In defending his claim that Jeremiah accurately predicted that the Jews would be held in Babylonian captivity for 70 years, Dr. Price has, in effect, argued that to disprove his claim I must present "objective evidence" that Jeremiah did not make the prediction. In so doing, he has flouted the widely accepted rule of evidence that requires the asserter to assume the burden of proving his assertion. Basically, the extent of Price's evidence that Jeremiah's prophecy is genuine has been that it is in the book of Jeremiah, the present form of which religious traditionalists believe was written in its entirety by the prophet Jeremiah. In response to this claim, I have shown that (1) two substantially different versions of Jeremiah have been known to exist since the 3rd century B. C. and (2) many very reputable biblical scholars have textually analyzed the book of Jeremiah and determined that it is not the work of just one person but several. These facts cast serious doubt on the one thing that Dr. Price must establish beyond reasonable doubt before he can claim that Jeremiah made an amazingly accurate prophecy statement, and that one thing is that the book was written in its entirety at the time he and other traditionalists claim that it was, i. e., prior to the end of the Babylonian captivity of the Judean Jews.
The Null Hypothesis Again: Dr. Price spent an entire page talking again about my responsibility to prove the "null hypothesis." This section was much too long to permit me to respond to every minute point he tried to make, but a major premise in his argument seemed to be a reiteration of his belief that his position will prevail unless I can prove that it is not true or unless I can prove that a "null hypothesis" is more likely. Never mind that logicians have long recognized that the absence of negative evidence does not constitute positive evidence, just as the absence of positive evidence does not constitute negative evidence. No matter how widely accepted this principle is, Dr. Price seems determined to win by default, even though he hasn't even come close to proving his proposition. Perhaps it is the recognition that he has failed to prove his proposition that has turned him to arguing that he has won by default.
He appealed to the law of noncontradiction, which recognizes that a proposition cannot be both A and not-A at the same time (May/June 1998, p. 6). Hence, he seems to be arguing that if his proposition is A, and I cannot prove not-A, then it must be that A is true. That A and not-A cannot both be simultaneously true is certainly a recognized principle of logic. However, the failure of an opponent to prove not-A does not automatically make A true. It may be that not-A is true, but the opponent was simply unable to establish its truth. Surely, Dr. Price can recognize this. Otherwise, he will have to agree that I am just as entitled to argue that unless he can prove that not-A is untrue, then, by default, I will have established that his proposition A is untrue.
In a long elaboration, he argued that a "hypothesis that has strong statistical support is regarded as a reasonable explanation of the observed" and from this went on to argue that a "common method for validating a hypothesis is to disprove the null hypothesis" or, in other words, to show that "the opposing hypothesis is contrary to the observed evidence" (May/June 1998, p. 6). Dr. Price probably didn't recognize the serious damage that his own line of reasoning has inflicted on his position, because his hypothesis is that Jeremiah, prior to the end of the Judean captivity in Babylon, accurately predicted that the bondage would last for 70 years. There are various "null hypotheses" that could be offered as alternatives to this proposition: (1) Jeremiah did write the prophecy before the end of the captivity, but he intended the number 70 to have the figurative meaning of just a long, indefinite period of time and not 70 literal years. (2) Jeremiah did write the prophecy before the end of the captivity and used 70 in a literal sense, but the actual time of the captivity fell far short of 70 years. (3) Postexilic editings of the book revised sections to make it appear that Jeremiah had accurately predicted the length of the captivity.
In my previous responses, I have already discussed these alternatives to the traditional view that Dr. Price espouses, but I don't recall that he has disproven any of them anywhere close to the "95% level of certitude" that he indicated is necessary (May/June 1998, p. 6) to show that the original hypothesis is "valid." By his own, standards, then he has not proven his hypothesis is true because he has not disproven any of the null hypotheses beyond a 95% level of certitude. How, for example, could he prove beyond a 95% level of certitude that Jeremiah didn't intend the number 70 to be understood in a figurative sense? Many biblical scholars think that this was the case, just as they think that Isaiah intended the number 70 to represent only a long, indefinite period of time in his prophecy that Tyre would be destroyed and forgotten for 70 years (23:15-17). How could Dr. Price or anyone else prove with a 95% level of certitude that Jeremiah did not intend the number 70 to have the same figurative meaning? If he did so intend, then it would not be true that he predicted the exact period of captivity with amazing accuracy. It would only be true that Jeremiah had predicted that the captivity would last for a long period of time, and there is nothing exceptional about a prediction as indefinite as this.
