Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Galan · 06-22-2005, 12:10 PM

Hi. I know this has been touched on before here, but while looking around on Amazon I ran across a book review that got me to thinking about it again. First, the review was for the book The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science by Taner Edis. And the specific review that I'm talking about was made by a Steven Tooley on January 30, 2004.

In his review, Tooley gives several arguments for an early dating of Daniel. I think most are a rehash of ones I've seen before, including the counter-intuitive claim that the author's 'extensive' knowledge of 6th century events disqualifies him from having been a 2nd century writer, but a few I'm not familiar with so I can't judge for myself. Hence, I'm wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the claims and arguments put forth in the review.

In anyone does and could post them here, many thanks in advance.

Toto · 06-22-2005, 12:44 PM

From the review;

Quote:

Many fragments of Daniel have been found at Qumran, an evident sign that the book had caused considerable importance in the 3rd century. This alone devastates the author and reviewers argument, but lets continue.

Daniel exhibits extensive knowledge of the 6th century events, far more than would seem possible for a 2nd century writer. For Example:
1. Babylon was the creation of Nebuchadnezzar.
2. Belshazzar was functioning as king when Cyrus took Babylon in 538 BC
3. Intimate knowledge in recording the change from punishment by fire under Babylonians to punishment by being thrown to the lions under the Persian regime.

As a side note historians used to criticize Daniel for the following items until recent finds have vindicated the books historical accuracy. Conversely, Daniel exhibits no knowledge of 2nd century events, quite curious for a book that is theorized by a few liberal scholars to have been penned in the 2nd century.

Daniel uses three (not two) languages; Persian, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The Persian expressions in Daniel are specifically OLD Persian words. Linguists date these old Persian sources to pre 350 BC. This is also evident that the Septuagint translators made inexact, almost guesses as to the meaning of these words. It stretches credulity to believe that Daniel was authored in 167 BC and less than 30 years later the meaning of the words have been lost or forgotten. It is absolutely farcical to assume Daniel was authored, accepted into the canon (this alone averages 100+ years), transported to Alexandria Egypt, translated into Greek all in a scant thirty years. Pleaaaaaase, if you buy this then you also believe that Rome WAS built in a day.

Another hurdle with the allegation that the book was written in the 2nd century is that Daniel uses Persian terms for government terminology where one would expect a writer in the 2nd century BC to have employed the current Greek government expressions. Again no explanation is given for this simply because no rational one can be given.

The Aramaic in Daniel is what linguists call Imperial Aramaic, as you undoubtedly know language changes greatly over time, just read Lincolns Gettysburg address to get the point. There are several papyri that have been dated around 5 - 6 century BC where the Aramaic matches that of Daniel (see the Elephantine papyri for example). The papyri that have been dated at the 2nd century BC show notable differences. This leads the UNBIASED linguists to date the document as early of the later part of the sixth century BC. As you can see linguistic evidence is clearly against a date in the second century BC.

I can continue listing a panoply of evidence that historians use to date this book, but just this small sampling should suffice those who are really interested in learning about history without the philosophical burden of naturalism dictating to them that they must disregard truths in favor of their ideology.

In conclusion Mr. Edis and Mr. Tew presents a modified Maccabean view, however a fair and UNBIASED survey of the data seems to indicate that historically, linguistically, and logically a second century date for the autograph of Daniel is extremely difficult to maintain. In essence you can still find people that believe the world is flat, but if you look at the evidence you will reach the conclusion that the world is oval and Daniel was written pre 3rd century BC.

The reviewer seems to have read JP Holding's Daniel Defense and an essay hosted by Tektonics by David Conklin, "Evidences Relating to the Date of the Book of Daniel"

Farrel Till discusses some of Conklin's claims here.

Galan · 06-22-2005, 01:39 PM

Thanks Toto. I'm looking the info over now. Could these be the "secular historians" Tooley was referring to?

Also from his review:

Quote:

Mr. Tew and Mr. Edis have fun in your fundamentalist world of naturalism as for me; I will take the empirical and verifiable evidence and use them to ascertain truth.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears Mr. Tooley is being something of a hypocrite here.

martini · 06-22-2005, 01:43 PM

Quote:

In essence you can still find people that believe the world is flat, but if you look at the evidence you will reach the conclusion that the world is oval and Daniel was written pre 3rd century BC.

at the risk of sounding flippant, isn't an oval a two-dimensional object? is s/he really saying that the world is two-dimensional? sheesh.

spin · 06-25-2005, 09:29 AM

Just a few comments on the passage from Tooley...

