Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Leelee · 09-16-2007, 06:22 AM

Hi, I found this article by JP Holding in which he gives evidence that Daniel was written early. Does anyone know if there is a rebuttal to it?

John Kesler · 09-16-2007, 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leelee

Hi, I found this article by JP Holding in which he gives evidence that Daniel was written early. Does anyone know if there is a rebuttal to it?

It should be noted that Holding is coauthor with Kevin Closson. I don't know of a specific rebuttal to this article, but I can recommend a book which discusses the dating of Daniel: Brodrick Shepherd's Beasts, Horns And The Antichrist. Also read anything by John J. Collins. In short, the book of Daniel dates itself, because it shows uncanny accuracy in its "prophecies" until 11:40 through the end of the book.

Johnny Skeptic · 09-16-2007, 09:02 AM

An interesting article about the book of Daniel is at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html. The article shows that Josh McDowell's own sources disagree with him, in at least one case in the very book that McDowell quotes as evidence that supposedly supports his own arguments.

spin · 09-16-2007, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leelee

Hi, I found this article by JP Holding in which he gives evidence that Daniel was written early. Does anyone know if there is a rebuttal to it?

He hasn't said anything at all. He cites other people's opinions, including such lights as Gleason Archer, -- none of whom are historians -- and gives his own. He's just shifting and shaping. Check out the publishers of his sources (Moody, Zondervan, etc.): this stuff is pure apologetic. There is so little primary evidence, ie he basically doesn't deal with ancient materials, nor even the opinions (as he trades in opinions) of historians whose field the area is, no Assyriologists, no Near East scholars. This is because he knows nothing of the field other than what is necessary to deal -- as he sees it -- with problems scholars have indicated with the biblical text.

In short he doesn't say anything. He doesn't even know the right people to turn to to get information.

Consider one issue, the fact that Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar. He cites S.R. Driver, who says:

Belshazzar is represented as king of Babylon; and Nebuchadnezzar is spoken of throughout (chap. 5:2,11,13,18,22) as his father. In point of fact Nabodinus was the last King of Babylon; he was a usurper, not related to Nebuchadnezzar, and one Belsharuzer is mentioned as his son. Belsharuzur's standing title is the 'king's son,' something like the 'crown prince.'

Driver is almost certainly referring to -- amongst other things -- the Nabonidus Chronicle, which clearly shows the status of Belshazzar, ie not king.

Holding cites the hick, Archer:

This argument, however, overlooks the fact that by ancient usage the term son often referred to a successor in the same office whether or not there was a blood relationship. Thus in the Egyptian story, 'King Cheops and the Magicians (preserved in the papyrus Westcar from the Hyksos Period), Prince Khephren came to pass in the time of thy father, King Neb-ka.' Actually Neb-ka belonged to the Third Dynasty, a full century before the time of Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty. In Assyria a similar practice was reflected in the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which refers to King Jehu (the exterminator of the whole dynasty of Omri) as 'the son of Omri.'

Archer of course doesn't show any trend for the use of "son of" (or at least the original language version) being used as he wants it. He merely shows two problematic descriptions, which seem like errors from his sources. In fact, the Jehu/Omri example shows that it must have been an error on somebody's part, because, according to the bible and Archer, Jehu was not related to Omri at all and so the Holding explanation is irrelevant to his cited example in Archer. Jehu wasn't even a distant descendant.

But look at Holding's logic here:

As for the father/son relationship, there are many possible answers to this:

1. Archer notes above the reference to "Jehu son of Omri." This reflects a general Oriental usage of father/son terminology. Textual (non-Biblical) evidence reveals that "son" was used at least 12 different ways in the ancient Orient, and "father" was used at least 7 different ways [Ford.Dan, 123; MillS.Dan, 149].

Scratch this one. He's just hoping to confuse the doubter, though Daniel clearly states to Belshazzar, "...the most high gave your father, Nebuchadnezzar, kingship..." (5:18) and "you, Belshazzar, his [Nebuchadnezzar's] son..." (5:22). The text itself uses the terms "father" and "son" in a conversation between Daniel and Belshazzar. Reading the text as written, there is no reason whatsoever to think that the text meant anything else than what it literally says, ie what Holding is bending over backwards to confuse.

