Mike,
George may wish to reply to your note directly to him, but as a
participant in this "Daniel" debate, I want to make a personal comment on
your words:
> You've told me where you are coming from. From the schools of higher
> criticism. The book of Daniel clearly claims to have been written by
Daniel
> himself from beginning to end. The words "I, Daniel" and other such claims
of
> authorship can be found in every part of the book, from beginning to end.
If
> it was not then the Bible is not a book which can be trusted. If it is
not,
> how can we believe it when it tells us God raised Jesus Christ from the
dead?
>
>
and say that my belief that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead is not
dependent upon whether there was actually a sixth century prophet named
Daniel who wrote the Book of Daniel, or that God created the world in six
literal 24 hr. days and completed it by the seventh, or that the Queen of
Sheba literally came from the ends of the earth, or that an actual prophet
named Jonah was actually swallowed by a great fish and lived in it for three
days. The trustworthiness of Holy Scripture, for me, is not dependent upon
my taking such matters literally.
One of the advantages of higher criticism over naive literalism is that the
higher critics have worked to help us understand the contexts--literary,
historical, cultural, etc.--of these things. There are numerous examples of
extracanonical pseudonymous literature during the last two centuries BC and
the first century AD and later to help us understand that this was an
accepted literary genre. I no more have to believe that that Daniel wrote
the Book of Daniel than I have to believe that Enoch wrote I Enoch or Moses
wrote The Apocalypse of Moses, et al. And, I am hard pressed to think of
any higher critic whose work I have benefited from who did not believe in
the resurrection of Christ.
Grace and peace,
Bob Schneider
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