Phscs

I've collected a couple of your responses up here to treat as once.

I agree with you that Alexander hardly built an empire, he was more on a sightseeing trip, conquering whatever came in his way, and as you say, leaving to his successors to actually build some kingdoms.

I also agree that in most of his empire, including Jerusalem, they might not notice much.

In his lifetime of course.

From the viewpoint of Daniel-2 - isnt this completely irrelevant?

The writer of the chapters 7-12 lives around 165 BC, more than 150 years after Alexander died. He does not face the "academic reality" of Alexanders own age, he faces The Legend of Alexander the Great.

The author does not know any details of what took place when Alexander passed by, but he lives in a place ruled by Alexanders greek successors for more than a hundred years. He knows cities like Alexandria, named from some great greek/macedonian conquerer who grabbed the whole world, only to die at a young age.

In his view he lives in a part (a quarter) of the kingdom of The Legend, Alexander the Great. His view is that Alexander conquered the world, just to die and his kingdom being split into several parts. To him, this should have appeared as a stand-alone kingdom, just as it did for Julius Caesar and Oliver Stone.

Your reasoning here might be valid for the author of chapters 1-6 (who wrote few years after alexanders death), but we already agree that this is another author than for the chapters 7-12 (who wrote about 150 years later).


My reply is still "so what" - especially as I'm fully aware of the unfortunate GT prophesy stating the medes should take Babylon.

My point is that our author number 2 has no problems with GT at all. The first author has already solved the "mede" problem by placing some odd "mede" into an apparent persian kingdom - "Darius the mede". Since this is already in the text, author number 2 has no need to put in any Mede kingdom in his sequence at all - he already has a "mede" in the text he is adding to - so that problem is solved for him.

He can simply put in the current kingdom, Seleucids, The Legend of Alexander before this, then Persia, then Babylon. The mede problem is already solved with "Darius the mede" - who can easily be faked into a distant Persian kingdom. This is simply the easiest "lie" to tell - many might know that persians took Babylon, but since their king then was "a mede" - GT is still correct.

I dont ignore this fact - I'm perfectly aware of it. I just realise one consequence of this "inheritance" which you choose to ignore:

The mede problem (from GT prophesies) is already solved for author #2. He has what appears to be a persian king of specifically mede descent as entering Babylon in 539 BC. This makes the "prophesies" true. Hence author #2 is free to actually put in the proper sequence of kingdoms - without using the medes at all.

Agreed, but do not forget the time of the "perspective" - 165 BC. Surely we can presume that Alexander "the Great" was already famous/legendary at this time - his "impact" over time being a lot more noticed than whatever he did on his brief "rampage" 150 years earlier.

To summarize: the GT prophesy of medes taking Babylon is already solved when chapters 7-12 are written, Alexander the Great should be viewed as a legendary kingdom between the persians and the seleucids/pteolemies, making Alexanders kingdom an excellent (or perhaps necessary) candidate for the third kingdom in chapter 7.

regards

-phscs

spin

There is no reason for you to contemplate the Median reference as a problem or the writer of Daniel "solving" anything. He had what he saw and he had his traditions. The Medes ending Babylon was part of the tradition.

Alexander was responsible for initiating Greek (Macedonian) hegemony over the whole known world. Why should the writer of Daniel in ch.7, which is quite a panoramic view of history (not even mentioning the Ptolemies), bother to separate him from what he started?


spin

Phscs

Precisely - but lets not forget that "The Medes ending Babylon" can be interpreted easily in several ways. First, a Mede kingdom taking over Babylon, and second, some mede guy taking over Babylon at the head of some Army of another kingdom.

Religious people do have a tendency to stretch such "prophesies" to match whatever straw is available (even when the "straw" is fake, as in Darius the mede).

You seem to assume without reason that the author of Daniel-2 is forced to put in an entire mede kingdom - that's not really required is it?

Babylon was a large kingdom, Persia was an even larger kingdom, and Alexander the Greats empire was the largest of them all. Then it split apart, into several smaller parts, one being seleucids - another being ptolemians.

Wouldn't this be the perspective of some person living in Jerusalem in 165 BC? Should we not expect the people in this greek controlled country to view Alexanders short-lived kingdom as greater than the persian empire?

Would it not be difficult for the author of Daniel-2 to sell his list of animals to his readers if he included the lesser kingdoms of Persia and Syria and left out (for him, in his time) the biggest kingdom of them all?

"he had what he saw" as you say.

regards

-phscs

spin

I'll leave you with your repetitions.