Quote:

Many fragments of Daniel have been found at Qumran, an evident sign that the book had caused considerable importance in the 3rd century. This alone devastates the author and reviewers argument,

This is plain rubbish. The scrolls were dug up from a context dated either in the 1st c. BCE or 1st c. CE. How he gets this 3rd century stuff doesn't reflect reality.

Quote:

but lets continue.

Daniel exhibits extensive knowledge of the 6th century events, far more than would seem possible for a 2nd century writer. For Example:
1. Babylon was the creation of Nebuchadnezzar.

I don't understand this. Babylon existed for well over a millennium prior to Neb.

Quote:

2. Belshazzar was functioning as king when Cyrus took Babylon in 538 BC

At the time of the fall of Babylon, Nabonidus the king was in the city, a fact that Daniel was woefully unaware of. At least that's what the contemporary evidence tells us.

Quote:

3. Intimate knowledge in recording the change from punishment by fire under Babylonians to punishment by being thrown to the lions under the Persian regime.

This raises a grin: "Intimate knowledge" indeed. What is the evidence for this claim?

Quote:

As a side note historians used to criticize Daniel for the following items until recent finds have vindicated the books historical accuracy.

Ummm... what recent finds???

There are so many anachronisms in Daniel, I wonder how much any recent finds can revise.

Quote:

Conversely, Daniel exhibits no knowledge of 2nd century events, quite curious for a book that is theorized by a few liberal scholars to have been penned in the 2nd century.

I think I have shown regarding Daniel elsewhere that the book does indeed have intimate knowledge of the history of the relationship between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies down to the time of Antiochus IV and the events in Jerusalem from the time of the high priest Onias III to the pollution of the temple by Antiochus IV.

Quote:

Daniel uses three (not two) languages; Persian, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The Persian expressions in Daniel are specifically OLD Persian words.

If one wants to be pedantic, there are four languages, as there are Greek names for some musical instruments.

Quote:

Linguists date these old Persian sources to pre 350 BC.

Sources pre 350 BCE don't say when the text was written.

Quote:

This is also evident that the Septuagint translators made inexact, almost guesses as to the meaning of these words. It stretches credulity to believe that Daniel was authored in 167 BC and less than 30 years later the meaning of the words have been lost or forgotten.

Most analysts divide Daniel into two parts, the first chapters 1-6 written in the third century, chapters 7-12 written before 164 (but after 167). The credulity stretching seems to be on the part of he who doesn't know the analysis well enough. Unless of coourse Mr Tooley wants to claim that the second part contains Persian terminology, etc.

Quote:

It is absolutely farcical to assume Daniel was authored, accepted into the canon (this alone averages 100+ years), transported to Alexandria Egypt, translated into Greek all in a scant thirty years. Pleaaaaaase, if you buy this then you also believe that Rome WAS built in a day.

Cuting through the rhetoric, this comment contains no information.

Quote:

Another hurdle with the allegation that the book was written in the 2nd century is that Daniel uses Persian terms for government terminology where one would expect a writer in the 2nd century BC to have employed the current Greek government expressions. Again no explanation is given for this simply because no rational one can be given.

If one stretched their imagination a little -- so that it stopped being dysfunctional -- one would understand attempts to tart a text up with words of the "era". Ye olde tarte it up trycke.

Quote:

The Aramaic in Daniel is what linguists call Imperial Aramaic,...

More rubbish. The Aramaic of Daniel is extremely problematical. In fact one analyst (G.Garbini) says that it doesn't reflect any coherent Aramaic of any period and seems to be a mishmash of someone trying to pretend to write Persian Chancelry Aramaic.

Quote:

...as you undoubtedly know language changes greatly over time, just read Lincolns Gettysburg address to get the point. There are several papyri that have been dated around 5 - 6 century BC where the Aramaic matches that of Daniel (see the Elephantine papyri for example). The papyri that have been dated at the 2nd century BC show notable differences.

Yup. See above.

Quote:

This leads the UNBIASED linguists...

Who are these "UNBIASED linguists"?

Quote:

...to date the document as early of the later part of the sixth century BC. As you can see linguistic evidence is clearly against a date in the second century BC.

Plain rubbish.

Quote:

I can continue listing a panoply of evidence that historians use to date this book,

Which "historians"?

