Prophecy probability done honestly

Peter Stoner, Science Speaks (1958), calculated the combined improbability of any one person fulfilling 8 specific Old Testament prophecies as 1 in 10^17, and 48 prophecies as 1 in 10^157. The methodology is contested. Stoner assigned subjective probabilities to events whose probabilities are not independently determinable, and treated the prophecies as logically independent when many overlap. The numbers carry a precision the method cannot support.

Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe has tried to be more careful, working from demographic and historical baselines: birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2) at ~1 in 10^5; betrayal for thirty pieces of silver thrown to the potter (Zechariah 11:12 to 13) at ~1 in 10^11; pierced hands and feet (Psalm 22:16) given the historical specificity of crucifixion as a Roman method introduced after the psalm was composed at ~1 in 10^13. Combined for a careful subset, ~1 in 10^17 to 10^25.

The honest framing. Probabilities assigned to historical events without independent baselines are subjective. The defender of prophecy fulfillment cannot prove a 1 in 10^157 number with the precision the format suggests. What the defender can say: the texts of Isaiah, Psalms, Daniel, Micah, Zechariah were written centuries before Jesus, the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm they existed in essentially their current form by ~150 BC, and the convergence on Jesus is striking enough to require explanation.

The competing explanations: coincidence (some prophecies are vague enough to fit many figures, true for some but not for the specific details of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53); selection (the Gospel writers shaped accounts to fit, possible for some narrative details but less convincing for the major architectural facts including embarrassments like female witnesses); genuine prophecy (the convergence is too dense to be coincidence or selection in totality).

The site does not stand on Stoner's number. It stands on the dense pattern of fit. The probability is not the argument; the convergence is.

Reading

• Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 4th ed., 2018.
• Michael Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3, 2003.
• Walter Kaiser, The Messiah in the Old Testament, 1995.