Jack the Bodiless

The accuracy of Daniel varies with time: somewhat inaccurate in its account of when Daniel supposedly lived, getting better after that, then conforming closely to events during the Maccabean Rebellion (when it was actually written, according to modern scholars), then "losing it" by predicting a long life for Antiochus II Epiphanes (who died in 164 BC IIRC).

The book is also never mentioned before the Maccabean period, and even Ezekiel's brief mention of a "Dan'el" does not describe him as a contemporary.

Given the lack of any good reason to believe that the book was written before the Maccabean period, it is indeed a very poor choice for a "proof of prophecy" of any events up to this point. I think we can all agree that it WAS written well before Jesus, but it doesn't specifically prophesy him. Furthermore, much of the alleged "fulfillment" relies on unverifiable claims ("...coming of the Holy Spirit"? Even if we were to assume that this is what Daniel was referring to: where's the actual independent proof that the "Holy Spirit" came?).

Book of Daniel
Revealing Daniel

There have also been many discussions of Daniel on this forum, of course.

mdd344

Jack,
There is much, much more in that first post than that to which you have responded, such as the kingdom, the church, etc. In addition, the book of Daniel's date is not questionable except by those with an agenda to begin with. The only reason anyone would late date it, given what the Book itself says about its timeframe, is to get rid of the prophecies. For that matter, that is the reason behind destructive criticism in the first place. I.e. get rid of miracles and prophecy, since they cannot exist.

Jack the Bodiless

Incorrect. It is also dated late to account for the historical errors and anachronisms that it contains.

And there is still no reason whatsoever to assign an early date to it. You seem confused about where the burden of proof lies. YOU are making an extraordinary claim: and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. YOU must establish that the book was written early. YOU must establish that it made predictions. YOU must establish that the predictions were actually fulfilled.

These cannot be assumed by default.

Paul2

Write a prediction vague enough and it has to come to pass. Eventually something will match close enough to fool gullible people. Besides, you're using the same reference to say that the prophecy was completed as the prophecy it self. Sorry, but any schmuck could write something down, then a few pages later say it happened and name himself an oracle. I'm not impressed.

funinspace

Right from the authors of the NAB:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/daniel/intro.htm
If you cannot even convince major segments of senior Christian theologians of your specific dogma, why do you think you will convince atheist? Not all Christians hold to the idea that God breathed out the Bible. It doesn’t make you or them right, but it sure puts a big black hole in the middle of your argument. And you have no agenda?

Amaleq13

The late date is not accepted to "get rid" of prophecies but results from a recognition that people cannot magically see into the future. This is done routinely by professional scholars studying all ancient texts but I can only assume you wish to make a special plead that your Bible be given different treatment.

The fact remains that you will find this same "late date" resulting from the same consideration of the evidence given in many Bible commentaries including Harper's and Jerome.

mdd344

funinspace,
There will be always in existence people who disagree. That proves nothing except that there will be always in existence people who disagree. Once again, God Himself could come to earth and tell some that 'x' was true and they would not agree. That is not far fetched, as some here have said God could appear to them and they still would not believe.

What does the evidence show? That is the question. What is the rational response to the evidence? That is the key.

mdd344

Amaleg13,
You have made my point when you say, .

The 'recognition' is the assumption people take, then they set out about to destroy any evidence to the contrary (i.e. destructive critics, late dating, etc) in order to prove their assumption.

windsofchange

The problem is, as you have stated in other threads, you will not accept any rational responses if their conclusions differ from yours. So what's the point of providing them? :huh:

spin

You don't seem to have read the materials concerning Daniel and the date of writing. The issue of when Daniel was written is important to understand the content of the text.

The notion of prediction is not central to the biblical notion of prophecy. Prophecy is about god communicating with humans through a specific voice, a prophet who receives the words of god and passes them on. Jonah received the words of god, but didn't feel he could pass on the message, which was for Nineveh to clean up its act or suffer the consequences.

The most important thing it was written for was to give moral support to those fighting against the Seleucid oppressors of little Judea. in the early second century BCE. The second part of the book was written during the period of Judas Maccabaeus. The first part was a little earlier, but then you could read all about it in a scholarly analysis of Daniel as in the commentary by John J. Collins.

The book never claimed to be historical, but to present a crypto-history of the wars around Judea from the time of Nebuchadnezzar until the struggle between the Seleucids, the kingdom of the north, and the Ptolemies, the kingdom of the south (ch. 11). Much of the latter part of the book deals most specifically with Antiochus IV and his pollution of the temple. This king was responsible for the abomination of desolation in 9:27. He was also the horn which displaced three others, 7:8, when he came to power. He also removed the high priest of the temple in 175 BCE, the prince of the host in 8:11, or, later put, he swept away the prince of the covenant, 11:22.

That is when it is set, not when it was given. You need to distinguish between appearance and reality. The text gives one impression that it is dealign with the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but that is only the appearance and is really dealing with the period of Antiochus IV, to whom the book returns again and again -- in the second half at least.

