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

[Simon Beaumont]

i enjoy reading this. i thought daniel wrote it but perhaps another jewish 
writer, perhaps a scribe wrote it. god uses prophets to write things 
concerning his judgement and what is true.
i often wondered how the mysterious human hand wrote on a wall during 
belshazzar's last ruling reign / only god knew and it is possible that he 
used his own powers to bring down judgement as well as mercy for those who 
believed. i think maybe nebrchadnezzar believed in god.
sorry that i don't write my views very well. i try to express my views and 
thoughts.
simon
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Smith via Faith-talk" <faith-talk at nfbnet.org>
To: <serenitymountain at ultragroups.us>
Cc: "Paul Smith" <paulsmith at samobile.net>
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 8:37 PM
Subject: [Faith-talk] {Spam?} Baffling Bible Questions Answered for 
Monday,May 9, 2016


> 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
>
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