Sheshonq

No, he was not. He was the viceroy over the whole empire, not just the city.

Also wrong.

Note that quoting 50 Bible versions of the same passage in Daniel doesn't help you since they're all based upon the same incorrect text.

Sheshonq

1. Wrong. He was in charge of the entire empire, not just the city.

2. Daniel 5 refers to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's father, not Nabonidus - another mistake. And there are MULTIPLE references in that chapter.

1. No one, since there is zero evidence that it ever happened.

2. Moreover, you have contradicted yourself. First you try to claim that Belshazzar is only king over the city of Babylon, in order to wiggle your way out of a contradiction. But the text you just quoted above says "second (or third) highest IN THE KINGDOM."

So which is it, arnoldo? Was Belshazzar king of the city? Or king of the kingdom?

Which doesn't help you since Daniel says it was Nebuchadnezzar, the king - not Nabonidus.

1. Which is just wishful thinking, for the reasons above.

2. It also doesn't explain why Daniel refers to Belshazzar as the king, when we know it was Nabonidus.

3. It also doesn't fix the broken timeline in Dan 5:30 and 5:31

* No mention of Cyrus II, the actual conqueror of Babylon;
* No mention of Cambyses II, who ruled after Cyrus;
* No mention of the almost two decades that intervened between (a) the fall of the Chaldeans and (b) the reign of Darius I (539 to 522);
* No "Darius the Mede" in any case;
* No conquest, no uprisings by spurious "Nebuchadnezzars", no revolt in Babylon against the Persians, no protracted military engagement to re-take Babylon - NOTHING

Dan 5:30 slides right into 5:31 and misses all these things.

ynquirer

So - what? Is 'capital' of necessity a mistranslation, so that only Greek baris, no metropolis could reasonably be used? Josephus thought otherwise (and he did use baris, but not in this context).

Pssss. The problem is not with (WBL, which can either mean 'river', 'creek' or 'canal' while everything remains the same. The problem is with (WLY, 'U'lai' or 'Ulai', an Elamite word of which only inscriptions in cuneiform script have been found so far.

arnoldo

That's a pretty lame argument even if you don't accept the explanation by Herodotus: From The History of the Persian Wars that Nebby had a daughter named Nitocris.

Sheshonq

How is it "lame" to point out to you that your own source identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the father of Belshazzar?

This is about the time in the debate where I rub the fundie's nose in his own source
Is that enough references in one chapter fer ya, arnoldo? Even the queen seems to get it:

the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say, thy father,

So?

There is no evidence for any princess by this name in Babylon, except for this one citation in Herodotus. Of course, Herodotus also makes the bogus claim that the course of the rivers was changed as a military tactic to take the city as well.

Not that this would help you much, even if Herodotus account is true. Once again, you didn't read what your source said:

The expedition of Cyrus was undertaken against the son of this princess, who bore the same name as his father Labynetus, and was king of the Assyrians.

Herodotus makes Nitocris out to be the mother of Nabonidus, not Belshazzar.

Johnny Skeptic

But not nearly as lame as the fact that the Bible and all other religious books contain 100% disputable prophecies. If Pat Robertson accurately predicted when and where a natural disaster would occur, that would an indisputable prophecy. If that happened, surely some skeptics would become Christians who were not previously convinced. That is a reasonable assumption since historically, many people have accepted all kinds of outlandish religions based upon a lot less convincing evidence than that. In addition, Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce attracted a lot of follower based upon a lot less convincing evidence than that.

Micah 5:2 says “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” If Micah had predicted that the messiah would rule a heavenly kingdom instead of an earthly kingdom like Micah misled the Jews to believe, and had predicted that the messiah would heal people, and that the messiah would be crucified, buried, and rise from the dead in three days, and that Pontius Pilate would become the Roman governor of Palestine, and that Herod would become the King of Judea, surely more Jews would have accepted Jesus.

In your opinion, if God telephathically communicated the same messages to everyone in the world, would that eliminate a lot of doubt and confusion?

If you would rather discuss these issues in another thread, just let me know and I will direct you to other threads at this forum and at the GRD Forum where discussions regarding these issues have taken place, threads which, by the way, you conveniently vacated when you got into trouble.

ynquirer

That’s correct. Daniel is either a prophetic book or or - as you say - “a literary device to make Daniel prophetic (as a character) but describing events that are still understood to be in the past.” IOW either a prophetic book or a fraud.

This is the reason why answers like the following are all the more mystifying:

Daniel, for the edification of the people involved in those troubling times? Certainly, it is not the way Jews of the Second Temple themselves understood Daniel:

“A prophet,” “predictions,” “manifest accuracy and undeniable veracity of his predictions.” This seems to be pretty clear, doesn’t it? If, from the outset, the book was intended to be “a literary device for the edification of people,” well, you may say the writers scored a pathetical failure, didn’t they? For it was “wrongly” understood by readers rather close to them to be a true prophetic book.

Sweet business, isn‘t it? One takes a text, written at least twenty-two hundred years ago, and pontificates on the genre of the text without dealing with how the text itself was received by the audience to whom it was addressed.

Maybe you find anything sensible in the job. I don’t.

mens_sana

What audience do you have in mind?

Casper

Yeah, i think I see how the audience could evolve and the intent be lost.

After all, if the author of Daniel got this history wrong then how would Josephus know?

So while the intent was a story using prophecy as a literary device, that aspect could have easily evolved into a primary aspect when it wasn't intended that way.

After all, Daniel is still a heroic figure.

ynquirer

This is how the game goes.

There is a theory, that Daniel was written in or about 164 BC and that it was never intended to be a prophetic book, but a “literary device for education of the people” instead. The theory consists of two hypotheses, namely, a) dating Daniel in or about 164, and b) Daniel as an educational text, not a prophetic one.

All right, let’s try b. I have afforded adverse evidence to the hypothesis. Writing some two and a half centuries after 164 BC, Josephus quite straightforwardly calls Daniel a prophet. And he mentions the point not as if a recent revision of the issue had resulted in changing his and his contemporaries’ perception from educational to prophetic; he speaks of it as a matter of course. That takes us back to the early-to-mid first century AC, or some two centuries after the alleged date of writing.

You say it’s too late a witness. I reply, show me an earlier witness in support of the hypothesis. Thus far, you have produce no one. Inspection of the text to see how it looks like very much resembles figuring out what is drawn in the clouds. Someone sees a man, another a horse, still a third sees nothing.

Now, if you want the discussion to progress, please tell me of your evidence, provided that mine seems unworthy to you. In the market for ideas evidence is the sole currency. As you say, “Show me the money” to struck a deal, what I say is, “Show me the evidence.” You are free either to buy or not to buy, depending on the value you assign to my evidence. Yet, at the end of the day, I’m not here to convince specifically you but those unprejudiced people who are ready to notice how evidence differs from empty talk.

And if you don’t agree with the rules of the game go read Jacob Neusner’s Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament: What We Cannot Show, We Do Not Know.

I’ve shown a water-clear text on the perception of Daniel by (alleged) near-contemporaries. I do know that at least an educated Jew of the second half of the 1st cent. AD perceived Daniel as prophetic.

What do you know?