[Faith-talk] {Spam?} Baffling Bible Questions Answered for Monday, May 9, 2016

[Paul Smith]

Hello and greetings to you on a Monday or, for you in Australia and New 
Zealand, a good Tuesday.  I hope that your day is going well, by God's 
matchless grace and His providential care.

Before I give you the Baffling Bible questions answered for today, my 
apologies for not posting the quotes.  I simply woke up too late to do 
so, but hopefully tomorrow they will be posted.

Today we delve into the book of Daniel.  It's somewhat long, so let's begin.



Question:  Who wrote this book, and what themes and topics does it deal with?

Answer:  The book purports to have been written by Daniel, a Jewish 
nobleman who was taken to Babylon as an adolescent and advanced to high 
positions in the civil service of both the Babylonian and Persian 
empires.  The first six chapters of Daniel are biographical and relate 
incidents that demonstrate God's sovereignty despite his people's 
subjection to pagan powers.  The second six chapters are filled with 
visions and prophecies about the future.  These are intended to 
communicate to Israel that God in His sovereignty knows and controls 
the future and will establish the Jews to their homeland at history's 
end.  To demonstrate this theme of God's sovereign control, Daniel 
utters some of the most specific of the Old Testament predictions about 
the course of history.  These predictions were fulfilled so 
unmistakably that many critics have argued that the book itself must 
have been written in the second century B.C. rather than the fifth 
century B.C. setting of Daniel's story.



Daniel's Dates

Question:  Modern critics insist that there is proof that Daniel was 
written in the second century B.C. instead of the fifth century B.C.  
If that's true, the book must be a fraud and can hardly be viewed as 
Scripture, which if correct shows the whole notion that the Bible is 
inspired by God to be wrong.

Answer:  There is no doubt that many believe the Book of Daniel is one 
of many religious writings dating from the second century, whose 
anonymous authors used the names of ancient heroes in their titles.  
This view is reflected in an article in "Bible Review" (August 1989, p. 
13), in which Marc Brettler writes:  "Clear linguistic and historical 
evidence suggests that Daniel was written in the second century B.C.E. 
(before the Common Era), yet the text itself implies it was written 
three centuries earlier.  The author of Daniel made this false claim 
that his book would become an instant, ancient classic, and he suggested."

The fact is, however, that "clear linguistic and historical evidence" 
does not suggest Daniel was written in the second century, and the 
notion that a newly created book could be foisted off on the Jews as an 
ancient work by Daniel is absurd.  The Jews had a fanatically high 
regard for Scripture.  Copyists followed strict rules to reduce the 
chance of even slight errors in transmission. Scholars debated the 
meaning of every phrase, and various interpretations were passed down 
from generation to generation.  The idea that anyone in the second 
century B.C. could successfully claim his book as a book of Scripture 
composed by Daniel three centuries earlier and have it accepted by the 
community of Jewish scholars borders on the bizarre and at best must be 
considered irrational.

But what about the historic and linguistic evidence cited by the 
critics? One line of reasons involves the description in Daniel 2, 7, 
8, and 11 of the empires that succeeded Babylon, the Persian, Greek, 
and Roman Empires.  How could Daniel have so accurately traced the 
division of Alexander's empire under his four generals if the book was 
not written after all this happened? The believer's answer, of course, 
is that all predictive prophecy depends on the supernatural.  It is not 
at all surprising that God, who controls the future, knew the future 
course of empires and would reveal it ahead of time through His prophet.

Other so-called historical evidence comes in the form of alleged 
inaccuracies that a real Daniel would supposedly have corrected.  For 
instance, Daniel 1:1 says Nebudchadnezzar invaded Judah in the third 
year of Jehoiakim, while Jeremiah 46:2 places in the fourth year of 
Jehoiakim.  But recent understanding of New Eastern dating systems has 
shown that the dating system used in Judah was different from one used 
in Babylon, and that this supposed inaccuracy is, in fact, a most 
compelling argument for fifth-century authorship.  No Jew writing the 
Book of Daniel in the second century B.C. would have gone against 
Jeremiah 46:2 and dated the invasion using a Babylonian dating system 
three centuries out of date.  There are a host of similar objections 
and responses.  For instance, Belshazzar was long assumed to be 
apocryphal, because the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in 450 B.C., 
named Nabonidus as the last king of the Babylonian empire.  See, the 
critics shouted, Daniel is wrong.  Then came the discovery of cuneiform 
tablets which revealed that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus and had 
been made co-ruler with his father.  Suddenly, it seemed that Daniel, 
in writing about the Babylon of 540 B.C., knew more about the situation 
there than Herodotus who wrote ninety years later.  And, if the 
historian was in error about recent history, how could an unknown 
Jewish writer three hundred years later know about this lost fact of 
Belshazzar's co-regency?

As archeology has provided more and more information about the 
Babylonian-Persian period, detail after detail in Daniel's portrayal of 
the times, its customs, and even of individual personalities has been 
authenticated.  There are still historical problems.  But a clear 
pattern has been established:  When new information becomes available, 
it is Daniel, not the critics, who proves to be correct.

How about the linguistic arguments? These hinge primarily on the notion 
that words borrowed from the Greek language are found in Daniel and 
that therefore the book could not have been written before the 
Helenistic period initiated by Alexander about 330 B.C.  Here, too, 
research has provided interesting information.  Today only three words 
in the book are undoubtedly borrowed from Greek.  All are names of 
musical instruments, listed in Daniel 3:5, 10, 15.  Could these words 
appear in an authentic fifth century B.C. Babylonian or Persian 
document? Absolutely.  Eighth-century B.C. Assyrian inscriptions 
mention Greek captives taken to Mesopotamia.  The Assyrians and 
Babylonians were always interested in music.  Why shouldn't they have 
learned from these Greeks? Furthermore, the Greek Alcaeus of Lebos in 
the seventh century B.C. mentions his brother serving in the Babylonian 
army.  Neo-Babylonian tablets from the same century list supplies 
provided to Ionian (Greek) shipbuilders and musicians.  The argument 
that three music words from the Greek indicate a second-century date of 
the writing of Daniel is obviously incredible.  In fact, Daniel's 
writing contain at least fifteen Persian words that have to do with 
government and administration.  Daniel applies these words as they were 
used by the Persians themselves.  This supports the fifth-century date. 
Daniel's correct use of these words simply cannot be explained if the 
author was an unknown second-century writer unfamiliar with the details 
of Persian government three hundred years before his time.

It is amazing that, despite the host of evidence cited by conservative 
scholars, many people persist in holding the view that the Book of 
Daniel is a fraud perpetrated on the Jewish and Christian communities.  
Daniel is, in fact, inspired Scripture, an authentic account of the man 
whose adventures and visions it records.  As Scripture, the prophecies 
of Daniel, many of which have proven accurate by the passage of time, 
must be given serious attention by anyone interested in the Bible's 
picture of the future of the earth.

And there you have this week's baffling Bible questions answered 
column, written by an unknown author.  Although a bit long, I hope that 
you enjoyed reading it.

And that will do for today.  Tomorrow we have an even longer article on 
the subject of clutter.  Until then may the God of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last 
days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul