Biblically Compatible Archaeology and Geography

  by Damien F. Mackey     “Even if they hide at the bottom of the ocean, I will send the sea serpent after them to bite them”.   Amos 9:3     Two biblical prophets, Amos and Jeremiah, provide, respectively, something of a terminus a quo and a terminus ad quem for what I would consider to have been two separate – and well spaced in time – callings by the Lord of the prophet Jonah.   Testimony of Amos   Amos (Amoz, Amaziah), who was “Amittai” the father of Jonah. See my latest article:   Were any Old Testament prophets from Galilee?   (4) Were any Old Testament prophets from Galilee?   clearly refers to the first episode, the one involving Jonah’s flight (the storm at sea) and the great sea creature (Jonah ch’s 1-2), when he writes (Amos 9:3): “Even if they hide at the bottom of the ocean, I will send the sea serpent after them to bite them”.   It is hardly surprising that Amos should ref...

  by Damien F. Mackey     “[The Pharisees] replied, ‘Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee’.”   John 7:52     Some years ago the question was asked: biblical basis - What prophets came from Galilee? - Christianity Stack Exchange   What prophets came from Galilee?   According to the Pharisees at the time of Jesus, no prophet ever came from Galilee. And I suspect that these nit-pickers of Scripture would have been perfectly correct in their knowledge of, and insistence upon, this.     However, the suggestion is made in the following discussion that the Pharisees were actually wrong when they claimed that no prophet came from Galilee. And so we read:   This question   talks about how in John 7:52, the Pharisees claimed that "no prophet comes out of Galilee." The accepted answer discusses how commentators often point out the Phari...

  by Damien F. Mackey   “So then, comparing the antitype with the type, even as Herod sought to destroy the Divine Child whose birth might be supposed to endanger his throne, so Ahaz, from a different motive indeed, may have sought to destroy the typical Immanuel, the prediction concerning whose birth foretold the ruin of Judah at the hands of Assyria”.   Charles Boutflower   If, as is generally thought, the name of the famous town is derived from Kfar Na ḥ um ( כְּפַר נַחוּם ), literally, ‘Nahum’s village’, then I can think of only two prophets Nahum who could possibly have inspired it.   One of these was the prophet Nahum, who was Jonah ( cf. Tobit 14:4), the man of God who hated Assyria. The other was the pious and prayerful Nehemiah, whom I have identified as the better-known prophet Daniel:   Nehemiah must surely be the wise prophet Daniel   (5) Nehemiah must surely be the wise prophet Daniel   The tw...

  “… comparing the antitype with the type, even as Herod sought to destroy the Divine Child whose birth might be supposed to endanger his throne, so Ahaz, from a different motive indeed, may have sought to destroy the typical Immanuel, the prediction concerning whose birth foretold the ruin of Judah at the hands of Assyria”. Charles Boutflower     Charles Boutflower, reading between the lines, came up with the fascinating theory that Isaiah and his family had felt compelled - just like the Holy Family that it typifies - to escape, by flight, from a wrathful king.   Here follows Chapter V, “Immanuel”, from Charles Boutflower’s 1930 classic, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters [I-XXXIX] in the light of the Assyrian monuments.   “Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil and choose the good.”—Isa. vii. 15.   In studying the Book of Isaiah, whether for our own benefit or to edify others, the question will often fo...