Diogenes the Cynic

In the Tyre thread, arnoldo made some erroneous and uneducated claims about the dating of the Book of Daniel and, when corrected -- specifically when reference was made to the historical inaccuracies made by Daniel with regard to the Babylonian exile -- arnoldo asked for details. So as not to hijack the other thread away from the Tyre discussion, I've chosen to start a new thread to explain to arnoldo or others who might be curious why Daniel is easily and uncontroversially dated to the 2nd century BCE by contemporary Biblical scholars (who are to be distinguished from religious conservatives and traditionalists who date Daniel according to predisposed religious convictions rather than empirical methodology), and invite any questions or address any rebuttals he might imagine he still has.

Without further ado, here we go.



Daniel (with the exception of the first few chapters which may date to the 3rd century) was written during the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus and the Seleucid Empire between 167-164 BCE. It is set during the Babylonian captivity but historians do not believe it could have been written then for a number of reasons. Those reasons include the following:

• Daniel contains a number of historical inaccuracies regarding Baylonian history- the era during which it is alleged by traditionalists to have been written. These include such things as the erroneous belief that Nebuchadnezzar had a son named Belshazzar, that this Belshazzar was the last king of Babylon during the Jewish captivity, that Babylon under Belshazzar fell to Darius and that Darius was a Mede. Every single one of those points is wrong. There were four kings of Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel thinks there was only one, and the one he names never existed. Nebuchadnezzar did not have a son named Belshazzar and no one by that name was ever king of Babylon. The guy who was king when Babylon fell was named Nabonidus and he was not related to Nebuchadnezzar. Interestingly, Naboninus had a son named Belshazzar but that son was never king and he died before his father did.
  
  Daniel is also wrong about both the name and nationality of the person who conquered Babylon (and liberated the Jews from captivity....something which a contemporary Jew should not have gotten confused about). Babylon was not conquered by "Darius the Mede," but by Cyrus, who was Persian. There was no such person as Darius the Mede and (contrary to Daniel, who was evidently trying to backfill failed prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah) Babylon was never conquered by the Medes.
  
  Cyrus had a grandson named Darius who eventually became king, but he, like his grandfather, was a Persian, not a Mede. Daniel also says that "Darius the Mede" was the son of Xerxes, but Xerxes was actually the son of Darius, not his father.
  
  It is quite implausible that any Jewish person who survived the entire exile would get this many things wrong but would be entirely to be expected by anyone who was writing historical fiction several centuries later.
  
  
• The Book of Daniel contains a number of historical anochronisms which date it well after the Exile and into the Hellenistic period. It uses Greek words and references a Greek musical instrument which didn't exist until the 2nd century. it contains Aramaic dialect which dates well after the exilic period. It contains an anachronistic use of the word "Chaldean" to refer to astrologers. That word was only an ethnic indicator during the era of the exile and only came to be used for astrologers much later. Daniel contains post-exilic eschatological ideas about such things as a resurrection and judgement of the dead. Daniel also references the book of Jeremiah as a "sacred book" (i.e. as scripture) but Jeremiah would have been a contemporary of Daniel and the Book of Jeremiah did not become part of Jewish Canon until c. 200 CE.
  
  
  
• Daniel is very accurate about the Greek period and makes historically sound "predictions" regarding Alexander's conquest and subsequent dynasties up to and including the reign of Antiochus, his installation of a statue of Zeus in the Temple (167 BCE) and the revolt against him. Once Daniel gets past 164 BCE, though, the predictions all fail. Daniel predicted that Antiochus would be killed in Palestine by a Ptolemaic king from the south and then the end of the world would come. Antiochus died not in Palestine, but in Persia, not by a king from the south but by an illness. Obviously, the world never ended either.

This is a clear indication that Daniel was written after the installation of the "abomination" in the Temple (167 BCE) but before the death of Antiochus (164 BCE).

All things considered, Daniel is one of the most datable books in the Bible.

I open the floor to rebuttals.

Johnny Skeptic

I would like to add that an article at http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=234947 provides lots of evidence that the book of Daniel should not be trusted.

spin

I'd say Daniel is rather trustworthy, but not for the time that it purports to represent, ie I'm objecting to your choice of words in "trust". Your problem with Daniel seems to me to be the abuse of the book by christians intent on turning it into prophecy. Daniel is not a transparent text to someone not living in the politico-cultural context in which it was written. That's why christians have trouble with it and have had since early christian times, as seen by the misunderstanding about the son of man in Dan 7. It is frequent that once a historical context is lost, the significance of a text written in that context drifts until it is reinterpreted. This is not the "fault" of the text (or a matter of its trustworthiness), but of the users of the text: they do eisegesis on the text rather than exegesis.

The good thing about Daniel is that it is so rich in historical allusions that one can pinpoint its historical context and that makes the text eminently understandable -- at least the visions part of the book, chapters 7 - 12, though there aren't many problems with the rest, it's harder to contextual it.


spin

spin

No rebuttal from me, but...
Further interestingly, there is a text from Qumran, 4Q242, known as the Prayer of Nabonidus, which bears a striking likeness to material regarding Nebuchadnezzar in Dan 5. That 4Q242 deals with Nabonidus rather than the better known Nebuchadnezzar strongly suggests that Daniel's Nebuchadnezzar was really Nabonidus with a more famous name for his late readers. They would far more likely have known Nebuchadnezzar than Nabonidus, so it is highly unlikely that Nabonidus would have been a later modification. With this in mind that Belshazzar is transferred onto Nebuchadnezzar as well would only have been a consequence and reading Nabonidus for Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 5 helps make the text clearer. There was a source to Daniel that probably got the relationship right, using Nabonidus and a conscious effort was employed to change the text.


spin

Roger Pearse

While I have no special views on this, I would suggest that documenting these claims would be an important pre-requisite to discussion, before inviting rebuttals?

spin

Perhaps I could recommend a good commentary on Daniel:

Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (or via: amazon.co.uk)
by John Joseph Collins, Frank Moore Cross, and Adela Yarbro Collins
Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible
1994

This will deal with all the history. If there's any specific issue you'd like to know about, please ask, but I don't really feel like supplying the background to all the problems unless absolutely necessary. Sources include the Nabonidus Chronicle and the Cyrus Chronicle.


spin

arnoldo

Here's another sources on the issue.

arnoldo

Are you saying it should not be trusted because it is historically inaccurate?

Diogenes the Cynic

So go ahead and prove it was written before 167 BCE then.

Do you have any responses to anything I stated in the OP? Where is the tomb of Darius the Mede?

spin

It's certainly not accurate for the period it is set in. See the OP.


spin