2. Hints of an actual familial relationship, however, provide a more convincing solution to the problem. Indications of such are given by Herodotus, who reports that the queen mother Nitorcris, Nebbie's wife, was the "mother" of Nabodinus [Town.Dan, 70] - perhaps meaning by this, the mother-in-law.

Herodotus is famous for not having useful sources about Mesopotamia. It's endemic that Holding cites the Nitocris legend as fact. It shows what levels he is prepared to sink to. Or better it is an indication that he simply doesn't know what he is trying to talk about. Here's what Herodotus actually said:

The expedition of Cyrus was undertaken against the son of this princess [Nitocris], who bore the same name as his father Labynetus, and was king of the Assyrians.

Naturally we don't really know who "Labynetus" was , although we must guess that Holding wants to believe with his sources that it is really Nabonidas, who was a king of Babylon, not Assyria. How many mistakes is Holding prepared to live with to force Nitocris into this cover up of his?

The realization of this kind of relationship, or something similar, is being slowly adapted even by liberal critics.

Is this a lie or just self-deception? Perhaps though, when he says "liberal critics", he really means apologists who provide support for his beliefs.

I would at this stage challenge anyone who agrees with Holding and his apologetic sources to go to any mainstream university text specifically dealing with Mesopotamia and find one Near East specialist who supports even one aspect of Holdings views on Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Nitrocis. Better still, get some relevant primary historical sources on the issue (and Herodotus, writing in Greece and working on hearsay about Mesopotamia is not such a source).

Oriental monarchs who were usurpers commonly tried to legitimate their claim to the throne by marrying their predecessor's wife or daughter [Bout.IABD, 116]. This may be indicated in the case at hand by the fact that Nabodinus named one of his sons after Nebbie. Furthermore, one of Nabodinus' predecessors, Neriglissar, himself married one of Nebbie's daughters, so there would be a precedent for Nabodinus to follow. He is simply out of his depth, but he doesn't care, because those who read his stuff don't know as much as him and obviously he banks on this.

Holding has provided no Babylonian or Assyrian sources to indicate that a person who married a daughter of a king or a descendant of that person could be called a "son of" the king, but naturally Holding provides no evidence for such a claim. At the same time, while Neriglissar, a prince who had held important office ("rab mag"), might marry the daughter of a king, Nabonidus was what Mesopotamian texts called the "son of a nobody" and, despite being a successful general, he was not a suitable husband for a king's daughter.

In the Nabonidus Chronicle we meet the king's son, who is never called "king" in the text. Read for example the seventh year:

The king stayed in Temâ; the crown prince, his officials and his army were in Akkad. The king did not come to Babylon for the [New Year's] ceremonies of the month of Nisannu; the image of the god Nabû did not come to Babylon, the image of the god Bêl did not go out of Esagila in procession, the festival of the New Year was omitted. But the offerings within the temples Esagila and Ezida were given according to the complete ritual; the šešgallu-priest made the libation and asperged the temple.

The text clearly makes the differentiation between roles. The king was away from Babylon and his son stayed in Babylon to perform those necessary tasks he was capable of doing, though he was unable to perform the New Year festival, not being king. Yet Holding nonchalantly says:

Clearly, Belshazzar was regarded as a "king" in a full sense of the word - indeed, the evidence is so clear that even the liberal Lacocque admits that the cuneiform evidence "militate(s) in favor of a reign of Belshazzar."

You can see how clearly 'Belshazzar was regarded as a "king"' -- not at all. But had Holding bothered to read what the primary sources actually said, he might have known better than to say such things.

It would take more effort than it is worth to pull the legs off the other buggy defenses Holding throws up to confuse the unwary traveler about the book of Daniel. For a thinking man, one could say that his efforts were nothing short of dishonest, but his task is purely apologetic. Honesty doesn't enter into his equation.

spin

Steven Carr · 09-16-2007, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Holding cites the hick, Archer:

This argument, however, overlooks the fact that by ancient usage the term son often referred to a successor in the same office whether or not there was a blood relationship. '

spin

Boy, that JP Holding guy sure can find parallels between Biblical stories and pagan stories.

I never knew there were so many examples of parallelism between the Bible and pagan stories until I started reading Holding.

Perhaps Holding can exert himself on our behalf and find parallels between Gospel stories and pagan stories?

