get 430 years, which he then reduced to 360 by subtracting Jeremiah's 70 years instead of Ezekiel's 40 years for the punishment of Judah. After all of this verbal legerdemain, he multiplied 360 by 7 to get 2,520 years, a step that he justified by falsely applying statements in Leviticus 7. Then, he multiplied 2,520 by 360 years on the grounds that the Jews used a lunar calendar of 360 days, after which he then divided 907,200 (2,520 x 360) by 365 to get the number of "solar years" that were to pass in the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy.

Anyone who thinks that God would use such a complicated formula as this to date his prophecies really should seek professional help, but the pathetic thing about it is that Kinsella's sycophants are too uncritical to see that this pat little formula is seriously flawed. First of all, Kinsella's source of all of this prophetic flapdoodle failed to recognize that the Jews of biblical times were well aware that there were more than just 360 days in a year, and they reflected this recognition in their calendar. The Jewish calendar was planned around the recognition that having only 360 days in a year would cause the seasons to drift gradually and make it difficult to keep track of when planting and harvesting seasons would begin. Hence, the Jewish calendar would intercalate an additional or 13th month at intervals of 3, 6, 11, 14, 17, and 19 years (The Bible Dictionary, Inter-Varsity Press, 1994, p. 159), which had the effect of keeping the seasons synchronized with the solar year. There are some biblical passages that seemed to round off years in terms of twelve months, but that is hardly evidence that when a prophet spoke in terms of years, he always meant 360-day years. The fact is, as I will show below, there were no 360-day years at all in the Hebrew calendar. Their years ranged from 353 to 385 days in length. Hence, if Kinsella is going to put such a key element as a 360-day year into his fulfillment scenario, he needs to prove that the prophecy in question was intended to be calculated in terms of 360-day years. He presented no such evidence; he merely asserted that it was this way.

A second flaw in Kinsella's fulfillment scenario is that he is claiming an exact, to-the-very-day fulfillment on May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its independence, but he didn't give us a beginning date for Ezekiel's "countdown." As readers can see, the absence of a beginning date is very obvious in the continuation of his fulfillment scenario.

Kinsella:
2,485.479 years from 536 BC brings us to the end of the first quarter of the year 1949-- exactly one year after Israel's restoration in 1948. But 1 BC and 1 AD were the same, so the actual date on our calendar that Ezekiel predicted the restoration of Israel corresponds to late spring, 1948!

Till:
I suppose the exclamation point at the end of his statement was supposed to make us think that he had made a startling discovery, but this guy is so calendrically ignorant that he thinks that 1 BC and 1 AD were the same. They were not the same. In his confusion, Kinsella was probably thinking that there was no year zero, but that is not the same as saying that 1 BC and 1 AD were the same. In reality, 1 BC ended, and then 1 AD began. They were not the same, and anyone who wants to verify this can go to Rosetta Calendar conversion service (which I will refer to again below and explain in more detail) and see that January 1, 1 BC, in the proleptic Gregorian calendar was Julian Day Number 1721060 and January 1, AD 1, in the same proleptic calendar was Julian Day Number 1721426. When JDN 1721060 (January 1, 1 BC) is subtracted from JDN 1721426 (January 1, 1 AD), the answer is 366. (Since there was no year zero, 1 BC was a leap year with 366 days, so in BC proleptic calendars, leap years fell in odd-numbered years.) The important point, however, is that the JDN numbers show that Kinsella was flat out wrong when he said that 1 BC and 1 AD were the same year. If he doesn't know any better than this, he certainly has no business claiming that he has found an exact, to-the-very-day prophecy fulfillment.

What I said above about Julian Day Numbers may be incomprehensible to those who know nothing about JDNs, but my comments further along will explain what they mean and how they are used by astronomers and historians to determine exactly when events happened. It should then be clear why JDNs are a more exact way to determine the exact number of days that passed between a beginning and an ending point.

Aside from the problem I identified above in Kinsella's pat little theory, we have to wonder how he can know that 2,485.479 years from 536 BC would take us to late spring of AD 1948? Where in 536 BC did he begin his countdown? From the first month? The second month? The third month? Where? You just can't know that 2485.479 years or 907,200 days passed from a beginning point until May 14, AD 1948, unless you know the exact date of that beginning point.

The problem is that Kinsella was so unfamiliar with this fulfillment scenario that he forgot to include a beginning date in 536 BC so that we could test his theory to see if exactly 907,200 days had passed from that specific date to May 14, 1948, the specific date when Israel declared its independence. Better informed proponents of this fulfillment scenario claim that the countdown began on the first day of Nisan in 536 BC. This gives a more specific scenario that can be tested, and the tests will show that it won't work, but before I show that, let's first assume that the countdown began with the first day of the year 536 BC.

