How does "hermeneutics SE" handle prophecy questions? Appropriate forum? [duplicate]

Question

I asked a couple of questions on the Christianity SE site in the past. I quickly learned that questions asked were often put on hold and/or migrated to meta site by SE members for being considered by some to be "off topic". Questions were also (more often not) intellectually debated as religious trivia rather than answered. Since then, while continuing to wonder about "prophecy" as a question topic, I have had serious reservations about how any question would be received. I just noticed, though, that there is a "prophecy" tag here at this Biblical hermeneutics beta site. So, I looked at one of the recent questions at the link below from about a week ago.

Are the 1290 days in Daniel 12 related to the 2300 evenings and mornings in Daniel 8?

At first look, I considered that the only answer that was offered (so far) to the Daniel 12/8 question was completely wrong/in error and only vaguely supported from some kind of "preterist only blog" viewpoint of prophecy interpretation. But then, on second thought, I noticed that both the original question and the "questionable" answer given 1.) still remain active, 2.) have not been torn apart by SE site commentors, but sadly 3.) they have not been shown much interest in general either (sad because "prophecy" is one of the main purposes and communication themes in the Bible).

I understand that "prophecy" has broad, multiple, and overlapping ranges of valid interpretational perspective, but how does "Biblical hermeneutics" treat prophecy and how does it handle the prophecy as a topic? Is there much expertise "overlap" between Christianity SE and Biblical hermeneutics SE?

Answer 1

Hello user22542 and welcome to the Biblical Hermeneutics forum.

You ask a good question, one that puzzles a lot of people.

The questions and answers here are supposed to conform to the discipline of hermeneutics, narrowly defined as the correct interpretation of the scriptures using credible sources. These sources include the received Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek texts, similar texts in other parts of the Bible, different translations and variants, published scholars, extra-Biblical sources such as cultural practices and expressions, and so on.

It's not supposed to be about--using your example--somebody's cool theory about 1290 days being the speculated orbital period of the lost planet between Mars and Jupiter, the idea that 1290 years after Daniel's vision, the prophet Mohammed appeared, or some other contrived opinion about an interpretation of this prophecy.

However, it's often easy to present an unsupported opinion here. Interpretations of prophecy are especially vulnerable to personal opinion or doctrinal positions. Also, statements of position can also masquerade as "questions."

If you don't see an answer to your question, this can mean no one here knows, or it might mean that you should do more research to ask a more specific version of the question. Again, using your example, if the person had asked "How should Daniel 12 be interpreted?", it would likely be flagged, since entire books are written on the subject.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Dieter