The Second Alternative Hypothesis: As I have shown in earlier responses to Price (see "A Figurative View," July/ August 1997, p. 6), if Jeremiah did intend for the 70 years to be understood literally, then we have a prophecy failure rather than a prophecy fulfillment, because the captivity fell far short of lasting 70 years. In his latest article, Price screamed, "I did not date the prophecy in 605 B. C., Jeremiah did!" (May/June 1998, p. 5), but his problem is that he can't seem to distinguish between when the prophecy was allegedly spoken and when the captivity that it predicted began. He has fixed 605 B. C. as the date when the captivity began, but I have shown (July/August 1997, p. 5) that 597 B. C. was the earliest date that can be assigned to the beginning of the captivity. Jeremiah (25:1) said only that the "word of Yahweh" came to him in the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (which would have been 605 B. C.), but he did not say that the captivity would begin that year. He went on to predict that a captivity in Babylon would happen and that it would last for 70 years (vs:11-12), but there is no way that Price can distort this passage to mean that Jeremiah predicted that the captivity would begin in the first year of Nebuchadnezzar. Price can't seem to distinguish between when Jeremiah said that the revelation came to him and the time that the captivity he prophesied about actually began. The matter is as simple as if someone in our time had claimed that in the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency a psychic insight came to him/her warning that there would be 20 years of famine in Africa. If a famine in Africa should then begin in 1998 and last until 2012, this could not in any sense be considered a remarkable prophecy fulfillment, because the famine did not begin until 6 years after the prediction was made and then lasted only 14 and not 20 years. In other words, 20 years after the time the psychic prediction was made would not be the same as the actual duration of the famine, which would have been only 14 years.
This is exactly the case with Jeremiah's 70-year prophecy. Even if we concede to Price for the sake of argument that Jeremiah wrote this book in its entirety, it would still be true that the captivity began in 597 and not 605 B. C. As I have shown by citing the letter that Jeremiah sent to the captives in Babylon (29:1-14), the prediction of a 70-year captivity was made to those who had been "carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon after that Jeconiah the king and the queen-mother, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen, and the smiths were departed from Jerusalem" (29:1-2), and this event is described in 2 Kings 24:10-17. All of the "objective" historical records that Price has talked about date this event at 597 B. C. when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem the first time. Since Babylon fell in 539 B. C. to Cyrus, who granted in the first year of his reign permission for the Jews to return to their homeland, even if we allow two years for them to return to Jerusalem (as Price demanded), the time involved would still fall 10 years short of 70, not even to mention that the two years the Jews were traveling back to their homeland could hardly be construed as "captivity." Yet Price has leaned over backwards to try to get 70 years out of 58, so it is no wonder that he has been distorting Jeremiah 25:1 to try to make it mean that the captivity began in 605 B. C. He needs as many years as he can scrounge up, but even if we allowed him to date the beginning of the captivity from 605 B. C. and then allowed him two years for the captives to travel back to Jerusalem, he would still have only 68 years. Knowing this, he has talked about "round numbers," but anyway he slices the material he has presented in this debate, it still comes out baloney. He has come nowhere close to disproving this second "null hypothesis" with a "95% level of certitude." The fact is that this is not even a hypothesis. It is recognized as a historical fact supported by all the "objective evidence" that the Babylonian captivity of the Judean Jews did not last 70 years. Some biblical scholars even date the captivity from Nebuchadnezzar's second sacking of Jerusalem in 587 B. C., when he also destroyed the city, left it in ruins, and "carried the population away captive" (2 Kings 25:1-21). Even the book of Jeremiah itself records these two sackings of Jerusalem, dating the first one in the 9th year of Nebuchadnezzar (52:4) and the second one in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar (v:12). Needless to say, neither one of these could have happened in 605 B. C., the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Hence, the "objective evidence" that Dr. Price has been asking for shows that the Babylonian captivity lasted somewhere between 50 and 58 years, not 70. I would say, then, that if Dr. Price wants me to prove a "null hypothesis," I have done so. That null hypothesis would be that the actual period of Babylonian captivity fell several years short of 70. That being so, it cannot be claimed that Jeremiah was remarkably accurate in predicting that the Judean Jews would be in captivity for 70 years. Dr. Price apparently has a hard time seeing that 58 is not 70 and isn't even close enough for 70 to be considered just a "round number."
