Even the historicity of Daniel the man is dubious. Unlike other prophets, he has no patronymic, profession, or place of origin, and he first appears in historical records when “Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians” lists him with the legendary Noah and Job (Ez. 14:13-14, 14:19-20), treating him as what we would normally identify as a mythical hero, among the “three” heroes of yore possessed of a legendary righteousness and wisdom (Ez. 28:2-3). Noah and Job are notably non-Israelites, and Ezekiel is writing to a non-Israelite audience; odds are, he understood this Daniel therefore to be another non-Israelite hero, hence why he puts these three together like this. None of these three men are likely historical. Ezekiel appears to cite them as such (they seem to come from “mythic time,” not real historical time; they are men “of yore”). And though Daniel was a common Israelite name, in this context the name and identity sounds suspiciously a lot like Danel, a mythical Ugaritic hero; and we know a lot of Jewish mythology is adapted from Ugaritic and similar surrounding cultures. The two names even mean the same thing (Daniel, “God Is My Judge” in Hebrew; Danel, “God Is My Judge” in Ugaritic), and are linked to the same God (Danel’s god El was known as “Father of Years”; Daniel 7:9-10 refers to Daniel’s God as “Ancient of Days,” possibly indicating lore about the Ugaritic Danel may even have been used to construct the text of Daniel), and this name relates directly to the mythical hero’s role (Danel was a judge of renowned god-endorsed wisdom; and the Daniel depicted in the book of Daniel is portrayed as a wise and righteous judge), a common red flag for mythical persons. The conclusion therefore wins on balance of probability that when Ezekiel wrote, he was lumping the Ugaritic Danel in with the other non-Israelite heroes of Noah and Job (who also had counterparts in foreign cultures, e.g. Zisudra and Jobab; likewise Noah is, like Danel, a suspiciously apposite name). There is no mention here of this Daniel being a Jewish prophet; nor of being either Jewish or a prophet; much less of having written a book of his name; or even existing in any recognizable era.
Nevertheless, we’ll set that aside. Because whether mythical or not, this hero “existed” in Jewish literature to be “tapped” as a purported legendary author of the Book of Daniel itself. Is there any reason specific to that book to warrant our concluding it is a forgery? Yes. Quite a lot in fact. And here I’ll summarize that for you. Principal peer-reviewed sources I rely on in this article are C.L. Seow’s Daniel by Westminster Knox Press (2003) and John Collins’ Daniel by Fortress Press (1993), part of the excellent Hermeneia commentary series. See also The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, vols. 1 and 2 (Brill, 2002), edited by John Collins and Peter Flint. This is all mainstream scholarly consensus now. Only biblical fundamentalists and similarly desperate believers still hold out hope that Daniel was actually written by an actual Daniel when it purports to have been. Mainstream scholarship has long since left them behind.
Historical Problems
Daniel itself purports to be a 6th century B.C. record made by an actual Daniel, a Jewish prophet in exile, of events around and after 600 B.C. It even purports to contain epistles and decrees written by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar himself (Daniel 4:1-18 and 4:34-37) and the fictional Babylonian king “Darius the Mede” (Daniel 6:6-12 and 6:25-28), which are ridiculously ahistorical fabrications self-evidently in service of Jewish propaganda, matching no actual evidence from the period. These epistles and decrees simply don’t exist in Babylonian or Persian records, nor do any records of any kind support any of the events peculiarly related in the book of Daniel. More importantly, were any of this true, Daniel could not make fundamental historical errors about that very time and place. Yet the book we have, does. In fact, whoever wrote it, knew the actual history of the period very poorly.
For example, Daniel begins:
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.
Daniel 1:1-2
This didn’t happen. “The third year of the reign of Jehoiakim” is 606 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar attacked and sacked Jerusalem in 598 B.C. which is the eleventh year of Jehoiakim, a fact confirmed not only elsewhere in the Bible but in contemporary Babylonian records. Technically Jehoiakim was killed before the sack and his son, Jehoiakin (a.k.a. Jeconiah), reigned a few months still holding out, but this passage is vague enough to encompass such a train of events (in ancient literary parlance we would call that a standard compression of events, which deliberately doesn’t distract a reader with pedantic trivia). It’s the rest of it that makes no sense. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t even ascend the throne until 605 B.C. (although disagreements of only a year can be due to the use of different calendars or other minor causes of error). In that year, though, when Nebuchadnezzar threatened to besiege Jerusalem, Jehoiakim, then a vassal of Egypt, pledged allegiance to the Babylonians instead, and served as their vassal until 601, when he allied with the Egyptians again, provoking Nebuchadnezzar to finally make good on his threat, ending Judah as a kingdom in 598 (or 597, depending on calendar, etc.). To confuse all this is an impossible mistake for anyone contemporary to these events.