Quote:

but just this small sampling should suffice those who are really interested in learning about history without the philosophical burden of naturalism dictating to them that they must disregard truths in favor of their ideology.

Mr Tooley simply tells us he believes the religionists who don't seriously analyse the current status quo scholarly understanding of Daniel.

Quote:

In conclusion Mr. Edis and Mr. Tew presents a modified Maccabean view, however a fair and UNBIASED survey of the data seems to indicate that historically, linguistically, and logically a second century date for the autograph of Daniel is extremely difficult to maintain. In essence you can still find people that believe the world is flat, but if you look at the evidence you will reach the conclusion that the world is oval and Daniel was written pre 3rd century BC.

I guess the "oval" here means, "slightly egg-shaped", but the terminological mistake is endemic of the mistakes Mr Tooley is prepared to make to reach his conclusion.

spin

Sauron · 06-26-2005, 01:49 PM

Just some quick thoughts here -

Quote:

Daniel exhibits extensive knowledge of the 6th century events, far more than would seem possible for a 2nd century writer. For Example:
1. Babylon was the creation of Nebuchadnezzar.

Why would this be considered unusual knowledge? Hello?

Nebuchadnezzar was responsible for the Captivity in Babylon.

I'm sure that the Jews didn't let *that* little diplomatic faux pas fade into obscurity. The fact that a Jewish writer knew about Nebuchadnezzar three centuries after the Captivity is hardly astounding.

Moreover, there is no language in Daniel (at least, that I can find) that suggests Daniel credits Nebuchandezzar with "the creation of Babylon." This appears to be an attempt by the reviewer (or Turkel / Holding, whom the reviewer has read) to inflate the accomplishments of Daniel by ascribing to Daniel conclusions that Daniel's writing don't support.

Note to spin - there *was* a Babylonian empire prior to Nebuchadnezzar; however, it fell into disarray and eventually became a vassal state of Assyria. After the collapse of Assyria at Nineveh, however, a new Babylonian state emerged. This new state was the creation of the Chaldean tribes, and for that reason it is often called the "neo-Babylonian Empire" -- they were trying to remake the former glory of the previous Babylon.

Quote:

2. Belshazzar was functioning as king when Cyrus took Babylon in 538 BC

Note the careful phraseology of this reviewer: "functioning as". However, that isn't what Daniel claims. The text in Daniel claims that Belshazzar WAS king - not merely functioning as king. Daniel gives no hint that Belshazzar's rule was a temporary, or "substitute", for some other ruler.

Quote:

3. Intimate knowledge in recording the change from punishment by fire under Babylonians to punishment by being thrown to the lions under the Persian regime.

Intimate knowledge - no evidence of intimate; only evidence of knowledge.

And again, I'm not sure why this would be deemed extraordinary. People in the empire would have known about ultimate punishments of the rulers. People (and ancient writers) in the Roman empire knew about crucifixion; why wouldn't people (and writers) in this time period know about the punishments?

Quote:

Daniel uses three (not two) languages; Persian, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The Persian expressions in Daniel are specifically OLD Persian words. Linguists date these old Persian sources to pre 350 BC.

Not surprising. Darius I instituted imperial Aramaic as the mandatory language of govt. That event forced an influx of Persian words into Aramaic:
http://www.answers.com/topic/aramaic-language

Quote:

Imperial Aramaic

Around 500 BCE, Darius I made Aramaic the official language of the western half of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The bureaucrats in Babylon were already using the local dialect of Eastern Aramaic for most of their work, but Darius's edict put Aramaic on firm, united foundations. The new, Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of Persian gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility.Imperial Aramaic is sometimes called Official Aramaic or Biblical Aramaic. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (in 331 BCE), Imperial Aramaic as prescribed by Darius, or near enough for it to be recognisable, remained the dominant language of the region.

Moving along....

Quote:

This is also evident that the Septuagint translators made inexact, almost guesses as to the meaning of these words.

What evidence?

Quote:

Another hurdle with the allegation that the book was written in the 2nd century is that Daniel uses Persian terms for government terminology where one would expect a writer in the 2nd century BC to have employed the current Greek government expressions. Again no explanation is given for this simply because no rational one can be given.

The assumption that Daniel would have used Greek terms is not proven. Nor does it even make sense. If you're describing an earlier kingdom, why wouldn't you use the same term as previously used?