Steven Carr · 09-16-2007, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

1. Archer notes above the reference to "Jehu son of Omri." This reflects a general Oriental usage of father/son terminology. Textual (non-Biblical) evidence reveals that "son" was used at least 12 different ways in the ancient Orient, and "father" was used at least 7 different ways [Ford.Dan, 123; MillS.Dan, 149].
spin

Notice Holding's inability to quote primary sources.

Basically the Bible is inerrant because it conveys no information.

A was the son of B.

That could mean anything of 19 different things, (at least according to Archer and Holding)

In other words, they can't read the Bible and tell you what relationship Belshazzar was to Nebuchadnezzar.

All they can say is that whatever of those 12 and 7 relationships it was that were mentioned above, the Bible is inerrant in saying it was one of them - whatever one of them it was that the Bible meant.

What is the point of having an inerrant book where you can't even say what it meant by father/son?

Johnny Skeptic · 09-16-2007, 01:44 PM

James Holding should take a look at the following:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bernard Katz

Since the discussion centers on this biblical book, it's necessary to first ask: "Who was Daniel?" McDowell insists that "the Book of Ezekiel gives further evidence that Daniel was a historical figure" (p. 27). To refute this, I'd like to quote from Millar Burrows whom McDowell uses twice to back up part of his thesis (pp. 26, 124), as well as supplies a succinct and complementary biography in his "Biographical Sketches of Authors," (p. 137), which points up this scholar's excellent credentials.

In his What Mean These Stones? 1957, paperback edition, Burrow's admits to exactly what McDowell says: "... the references to Daniel in Ezekiel might be cited. In 14:14, 20 (of Ezekiel) Daniel is named with Noah and Job, the three being clearly chosen as supremely righteous men..." (p. 262).

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).

The 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, underlining mine).

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. 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).

The article that I quoted is a long article, and it leaves little doubt that James Holding does not have any idea whatsoever what he is talking about. He once said that the Bible does not have to be inerrant for his belief system to work, but that he still believes that it is inerrant. That is not true. The Bible certainly does have to be inerrant for Holding's belief system to work regarding the Resurrection and a host of other claims.

Leelee · 09-16-2007, 08:15 PM

Thanks for your replies. One section of the article is about things that indicate a sixth century BC date for Daniel. Holding says that there are things mentioned in Daniel that a second century BC writer would probably not have known.

Quote:

1A) Nebuchadnezzar's Threat (Dan. 2:5) Driver [Driv.BD, 20] says, "The violence and peremptoriness of the threatened punishment is in accordance with what might be expected at the hand of an Eastern despot; the Assyrians and Persians, especially, were notorious for the barbarity of their punishments." If the wise man were able to respond to their request, they were promised "gifts and rewards and great honor." The monarch would lavish them with expensive gifts and great honor.

1B) Nebuchadnezzar's Building Activities. It is commonly agreed that Daniel correctly represents correctly Nebbie's building prowess - and his corresponding braggadocio. The East India House inscriptions in London has six columns of Babylonian writing bragging about building operations which Nebbie carried on in enlarging the beautifying Babylon. [see Bout.IABD, 65-77, 92-104; Lacq.Dan, 86]

1C) Nebuchadnezzar's "tree dream" and humble origin. Nebbie was known to have been fascinated by the tall cedars of Lebanon; the dream recorded would have been appropriate to him in that respect (although it also bears resemblance to conceptions of a "world tree" in currency - Porte.Dan, 67). His reference to himself as the "lowest of men" accords with what we know of his humble background; inscriptions by his father Nabopolassar refer to himself as the "son of a nobody." [Bout.IABD, 89-90]

The above are personal quirks of Nebbie that we would hardly expect any later writer to be so familiar with.

2) The Golden Image. (Dan 3) Montgomery [Mont.Dan, 193-5] writes: "The Persians did not worship wood and stone with the Greeks, nor the ibis and ichneumon with the Egyptians. But after some ages they introduced human images."

3) The Literary Genre of Chapter 4. It is Epistle of a King to his People. The placing of the sender's name before that of the recipient is standard practice in neo- and late Babylonian letters, but also in Persian administrative correspondense. Other stylistic indications fit an earlier period: 1:2, 3:31, and 5:8. [Lacq.Dan, 70]

spin · 09-16-2007, 08:54 PM

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