If we begin the countdown at January 1, 536 BC, in a proleptic Gregorian calendar, and since Kinsella's fulfillment date was a Gregorian date, to test the accuracy of his claim, we must proleptically project the Gregorian calendar back to 536 BC. (Proleptic calendars are routinely used by astronomers and historians, a fact that can be verified by checking a calendric conversion site.) When this is done, we find that from Gregorian January 1, 536 BC, until the last day of Gregorian BC 1, 536 years or 195,769.71 days (536 X 365.242) would have passed. From the first day of Gregorian AD 1 through December 31, 1947, in the Gregorian calendar, 1,947 years or 711,126.17 days (1,947 x 365.242) would have passed. Hence, from Gregorian January 1, 536 BC, through Gregorian December 31, 1947 AD, 2,483 years (536 + 1947 = 2483) or 906,895.88 days (195,769.71 + 711,126.17 = 906,895.88) would have passed. From January 1, 1948, to May 14, 1948, there were 135 days (January 31 + February 29 + March 31 + April 30 + May 14 = 135). Hence, from the very first day of 536 BC through May 14, 1948 AD, there were only 907,030.88 days (906,895.88 + 135 = 907.030.88). If we round off the fraction, we have only 907,031 days, which is 169 days short of the 907,200 days in Kinsella's scenario. Since it would be impossible to begin the countdown from 536 BC any earlier than the very first day of that year, it isn't possible to begin the countdown at any time in 536 BC and get the 907,200 days claimed in Kinsella's scenario. So much for his amazing, to-the-very day fulfillment of Ezekiel 4:5-6!

We can double check my calculations by the Julian-Day-Number system which astronomers and historians use to date events without having to rely on imperfect calendars. A good layman's explanation of Julian Day Numbers can be found at the site that I just linked to, and I would suggest that readers unfamilar with JDNs go there and read the article before continuing in this article. Simply stated, Julian Day Numbers number days consecutively without reference to months, days, and years. Hence, each day is assigned a number instead of a date like August 28, AD 2004, the date on which I am writing this article. The JDN for this date is 2453246 or, in other words, the 2,453,246th day from Julian 1 January 4713 BC, which Joseph Justus Scaliger, the inventor of the system, obtained by projecting the Julian calendar back into time. Although particular days in the past may have different dates on the different calendars, the JDN will always be the same regardless of what calendar is used. For example proleptic Gregorian January 1, 536 BC, would have been proleptic Julian January 7, 536 BC, but the JDN for that day would have been the same, 1525656. In the Hebrew calendar, this date would have been 9 Shevat 3225, but again the JDN would have been the same, 1525656.

With this information in mind, anyone reading this can go to a calendar conversion site and locate the JDNs necessary to check my calculations above. I use the Rosetta Calendar conversion service, and it shows, as I noted above, that the JDN for Gregorian January 1, 536 BC, was 1525656. It shows that the JDN for May 14, AD 1948, was 2432686. When JDN 1525656 (Gregorian January 1, 536 BC) is subtracted from JDN 2432686 (Gregorian May 14, AD 1948) the answer obtained is 907,030. Hence, the JDN system tells us that 907,030 days separated Gregorian January 1, 536 BC, from Gregorian May 14, AD 1948, the same number that I obtained above in my clumsier way of calculating the number of days that passed from the first day of the year 536 BC to the date of Israel's restoration in 1948. Hence, two methods of precise calculations have shown us that it would have been impossible for 907,200 days to have passed from any date in 536 BC to the restoration of Israel in AD 1948. As I explained above, it would be impossible to start a countdown from 536 BC any earlier than the very first day of that year.

Now that everyone understands how Julian Day Numbers work, I can use them to show that Kinsella is wrong when he says that the Jewish year was just 360 days long. Using again the Rosetta Calendar will show that the Hebrew year 3226, which overlapped with Gregorian 436 BC, began on 1 Tishri, whose JDN was 1525914, and ended on 29 Elul, whose JDN was 1526268. Hence, there were only 354 days (1526268 - 1525914 = 354) in the Hebrew year 3226 (436/435 BC), so we immediately see that Kinsella is wrong in saying that the Hebrew year consisted of twelve 30-day months. (In fact, we will soon seen that there were no 360-day years at all in the Hebrew calendar.) A lunar cycle is about 29.5 days in length, so necessarily some months in a lunar calendar had 29 days and some had 30, and this caused variations from 353 to 355 days in Hebrew common years. If we go to Hebrew year 3227, we find that it had 353 days. It began with 1 Tishri, whose JDN was 1526269, and ended with 29 Elul, whose JDN was 1526622, so 1526622 - 1526269 = 353. If this kind of calendar had continued, the seasons would have drifted to a point that predicting planting and harvesting seasons would have been difficult if not impossible. Hence, the Hebrews, as noted above would intercalate a 13th month (Adar II) at different intervals. The Hebrew year 3228, for example, was a leap year that had two months of Adar. That year began with 1 Tishri, whose JDN was 1526623, and ended with 29 Elul, whose JDN was 1527007. Subtracting 1526623 from 1527007 shows that there were 384 days in this year. The extra days resulted from the addition of a second month of Adar. These leap years that added a second month of Adar at intervals of 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 years had the effect of keeping the Jewish calendar synchronized with the solar year. An analysis of the Hebrew calendar, which is too long to quote here, will explain that "common years" in this calendar would have 353, 354, or 355 days and that leap years would have 383, 384, or 385 days. Curiously, a Hebrew year never had 360 days as Kinsella claimed. So much for his expertise on the length of biblical years.