If I'm writing about 18 century Russia, do I describe the ruler as "The President of the United States of Russia"? Do I describe him as "President of the Politburo of the Soviet Union"? Or do I describe him as "Czar Peter the Great of Imperial Russia"? Seems obvious that I would use the actual term associated with the person.

Quote:

The Aramaic in Daniel is what linguists call Imperial Aramaic, as you undoubtedly know language changes greatly over time, just read Lincolns Gettysburg address to get the point. There are several papyri that have been dated around 5 - 6 century BC where the Aramaic matches that of Daniel (see the Elephantine papyri for example). The papyri that have been dated at the 2nd century BC show notable differences. This leads the UNBIASED linguists to date the document as early of the later part of the sixth century BC. As you can see linguistic evidence is clearly against a date in the second century BC.

This reviewer has just stepped in a big pile of.....
http://www.answers.com/topic/aramaic-language

Quote:

The conquest by Alexander the Great did not destroy the unity of Aramaic language and literature immediately. Aramaic that bears a relatively close resemblance to that of the fifth century BCE can be found right up to the early second century.

Oops. Apparently 2nd century authors were paying close attention to the previous linguistic and orthographic standards of Imperial Aramaic, and continued to follow those dictates of style for several centuries later. More:

Quote:

The Seleucids imposed Greek in the administration of Syria and Mesopotamia from the start of their rule. In the third century, Greek overtook Aramaic as the common language in Egypt and northern Palestine. However, a post-Achaemenid Aramaic continued to flourish from Judaea, through the Syrian Desert, and into Arabia and Parthia. This continuation of Imperial Aramaic was a subversive, anti-Hellenistic statement of independence.

So the Jews deliberately hung on to Aramaic as a way to fight back against the Hellenization of their culture, to resist what they saw as the loose morals of Greece, and to preserve their ethnic identity while under the rule of a foreigner.

Quote:

Biblical Aramaic is the Aramaic found in four discrete sections of the Hebrew Bible:

* Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26 — documents from the Achaemenid period (fourth century BCE) concerning the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem.
* Daniel 2:4b–7:28 — five subversive tales and an apocalyptic vision.
* Jeremiah 10:11 — a single sentence in the middle of a Hebrew text denouncing idolatry.
* Genesis 31:47 — translation of a Hebrew place-name.

Biblical Aramaic is a somewhat hybrid dialect. Some Biblical Aramaic material probably originated in both Babylonia and Judaea before the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty. During Seleucid rule, defiant Jewish propaganda shaped Aramaic Daniel. These stories probably existed as oral traditions at their earliest stage. This might be one factor that led to differing collections of Daniel in the Greek Septuagint and the Masoretic Text, which presents a lightly Hebrew-influenced Aramaic.

At which point the fundibots will tell you that the masoretic text is not to be trusted, because its language sabotages their inerrantist position......

Johnny Skeptic · 06-27-2005, 07:16 AM

At a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html Bernard Katz aptly deals with Josh McDowell’s mention of Daniel’s 70 weeks in McDowell’s book titled ‘Prophecy: Fact or Fiction.’ Ironically, Katz discredits McDowell with some of McDowell’s own sources. Following are some excerpts from the article:

“Christian fundamentalist Josh McDowell has become quite rash in one of his latest books Prophecy: Fact or Fiction. For he is pinning his whole faith in Christianity on the ‘historical evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Daniel.’

“Here's his argument: ‘Such amazing accurate predictions (in the Book of Daniel) defy the possibility of merely human origin. If these prophecies were composed in the lifetime of the sixth century Daniel, they would compel our acceptance of special revelation from a transcendent, personal God. No anti-supernatural position can reasonably be defended if Daniel is a genuine book of prophecy composed in 530 B.C. or the preceding years’ (p. 5).

“Sounds like Burrows definitely agrees with McDowell as to the historicity of Daniel - right? Wrong! For this ‘friendly witness’ then goes on to say: ‘Naturally readers of the Bible have supposed that in these passages the hero of our book of Daniel was meant... Now, however, we have from Ras Shamrah (tablets which are giving us ‘an enormous mass of new knowledge regarding the religion and mythology of northern Syria in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs’) a poem concerning a divine hero who name is exactly what we find in Ezekiel. He sits at the gate, judges the cause of the widow, and establishes the right of the orphan... In any case one can hardly doubt that the Dan'el referred to in Ezekiel is the same as the Dan'el of the text from Ras Shamrah. Here is a group of biblical passages which have been put in an entirely new light by a recent archaeological discovery’ (p. 263). And this refutation is from a ‘friendly witness.’

