funinspace

I didn't see where anyone had given a straight forward response to your query (other than no), so I thought I would. I wouldn't us the word trust, for it implies agreement. However, I do tend to respect at various levels the below writers and find them interesting:
Dr. Bernhard W. Anderson
C. S. Lewis.
Stanley Hauerwas


So could you name three Koran apologists that fit your own specifications above? Just curious.

Amaleq13

Let's focus on the arguments and not the person, folks.

Thanks in advance,


Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

Johnny Skeptic

Better yet, do you really care how many scholars take the position that the book Daniel had more than one author, and was not all written during Daniel's lifetime?

What about the book of Daniel do you find to be the most impressive?

hatsoff

From the Zondervan NIV study Bible, Kenneth Barker, gen. ed., introduction to Daniel:

Author, Date and Authenticity

The book mentions Daniel as its author in several passages, such as 9:2 and 10:2. That Jesus concurred is clear from his reference to "'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel" (Mt 24:15), quoting 9:27; 11:31; 12:11. The book was probably completed c. 530 B.C., shortly after the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539.

The widely held view that the book of Daniel is largely fictional rests mainly on the modern philosophical assumption that long-range predictive prophecy is impossible. Therefore all fulfulled predictions in Daniel, it is claimed, had to have been composed no earlier than the Maccabean period (second century B.C.), after the fulfillments had taken place. But objective evidence excludes this hypothesis on several counts:

1. To avoid fulfillment of long-range predictive prophecy in the book, the adherents of the late-date view usually maintain that the four empires of chs. 2 and 7 are Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece. But in the mind of the author, "the Medes and Persians" (5:28) together constituted the second in the series of four kingdoms (2:36-43). Thus it becomes clear that the four empires are the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman. See chart on "Visions in Daniel," p. 1301.

2. The language itself argues for a date earlier than the second century. Linguistic evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls (which furnish authentic samples of Hebrew and Aramaic writing from the second century B.C.; see "The Time between the Testaments," p. 1424) demonstrates that the Hebrew and Aramaic chapters of Daniel must have been composed centuries earlier. Furthermore, as recently demonstrated, the Persian and Greek words in Daniel do not require a late date. Some of the technical terms appearing in ch. 3 were already so obsolete by the second century B.C. that translators of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT) translated them incorrectly.

3. Several of the fulfillments of prophecies in Daniel could not have taken place by the second century anyway, so the prophetic element cannot be dismissed. The symbolism connected with the fourth kingdom makes it unmistakably predictive of the Roman empire (see 2:33; 7:7, 19), which did not take control of Syro-Palestine until 63 B.C. Also, the prophecy concerning the coming of "the Anointed One, the ruler," 483 years after "the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" (9:25), works out to the time of Jesus' ministry.

Objective evidence, therefore, appears to exclude the late-date hypothesis and indicates that there is insufficient reason to deny Daniel's authorship.

*Please note: I typed that all out very quickly; forgive me for any typos.

But the point is: What a crock. There's so much wrong with that I don't know where to begin. Maybe the second sentence, where the author decides that it is clear Jesus agreed Daniel was the author because the Gospel of Matthew implies so. Geez Louise!

EDIT: The one thing I am curious about is its claim that the language is too primitive for the 2nd century. I'm no expert in any other language but modern English, and I don't know what to make of that assertion.

pharoah

Just about every denomination makes a similar claim, but you'll usually find that on closer examination that they excuse themselves from some of the more difficult sayings and commands by asserting that they applied to a different era or a specific person or group of people in the past. For example, do you and your church give all of what you own to the poor as commanded by Jesus?

Johnny Skeptic

Why doesn't God live as he tells others to live? God tells Christians via James that if a man refuses to give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. One million people died of starvation in the Irish Potato Famine, most of whom were Christians, because God refused to give them food. This means that God is vain, and that he is a hypocrite. If giving food to hungry people is a worthy and necessary goal for humans, why isn't it a worthy and necessary goal for God? Trust must be EARNED, not merely DECLARED in copies of copies of ancient texts. True love is best revealed by ACTIONS, not WORDS. Talk is cheap.

If God does not exist, all tangible benefits would be indiscriminately distributed at random according to the laws of physics without any regard for a person's needs or worldview. How is that scenario any different from the scenario that we have today? It is my position that a loving God would be concerned with peoples' spiritual needs AND their tangible needs.

Are you by any chance an inerrantist?

By the way, even if God can predict the future, so what? There is not a logical correlation that can be made between the ability to predict the future and good character. Predicting the future is merely a demonstration of power, not goodness.

diana

I posted this earlier, but it's buried in the thread now:

Church of Christ Rules For Interpreting the Bible


The executive summary is: do whatever is necessary in order to deny that the text is errant in any way.

d

Lucretius

I have to say that like Isolde I have found this thread interesting ,though perhaps not in the way that md344 would have hoped ,while I did study Ancient History & Archaeology at Universtity as a subsidiary subject it was limited to Europe so some of the references I have seen here are in many respects new to me and things that I would like to "study" further when I have the time.

Sven

Poe's Law in action! :rolling:

Sven

Well, you know what they say about creationist: If reality conflicts with the bible, they reject reality.