Michel de Nostradame, better known to history as Nostradamus, was the grandson of jews then resident in France (1) and is probably, along with Mother Shipton, the best known of non-religious prophets-cum-fortune tellers.
I will deal with Nostradamus' life and career in a separate (and much longer) article, but it is enough to say that in spite of the various myths that swirl about him like a miasma. Nostradamus was an incompetent astrologer who couldn't even cast a horoscope correctly (and his contemporaries knew it), (2) who lied about having a medical degree (3) and who systematically plagiarized his famous 'prophecies' from several different authors. (4)
Here I wanted to briefly address the claim that Nostradamus made prophecies or predictions in regard to Israel. The first usually cited is Century 2, Quatrain 45, which reads:
'Now heaven mourns the birth of the Hermaphrodite
Near to heaven, human blood is shed
Too late, through death, a great people are recreated
Help comes both too early, and too late' (5)
This is interpreted by Mario Reading as follows:
'But perhaps he is talking of his own fusing of Catholic and Jew? In that case the 'recreation of a great people, through death', that he mentions in line 3, might refer specifically to the Jews, and Nostradamus might be foreseeing (a long shot, this, but feasible) the creation of Israel on the back of the Holocaust?' (6)
Aside from noting the obvious warning that the use of the qualifiers 'might' and 'perhaps' implies; in so far as it rather screams that Reading is speculating (and, to be fair, even he acknowledges he is doing so rather imaginatively) rather than interpreting the meaning of Nostradamus' prophecies.
This claim can be shot down by noting that this verse isn't really a Nostradamus creation at, but rather a paraphrase of Julius Obsequens' medieval book 'On Omens'. (7)
Reading also cites Century 2, Quatrain 85 as being related to Israel. He quotes the verse thus:
'The old man conceals stern laws beneath his beard
The Lion is raised about the wedge-shaped Eagle
The great man, small in size, persists too long
There is the sound of weapons from the sky; the Red Sea turns Ligurian.' (8)
He interprets this as follows:
'An extraordinary quatrain, persistently mistranslated. Suffice to say that the 'Lion' is the emblem of the tribe of Judah (i.e. Israel). 'Judah is the lion's whelp: …. he crouched as lion, and as an old lion; who shall raise him up?' (Genesis xlix, 9.). The 'Eagle', on the other hand, was the ensign of the ancient kings of Babylon and Persia, of the Ptolemies and Seleucides. Another link to the world of Islam is the mention of the Red Sea, which is the graphical centre of the Islamic World, running, as it does, near to the holy centres of Medina and Mecca. This is so categorical, that it comes as some surprise to find that no commentator has yet made the connection.
[…]
Given all this, the quatrain now begins to make sense. A literal translation would read as follows: 'The leader of Israel is a hard taskmaster/ His people have the ascendancy over the Arabs/ But he does not know when to stop/ The Arabs resort to trickery: a terrible war ensues.' (9)
This rather fanciful plethora of claims by Reading is all predicated on his 'translation', but the problem is that his translation is heavily edit to massage his favoured interpretation. The proper, and latest, academic translation by Peter Lemesurier based on research on Nostradamus' work by French scholars translates this quatrain rather differently.
To wit:
'The old full beard under the severe edict at Lyon beats the Celtic Eagle.
The minor lord perseveres too far;
The sound of arms in the sky;
The Ligurian sea red.' (10)
This translation makes rather more sense in that it doesn't claim that an eagle is 'wedge-shaped' (which is frankly clunky and not a little weird), but rather refers to it being Celtic (i.e., Northern tribes) and correctly identifies 'Lyon' rather than the considerably more imaginative rendering of 'lion'. This also, of course, ties in with the reference to the Ligurian sea, which Reading has problems interpreting and basically disregards as to difficult to explain. (11)
We can thus see that the problem with interpreting Nostradamus, even if you view his claims is prophetic, is the translation you make and, as has oft been the case, interpreters of the so-called prophecies massage the translation (or simply mis-translate) the original text in order to fit a specific interpretation as is the case with Reading.
It doesn't help Reading's case that this quatrain is yet another plagiarism by Nostradamus - this time from Obsequen's 'On Omens' - as with Century 2, Quatrain 45, but also from Virgil's 'Aeneid' (specifically 8:524-529). (12)
One wonders how a medieval book on omens and the Aeneid can be quite so prophetic about Israel!