“In his From Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, paperback edition, Albright tells us: ‘And yet, the book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and other works of the same general age show that a positive doctrine of the after-life had already gained the upper hand as early as 165 B.C....’ (p. 351).

“Farther along, on page 362, this archaeologist states: ‘It is highly probable that the idea of seven archangels was taken from Iranian sources. In the earlier books of the Old Testament and the earliest apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature there is nowhere any suggestion that certain angels formed a specially privileged group in the celestial hierarchy, nor do the angels receive person names identical with those of human beings. In Daniel (cir. 165 B.C.) Michael and Gabriel appear...’ (p. 362)

“Notice that Albright uses the date of 165 B.C. in the above two quotes. This late date of 165 B.C., not 530 B.C. as McDowell would have us swallow, is repeated by a great many other scholars. All of which flies in the face of the extreme claim of McDowell, who quotes from one of his sources: ‘Therefore, since the critics are almost unanimous in their admission that the Book of Daniel is the product of one author" (c.f. R.H. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 761, 762), we may safely assert that the book could not possibly have been written as late as the Maccabean age’ (p. 14).

“Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.!

“To disprove a long chapter by McDowell (‘Attacks on Daniel as a Historian,’ pages 33-79, which amounts to 35 percent of the whole of McDowell's book), and in which McDowell says: ‘The alleged external discrepancies between the historical assertions of the Book of Daniel and secular historical sources will not hold up under close scrutiny’ (p. 129), I'm going to use Pfeiffer again. He's a top scholar and McDowell favors him with a thumb-nail biography on page 139 besides quoting him on pages 14 and 65.

“The historical background of Daniel is presented by Pfeiffer on pages 754 through 760, which is much too long for extensive quoting, so I'll choose just the highlights.

“He denies the correctness of McDowell's assertion that the Daniel mentioned in Ezekiel is the same Daniel who wrote the book of Daniel. This is what Pfeiffer says: ‘The Daniel of Ezekiel could conceivably be identified with that of Ras Shamra, but hardly with the hero of our book who, being at least ten years younger than Ezekiel, could hardly be classed with Noah; moreover, in 591 and 586 when Ezekiel was writing those passages, our Daniel had barely begun his career....’ (p. 754).

“Pfeiffer continues: (page 754) ‘The historicity of the Book of Daniel is an article of faith, not an objective scientific truth... In a historical study of the Bible, convictions based on faith must be deemed irrelevant, as belonging to subjective rather than objective knowledge. The historical background of Daniel, as was discovered immediately after its publication, is not that of the sixth but of the second century B.C. In the Sbylline Oracles (3:3831-400, a passage written about 140 B.C.) the ‘ten horns’ of Dn. 7:7, 20, 24 are already recognized to be ten kings preceding Antiochus Ephiphanes (175-164 B.C.) on the throne. In the first century of our era Josephus correctly identified the little horn in 7:20-27 with Antiochus Ephiphanes... (Antiquities 10:11, 7)... But the real discoverer of the historical allusions in Daniel was the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry (d. ca. 304 A.D.), who devoted the twelfth volume of his Arguments against the Christians to the subject. The extant portions of this work which have been preserved by Jerome (d. 420) in his commentary, which is the most important of all the studies on Daniel. Porphyry assailed the historicity of Daniel by proving in detail that ch. 11 presents a history (not a prophecy) of the Seleucids and Ptolemies culminating in the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Ephiphanes. Jerome honestly accepted the views of this foe of Christianity, although in 11:21-45, he identified the tyrant Antichrist ... and not with Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (pp. 755-56).

“In view of the great importance which Pfeiffer attaches to Jerome's commentary on Daniel, I find it incredible that the only mention in McDowell of Jerome is that this great scholar places Daniel among the prophets (McDowell, p. 38).

“Pfeiffer continues: ‘It will be noticed at once that the amount of historical information gradually improves as we move from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (p. 756). The reason for this is that since the book was written during the reign of Antiochus then those events pertaining to this Greek king would certainly match those in Daniel, but as history receded the events became more confused an in error.

“But McDowell takes the opposite tack. He says that the events of the sixth century B.C. are accurate because that is when the book was written and that the subsequent events (which are historically correct) substantiate the infallible prophetic revelations given by God to Daniel (p. 13). But the whole point of all the critical analyses by scholars shows that McDowell has turned the evidence upside-down and actually inverted the truth!

