stephan huller

Am I now officially a part of the whack jobs at this forum? The question was why does Moses stand at a different level than the other prophets. Why is it that every answer leads to a new set of absurd tangents. I was just trying to give some colo(u)ring or flavo(u)ring for how Moses serves as a prototype for the one to come in each tradition. I achieved this understanding by taking the time to respect the traditions of other peoples. This doesn't mean that I became a Samaritan. But I like to try to figure out the people and traditions I engage. Sorry that I can't begin to understand Christianity with the objectivity of someone who'd liken it to:

archibald

Hi Stephan,

I am reading an interesting book at the moment, Carrier's 'Not the Impossible Faith' (I like it for some reasons, dislike it for others, but overall it's a very interesting read).

In an early chapter, Carrier uses Daniel to show that 'a messiah who would be killed prematurely' featured in pre-Christian expectations.

But two chapters later, making a different point, he discounts Daniel, on the basis that 'most objective scholars agree' (his phrase) that Daniel is a forgery produced in the 2nd C.

I'm therefore confused, but since you referred to Daniel, I was wondering if you could shed any light?

dog-on

I think you mean the 2nd century BCE, which would allow it to also be a feature of "pre-Christian" expectations.

archibald

I will need to go back and check, dog-on. I'm nearly sure Carrier said 2nd C forgery, which would imply CE. I could simply have misread. It was late. I was reading just before zzzzzzzz's. I will check later, don't have the book with me here in the temple office. :]

Iskander

Forgery arguments are the refuge of the defeated.

For some people humans are also forgeries since they were made out of dust and Adam could not possibly be a mother. It is all lies and contradictions, humans are a myth.

gurugeorge

As soon as you joined ussss, your fate was inevitable

Toto

The overwhelming consensus view of all experts and amateurs alike is that Daniel dates to the second century BCE and is pre-Christian. The only dissenters are inerrantists who date it much earlier.

OK, I found it, at p. 90:

stephan huller

Hi archibald

I am flattered that anyone would want to hear anything that I have to say. Unfortunately my answer is certain to prompt a familiar answer from Mary Helena. Nevertheless I will give an answer that will avoid - as much as possible - me having to respond to her familiar banter.

I have not read Carrier's book and typically avoid reading works by people who aren't specialists in ancient languages. I assume that Carrier is making reference to Daniel 9:26 which is a messianic prophesy and has a word which is interpreted by later rabbis and even some later Christians as implying the messiah would die. This is not an incorrect interpretation but it should be put in the proper linguistic context.

The actual wording in Daniel chapter 9 is that the messiah would 'disappear.' There are two ways that this can be rendered in Hebrew:

This is the exact English equivalent of the Hebrew. I put both down for comparison. My point was that the distinction can be made in Hebrew, and Daniel has the second expression, not the first.

The first expression is used of Enoch. “He walked with the angels (ha-Elohim). And he was not (he was not there any more); for God (Elohim) took him (had taken him)”. In Biblical Hebrew ואיננו (ve-enénnu) is the equivalent of ואינו (ve-enó).

The distinction is like this. The first means he she or it does not exist or does not exist any more. Of a person, it could mean he has died, but only if something is added. In the case of Enoch it means he was transported (to Heaven, not to Hollywood). If said of an empire, it would mean it no longer exists. The second means he is no longer present, he has vanished, he is off the scene. It does not mean he has died. His whereabouts might be well known, but he is not HERE or ACTING IN THIS CONTEXT.

The verb yikkaret which appears in Daniel does not mean he will die. I know everyone says it does, but it does not. If the context allows AND DEMANDS IT, it can mean he will be killed, as the Peshitta translates it. But the meaning without preconceptions is that he will stop acting in his function. THIS VERB IS NOT NORMALLY USED OF PEOPLE. It is used of dynasties, for example. Its use in relation to a person is not normal. It is JARRING. The meaning can only be that he stops acting as Anointed Leader. The sentence says (over-translating) “The OFFICE of Anointed Leader will terminate. He will disappear from the scene”.

There is one common use of the Biblical Hebrew narrative future of KRT in the feminine passive (ve-nichreta ונכרתה) in reference to a person. Someone is sure to raise this as an objection, so here is the answer. In several places in the Torah, it says that if a soul (nefesh, feminine) does some defined thing or does not do some defined thing, that soul “will be cut off” from its (her) people. Rabbinic exegesis on the superficial level says this means death before the age of fifty. (This is why in John it is objected by someone that Jesus is not yet fifty. He has not ye proven his genuineness). If you look more carefully, what is meant is that death before that age can be a sign of this having happened, but not everyone in this category dies before fifty and not everyone that dies before fifty is in this category. The Rabbinic Hebrew noun is karet. The meaning of karet is separation of the individual soul from its group identification. Note carefully that it does not in itself mean death. It means the end of adhesion of the individual soul to the group, and the ending of its share in the salvation of the group. The most salient offence causing karet is not to keep the Sabbath, but there are others.

