Biblical interpretation has moved on a bit beyond Jerome, and it is
interesting that as far back as the third century the book of Daniel; wass
aseen as having been written in Macabean times. Those who want to take a
look at the what the modern scholarly interpretation of Daniel is can try
http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/CH17/CH17_TC.HTM
I note for the record that there is no internal evidence of the authorship
or dating of Daniel, so there can be dogmatic assertion that Danel MUST date
to early times.
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of gordon brown
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 5:29 PM
To: bivalve
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: The Bible: human word of the almighty God.doc
The Maccabean date hypothesis for the book of Daniel was advanced in the
third century by Porphyrius of Tyre, a philosopher who did not believe
that the prophecies of Daniel that were fulfilled in such detail could
have been written before they happened and so must have been history
rather than prophecy. Jerome devoted considerable space in his commentary
on Daniel to refuting this theory.
To turn the prophecies into pre-Maccabean history requires none of them to
refer to the Roman Empire, which in turn requires some seemingly unnatural
interpretations of the kingdoms that are mentioned. The word order in the
Aramaic section of Daniel is similar to that of Akkadian (Babylonian) and
different from the usual order that the Jews would have used in the 2nd
century B.C. Also, the translators of the Septuagint, which was translated
soon after the Maccabean period, mistranslated the words for various
government officials, which they shouldn't have done if they were
translating from the language that was current at that time.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, bivalve wrote:
> >I find the conservative attempts to find a place for Darius the Mede
> >in history quite implausible. No else seems to think Cyrus the Great
> >was ever called Darius the Mede(a strange appellation for a Persian)
> ><
>
> I find the attempts to find a place for the writing of Daniel in
> Maccabean times quite implausible. No doubt we differ in our
> standards of credibility. As Cyrus was half Median, the appellation
> is not quite so strange as might be thought. After all, one man's
> Mede is another man's Persian.
>
> >The word "forger" is an unfortunate choice of words in a context
> >where the writers of this type of literature (apocalyptic) typically
> >took on the guise of an ancient hero.Our ideas about authorship were
> >simply unknown in the ancient world. People should understand that
> >and get past that. "The past is another country. People do things
> >differently there". <
>
> This is getting into the question of historicity and verifiability of
> Scripture, an argument that has gone around on the list several times
> without sign of resolution. At this point, I will simply note that
> the specific case of Daniel would involve not only invocation of the
> authority of a figure from the past (as seems likely for
> Ecclesiastes), but also fraudulent justification of the authority of
> the book by faking predictive prophecy. The apocalyptic parts of
> Zechariah do not invoke an ancient hero, so I am doubtful about its
> being integral to the literary genre. Invoking a famous source from
> the past (or present) was recognized by the early centuries AD as a
> dishonest way to try to gain authority for one's claims, as in the
> pseudepigraphical gospels, letters, etc. (already becoming an issue
> in the NT), some pagan attacks on Christianity, and some Christian
> responses to these.
>
>
> Dr. David Campbell
> Old Seashells
> University of Alabama
> Biodiversity & Systematics
> Dept. Biological Sciences
> Box 870345
> Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 USA
> bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
>
> That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted
> Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at
> Droitgate Spa
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 28 2002 - 21:38:55 EDT