Jack the Bodiless

...Except that it doesn't.

WHY do you keep on making stuff up, arnoldo?

It's about an ulcer suffered by Nabonidus. Not a madness suffered by Nebuchadrezzar.

Nor does it mention Daniel by name.

However, it probably was part of the material used centuries later by the author of the story of Daniel.

Daniel didn't "help Nabonidus" with anything, because Daniel's creator erased Nabonidus from history and gave his son (Belshazzar) to Nebby!

spin

Have you?... No, don't answer that. You'll only give me more ammunition.


You've heard that you can lead a horse to water, well, this guy would die of thirst. That is so, so lame. Y'oughta publish this in a learned journal, say, one dealing with alexia.


spin

arnoldo

Ok, since you are the bible scholar did the writer of daniel rip off the Prayer of Nabondius? If so was the Prayer of Nabonidus written in the year 167BC and the Book of Daniel written in 164 BC? :huh: Oh wait, they were both written around the same time, right?

arnoldo

It helps if the Prayer of Nabonidus contains an extra bibilical reference to Daniel who helped Nebby and Nabonidus who were both afflicted with a similar condition.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to arnoldo: Please make a post in my thread at http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthr...97#post5154097 at this forum.

spin

Think about it for a moment. (Are you? No. Oh, well, do try...)

Nebuchadnezzar was certainly much better known than Nabonidus. While the former was responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, the latter was an unknown king for the Jerusalemites, who was hardly seen in his own country. The Nabonidus prayer certainly has precedence over the story of Nebuchadrezzar. It's far easier to explain that they got rid of Nabonidus and reworked the story for Nebuchadrezzar than vice versa. Why add an also ran in the place of a star? It would make no sense. (This is a fairly basic approach to many problems: the more difficult of text forms is the more likely original.)

Obviously, the prayer was around before the writers of Daniel incorporated its basics. I have also said a number of times that the first part of Daniel was written quite a while before the second part. It is easy to explain the reference to the mixing of seed between the legs of the statue in 2:43 as marriage between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, which happened on two occasions, Antiochus II and Berenice, and Cleopatra Syra (daughter of Antiochus III) and Ptolemy V. Neither occasion brought stability.

The prayer comes from before the last marriage circa 200 BCE and probably before the first circa 250 BCE. That means that it is likely to have been based on Persian propaganda relating to Nabonidus that was apparently in circulation in the empire, given the attacks on his character that have survived. Judea was under the Persians for a couple of centuries.


spin

spin

You're making things up again... that's normally called fibbing, but the good thing is, when you con yourself, it's really not a fib... and you're not reading what people have said to you.


spin

Sheshonq

Was that ever the point?
It wasn't the Aramaic of Daniel that dated it to the 2nd century.
It was the historical and archaeological mistakes as well as the internal inconsistencies.

Are you proving points that nobody disputes again? :rolling:

Sheshonq

1. You deliberately forget that it isn't just me - judging from the 30 to 1 ratio of hits in Google, almost nobody calls it by that name. Trying to portray this as only my usage is dishonest of you (how unexpected);

2. You have not updated your claim to reflect this reality. Let me refresh you: your claim was that "we" call it by that name. Clearly "we" do no such thing whatsoever.

1. As I said: it's not just me.

2. This issue illustrates two of your habits that we'll be observing repeatedly in this discussion:

(a). you exaggerate in order to push your case, and cannot be trusted to accurately represent the facts as they are on the ground;

(b). when you make a mistake and are confronted with it, you are incapable of being an adult and admitting it, preferring instead to try and make your opponent out to be the bad guy.

This is the 2nd time you've done this, by the way. The first time was when you tried to claim that the Aramaic in Daniel was unique in some way. I asked for proof of that claim, and you had a meltdown when you were unable to support that claim.

Near contemporary? Says who? You? Oh, but that is the conclusion you want to prove here. You cannot assume your conclusion as part of your evidence for said conclusion. Circular reasoning doesn't cut it.

Oh, I don't know.....

1. Maybe because allegedly Daniel was the third in the kingdom and served on a regular basis in the court of the ruler? Given that kind of access and focus of his life's work, one would think that he wouldn't make such an obvious mistake. It would be kind of like someone working in the Bush White House staff for eight years and making the statement that Bush was from Hawaii, not Texas. You really should have figured that one out yourself, ynquirer.

2. Maybe because the Greek misconception was more likely given their limited exposure outside their own world, and because the Greeks and Persians were enemies? Whereas the Jewish experience was more broad (if for no other reason, because the Jews were the doormat of every empire in history), and the Jews were not enemies of Persians, but benefactors of them? The situations are not parallel; had you bothered to think about it for 10 seconds, you might have realzied that?

3. Maybe because there is no historical evidence for any "Darius the Mede"?

I didn't ask for a measurement of geographic proximity. I asked you to support your claim that they were more civilized.


Americans? Civil War?

I'm sorry; did you really, truly think that a statement about American behavior in the US Civil War could be stretched into a generalization over all civilized cultures (i.e., your claim?) Especially cultures separated by 2500 years and 10,000 miles? And comparing an era before gunpowder (Persia) with a post-Renaissance era with gunpowder, technology, and about a thousand other differences?

Did you actually think that anyone would buy that enormous overgeneralization?

You built an argument based upon two ad hoc assumptions:
1. Medes were more civilized than Persians
2. "Civilized" cultures disdained hand-to-hand combat (in an age of swords and spears, by the way)

It is not apparent at all. Opportunistic copying or stealing is not the same thing as admiration for someone else's culture and technology. The Chinese, for example, were experts at copying from other cultures while steadfastly maintaining that their own culture is older, more advanced, more ethically upright, and superior to all others.

1. That is not a citation indicating "enjoyment". It is another example of Greeks making geography mistakes.

2. You also still lack a citation of "enjoyment" from Daniel.

Sheshonq

No, it is not.