Daniel then erroneously has Belshazzar succeed Nebuchadnezzar as his son (Daniel 5; cf. Daniel 7:1 and 8:1). But Belshazzar was neither his successor nor his son; and abundant contemporary records show he was never King of Babylon, but only served occasionally as regent under his father—but even that was a decade or so after several other rulers of Babylon had come and gone. Belshazzar’s actual father, Nabonidus, took the throne six years and three kings—Amel Marduk, Neriglissar, and Labashi-Marduk—after Nebuchadnezzar. There is no possible way any contemporary of events could have gotten this so horribly wrong. Whoever wrote Daniel was bad at history, and somehow mistook Belshazzar as a king of Babylon (he wasn’t), the son of Nebuchadnezzar (he wasn’t), and as succeeding Nebuchadnezzar (he didn’t; not even as regent).
Daniel then invents a king who never existed: Darius the Mede. Daniel claims he “took over the kingdom” after Belshazzar was killed (Daniel 5:30-31). In fact the actual king of the Babylonians was not killed. The Persians (not the Medes) took over Nabonidus’s kingdom, and spared his life (the real fate of his son and sometimes-regent Belshazzar is not recorded). Daniel’s author was clearly quite confused by the political chronology of this period, mistaking the famous Darius the Great as the Persian king who freed the Jews, when in fact all records show—including other books of the Bible—that that was Cyrus the Great, who reigned several kings previous in succession (Darius succeeded only after Cyrus’s sons had their turn at the throne, first Chambyses and then Bardiya). Daniel even confused who fathered whom, getting the line of succession exactly backwards: Daniel says Darius was the son of Xerxes (Daniel 9:1); in fact Xerxes the Great was the son of Darius. Darius’s father was Hystaspes, a distant relative of Cyrus the Great.
There was no other Xerxes nor any other Darius the author of Daniel could have mistakenly meant. Surviving Babylonian and Persian records of the era are sufficiently extensive that any speculation contrary to this bears little probability; and is outright impossible: because Daniel’s author(s) clearly did mean Darius the Great, as they describe his division of Persia into provinces called satrapies, each under the care of a provincial governor called a satrap (Daniel 6:1-4), even though here again there is confusion: contemporary records show that Cyrus actually created the satrap system; Darius only reformed its organization, though in result was often mis-credited by outside observers as “creating” it (nevertheless a mistake no contemporary official of his court would make); and Daniel incorrectly says he created “120” satrapies, when in fact it was only twenty or so (in the Behistun Inscription, Darius declares his rule extended over 23 provinces; according to Herodotus, it was 20; and though some sources claim as much as 36, that’s still nowhere near “120”). And needless to say, no record exists of “one of [these satraps] being Daniel” (or anyone outranking them being Daniel; or any Persian official whatever being named Daniel). Compounding the author’s error, this Darius was also definitely not a Mede, either, but an Achaemenid. So they have confused even different sub-kingdoms and ethnic groups within the Persian Empire, mistook the number of satrapies under Persia, and completely hosed the actual historical chronology.
All of these mistakes together are simply impossible for an author at the time, much less a high ranking Babylonian and Persian official, as Daniel is incredibly portrayed throughout. The actual author of Daniel was simply very ill-informed about the Babylonian and Persian eras, and is struggling to make up anything he can using famous names vaguely known here and about, and also to “fix” failed prophecies in Jeremiah (who predicted the “Medes” would vanquish the Babylonians; it ended up being the Persians instead, but this can explain why Daniel has “changed” Darius into a Mede). Which all indicates Daniel was most likely written centuries later than it purports. This was so obvious that it was noticed even in antiquity: the 3rd century philosopher Porphyry famously pointed it out long ago. It’s thus very telling that, though it purports to be written in the 6th century B.C. foretelling events in a later century (in Daniel 9-12), it becomes quite accurate for that later century. As Seow aptly puts it, “the book is remarkably precise in its allusions to certain events in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid periods down to the time just before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes” at the end of 164 B.C. After which year it gets everything about the course of history disastrously wrong. Two guesses then when Daniel was written.
In furtherance of this conclusion it has also been pointed out that the Aramaic of Daniel (in Daniel 3:4-15) weirdly contains loan words from Greek—in the words it chooses to use for zither, sambuka, harp, and a multi-piped flute. It is strange even that Greek instruments should appear here at all (if such instead is meant), in a proclamation about what people should expect to hear from a Babylonian imperial marching band. Indeed, Greek loan words don’t otherwise appear in Aramaic texts or inscriptions until the late Persian period (hundreds of years after Daniel purports to have been written). This does not alone prove the conclusion, but it does increase its probability. Though apologists will argue that Greek loan words in Daniel are possible for an early Persian-era text (e.g. Benjamin Noonan, “Daniel’s Greek Loanwords in Dialectal Perspective,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 28.4 [2018]: 575-603), that ignores the actual point which is that this is improbable. An official “Babylonian herald” such as Daniel claims to be quoting, or a high official in the Babylonian (and then Persian) court, as Daniel is depicted, would far sooner have employed much more recognizable Babylonian, Persian, or (as the text usually attempts) Aramaic words for those same things (or have correctly described an actual Babylonian orchestra). Thus, that the obscure and largely impertinent language (or even actual instruments) of the Greeks would be chosen for them instead is really weird. It thus does not matter if it is “possible.” What matters is that this is not at all what we expect, and thus is not at all probable; whereas an author writing under Antiochus who had little knowledge of Babylonian or Persian court vocabulary for such things (or even the actual musical instruments of that era) would be entirely likely to grab then-more-familiar Greek words for the purpose instead (especially for instruments that would by then be entirely familiar to a people who had been serving under a Greek empire for decades or even centuries). It is this difference in probabilities that makes this observation evidence for forgery. This cannot be rebutted by arguing for a mere “possibility.” The point carries. No apologetics can escape its impact.
Finally (per Collins, pp. 24-38 and Seow, pp. 7-11), many serious proposals have been made (and evidence adduced) that earlier parts of Daniel (much or all of Daniel 1-6) might date to around the 4th century (still, thus, forged), but that obviously does not include chapters 9-12, which can only date to the 2nd century, yet are the chapters Christian apologists most desperately need to be authentic. But their having been forged in the 4th century wouldn’t make them authentic either; and we don’t know how much any earlier material may have been altered or edited for the 2nd century edition (indeed additions kept being made even after that, e.g. Bel and the Dragon as chapter 14, Susanna as chapter 13, and the Song of the Three Children was added to chapter 3). So none of these scholarly arguments are of any help to apologetics. (I should also add that even in the small fraction of the text of Daniel recovered at Qumran are many variant readings and scribal corruptions, which means the total number of corruptions across the whole text of Daniel must have been much larger even by then; and therefore considerably more must have crept into any manuscripts from centuries later.)
Historical Context
Daniel 11:1-4 is not so accurate, but Daniel 11:5-39 is spot on, and that chapter gets progressively more detailed and precise as it follows history along from the Persian to the Alexandrian and then the Seleucid eras, until it spends the most verses, and with the most verifiable detail, on the ten year reign of Antiochus, all the way up to just before his death (and the Jewish recapture of Jerusalem) in 164, during the Maccabean Revolt. As Seow observes, therefore, “the interests” of the “author and probably its audience are focused on that decade.” So the book of Daniel is really about that period of history, and was written for Jewish readers going through that decade. It was thus clearly written as an inspirational tract for the people fighting for the Jewish rebellion under the Maccabees; it was probably passed off as a forgotten book “serendipitously rediscovered” at just the right moment when increased resolve was needed to finally vanquish the enemy Antiochus (the convenient “discovery” of long lost books was a known way to pass off forgeries promoting going political movements; one can suspect it for Deuteronomy, the Linen Rolls and Sibylline Oracles, and the original Ascension of Isaiah).