Having dealt with this claim; we can move on to the last quatrain usually cited as dealing with Israel.
This is Century 3, Quatrain 97, which runs as follows:
'A new dispensation shall occupy a new land
toward Syria, Judea, and Palestine:
the great Barbarian [Arab] empire shall decay,
before Phoebe [the moon] completes her age.' (13)
Reading interprets this as follows:
'Phoebus is the sun. In Greek mythology Apollo was called Phoebos, the sun god, after the act of 'shining'. He was regarded as the font of moral excellence, and his influence was a benevolent one. The implication here is that moral and ethical laws are overturned, in the Middle East, and one is forced to refer back to 2/85 – 2085 [The Future of Israel] for an explanation. The 'great barbarian empire' is possibly that of Israel, therefore, when one takes into account the meaning of the word 'barbarian' in its biblical sense (and we are talking of Bible lands here).' (14)
This is, of course, absolute drivel as it relies on using a known Nostradamus plagiarism (specifically Century 2, Quatrain 85 [the 2/85 of Reading's interpretation, which magically becomes a date of 2085]) to divine meaning in yet another plagiarism of the proverbial prophet. Specifically in this case the plagiarized texts are the Prophecies of Pseudo-Methodius, the Mirablis Liber of 1522-1523 and also Richard Roussat's 1549-1550 work 'Livre de l'estat et mutations des temps'. (15)
Ovason points out in addition to this that famous translators and interpreters of Nostradamus have often plumped for a similar line with Roberts and Cheetham claiming this quatrain 'anticipates the origin of the State of Israel', while de Fontbrune is more inventive and claims it is actually describing the Six Day War of 1967. (16)
He comments further that:
'These interpretations are almost classical examples of how cavalier translators of Nostradamus may be.
Let us look at what the quatrain actually says, rather than what the translators imagine it says.
First, we must note that there is no specific mention of Israel by name – merely a mention of Palestine, where (we now know) the State of Israel was founded. When viewed in the light of the sixteenth century history, we see that the prophecy is related to one of the most abiding fears of that time, which was of the Muslim advance from the East, westwards.' (17)
This is obviously a far saner interpretation, although Ovason was unaware of Nostradamus' wholesale plagiarism when he wrote, as it actually works within the reasonable possibility of what Nostradamus could have been talking about in the context of the time he created the prophecies.
However the fact that this quatrain is yet again a plagiarism from non-prophetic authors by a so-called prophet renders it null and void as a 'prophecy' as it was never written or intended as such by its original authors. After all unless one actually believes that Nostradamus was divinely-guided in his plagiarism (i.e., bibliomancy) then it means that he is little better, and probably a great deal worse, than your average 'psychic medium' of today.
Nostradamus said, and predicted, nothing to do with Israel: it is as simple as that.
References
(1) Ian Wilson, 2002, 'Nostradamus: The New Evidence', 1st Edition, Orion: London, pp. 3; 15; Peter Lemesurier, 2010, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer: The Man, The Myth, the Truth', 1st Edition, New Page: New Jersey, p. 9
(2) Ibid., pp. 57-64; David Ovason, 1997, 'The Secrets of Nostradamus: The Medieval Code of the Master Revealed in the Age of Computer Science', 1st Edition, Century: London, p. 73; Wilson, Op. Cit., pp. 144-145
(3) Peter Lemesurier, 2000, 'Nostradamus in the 21st Century and the Coming Invasion of Europe', 2nd Edition, Piatkus: London; Lemesurier, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer', Op. Cit., pp. 46-56
(4) Wilson, Op. Cit., pp. 102-103; 120
(5) After Mario Reading, 2006, 'Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies for the Future', 1st Edition, Watkins: London, p. 171
(6) Ibid., pp. 172-173
(7) Lemesurier, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer', Op. Cit., p. 119
(8) Reading, Op. Cit., p. 294
(9) Ibid., p. 295
(10) Lemesurier, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer', Op. Cit., p. 127
(11) Reading, Op. Cit., p. 295
(12) Lemesurier, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer', Op. Cit., p. 127
(13) Ibid., p. 148; the parentheses are Lemesurier's pointers as to the probable meaning of the original text.
(14) Reading, Op. Cit., p. 315
(15) Lemesurier, 'Nostradamus, Bibliomancer', Op. Cit., p. 148
(16) Ovason, Op. Cit., p. 126
(17) Ibid., pp. 126-127