FunkyRes

Glad you admit the 2nd century dating is falsifiable-

The assumption in Daniel is that the Author does not accurately know the death of A. IV E.

Actually, the text supports that the problem verses do not refer to Antiochus IV Epiphanes on several counts-

1) The Directional Kings change historical identity several places in the prophecy- so "King of the North" after v 32 is not demanded to be A. IV E.

2) vs 33-35 is a distinct break in the prophecy where the author stops talking of the Soap Opera of the Compass (term I coined ) - a definite change in focus- which leads the question as to why it is insisted that when he goes back to the Soap Opera of the Compass that it demands he is returning to A. IV E. (especially in light of point 1)

3) The death of A. IV E. _is_ correctly prophecied in chapter 8:25b-

"Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power"

The little horn in Chapter 8 is clearly A. IV E.
Therefore, it does not make sense that the author would then in chapter 11 describe the King of the South defeating A. IV E.

4) Daniel 11:36 on parallels the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 very closely, where Gog is described as coming from the North and being killed on the mountains of Israel- if you can detach yourself from claiming that Daniel 11:36+ is A. IV E. then you can clearly see that it parallels another prophecy that had nothing to do with A. IV E.

-=-
Additionally, it is argued that all the prophecy leads up to the Greeks under A. IV E.
That is just not true-

5) The Dream of Nebuchadrezzar and the Four Beasts only end with the Greek empire IF you assume that they were written as history and that the author though the Medes was one Kingdom and the Persians was a seperate one- but internal evidence withing Daniel clearly demonstrates that the author knew the medes and persians were one kingdom, and the dreams/visions fit much better if you allow Rome to be the Iron legs of the statue and the "Terrifying and Frightening Beast"

The only ones who claim Greece was the last kingdom are the ones who say Daniel was written in 2nd century therefore they must be- an interpretation based upon assumption that they can't be prophecy. But if you take authorship date away, those interpretations make no sense in light of the internal proof that the author saw the medo-persian empire as ONE kingdom.

A second century dating written as "History" Requires that medes and persians be seen as seperate kingdoms, otherwise the model doesn't fit. Yet we know the author KNEW they were one kingdom, so a second century "written as history" model doesn't fit the text, whereas a profetic one allows Rome to be described and everything fits a LOT better.

-=-
Furthermore, it is claimed that Daniel is incorrect regarding Belteshazzar-

6) Belteshazzar isn't mentioned in any other histories after 5th century, and was in fact thought to be ficticious until late in the 19th century, and was thought to never have been King until the Twentieth Century. Yet Daniel had it pegged as accurate. It is argued that he wasn't "King" but we know he was the crowned prince and left in command of Babylon, I believe the Nabonidis Chronicle says "left him the throne"

The word Daniel uses for King does not demand that a higher king over him did not exist, but rather, the fact that Daniel was only offered 3rd rule in the Kingdom (5:7) indicates that the author knew very well that 2nd rule wasn't available (as that belonged to Belteshazzar, with Nabonidus having first)

With regards to "son" and "father" the skeptics love to argue that they had to mean literal son and literal father, but never seem to know ancient aramaic well enough to suggest what SHOULD have been used, when the people who DO know Aramaic don't see it as a problem.

For example- Joyce Baldwin, a respected scholar who knows her Aramaic, says the use of Father and Son in that context is very appropriate. Scholars like <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/till-bio.html" target="_blank">Ferrel Till</a> who object don't seem to have any indication that they know aramaic at a scholarly level (or in the case of Till- I see no indication that he knows any Aramaic).

Who you gonna believe? The one who is intimately familiar with Aramaic, or the skeptic who is not?

I'll go with the expert, thank you

-=-
Daniel is accused of being wrong with regard to who took Babylon-

7) Darius the Mede. We don't have a positive ID on him, but Guburu fits the description perfectly- and we know (despite some translation confusion) that he is different than the Gobyras who quickly died- but that he ruled Babylon for possibly as long as 13 years, having been put in power by Cyrus with the ability to put people under him etc.

Daniel 9:1 confirms this because it says "was made ruler over babylon" and the Hebrew phrase used for that is NEVER used for a conquoring King, but for a King who was put in power by someone else- Cyrus in this case.