So when we notice Daniel then starts to get history totally wrong (Daniel 11:40-45), incorrectly “predicting” a war between the Ptolemies and Seleucids that never came to pass, and that Antiochus would conquer most of North Africa (he didn’t capture even a single province there, due to the unforeseen intervention of the Romans), and die in Palestine (he was nowhere near), we can directly tell when the book was written: sometime in or shortly before 165. Because any earlier and its inaccuracies would start sooner, and any later and it wouldn’t have circulated successfully so as to gain a strong position as scripture, since its predictions would have been too rapidly falsified; instead it clearly gained such fanatical support that even when its prophecies eventually did fail, people’s faith in it was strong enough to motivate them to do what they did with all beloved but failed prophecies: try to reinterpret them as referring to yet a further distant time (exactly as Daniel 9 does with a failed prophecy of Jeremiah). And notably, it is precisely the effort to do that that caused Christianity.
It is generally agreed by mainstream experts now that the “Messiah” who is “predicted” to be killed (Daniel 9:25-26) was actually meant to be the “rightful” high priest Onias III, illegitimately deposed and replaced by Antiochus but revered as something of a saint at the time (e.g. 2 Maccabees 3-4), who then was assassinated while in exile in Syria before Daniel was written (making this a classic, and indeed altogether typical, example of “prophecy” being written after the fact and then purported to have been written before the fact, a common device in prophecy as a literary genre). That this makes the strange math in Daniel 9 work perfectly only confirms this conclusion. Since Daniel was actually written centuries after the restoration of the Jewish Temple under Cyrus, 59 years after its sack (by Babylonians in 598, who were overthrown by Cyrus in 539), and thus the prophecy of Jeremiah that this would not happen for seventy years was proved false, that “seventy” year timetable had to be “reinterpreted” so Jeremiah could be rescued from the charge of being a false prophet. Accomplishing this by reimagining Jeremiah as “actually” referring to the Maccabean revolt was then propagandistically exactly what its authors needed. So they did some weird math to make it come out that way.
After Daniel’s prophesied end of the world did not come, later interpreters re-thought his math to guess at different intended years (again to rescue another now beloved prophet from the charge of being false)—and one of those formulations was adopted by the Christians to justify their declaration that the end had begun with their “Anointed One’s” death in the 30s A.D. But in the originally intended formulation, the angel Gabriel had come to Daniel to answer his plea to explain how the prophecy could have failed by now explaining Jeremiah did not mean “years” but “weeks of years,” i.e. 70 periods of 7 years (or 490 years in all, which is tantalizingly exactly “ten jubilees”), and that these will not be sequential as expected, but partly concurrent (after Daniel’s prophesy failed, this detail was abandoned and the years reimagined as sequential again). Because Gabriel says, “From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes [the word “ruler” here is actually “leader, noble, prince,” even “chief officer,” hence “Chief Anointed,” thus in standard-cryptic-prophesy-speak alluding to the High Priest, Chief Officer of the Temple; a High Priest was then often referred to as the Anointed], there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’,” meaning two overlapping periods: one of 49 years and one of 434 plus 7 years (those extra seven years follow Onias), thus completing a “total” of 490 years.
Why do this? Because Jeremiah was prophesying in 605, and that was “the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” Daniel speaks of (because this is how the author of Daniel refers to divine, not royal, proclamations—indeed in the very preceding verses: Daniel 9:21-23 and 1:2), and 605 minus 434 lands exactly in 171 B.C., the very year Onias III, the “true” Anointed High Priest, was assassinated (at the orders of Menelaus shortly after having “bought” the High Priesthood for himself in 172). This coincidence is quite improbable. So that is clearly what the authors intended—and hence why they “broke” the “seventy sevens” into three separate amounts, 49 and 434 followed by another 7; there is no reason to do that if they intended this to be a straight sequence of 490 years. So the author of Daniel is doing a lot of creative accounting here to get the result he wants: first he changes Jeremiah’s “seventy” years into “seventy sevens of years,” then he subtracts 49 years with this convenient new maneuver of saying this meant not a sequence of 490 years but two separate periods of 49 and 441 years and then split the latter into 434 years and 7 years, all to get the math to work out to the death of Onias (with those 7 years to spare, counting down to the apocalypse). No one engages such convoluted efforts who isn’t attempting to create just this kind of specific result. That’s why it’s a dead giveaway. Whoever did this was writing after 171 B.C. and for the current political situation in the 160s.