Otherwise, KRT refers to the end of a dynasty.

Oversimplifying, ve-enó means he no longer exists or is no longer on this earth or at least no-one knows if he is still on this earth. Like when the Bush administration said they knew exactly what had become of Bin Laden. Their reliable intelligence informed that he was alive in Afghanistan, or otherwise was dead in Afghanistan or was alive in some other country. On the other hand, ve-en lo means he vanishes rather than disappears. His whereabouts might be still be well known and he might still be active. So Daniel says (paraphrasing): (a) “The office of Anointed Leader will be terminated (like the termination of a dynasty). There is no longer any office of Anointed Leader”; OR (b) “The individual Anointed Leader will be separated off (from “the Jews” in the sense the expression has in the NT). He won’t be there doing the job (though he will be alive and well as king, and he MIGHT EVEN STILL BE ANOINTED LEADER, but “the Jews” have no share in it)”.

This is the part which will bring in Mary Helena's typical banter.

As I have noted many times in many places here in the forum (almost always being drawn into this discussion by the aforementioned woman), the standard rabbinic method of interpreting Daniel 9:26 is to apply it to king Agrippa, the last king of the Jews. The rabbis however interpret Daniel as foretelling that that at the start of the Jewish War (i.e. 66 CE) Agrippa 'was killed.' This was clearly not the original interpretation of the Agrippa messiah myth. How do we know that? Aside from the plain meaning of the prophesy and the fact that Agrippa DID NOT die in 66 CE the original meaning is still preserved in the various copies of Josephus's account of the Jewish War which survive.

The reason that I wrote my less than successful 'Real Messiah' was that I was very excited to have uncovered the survival of that original messianic tradition in the writings of Josephus. Indeed if we look at ALL of the surviving manuscripts it becomes plainly apparent to the discerning reader that the whole history of the Jewish War is theological, that is less than historical - developed around the prophesy of Daniel chapter 9. As with the surviving rabbinic tradition Agrippa is the messiah of Daniel who is 'cut off' but as one would expect, the narrative now follows the true meaning of the original Hebrew.

I will cite the Hebrew Yosippon material sent to me by the world's leading expert on this text Professor Steve Bowman of the University of Cincinnati who sent me an early draft of the last paragraph of Agrippa's speech in ch. 60 of Flusser's edition:

The Yosippon has long been acknowledged to be a development or related to the Latin text of Pseudo-Hegesippus (4th century) which renders the same material as follows:

In other words, as we see throughout the Yosippon and Hegesippus (it is still present in other editions of Josephus too), the narrative blames the Jews for not listening to Agrippa, who is the true awaited messiah of Israel. In the Yosippon this is very pronounced. The Jews are depicted as referencing this speech from Agrippa (which takes up many pages) throughout the account of their eventually doom and destruction.

The moral of the story is then that because the Jews rejected their real messiah they ended up suffering a divinely sanctioned holocaust in 70 CE. Read Josephus again and you will see it.

stephan huller

And with respect to the surviving copies of Daniel. I think that an argument can be made that the surviving material was re-edited after the events of 70 CE and established as the framework for the 'official dogma' of contemporary Judaism and Christianity. It is utterly incredible how Jews and early Christians agree on critical details of how Daniel 9 applied to the historical reality of the Jewish revolt down to Agrippa being the messiah. It is also intriguing how important Daniel was to the earliest sources but then in later rabbinic Judaism Daniel is subordinated as a 'lesser prophet.' How can that be when Daniel is by all accounts the only prophet whose prophesy was 'already proved' in past history? Very odd and a sign IMO of a reactionary effort against the original significance of Daniel (even the Marcionites view Daniel favorably).

An ambitious scholar could make a strong case that the surviving text was re-edited after the Jewish revolt to make it agree with history. I am not so ambitious to actually spend time on this endevo(u)r however.

maryhelena

From an amazon review of The Real Messiah:

Stephan Huller on the book by Sebastian Moll: The Arch-Heretic Marcion:

The Arch-Heretic Marcion (or via: amazon.co.uk)