Analysis Of Benjamin Forman's The Blood Of Ahab

Benjamin Forman’s The Blood of Ahab: Reevaluating Ahab’s Death and Elijah’s Prophecy, analyzes the circumstances surrounding Ahab’s death and whether or not these circumstances negate the fact that Elijah's prophecy was fulfilled. In this article, Forman examines the six top possibilities as to why Elijah’s prophecy was not fulfilled and gives evidence to suppose each possibility. Theses possibilities include the fact that the prophecy was not location specific because it did not specify where Ahab died or that some texts did not specify where the dogs licked Ahab’s blood. Forman also explored the possibility that the prophecy was modified. He then considered the possibility that the prophecy remains unfulfilled. Forman also suggests that the …show more content…
To solve this problem, he could have combined the proposals that share a common issue. For example, Forman could have combined the proposal that claims the prophecy was modified with the proposal that said the prophecy was unfulfilled. The resulting proposal would claim that Elijah’s prophecy was not fulfilled because it was modified. Another issue was that Forman did not present substantial evidence. For example, in his sixth proposal, Forman claims that according to Ian Provan, 1 Kings 21:19 was misunderstood due to an error in the grammar interpretation. According to Forman, Provan’s evidence shows that the clause within 1 Kings 21:19 should have led with ‘instead of’ and not ‘in the place where’. However, since either expression would make the verse clear and logical, claiming that it is a grammatical error that caused the verse to be misunderstood seems improbable. Being that the text has been translated several times, Forman did not produce enough evidence to prove his argument. He would need to compile a vast number of translators to support this claim. Also it would