Since Jewish years were designed to average 365 days over time, I will challenge Kinsella to tell us why we should not think that Ezekiel 4:5-6 was written with this kind of year in mind. His scenario of 2,520 years in Ezekiel's prophecy would take us from 536 BC to AD 1984 (536 + 1984 = 2,520) if this prophecy, as Kinsella has interpreted it, was speaking of normal Jewish years that averaged 365 days rather than the 360-day years that Kinsella has hypothesized without justification. Let him show us that Ezekiel was not speaking of years that were the length calculated in the Jewish calendar.

Kinsella's scenario, which he appropriated from someone else, is clearly wrong, and I defy him to show on his website that I have miscalcuated. I hope this will be a warning for readers to be very careful before they accept prophecy-fulfillment claims from those who think that they have figured out exact, to-the-very-day fulfillments of biblical prophecies. Those claims are almost a dime a dozen, and none of them can withstand the kind of scrutiny to which I have subjected Kinsella's scenario.

Kinsella:
1948 -- the Year of the Countdown, counts down in both directions. It counts down with staggering precision to the exact point in history when the fig tree would once again blossom.

Till:
I have completely dismantled Kinsella's fulfillment scenario and shown that there is no precision at all to it and certainly no "staggering" precision, unless Kinsella wants to argue that missing a to-the-very-day fulfillment by 170 days would be "staggering precision."

I defy him to reply to my rebuttal and show that his scenario was "staggeringly" precise and my rebuttal of it is flawed. He will find that he just can't argue with the precision of Julian Day Numbers, which I doubt that he has any familiarity with at all.

Kinsella:
That event triggered the Second Countdown -- the one that signals the end of the Church Age. It is somewhat less precise, for obvious reasons.

Jesus said no man would ever be able to calculate the exact day and time, but He did tell us we would know when 'it was near, even at the door', [sic] saying, "This generation shall not pass, until all be fulfilled."

Till:
At this point, Kinsella switched to a claim he had made at the beginning of his article, which is that the restoration of Israel in 1948 was the "fig tree" that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24

Matthew 24:32 "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

Before I comment further, let's look at Kinsella's remarks below to see how he tried to distort this passage.

Kinsella:
The current Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, fought in the 1948 War of Independence. He is still around. And so are we. So the 'fig tree' generation has not yet passed from the scene.

Till:
To dismantle this part of Kinsella's fulfillment claim would require almost as much space as I have taken to expose the flaws and absurdities in his distortion of Ezekiel 4:5-6, so I will write a second article in this series to show that when Jesus said that "this generation" would not pass away till all these things have taken place, he meant the generation of his time. However, since that prophecy failed, diehard inerrantists have tried all sorts of shenanigans to make this text not mean what it was obviously saying, but I will have to save the details for my second article.

Kinsella:
And it won't before the Return of Christ. Which could be any minute now.

Till:
I am now 71 years old, and all of my life, I have heard demagogues like Kinsella warning that the return of Jesus would happen soon, and before I was born, the same kind of demagogues had predicted the same, but Jesus hasn't returned yet. Furthermore, he will never return, because if he really was an actual historical character--and there are good reasons to doubt that he was--he is dead, has been dead for a long, long time, and will remain dead until the end of time. I suspect, however, that charlatans like Kinsella will be around for just as long still fleecing gullible sheep for $10 per month or whatever they can dupe them into giving. After Ariel Sharon and everyone else of his generation are dead, fools like Kinsella will simply reinterpret prophecies like the ones in Matthew 24 and claim that they meant something else.

There seems to be no cure for ignorance.

Kinsella:
Keep looking up!

Till:
Kinsella can keep looking up if he wants to, but I have better things to do than waste time on religious stupidity.

My second article will, as I pointed out above, dismantle Kinsella's application of the fig-tree passage in Matthew 24. Meanwhile, I defy him to try to answer my rebuttal points in this article, but don't hold your breath until he does. I have conducted private correspondence with him and have learned that he is a coward who likes to preach to the choir on his website, but he isn't about to have his ignorance exposed in a public debate with informed opposition.  Go to Part Two.

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