It could not be a mistake reference to Darius the Great- he was also called Darius the Persian if I recall, not Darius the Mede.

Darius the Great had a son named Xerxes where Darius the Mede had a Father named Xerxes- but it is silly to demand that Xerxes could not have been used as name until Darius the Great had a kid.

As was the case with Belteshazzar, more archaelogy may defend Daniel with the identification of Darius the Mede- but even the archaeology we have gives us a pretty good clue.

-=-
Then it is claimed that Daniel had to be late due to its placement in the canon-

8) Place in the MT Canon (TANUK) not with the prophets is meaningless, as Daniel is placed with the prophets in the LXX and in the Canon by Josephus, both of which predate any known MT Canon, and is one of the most popular books found at Qumran, where other documents call him a prophet.

Furthermore, the MT Canon had strict requirements- only Hebrew works could be admitted because Hebrew was the holy language, Aramaic was the "commoner" language. Yet they had enough reverence for Daniel and Ezra to let them in anyway.

And the prophets they do have are ones that were
a) Written completely in Hebrew, Daniel was not
b) Prophets of Israel, Daniel was not

Daniel was a servant of a foreign court and prophecied very little about Israel. Only at the end did he prophecy about Israel. Also, much of Daniel is not prophecy, whereas that's not the case with the TANUK prophets.

-=-
In addition to the rebuttals of the above "arguements" for a second century dating, the language of the text itself DEMANDS an earlier dating.

There are only three greek words, specifically instruments and grouped together. Not the product of hellenization, for hellinized influence would have had common words in greek and scattered. Additionally, there are about 15 persian words (might be 25 but I think it's 15 or 17) and they are all OLD PERSIAN, some of which haven't been used since 350 B.C. (yet they magically appear in a 2nd centuru B.C. document?)

Additionally, the word order of the Aramaic is not 2nd century western aramaic, but is actually of a eastern form known as "court aramaic" which we know was in use for official stuff in 5th century BC.

Finally, Morphology dates the Aramaic in Daniel to be MUCH older than known 2nd/3rd century aramaic that we have from Qumran.

One last point-
Daniel is written in two languages. Hebrew and Aramaic.
The Aramaic part is 2:4 through the end of chapter seven.

There is a distinction between the aramaic part and the hebrew part- the aramaic part was not dealing with Israel, it's history or future. The Hebrew part deals with Israel, it's history and future.

Why the hell would a second century author write a book to "rile up" his countrymen that contains so much that has absolutely nothing to do with his countrymen?

It doesn't fit.

Second Century authorship is not demanded
Second Century authorship causes more problems than it solves (medes and persians being two kingdoms, for example- with the persian kingdom seeming like Greece in the statue and the four beasts)
Second Century authorship does not fit a scholarly analysis of the linguistics
Second Century authorship does not make sense.

The book does not "miss" on the death of A. IV E.- in fact, it gets it absolutely correct. It is the liberal scholars who "miss" on seeing where the death of A. IV E. is spoken of, and seem not to be able to comprehend that a complete change of focus in a prophecy can mean that a DIFFERENT King of the North is now being spoken of, one that matches Ezekiel 38.

Daniel was written 6th century B.C.
It is a clear case of specific prophetic prophecy being fulfilled.
The could indicate that the God Daniel proclaims is real!

-=-
references for most of my claims can be found at <a href="http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_05_01.html" target="_blank">http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_05_01.html</a>

Kosh

<a href="http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/comment/daniel.shtml" target="_blank">Other problems with Daniel</a>

FunkyRes

As far as the Chaldeans are concerned (Daniel use the word to speak about magicians in one place) they have found a early aramaic document I beleive from 5th century BC (might have been fourth) that uses Chaldean in both ways, as Daniel does- so that arguement has become moot.

Are there any other arguements from that page I should look at?

I should note- I much prefer it when people point out what the arguement is, rather than just a link- this is because it is not uncommon practice (for christian and athiest alike) to point a link to a page which makes arguements that have already been addressed, or mostly aready addressed.

Please specify some of the alleged problems I have not addressed.

