doubtingthomas

I assume that most of you here consider the book of Daniel to have been written around 167 B.C. I'm aware of most of the arguments for the late dating, but I was wondering what you guys thought of these articles by JP Holding and Glenn Miller? Also I was wondering if anyone knew of a rebuttal to either of these works?

http://christian-thinktank.com/qwhendan3x.html
http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_05_01.html

doubtingthomas

Ok, I guess I'll get this thread going and post some of my observations on Holding's article.


The first major problem I see with it, is his treatment of what I feel is the best evidence for an early date, the jewish apocryphal book "The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach" or "Ecclesiasticus."

Holding quotes Gleason Archer who says:

"But it should be pointed out that other important authors like Ezra received no mention either. Nor for that matter did he make mention of such key figures in Hebrew history as Job, or any of the Judges except Samuel; Asa, Jehoshphat, and Mordecai. How can such omissions furnish any solid ground for the idea that these leaders were unknown to Jesus Ben Sirach?"

I think that Archer fails to understand that the author mentions all of the major prophets, and minor prophets except Daniel. A prophet who had such astounding fulfillments would have surely been mentioned. It should be noted, that Archer says that Job was not mentioned, when in fact Job is mentioned in the same segment dealing with the prophets.

"9 He also referred to JOB, who always persevered in the right path."
Ecclesiasticus 49:9

Holding raises another objection to the silence about Daniel saying:

"In this regard, it should be noted that Ecclesiasticus failed to mention people outside of Israel. The writer was very Sadducean and nationalistic; he selected personalities to feature according to his own ideas. He pays no attention to those outside Israel: Jonah at Nineveh, Daniel at Babylon, and Mordecai in Persia"

The problem here is that in fact the author does mention people outside of Israel. In fact, the author mentions another of the great prophets Ezekiel who was deported to Babylon at around the same time as Daniel.

Vorkosigan

Farrell Till massively annihilated these hopeless arguments in a series of articles in his mag The Skeptical Review a few years ago. I think he started with this issue. If you work forward from there, there is a long debate that goes on for more than a year, and 8 or nine issues, with many articles.

Vorkosigan

doubtingthomas

The discussion in TSR concerning Daniel starts around 1998, but doesn't pick up steam until 2000-01. One thing I disagree with Till on, is the identity of the four kingdoms. If I remember correctly, Till adheres to the Maccabean Theory, which places the kingdoms in this order:

1. Babylonian
2. Media
3. Persia
4. Macedonia

The consensus of fundamentalists is that this is the correct order.

1. Babylonian
2. Median-Persian
3. Macedonia
4. Roman Empire

Now in my opinion there are problems with both of these theorys. The problem with the first theory, is that it places Macedonia as the fourth kingdom; when in fact the Macedonia should be considered the third since it matches the description of the third beast in Daniel 7. Our second theory runs into the same problem since its final kingdom (Roman Empire) is mentioned nowhere in the entire book of Daniel. Now a better understanding in my opinion is this:

1. Babylon
2. Median-Persian
3. Macedonian
4. Seleucid

with the four kings being

1. Belshazzar
2. Cyrus
3. Alexander the Great
4. Antiochus IV Epiphanes

This view clears up the inconsistencies with the two aforementioned theorys, though it has some problems of its own.

Lafcadio

Honestly reading some of Farrell Till's rebuttal it looks that he mostly clings on the errors made by his opponent (I read those against Bradford) than issue the dating of the book of Daniil.

Due to the reductionist reasoning applied in some of the cases, the procedure of dating doesn't look fair enough for me.

I find less probably that book of Daniil, if wroten in 6th century BC should be preserved in the original format to the authors of the Septuagint many centuries later (or other authors that compiled even later other versions of the Bible) so the possibilities of transcriptions and/or translations are almost imminent.
It is known that as a transcriber/translator one adapts every reality of the original text to reality he knows. Therefore one cannot refute some descriptive attributes like Darius's "son of Xerxes" only on the basis of chronology which the presumed 6th century BC narrator couldn't mistake. I think one possibility is that a Darius of 6th century BC, which later in transcribing/translation gain the "son of Xerxes" attribute as a wrong identification of the transcriber/translator. There were 3 Darius kings and probably many other satraps/governors/chieftains etc. in the ancient medo-persian history, so such a mistake it was easy to be made.

And regarding this errors and many others discussed there - in my mind it pops up the name Herodotus. This guy was a historian of its time. He made so many errors that a same incisive critic would place him 4 centuries later or more. Still none does it. So some of mistakes can be even those of the author of the book, even if he lived in that period. The accuracy for facts of the common people from antiquity is far from what we claim today.