TRANSPONDER wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 1:35 pm Even without Chronicles, I’d be inclined to credit the Assyrian account because you can see Sennacherib face -saving what was Terms when normally he’d stamp the place flat for rebelling. But then someone drew my attention to Chronicles and I realised that was a different Biblical account of the same event. In fact as much a contradictory account as the Nativities and the resurrections.
I assume you mean the 2 Kings account. 2 Chronicles doesn’t mention tribute payment either.
But as for all 3 Biblical accounts (Isaiah 36, 2 Kings 18, and 2 Chron 32), they harmonize fairly well. Yes, they each do not cover everything (like the tribute), but you can fit all the pieces together to form a consistent picture.
but omitting the inconvenient fact that Hezekiah submitted and payed tribute.
Only in the Assyrian account does it imply that Sennacherib abandoned Jerusalem because of the tribute. In the 2 Kings account, it is clear Sennacherib still attacked after getting the tribute.
The point is really that the Bible can’t be trusted because of the spin put on actual, or likely, events
The only thing really in question is why did Sennacherib abandon attacking Jerusalem. The Bible has shown to be reliable that the following are historically factual:
– There was a siege on Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah by the Assyrians by Sennacherib.
– Sennacherib conquered all the other fortified cities in Judah.
– There was a tribute given to Sennacherib by Hezekiah.
– Assyrians tried to take Jerusalem, but failed and left.
The spin is only an issue of which account to believe in for why the Assyrians left. The Biblical account says an angel of God smote them. I argue this is just an expression like “act of God” used now. It’s not like they had a spy in the midst of their army and witnessed exactly what happened. All they really saw was 185,000 of their soldiers dead the next day. For the Assyrian account, it actually does not mention why they left, but only implies they left because of the tribute. It does not explicitly say they left because of the tribute money. And it doesn’t make sense anyways to leave because of the tribute money when they were boasting about defeating them and had already conquered all the other cities.
Isa 37:17 And he wrote letters to cast contempt on the LORD, the God of Israel and to speak against him, saying, “Like the gods of the nations of the lands who have not delivered their people from my hands, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver his people from my hand.”
Plus Jerusalem was powerless militarily compared to the Assyrian military. So, the spin is not from the Bible, but actually from the Assyrian account.
NT and Old and the apologists reveal how myth – like these stories are by trying to make them look credible with a natural effect like camp disease or ‘mice’.
It doesn’t really matter how they died, whether by mice, rats, plague, or Michael flying down from the sky. I doubt any apologist is spending much time arguing how they died. The main point is that Jerusalem was not conquered and Sennacherib left the attack, which is confirmed by both the Bible and secular sources.
If the argument that the Bible is not reliable based on trivialities of how they died or so called spins of why Sennacherib left, I do not see that as convincing. But, I’ll let the readers judge for themselves on this and go on next to creation and the flood.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1055005#p1055005