Pfeiffer: It seems clear that our author's misconceptions about the Persian period are derived to a great extent from late sources of the Old Testament and possibly from other sources of questionable trustworthiness (p. 757).

Pfeiffer: Our author confused Nebuchadnezzar with Nabonidus not only by making him the father of Belshazzar, but probably also in the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness (p. 758; cf. McDowell pp. 123-4).

Pfeiffer: The chronology of Daniel is sufficiently elastic to allow the author to superimpose on the course of history a mechanical scheme based on the interpretation of Jeremiah's seventy years as seventy weeks of years, or 490 years. He divides the seventy weeks into three periods; seven weeks from 586 to 538 (with close approximation, 48 instead of 49 years), sixty-two weeks from 538 to 171 (actually 367 instead of 434 years), and, correctly, one week from 171 to 164 (p. 758; Pfeiffer cf. McDowell pp. 15-22).

Katz: This one paragraph destroys McDowell's reconstruction of Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks. To authenticate this prophecy, since it's crucial to the dates of the coming and death of Christ, as well as to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, McDowell devotes, as noted above, seven pages (15-22). The arithmetic of the weeks consumes three pages alone. McDowell would have been more productive if he had used the space to prove ‘pyramid power!’

“To resume listening to our ‘friendly witness’… ‘In conclusion,’ states Pfeiffer, ‘the author's information on the period preceding Alexander is extremely vague, being partly drawn from his imagination and partly from unreliable sources (p. 758). While the author knows very little about the history of his first three world empires, his information about the fourth, particularly in its later phases, is exact and clarified’ (p. 759). This corroborates what was said earlier in this article about McDowell inverting the truth.

“‘What lies beyond December 165,’ says Pfeiffer, ‘is not historical reality but apocalyptic dream... our author gives an imaginary picture of his (Antiochus') end. After a successful conquest of Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, Antiochus shall meet his end in his camp between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean, 'broken without hand' by a supernatural agency. This unfulfilled prediction follows the pattern set by earlier apocalypses...’ (pp. 759-760).

“Thus the ‘friendly witnesses,’ Burrows, Albright, and Pfeiffer break the back of McDowell's thesis. By his own words, McDowell has hoisted himself on his own petard. The implications for a Christian fundamentalist's faith in his religion and his Saviour are in great doubt - this according to McDowell's own words: ‘Of course it must follow that if the critics can prove their case, then they have seriously undermined the credibility of Christ, the Bible, and the Christian faith’ (p. 9).

spin · 06-28-2005, 04:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sauron

Note to spin - there *was* a Babylonian empire prior to Nebuchadnezzar; however, it fell into disarray and eventually became a vassal state of Assyria. After the collapse of Assyria at Nineveh, however, a new Babylonian state emerged. This new state was the creation of the Chaldean tribes, and for that reason it is often called the "neo-Babylonian Empire" -- they were trying to remake the former glory of the previous Babylon.

Note to Sauron - that's the potted version, but Babylon was substantial for at least half a century before Nebuchadrezzar. His father, Nabopolassar, was credited with the major reconstruction, but it was already a state. Remember "Evil-Merodach" (Amel-Marduk)? You have to go back before Ashurbanipal to the period when Babylon was even ruled directly by Assyria.

spin

Johnny Skeptic · 06-28-2005, 05:53 AM

Message to Spin:

As I said in my quote from http://www.infidels.org/library/mod...atz/critic.html, "Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.!"

McDowell was refuted by his very own witness, and it happened on more than one occasion.

06-22-2005, 12:10 PM	#1
Galan Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: The Bible Belt, USA Posts: 17	Dating the Book of Daniel Hi. I know this has been touched on before here, but while looking around on Amazon I ran across a book review that got me to thinking about it again. First, the review was for the book The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science by Taner Edis. And the specific review that I'm talking about was made by a Steven Tooley on January 30, 2004. In his review, Tooley gives several arguments for an early dating of Daniel. I think most are a rehash of ones I've seen before, including the counter-intuitive claim that the author's 'extensive' knowledge of 6th century events disqualifies him from having been a 2nd century writer, but a few I'm not familiar with so I can't judge for myself. Hence, I'm wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the claims and arguments put forth in the review. In anyone does and could post them here, many thanks in advance.