The image of the statue was written slightly before Antiochus IV's time. The four kingdoms are Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece. There is a chronological problem built into the work about Media, for it existed at the same time as Babylon and it was absorbed into the Persian empire, but it is the image used in 8:2ff with the ram with two horn, ie Media and Persia, with Media coming first, but it was broken, then Persia came, only to be defeated by the goat, Alexander, but at the height of Alexander's efforts his horn is broken and his power is divided into four, the Diadochi. The first horn of the ram is what interests us, for it represents Media, just as the second kingdom is Media and the third Persia. The fourth is Greece again, but the trunk is divided into two legs, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, who fought with each other continually one having advantage over the other then the positions were reversed, ie the feet of iron and clay, mixed showing one stronger then the other. They, at times, even had marriages between them to attempt peace -- that's the reference to mingling the seed of men, ie marriage, in 2:43.

Isaiah 13:17-19 talks about the Medes overthrowing Babylon. It didn't happen of course. It was the Persians who received Babylon's surrender.

When you look at it as a prophecy, it makes the purpose trivial. A dose of what is going to happen for history's sake. The text is a case of vaticinium ex eventu, ie presenting history as prophecy. It was written to show the fighters against the Seleucids that god was in charge of history and that in these final times all has been seen by god and so your fight is just as foreseen as all the other facts of history outlined in the text.

The text was written at the time when history becomes guessing about the future and therefore turns wrong. That time describes the period of Antiochus IV, though the text doesn't know about the death of Antiochus IV, for although it has much of his life chronicled, it doesn't know the end of it. That dates the writing of the second part of Daniel to 165 BCE. The were in the last half week, ie three and a half years, of the prophecy in Dan 9. The anointed one of Dan 9:26a is the high priest Onias III -- that's where the idea of messiah came from, the priesthood, god's chosen on earth, the high priest being the only person who could come into god's presence on earth the holy of holies in the temple. The high priest is removed from office by Antiochus IV and eventually killed. Antiochus gave the high priesthood first to Onias's brother Jesus/Jason and then to a higher bidder Menelaus. Eventually he got upset with the refractory Jews and after half a week of years he polluted the temple.

Once you start reading the new testament, you are no longer interested in Daniel, but what the n.t. says.

This has nothing to do with Daniel.

What has this got to do with Daniel? Nothing.

It's too early for you to make such claims. You're in no position to demonstrate the truth of them.

Now that's a really tangible criterion. Any kingdom comes with power otherwise it's not a kingdom. Doh!

[Omitted stuff which simply is unrelated to Daniel.]

I know it's hard to accept that the writers of Daniel could get it wrong.

You see this "Medo Persian" stuff is the usual fudge. It misrepresents history. The Medens were the Medes and the Persians were another bunch. The Persians defeated the Medes and the Persians then absorbed the Medes, they didn't become "Medo Persians", they were just Persians and they replaced the Medes. That's called history.

So we have two kingdoms, the Medes and the Persians. Notice interestingly that when Isaiah 13:17ff makes the prophecy about the Medes overthrowing Babylon, the Persians were nowhere in sight.

And here's where you need to stop. Babylonians, Medes, Persians and finally the Greeks.


Now while I can give you good reason why Daniel was written during the reign of Antiochus IV, can you give me a good reason why the story of Daniel according to you was written in the period it was set? After all it is simply wrong about such things as the relationship between Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar the latter not being the father of the former. If you want to treat the work as being written in the sixth century then it is also wrong about a number of other things.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdd344 The only possible way to explain such a predictive prophecy is through a divine Being, i.e. God.

But you have to assume that it was predictive. How can you demonstrate that it was? Short answer: you can't.

Actually I didn't ask. And your response to your own question is quite irrelevant as you go on about the things that have nothing to do with Daniel nor was it of interest to the writer, who was Jewish, writing to a Jewish audience about Jewish matters.

Note how willingly unresponsive to your text you are? The lord's house should be obvious to you as the temple. You know, that's where Zion is, Jerusalem. You have to metamorphose the text, ripping it out of its traditional meanings to turn the lord's house into the church. That's perverting the text.

You've handled Daniel's four kingdoms very poorly, yet these are the same four kingdoms in Dan 7. You've shown no attempt to deal with what Daniel actually says. While historians can read Daniel as being quite accurate for the period it was looking back on, you're dealing with something else all together. Daniel gives lots of very specific indications, as with the statue and the legs of iron and clay and their mixing and their mixing of seed. This last is mentioned in another of Daniel's prophecies in 11:6, which talks about a marriage between the king of the north married the daughter of the king of the south. You can find the marriage in Polybius's account of the relations between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies.

Another such detail in Daniel is the story of the three horns that the little horn surplants in 7:8. When Antiochus IV came to power, his brother Seleucus had just died and Heliodorus had propped up a son of the dead king as his puppet, so Antiochus came to power, doing away with both of them, so the three horms he surplanted were Seleucus his brother and the other two.

This Heliodorus is also mentioned in 11:20 as the official who was sent to raid the temple ("the glory of the kingdom"), "but within a few days he will be broken". You can read all about the event in 2 Macc 3. But back to 11:21, we read about Antiochus IV "on whom royal majesty had not been conferred". Antiochus was not destined to be king, but his brother died under strange circumstances while Antiochus was away from the country and returned to take power.

There are just so many specific details in Daniel that can be accounted for if one realizes that the book is about the time of Antiochus IV. Shift it from that context and so much will suddenly become confusing.


spin