[ July 18, 2002: Message edited by: FunkyRes ]</p>

Vorkosigan

I sorry I posted a link, but the arguments there are exhaustive and cover all your points. You, on the other hand, still haven't provided a site for your claims about linguistic analysis.

Your claim contains, of course, numerous errors. That is one of the problems of going with someone like Holding, and trying to defend a sixth century date for Daniel.

Darius the Great had a son named Xerxes where Darius the Mede had a Father named Xerxes- but it is silly to demand that Xerxes could not have been used as name until Darius the Great had a kid.

Darius the Great's father was Hsytaspes.

Belteshazzar isn't mentioned in any other histories after 5th century....Yet Daniel had it pegged as accurate. It is argued that he wasn't "King" but we know he was the crowned prince and left in command of Babylon, I believe the Nabonidis Chronicle says "left him the throne"

• With regards to "son" and "father" the skeptics love to argue that they had to mean literal son and literal father, but never seem to know ancient aramaic well enough to suggest what SHOULD have been used, when the people who DO know Aramaic don't see it as a problem.
  
  For example- Joyce Baldwin, a respected scholar who knows her Aramaic, says the use of Father and Son in that context is very appropriate. Scholars like Ferrel Till who object don't seem to have any indication that they know aramaic at a scholarly level (or in the case of Till- I see no indication that he knows any Aramaic).
  
  Who you gonna believe? The one who is intimately familiar with Aramaic, or the skeptic who is not?

FunkyRes, I'm going to believe scholars who know their stuff. And yours clearly does not. Daniel's history is grossly inaccurate, as competant scholars know.

(1)Belshazzar is depicted as Nebuchadnezzar's son. Daniel 5:11

• There is in your kingdom a man in whom is the spirit of the holy gods... King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans and astrologers.

Now, you want to argue that "father-son" here implies an ancestral relationship. Earth to FunkyRes: as Till pointed out already:

• We have here an extended passage in which the narrator himself referred to Nebuchadnezzar once as the father of Belshazzar, after which purported dialogue followed in which the queen twice referred to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's father, and Belshazzar once referred to Nebuchadnezzar as his father. A speech by Daniel then followed in which he once referred to Nebuchadnezzar as the father of Belshazzar and once called Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar, so altogether there are six different references in this one passage to a father-son relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.

Now, real history, not wacko literalist history, shows that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, not Nebuchadnezzar. If you want to claim that Daniel is implying some ancestor-descendent relationship, you are in deep shit: the text could not refer to an ancestor-descendent relationship because as any scholar could tell you, Nabonidus was a usurper and WAS NOT in the line of descent from Nebuchadnezzar. That's right, folks, Nabonidus was not in the direct line from Nebuchadnezzar. So this apologetic strategy fails utterly.

2) Belshazzar was never a king.

In any case, the Aramaic in Daniel is late Second Temple and is clearly from the 2nd century. A detailed discussion of this issue can be found in the 1993 Hermennia Commentary of Daniel by John J. Collins.

Darius the Mede. We don't have a positive ID on him, but Guburu fits the description perfectly- and we know (despite some translation confusion) that he is different than the Gobyras who quickly died- but that he ruled Babylon for possibly as long as 13 years, having been put in power by Cyrus with the ability to put people under him etc.

Guburu was one of Cyrus' governors. There was never any "Darius the Mede," this is one of the writer's numerous mistakes. As Till says:

• The writer's confusion in matters like those discussed above is one reason why many biblical scholars reject the tradition that Daniel was written by an important Jewish official in the 6th-century Babylonian empire, but it is, of course, his mistake in thinking that a Median empire intervened between the Babylonian and Persian kingdoms that presents the most compelling reason why so many scholars think that this book could not have been written by an official who was party to most of the events recorded in it. Although "liberal" scholars whom biblical inerrantists deplore may disagree on minor points concerning the dating of the book, they are in general agreement that this mistake was a major blunder that would not have been made by someone who had been an important official in 6th-century Babylon. Since this mistake has already been discussed in my previous responses to Hatcher, I will only summarize the major points: (1) In 550 B. C., Cyrus conquered the kingdom of the Medes and made it a province or satrapy of the Persian empire. (2) In 539 B. C., Babylon fell to Cyrus, so by this time Media no longer existed. (3) Cyrus ruled in Babylon from 539-538 B. C. and then moved his residence to Ecbatana, a city in territory that Cyrus had taken in his conquest of Media. (4) The writer of Daniel clearly indicated that a "Darius the Mede" reigned in Babylon for at least one year between the reigns of Belshazzar and Cyrus the Persian, but by the time Daniel's mysterious "Darius the Mede" had finished his reign in Babylon and Cyrus had begun his, Cyrus (according to contemporary Persian records) had left Babylon and moved his official residence to Ecbatana. Who can believe that a high government official living in those times could have written a book that contained such historical inaccuracies as these?

