Derec

There is a lengthy essay on tektonics.org titled Book of Daniel defended. It is not a very good essay, given that the author is given to his emotions (calling Daniel skeptics "bigots" or gratuitous use of exclamation marks). Nevertheless, I was wondering if anyone addressed the points he raises (and he quotes a lot of apologists, primarily one Gleason Archer.) in a sort of rebuttal or if anyone here with biblical history/Daniel expertise would care to address at least some of the points he raises.

gregor

Surely there are enough posts by spin on Daniel and the Maccabean dynasty in the archives. (There are a few on turkel, too).

John Kesler

In Farrell Till's articles about Daniel, he addresses some of Turkel's points. Go here and scroll down to the "Daniel" heading. For a compelling yet simple work which makes the case for a second-century BCE date for Daniel, see Brodrick Shepherd's book Beasts, Horns, And The Antichrist.

Derec

Yes, I know there are skeptic resources about Daniel, for example there is a (imho) good essay linked from our own library. However, the tektonics essay challenges many of teh points in that (and other) skeptic works as well as introducting claims I have not seen before. Now, I do recognize some of the points in the essay as spurious, or at least "stretching it", but I lack expertise for more technical claims.


Turkel? The essay credits Closson and Holding, not Turkel.

Thanks. I looks like exactly what I was looking for! I will start reading tomorrow.

S.C.Carlson

Holding is Turkel's pen name.

gregor

(according to him) Turkel was a prison librarian in Florida who uses the name Holding, purportedly for some sense of concern about his identity.

Johnny Skeptic

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

It's not a matter of skeptical sources on Daniel at all. Mainstream literature on Daniel is well aware of Daniel's late production. It is the nitwit lunatic fringe which defends an early date for Daniel.The rest of the world are up with the fact that it was mainly produced in the early second century BCE.

All you need do is consult any of the major scholarly commentaries on Daniel, the one that comes to mind is that of J.J.Collins, but there is a host.

This is not a matter of apologists against skeptics, but a matter of the scholarly world which can't get through to the literalists.



spin

TedM

The '70 weeks' prophecy is considered by Christian apologists to be one of the most convincing prophecies of the timing of Jesus' arrival.

Bernard Muller addresses the idea that "seventy weeks" is more accurately interpreted as "seventy sevens". He then brilliantly shows how a specific numerological interpretation will arrive at the year 167BC! To my knowledge NO ONE else has EVER come up with this alternative explanation.

Here is an excerpt from his site, http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/daniel.html

Since it doesn't cut and paste well to here, you'll have to go to his site to see the legend which shows that the 70th occurrence of the digit '7' beginning in 538BC is found in the number 167BC.

I found his overall discussion quite compelling.

ted

Johnny Skeptic

Did you find it compelling enough for you to become a Christian?

In the NIV, Daniel 9:24-27 say "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."

Regarding "From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens'", what does that mean to you?