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06-27-2005, 07:16 AM	#7
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	At a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html Bernard Katz aptly deals with Josh McDowell’s mention of Daniel’s 70 weeks in McDowell’s book titled ‘Prophecy: Fact or Fiction.’ Ironically, Katz discredits McDowell with some of McDowell’s own sources. Following are some excerpts from the article: “Christian fundamentalist Josh McDowell has become quite rash in one of his latest books Prophecy: Fact or Fiction. For he is pinning his whole faith in Christianity on the ‘historical evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Daniel.’ “Here's his argument: ‘Such amazing accurate predictions (in the Book of Daniel) defy the possibility of merely human origin. If these prophecies were composed in the lifetime of the sixth century Daniel, they would compel our acceptance of special revelation from a transcendent, personal God. No anti-supernatural position can reasonably be defended if Daniel is a genuine book of prophecy composed in 530 B.C. or the preceding years’ (p. 5). “Sounds like Burrows definitely agrees with McDowell as to the historicity of Daniel - right? Wrong! For this ‘friendly witness’ then goes on to say: ‘Naturally readers of the Bible have supposed that in these passages the hero of our book of Daniel was meant... Now, however, we have from Ras Shamrah (tablets which are giving us ‘an enormous mass of new knowledge regarding the religion and mythology of northern Syria in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs’) a poem concerning a divine hero who name is exactly what we find in Ezekiel. He sits at the gate, judges the cause of the widow, and establishes the right of the orphan... In any case one can hardly doubt that the Dan'el referred to in Ezekiel is the same as the Dan'el of the text from Ras Shamrah. Here is a group of biblical passages which have been put in an entirely new light by a recent archaeological discovery’ (p. 263). And this refutation is from a ‘friendly witness.’ “In his From Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, paperback edition, Albright tells us: ‘And yet, the book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and other works of the same general age show that a positive doctrine of the after-life had already gained the upper hand as early as 165 B.C....’ (p. 351). “Farther along, on page 362, this archaeologist states: ‘It is highly probable that the idea of seven archangels was taken from Iranian sources. In the earlier books of the Old Testament and the earliest apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature there is nowhere any suggestion that certain angels formed a specially privileged group in the celestial hierarchy, nor do the angels receive person names identical with those of human beings. In Daniel (cir. 165 B.C.) Michael and Gabriel appear...’ (p. 362) “Notice that Albright uses the date of 165 B.C. in the above two quotes. This late date of 165 B.C., not 530 B.C. as McDowell would have us swallow, is repeated by a great many other scholars. All of which flies in the face of the extreme claim of McDowell, who quotes from one of his sources: ‘Therefore, since the critics are almost unanimous in their admission that the Book of Daniel is the product of one author" (c.f. R.H. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 761, 762), we may safely assert that the book could not possibly have been written as late as the Maccabean age’ (p. 14). “Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.! “To disprove a long chapter by McDowell (‘Attacks on Daniel as a Historian,’ pages 33-79, which amounts to 35 percent of the whole of McDowell's book), and in which McDowell says: ‘The alleged external discrepancies between the historical assertions of the Book of Daniel and secular historical sources will not hold up under close scrutiny’ (p. 129), I'm going to use Pfeiffer again. He's a top scholar and McDowell favors him with a thumb-nail biography on page 139 besides quoting him on pages 14 and 65. “The historical background of Daniel is presented by Pfeiffer on pages 754 through 760, which is much too long for extensive quoting, so I'll choose just the highlights. “He denies the correctness of McDowell's assertion that the Daniel mentioned in Ezekiel is the same Daniel who wrote the book of Daniel. This is what Pfeiffer says: ‘The Daniel of Ezekiel could conceivably be identified with that of Ras Shamra, but hardly with the hero of our book who, being at least ten years younger than Ezekiel, could hardly be classed with Noah; moreover, in 591 and 586 when Ezekiel was writing those passages, our Daniel had barely begun his career....’ (p. 754). “Pfeiffer continues: (page 754) ‘The historicity of the Book of Daniel is an article of faith, not an objective scientific truth... In a historical study of the Bible, convictions based on faith must be deemed irrelevant, as belonging to subjective rather than objective knowledge. The historical background of Daniel, as was discovered immediately after its publication, is not that of the sixth but of the second century B.C. In the Sbylline Oracles (3:3831-400, a passage written about 140 B.C.) the ‘ten horns’ of Dn. 7:7, 20, 24 are already recognized to be ten kings preceding Antiochus Ephiphanes (175-164 B.C.) on the throne. In the first century of our era Josephus correctly identified the little horn in 7:20-27 with Antiochus Ephiphanes... (Antiquities 10:11, 7)... But the real discoverer of the historical allusions in Daniel was the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry (d. ca. 304 A.D.), who devoted the twelfth volume of his Arguments against the Christians to the subject. The extant portions of this work which have been preserved by Jerome (d. 420) in his commentary, which is the most important of all the studies on Daniel. Porphyry assailed the historicity of Daniel by proving in detail that ch. 11 presents a history (not a prophecy) of the Seleucids and Ptolemies culminating in the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Ephiphanes. Jerome honestly accepted the views of this foe of Christianity, although in 11:21-45, he identified the tyrant Antichrist ... and not with Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (pp. 755-56). “In view of the great importance which Pfeiffer attaches to Jerome's commentary on Daniel, I find it incredible that the only mention in McDowell of Jerome is that this great scholar places Daniel among the prophets (McDowell, p. 38). “Pfeiffer continues: ‘It will be noticed at once that the amount of historical information gradually improves as we move from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Antiochus Ephiphanes’ (p. 756). The reason for this is that since the book was written during the reign of Antiochus then those events pertaining to this Greek king would certainly match those in Daniel, but as history receded the events became more confused an in error. “But McDowell takes the opposite tack. He says that the events of the sixth century B.C. are accurate because that is when the book was written and that the subsequent events (which are historically correct) substantiate the infallible prophetic revelations given by God to Daniel (p. 13). But the whole point of all the critical analyses by scholars shows that McDowell has turned the evidence upside-down and actually inverted the truth! Pfeiffer: It seems clear that our author's misconceptions about the Persian period are derived to a great extent from late sources of the Old Testament and possibly from other sources of questionable trustworthiness (p. 757). Pfeiffer: Our author confused Nebuchadnezzar with Nabonidus not only by making him the father of Belshazzar, but probably also in the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness (p. 758; cf. McDowell pp. 123-4). Pfeiffer: The chronology of Daniel is sufficiently elastic to allow the author to superimpose on the course of history a mechanical scheme based on the interpretation of Jeremiah's seventy years as seventy weeks of years, or 490 years. He divides the seventy weeks into three periods; seven weeks from 586 to 538 (with close approximation, 48 instead of 49 years), sixty-two weeks from 538 to 171 (actually 367 instead of 434 years), and, correctly, one week from 171 to 164 (p. 758; Pfeiffer cf. McDowell pp. 15-22). Katz: This one paragraph destroys McDowell's reconstruction of Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks. To authenticate this prophecy, since it's crucial to the dates of the coming and death of Christ, as well as to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, McDowell devotes, as noted above, seven pages (15-22). The arithmetic of the weeks consumes three pages alone. McDowell would have been more productive if he had used the space to prove ‘pyramid power!’ “To resume listening to our ‘friendly witness’… ‘In conclusion,’ states Pfeiffer, ‘the author's information on the period preceding Alexander is extremely vague, being partly drawn from his imagination and partly from unreliable sources (p. 758). While the author knows very little about the history of his first three world empires, his information about the fourth, particularly in its later phases, is exact and clarified’ (p. 759). This corroborates what was said earlier in this article about McDowell inverting the truth. “‘What lies beyond December 165,’ says Pfeiffer, ‘is not historical reality but apocalyptic dream... our author gives an imaginary picture of his (Antiochus') end. After a successful conquest of Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, Antiochus shall meet his end in his camp between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean, 'broken without hand' by a supernatural agency. This unfulfilled prediction follows the pattern set by earlier apocalypses...’ (pp. 759-760). “Thus the ‘friendly witnesses,’ Burrows, Albright, and Pfeiffer break the back of McDowell's thesis. By his own words, McDowell has hoisted himself on his own petard. The implications for a Christian fundamentalist's faith in his religion and his Saviour are in great doubt - this according to McDowell's own words: ‘Of course it must follow that if the critics can prove their case, then they have seriously undermined the credibility of Christ, the Bible, and the Christian faith’ (p. 9).

06-28-2005, 05:53 AM	#9
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	Message to Spin: As I said in my quote from http://www.infidels.org/library/mod...atz/critic.html, "Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.!" McDowell was refuted by his very own witness, and it happened on more than one occasion.

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