Then, in the analysis of André Lacocque in The Book of Daniel (John Knox Press, 1979), the “49” year period is set “within” the 434-year period split off from the final 7-year period, and is meant to cover the convenient passage of 49 years between the beginning of the Jewish captivity (after Nebuchadnezzar’s second and final siege of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. after Judea again rebelled against his rule) and their restoration. He suggests this was signified by the ordination of the first High Priest of the Second Temple (who happens to have been named Jesus, i.e. Joshua, an event represented more or less messianically in Zechariah 3 and 6), but he incorrectly identifies that as an event of 538 B.C.; in fact that happened in 516. He footnotes the identification of other scholars for the first “Anointed” involved in restoring Israel as in fact Cyrus, who is literally so identified by Isaiah (45:1); and indeed Cyrus’s decree of liberation dates to 538. So here we have a convenient 49-year period, between the beginning of the exile and its conclusion (587 – 538 = 49), which involves another Anointed One ending the suffering God said he’d inflict on the Jews. Which Jeremiah had falsely predicted would last 70 years. This is the mistake Daniel is trying to fix with his creative math, by having instead two “messianic” events, one inside the other, and using “ten jubilees,” ten periods of 7 x 7, i.e. 49 years, to make it all seem magically prescient. All it required was finding the right dates to focus on to “get” a meaningful 49-year period within a meaningful 434-year period that could thus be “fitted” to the number seventy in Jeremiah, and still point to Onias III’s death as foreboding God’s celestial victory over the heathens 7 more years hence. Thereby inspiring God-fearing Jews to fight with even more fanaticism for the Maccabean regime. Again, no one goes to these absurd, convoluted lengths, unless they are truly struggling to fit Jeremiah’s prophecy to Onias III.
So for all these reasons and more, genuinely critical scholars are convinced Daniel was forged as propaganda for the Maccabees. There is no more probable explanation for its peculiar errors, peculiar math, and peculiar specificity and accuracy to a single ten-year period, the very one the Maccabees were concerned to get the masses roiled up about, and its mysteriously sudden failure of accuracy as soon as events approach the end of 164 B.C. By the time anyone would have noticed that, the revolt was already successful, thus “vindicating” the text in spirit if not to the letter; and as we all know, the response to such turns of events is rarely to abandon an inspiring scripture as false but to deploy any convenient apologetics in its defense—especially a scripture the now-ruling powers had banked their legitimacy and credibility on and thus needed to maintain as scripture for the next hundred plus years. This would explain why, for example, 1 Maccabees 2:51-60 is the first extant text to promote stories first appearing in Daniel as authentic.
And as the Maccabees were working with the restoration priesthood, they would surely have had the full support of their allies among the Jewish religious elite (while any others would be condemned as liars and collaborators with the Greek Antiochus and would thus carry no authority in the matter). They would thus have backed this text as authentic (and possibly even produced it) to achieve its political purpose, a purpose they wanted to achieve above all other things: the liberation of Israel and its Temple order from their pagan occupiers and corruptors. And once they did that, they could not walk it back. Thus Daniel had to be endorsed into their would-be canon for over a hundred years. No other new text had that strong and chronologically extensive support. Hence many Jews and sects revered many other books as scripture that were written in more or less the same period (between the 4th and 1st centuries B.C.), from the Book of Enoch to the Psalms and Wisdom of Solomon, the Genesis Apocryphon, alternative editions of the Psalms, the Testament of Moses, the Book of Jubilees; but only Daniel had the full backing of the ruling elite of independent Judea for over a century and required its status of Holy Scripture to bolster their political legitimacy (unlike, for example, other Maccabean literature, which could safely be treated as mere fallible human histories, or Jubilees, which contained no prophecies the regime banked its legitimacy on).
Apologetics
So, genuinely critical scholars. Now enter the gullible scholars: Christian apologists who need Daniel to be authentic. Attempts by fundamentalists and unrelenting believers to “rescue” Daniel’s authenticity are of course abundant. None follow any credible historical method. Real historians apply the same standards to the Book of Daniel, and to Daniel as a person, that we do to all other ancient books and persons. And we attend to what’s more probable, not to what’s convenient or merely possible.