The Third Alternative Hypothesis: In my previous responses, I also showed that responsible biblical scholarship has textually examined the book of Jeremiah and determined that it was written not by one person but by several people over a long period of time. Hence, another possible "null hypothesis" would be that the 70-year prophecy was a later addition and that Jeremiah himself made no prediction about the duration of the captivity. Dr. Price's response to this has basically been that it is just the opinion of "radical" or "atheistic" critics, but as the front-page article of this issue shows, linguistic experts can use proven methods of textual analysis to determine not just the authorship of documents but also sections where forgery, revisions, and redactions have occurred. This type of literary criticism does not rely on guesswork or wishful thinking but proven methods that use stylistic comparisons and analyses of vocabulary, grammar, and theme to determine that ancient documents were produced by multiple authors. If Professor Don Foster could use such methods to identify the author of Primary Colors, there is no reason to think that experts in biblical Hebrew could not use the same methods to determine that Jeremiah has undergone alterations and revisions and was, consequently, written by more than one author. Furthermore, most of the biblical scholars who accept this critical view of Jeremiah are not "radical atheists" but are in many cases practicing Christians or Jews. At any rate, the body of scholarship that accepts this view of Jeremiah is large enough and prestigious enough that Dr. Price is going to have to do more than just scream, "Radical critics!" in order to disprove it beyond the 95% level of certitude that he himself has said is necessary in order to establish the validity of the opposing hypothesis.
Did I misrepresent the Septuagint? Dr. Price accused me of misrepresenting the Septuagint, because I said that 51:64, which says, "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah," is not in the Septuagint. I said this in response to Price's claim that chapter 52, which was obviously written at least 37 years into the captivity (v:31), would in no way disprove that all of the book up until this point had been written by Jeremiah or his scribe Baruch. He justified this view by noting that 51:64, which is the last verse of Masoretic chapter 51, says, "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah." In other words, he was arguing that the book of Jeremiah was admitting that what Jeremiah himself spoke or wrote ended at 51:64 and what followed was an addition that was made by someone else, possibly the scribe Baruch. Since the final chapter (52) is essentially the same in both the Masoretic and Septuagint versions, all I wanted to do was point out that chapter 51 in the Septuagint did not end with, "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah." Therefore, we must wonder why if the intention of this statement was to inform readers that someone besides Jeremiah had written the last chapter, it was not also put before the last chapter in the Septuagint to let readers of this version know that Jeremiah's words had ended and that someone else was writing the final chapter. After all, Dr. Price seemed to be arguing that despite the many differences in the two versions, they were both inspired accounts that Jeremiah had written.
Dr. Price argued that "(t)hese words are missing because in the way the chapters are arranged in the LXX, the words of Jeremiah do not end there," but this is a quibble that I would have thought was beneath the level of scholarship that Dr. Price claims to represent. If the purpose of these words was to put a "disclaimer" before the final chapter of the Masoretic text to let readers know that Jeremiah's words had ended and someone else had written the last chapter, then why wouldn't the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit, who was presumably inspiring all of this writing, have considered it appropriate to put the same disclaimer before the same final chapter in the Septuagint version? After all, if the final chapter was written by someone besides Jeremiah, chapter 51 in the Septuagint would have been the end of Jeremiah's words just as a different chapter 51 was the end of Jeremiah's words in the Masoretic version. If not, why not?
The same principle would apply to Dr. Price's response to what I had said about the beginning verses of Septuagint chapter 52, which says, "The word which Jeremias the prophet spoke to Baruch son of Nerias, when he wrote these words in the book from the mouth of Jeremias...." I noted that Masoretic chapter 52 does not contain this statement, but Price has countered by saying that these words are found in Masoretic 45:1. In so doing, he has again failed to see a significant point. In Masoretic 45:1, they are separated from the final chapter, which Price admits that Jeremiah did not write, but in Septuagint 52, they come immediately before a long passage (chapter) that Price agrees was not written by Jeremiah, so rather than the Septuagint's beginning with a "disclaimer" before the last chapter, it actually begins with, "The words which Jeremias the prophet spoke to Baruch son of Nerias," a statement that leaves the impression that what follows (the same text as in Masoretic 52) was indeed written by Jeremiah. We, therefore, have one version (Masoretic) that says that Jeremiah's words ended at chapter 52 but another (Septuagint) that leaves the impression that the chapter was written by Jeremiah. Dr. Price doesn't see any problem in this? At any rate, if anything at all can be concluded from all this confusion about the structure of the two different versions of Jeremiah, it should be that a high degree of uncertainty about the contents of this book is very much in evidence. Despite this uncertainty, Dr. Price expects us to believe that all of the "objective evidence" indicates that Jeremiah made a remarkably accurate prediction about the duration of the Babylonian captivity.
