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Daniel - A Book on Trial

Edited for reasons of copyright

spin

It is only the fundamentalist xian who has difficulties finding his/her anus for a trip to the loo who believes that Daniel should a) be taken literally and b) be taken as prophetic for Jesus. This person has no understanding of history nor the book of Daniel's place in it.

If this page seems astounding to you, well, welcome to the real world.


spin

Jack the Bodiless

That article entirely omits the very problem that allows scholars to pin down the date of authorship: the failed prophecy that Antiochus Epiphanes would have a long reign. He reigned only for a few years, thus pegging the date at 167 BC or thereabouts.

Furthermore (from the link):
We already know that Matthew's gospel is an unreliable source! We also already know that other parts of the Bible are false (the Genesis creation myth springs to mind). This is "fundie logic": the Bible is right because the Bible cannot be wrong.

The author is a crackpot.

spin

I am impresssed that you took time to read it. One look turned me off.


spin

Javaman

I had to try but... font size 6!!! Criminy. The other chapters clue you in to the Jehovah's Witness source for this material. I couldn't find a page with any real info on it but I didn't look for more than a few minutes. It's almost too bad. Perhaps (if I'm bored) I'll cut and paste that into a more readable format... but, based on y'all's reading of it so far, maybe it's not worth the effort.

Craig

Whoa, just realized that was a JW book. I was raised as a JW, and they take every word of the bible as factual, literal truth. If it's in there, it happened.

It's interesting to look back now and see how I managed to rationalize that belief when there are so many facts that counter it. The JWs have just about got a monopoly on cognitive dissonace.

Intelligitimate

Does anyone know of any other ancient book that parallels Daniel; a book that accurately 'predicts' 100s of years of 'future' history yet was probably written after it? It would make for an effective arguing tool.

Also any modern frauds that do the same would be nice.

Intelligitimate

*cough*

Sauron

Well, right out of the starting gate it makes some suspicious claims. The website says:

Not true. Belshazzar is also known from Xenophon's Cyropedia, from Josephus, and from Baruch.

Which he was.

I don't read German; but I think it would be wise to get Hitzig's own words here, and not trust the Watchtower Tract Society (authors of the website) to relay what he allegedly said.

The evidence for this is scant.

I have it on good authority that Hebrew does have a word for "grandfather". Moreover, the genealogy of Matthew has been problematic for centuries. The particular verse:

MAT 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

is clearly discussing the role of "son" as figurative - Christ, the son of the moust famous king, and son of the founder of the Hebrew nation.

And the entire section on "Darius the Mede" is a cop-out. There is no evidence for any "Darius the Mede" ever ruling after the invasion.

Dean Anderson

Revelation springs to mind - a piece of post-Jewish-revolt propaganda masquerading as a pre-revolt prophecy 'predicting' the crushing of the failed revolution, and then going on to say 'but everything will be okay and we will get revenge when Yahweh smites them'.

Some of the imagery in it parallels that in Daniel too.

However, the sort of people who believe that Daniel is genuine prophecy probably also believe that Revelation is genuine prophecy, so it is probably not a good example...