Of course, speaking of Daniel's misunderstandings -- and there are so many -- the author of Daniel thought there were 120 satraps in the empire. But according to the Behistun Rock inscription (Column 1, paragraph 6) which was carved during the reign of Darius the Great (the Persian king, 522-486 B.C., who actually organized the Persian Empire into satrapies) there were only twenty-three. This is from the <a href="http://www.atheists.org/church/daniel.html" target="_blank">AA page on Daniel</a>, a good intro to the many problems of this text. As they add at the bottom:

• To lay "Darius the Mede" to rest for once and for all, one may observe that the archeological evidence leaves no space at all for a ruler of Babylon between Nabonidus and Cyrus. Archeologists have found numerous contract-tablets from the period in question. The dates of the tablets pass directly from one dated 10 Marchesvan in the 17th year of Nabonidus, to one dated 24 Marchesvan in the accession year of Cyrus the Persian.

Game, set, match.

There is a distinction between the aramaic part and the hebrew part- the aramaic part was not dealing with Israel, it's history or future. The Hebrew part deals with Israel, it's history and future.

The aramaic goes through Chapter 7, which is definitely prophetic in nature.

Daniel is a patchwork, like many books in the Bible, and a few parts of it may be a couple of centuries older. But the final writer of Daniel lived in the second century and garbled up his sixth century history. All serious scholars regard Daniel as second-century.

I see no reason to argue this further; the second-century date of Daniel is well-established. Please re-read the discussion of Daniel in Till. He is simply following what serious OT scholars say. If you can find specific errors in his presentation, by all means point them out.

Vorkosigan

Jayman

Chapters 1-6 and 7-12 form two separate parts of Daniel. Chs. 7-12 are dated to the second century BC by most scholars, while chs. 1-6 can be from an earlier date (I'm not sure what scholarly opinion on the date is).

FunkyRes

So the author of 1-6 decided to write 5/6 of his book in Aramaic and the author of 7-12 decided to write the just the first chapter in Aramaic?

There is no scholarship to support that 7-12 was added.

The oldest copies of Daniel that we have (Qumran) contain pieces of every chapter except 12, which is likely not represented because the end of the scroll was more suceptible to loss.

The disputed chapter 11 is in Qumran, however.

The multi-author theories are suggestions, but do not have any evidence at all.

-=-
With regards to the linguistics-
<a href="http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_05_01.html#lingua" target="_blank">http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_05_05_01.html#lingua</a>

Of note-
That's from Archer.

Also from Archer-

The specific references are in the link I give above.

FunkyRes

Except that Nabonidus married one of Nebuchadrezzar's daughters, who very well may have been the mother of Belteshazzar (and possibly even the Queen mentioned in Daniel)

FunkyRes

I'll try to find a reference for that, btw- but I've seen it many times (Nebuchadrezzar's daughter/Nabonidus)- I think it's noted in the Cuniforms. Maybe even the Nabonidus Chronicle, I'm not sure.

Vorkosigan

The date of those chapters isn't all that important (interestly, the Aramaic overlaps the two parts you divide above, so........), but it is clear that they date from much later than the sixth century. In any case, they also contain the exact same set of errors that the first six date from. For example, see 9:1....

Daniel also has 3 parts, 13-14 Susanna, Bel, and the Dragon, didactic short stories.

There are plenty of other anachronisms, and interested readers may peruse the scholarly literature for them.

Vorkosigan

FunkyRes

Which were not added to the LXX until later (early copies of the LXX don't have them) and were not in the Daniel scrolls in Qumran and are not accepted by the Jewish canon.

In other words, they are DEFINATELY add ons undisputed.