Poisoning the Well: Price accused me of referring to him with "rhetorically poisoned terms" such as "fundamentalist" and "biblicist" and argued that this is substantially the same as his use of "radical skeptic" in referring to those who reject traditional views of biblical authorship. In logic, this is known as the tu quoque (you too) fallacy, because if I am reasoning improperly, that would not justify his use of the same fallacious reasoning. I think, however, that a reading of all the articles Price and I have exchanged will show that I have at least tried to explain why I consider it proper to refer to him as a fundamentalist and a biblicist. That is because his view of the Bible rests not on an objective, impartial examination of its contents, as he would like for us to believe, but on a purely emotional religious belief that it is the inspired, inerrant "word of God." Those who hold this view can best be described as "fundamentalists" or "biblicists." On the other hand, I don't recall that Dr. Price has even tried to explain why the fact that a person may be a "liberal" (one who breaks with tradition) would necessarily make him wrong. He has simply implied that the opinions of those with liberal views of the Bible should be rejected because... well, because they are liberals. Such a position presupposes that tradition is always right, but we should know by now that this just isn't true. Traditionalists once believed that the earth was flat, that it was the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around the earth, but we now know better. Traditionalists once believed that there were many gods who each had a realm to preside over, but we now know better. We now know better in these matters, because there were once "liberal" thinkers who were willing to swim against the tide of tradition. Jesus himself was a liberal, because we find him saying in his sermons, "You have heard that it was said to them of old... but I say to you...." Without liberals to rock the boat of societal stagnation, civilization would never progress, and we would be doomed to live forever in the dark ages of ignorance.
More Straw Men: Price has again tried to evade his responsibility to provide extraordinarily good evidence to support his position by arguing that his claim really isn't extraordinary. He asked a series of questions: (1) What is extraordinary about a man making a prediction on a certain date? (2) What is extraordinary about an ancient people being put into servitude to an alien king? (2) What is extraordinary about a kingdom being deposed and people being released from servitude? These are actually straw men that Price has set up to draw attention from his inability to prove his actual proposition. That proposition is not whether the Israelites were put into servitude to an alien king, because we all recognize that they were. That proposition is not whether the Babylonian empire fell and the Israelites were then released from captivity, because we also recognize that both these events probably happened. The proposition isn't even whether Jeremiah made a prediction about the duration of the captivity, because I am willing to admit that this could have happened. The real issue is whether Jeremiah made a prediction that meant what Price claims and that was fulfilled exactly as he had prophesied, and I have presented many reasons why this proposition is doubtful. The reason most damaging to this proposition is the fact that even the "objective evidence" that Price has touted so loudly simply will not add up to 70 years. If Jeremiah said that the captivity would last 70 years but the "objective evidence" indicates that it didn't last that long, then there was no remarkable prophecy fulfillment. Why is this so hard for Price to understand?
Even Price realized that there is no way for him to hide from the fact that the extraordinary is involved in his proposition, because after he had kicked around the straw men identified above, he did admit that there are two extraordinary "aspects" in his proposition: (1) Jeremiah claimed that his prediction came from God; and (2) the "fulfilled prediction" was "beyond the normal expectations of human foresight" (May/ June 1998, p. 7). If, then, Dr. Price admits that there are at least two "aspects" of his proposition that are extraordinary, we would appreciate seeing him offer extraordinary evidence to support those two extraordinary aspects. Needless to say, he has not done that yet. He has even been unable to offer convincing evidence that the captivity lasted for 70 years, and he can never claim accurate prophecy fulfillment until he establishes this.
Till's Additional Claims: Price ended his latest article with a list of six "additional claims" that he thinks I must prove, as if it is my responsibility to assume the burden of proof in a discussion that was prompted by an extraordinary claim that he has made. The first of these "additional claims" that Price thinks I have the burden to prove is that "the text of the book of Jeremiah is very unreliable." In truth, however, I have alleged only that the text of Jeremiah is sufficiently unreliable to cast serious doubts on whether Jeremiah did indeed make the prophecy that Price alleges. Since he is the one claiming that Jeremiah did make the prophecy, he must assume the burden of showing that the textual confusion in this book does no damage to his claim. Next, Price said that I must prove that "the manuscript evidence does not support a sixth-century origin of the book," but this is also a misrepresentation of what I have argued. I have said only that the existence of this book can be traced back only to the third century B. C., three centuries after it was allegedly written, and that the manuscript shows that it experienced textual tampering even to the point that two entirely different versions of varying length and organization co-existed. If such a situation as this existed as far back as the manuscript evidence extends, what assurances can Price and his traditionalist cohorts give us that the book didn't undergo even more radical changes between the 6th and 3rd centuries? Price further charged that I must prove that "the book was not written in the sixth century B. C., but by a sequence of unknown authors, editors, and redactors in postcaptivity times," but this is just another distortion of what I have said. I have never argued that Jeremiah didn't write any of the book in the 6th century B. C. but that various scholars (mentioned in previous articles) see textual evidence that revisions and redactions were made during and after the captivity. These determinations have been made by sound methods of textual criticism discussed in the front-page article of this issue, so it is again Price's responsibility, as the claimant in this matter, to prove that the book was unquestionably written in the 6th century B. C. by Jeremiah and has ever since remained essentially unchanged. Needless to say, he cannot do this, or he would have already done it.
