Hello, Leelee, and welcome to IIDB.
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 Babylonian 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 ensue. 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). This makes Daniel one of the most datable books in the Bible. This is regarded as a settled issue among genuine historians and Biblical scholars. There is really no serious question or debate about it.
J.P. Holding is a retired prison librarian with no credentials in Biblical or historical scholarship. The case I have summarized above is not something he or other apolgists of his ilk are able to address with any effectiveness and that's why they are forced to resort to such straw-clutching dreck as imagining that they see authentic "personality quirks" in the descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar. Take it from us, Holding is not somebody who is ever going to offer you anything legitimately telling or insightful or startling or convincing. He is a hack's hack of literalist apology.
09-17-2007, 08:54 AM
