Toto

arnoldo: please label your quotes. You lifted that from tektonics:

Defense of Daniel

The cite is from Archer, Gleason. A Survey of the Old Testament Introduction (or via: amazon.co.uk). Chicago: Moody Press, 1974

spin

Quoting from apologetic apes aping old time apologists is not very useful.

Try "L'aramaico biblico" in Aramaica, Rome 1993, pp.51-63, in which Giovanni Garbini explains the contrary, that there are several mistakes in the Aramaic, reflecting a much later translation from Hebrew by someone who didn't know Persian chancelry Aramaic well enough. Here's a translation of the final paragraph:

Personally, I have no doubts about the fact that Ezra was the model for the bilingualism in Daniel: but while the author of the first had access to original documents that could be more or less awkwardly imitated, the second seems to have been based principally on Ezra and on a few other examples of borrowing (as in the case of azda:'): it is sufficient to remember the impossible syntax and the laboured and repetitive style of the dream of the statue (2:37ff) to affirm that the Aramaic translator of Daniel, wanting to avoid writing in the language which he spoke, succeeded in giving a painful impression of his knowledge of Imperial Aramaic. The Aramaic of Ezra is a less than happy imitation of Achaemenid chancellery Aramaic; that of Daniel is merely an aping of it. It will always be worth the effort to study Biblical Aramaic, not for what it will indicate about the language but only to have an idea of "Aramaic philology" as practised in the Judaic context of the end of the second century BCE.

spin

Toto

Previous thread on the Aramaic question.

(To avoid rehashing old arguments.)

Johnny Skeptic

Are you saying that God wants everyone to believe that he can predict the future, or that he does not care whether or not people believe that he can predict the future?

arnoldo

Sorry, next time I will also put the author and the link to the source.

Apparently the book of daniel also has persian idioms.

The cite is from: Dismemberment in Dan 2:5 and 3:29 as an Old Persian Idiom, "To be Made into Parts" John Makujina
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 119, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1999), pp. 309-312
doi:10.2307/606115

Persian Idioms

arnoldo

Thanks, I replied to the following post but didn't want to "bump" the post so I'm putting it here.

Apparently the babylonian records indicate Nabonidus was not in the city, a fact that Daniel is 100% aware of

spin

Unfortunately Makujina merely shows the possibility of an old idiom in the text, which fits within Garbini's framework of a 2nd c. BCE attempt to reproduce Persian chancelry Aramaic.


spin

arnoldo

At the risk of going *off topic* however in response to your question God only cares about the jewish people in relation to the fullfilment of their destiny as a nation (not necessarily predicting the future). At the same time God cares about the gentiles also and that is why he has established his church (spreading the gospel is more important that trying to convince anyone that "God can predict the future".)

spin

Memory failed you again that you have to go back to 2005? Here in this thread I asked you:

Do you accept that Nabonidus was in Babylonia at the time of its fall as indicated in the Chronicle of Nabonidus?

Note: Nabonidus was in Babylonia. This is in fact correct. Argue against current information rather than ignominiously ignoring it. You seem to have forgotten the following from here:

Nabonidus was indeed in Babylonia: he'd been back over a year. He had collected cultic statues for safekeeping in case of an invasion. He had performed the new year festival as only a king could. He was organizing resistance in Sippar at the time of the loss at Opis which opened way for the Persians to arrive at Babylon where the people gave the city to Ugbaru.

The errors of Daniel stand. Belshazzar was never a king. He was merely the viceroy for Nabonidus, no matter how much subterfuge you throw up.




spin

Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "God only cares about the Jewish people in relation to the fulfillment of their destiny as a nation, not necessarily predicting the future," your argument is not valid. You cannot credibly claim that Jewish history has proceeded according to God's plan without also claiming that the Bible predicted what will happen to Jews. Genesis 17:8 is a prediction, as are many other prophecies that mention Jews. If the Bible did not contain any prediction about Jews, you would not be discussing Jewish history.

Even if God is fulfilling Jewish history, what does that prove about God's character? Are you trying to establish a necessary correlation between power and good character?

Why are you so interested in Jews? The Bible makes lots of claims that do not have anything to do with Jews? What is God trying to accomplish? If he is trying to reveal his existence to people, he could have accomplished that thousands of years ago by making lots of indisputable prophecies. As it is, there is not one single indisputable prophecy in the Bible. Why is that? An indisputable prophecy would be a prediction when and where a natural disaster would occur. By "when," I mean month, day, and year. No one could credibly dispute a prophecy like that if it came true.

A God would not have any trouble at all convincing everyone that he exists. Otherwise, he would not be a God.

If you wish to discuss these issues at the GRD Forum, that would be fine. I recently started a thread at the GRD Forum that is titled 'Bible prophecy.' The link is http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=236335. For your convenience, I will now transfer the contents of this post to that thread.