Price said that I have charged that Jeremiah was "an irrational deceiver." I don't recall using the term "irrational" to describe Jeremiah, but I am willing to defend the charge that he practiced deception. Price himself will have to admit that this is so or else surrender his position that the Bible is inerrant. Jeremiah 38:14-28 relates an incident when King Zedekiah conferred with him and then asked Jeremiah to lie to the princes about what was discussed if they should ask him what he and the king had talked about. Verse 27 claims that the princes did come to Jeremiah and ask him what the king had wanted with him, and Jeremiah "told them according to all the words that the king had commanded him." Space doesn't allow me to discuss the details, but this book presented Jeremiah as an opportunist who ingratiated himself with the Babylonians after the conquest of Judea and referred to Nebuchadnezzar, the very king who had enslaved the Israelites, as Yahweh's servant (25:9; 27:6; 43:10). That is hardly honorable conduct.
Price said that I must prove that Jeremiah was a plagiarist, but I was under the impression that I had already shown that either Jeremiah or other biblical writers had plagiarized sections of the Bible. In "Testing the Null Hypothesis"(July/August 1997, pp. 2-3), I cited passages from 2 Kings 25:27-30 and Obadiah 1:2-5 that are almost identical in wording to passages in Jeremiah. I don't recall that Price has even tried to explain how this could have happened without at least some of these writers having plagiarized. Textual evidence of this nature is exactly why many biblical scholars do not see the book of Jeremiah as the work of a single writer. Price needs to address this textual problem.
Finally, Price said that I must prove that "the text was altered in the era of the second temple to give the appearance of a fulfilled prophecy," but this is only one view that scholars have suggested. Whether the alterations in the text occurred in the era of the second temple or at some other time is really beside the point. The text of Jeremiah shows clear signs of having been edited and revised, and Price has refused to address this problem beyond simply waving it aside as a view of "liberal" or "radical" critics. If Price has some evidence that Jeremiah wrote this book in its entirety in the early part of the 6th century and that it has ever since remained essentially unchanged, then why doesn't he present it? He doesn't because he can't. All he can do is ridicule "liberal" and "radical" critics who won't accept his claim that a prophecy that cannot be dated with certitude was accurately fulfilled by an event that did not last as long as the prophecy had predicted.
Greenleaf's Principle: To support his claim that Jeremiah is an authentic work, Price cited Simon Greenleaf's opinion about the genuineness of ancient documents. For those who may not know, Greenleaf was a 19th-century professor of law, whose Testimony of the Evangelists has become a popular reference work in Christian apologetics, because he took the position that the "testimony" to the resurrection in the gospel accounts would be accepted as evidence in any modern court of law. That any professor of law would seriously argue that second- and thirdhand hearsay testimony would be acceptable in modern courts of law says more about Greenleaf's determination to defend a personal religious belief than it does about his credibility as an unbiased authority on rules of evidence, but his apparent willingness to sacrifice legal scholarship to further personal religious biases has made him popular with modern Christian apologists. Greenleaf's statement that Price quoted claimed that "[e]very document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forgery, the law presumes to be genuine," but what Price conveniently ignores is that the book of Jeremiah does bear on its face "evident marks of forgery." It is precisely because of those marks that a significant body of biblical scholars consider the book of Jeremiah to be a collective work rather than the product of a single writer. To prove his proposition, Dr. Price, by his own admission, must show beyond a 95% level of certitude that the scholars who hold to a view of multiple authorship are wrong.
In the next issue, I will publish the last part of Dr. Price's
latest article on this subject, which he has said will bring his
defense of fulfilled prophecy "to a close." After I have responded to
this part of his defense, if he wishes to, he may try again to prove
the two points that are absolutely necessary to sustain his position:
(1) The book of Jeremiah as it exists today is the work of a single
6th-century B. C. prophet. (2) The Judean Jews were held in Babylonian
captivity for exactly 70 years, just as the prophecy in 25:11
predicted. If he thinks he can prove those two points, he is invited to
try; however, no more space will be provided for him to rant about
"anti-supernatural biases" and "radical" or "atheistic" critics.