When we attend to the actual evidence we have and to what’s the most probable, we see there is no evidence attesting to there being a Book of Daniel, or any specific stories in it, in any source prior to the Maccabean era. Red flag. The earliest reference to Daniel as a person, in Ezekiel, appears to imagine him as a foreign wise man in distant mythic time, not as a Jewish prophet, much less of the Persian court; and makes no mention of his writing books, much less of his being Ezekiel’s contemporary. Red flag. Daniel makes too many mistakes that are impossible for an eyewitness and leading Babylonian and Persian official as its author is portrayed to be. Red flag. Daniel only produces detailed and correct historical data for the last ten years of King Antiochus. Red flag. It then gets completely incorrect everything that happened just before and after his death. Red flag. These coincidences are absurdly improbable on any other theory than that Daniel was written shortly before 164 B.C. as propaganda promoting an ongoing war and cultural program. And exactly in line with that conclusion, and thus supporting it as evidence, the content of Daniel thoroughly supports the political and cultural interests of the Maccabees at exactly that time. There is no evidence for any other conclusion.
In response to this, apologists just hand-wave away all that evidence by making up “just so” stories as to why we should “assume” all of that evidence is misleading. They present zero evidence for any of those “just so” stories. They are just made-up speculations, that they push as “probable facts,” on no rational basis. They will ignore all current and leading peer reviewed scholarship, and dig around for centuries-obsolete scholars to quote instead. They will gullibly quote as “established fact” any ancient source that says what they want—even when they would admit that trusting such obviously self-interested, unsourced statements would be wholly foolish if they supported, say, the truth of Islam, or the falsity of Christianity. They will invent elaborate theories to explain away the evidence or to bolster the gullibly-trusted sources they cite, and then insist those theories are true—after presenting no evidence at all that they are true. And they’ll leave out all data that undermines any of this—such that when we bring that omitted data back in, everything they are saying collapses back into the improbable.
For example, in a recent discussion I had on this subject (see my conclusion below), it was insisted that “no one” in 2nd century B.C. Judea would forge an ancient scripture in any other language than Greek; at which I listed half a dozen examples of works that some Jews of that era were treating as scripture that were composed or forged in Hebrew or Aramaic in or around exactly that period (in Hebrew, this includes Jubilees, the Book of Noah, the Testament of Naphtali, the Vision of Samuel, an Apocryphon of Joshua, an Apocryphon of Moses, an Apocryphon of David, an Apocryphon of Malachi, a Second Book of Ezekiel, a Hebrew edition of Tobit; and numerous commentaries, alternative scriptures, and other contemporary texts—so Seleucid and Hasmonean era scribes were perfectly facile with Hebrew). The omitted evidence put back in, and Daniel looks exactly like a going trend of the time, and not as the inexplicable novelty they were trying to claim. Never mind that it doesn’t even make a priori sense that someone who wanted to pass off a text as an ancient document written in an era of Hebrew and Aramaic dominance would compose it in any other language than that. (Likewise, any belief that the “canon” was “closed” as of the 5th century B.C. would be precisely why this was forged to resemble a 6th century text.) This is the kind of illogical, evidence-neglecting rationalization that passes for “critical methodology” in Christian apologetics. Which is why apologetics is not legitimate history. It is what it is called: just a self-satisfying rhetoric built to defend a pre-conceived conclusion, not a critical means of ascertaining what actually is true. A genuine means to that end has to be immune to these very kinds of falsity-defending mechanisms, not based on them.
It is very important to understand that this is not a mere incidental mistake but a fundamental defect of their whole methodology. Their entire approach to history and literature is defective and indefensible. That is why it should be abandoned, and replaced with real critical historical methods. It’s just that when we do that, we don’t get the results they want. So they don’t abandon their methods for real ones. And round and round it goes. Desire thus trumps truth. For instance, a real historian would never trust Josephus when he insists, in a treatise defending the authenticity of Judaism against detractors (e.g. Against Apion 1.8), that his scriptures have been meticulously guarded and preserved for centuries. That is a self-interested statement; a mere faith claim. It is propaganda; apologetics. And we know this because Josephus cites absolutely no sources or evidence of any kind for that assertion; and he makes that assertion exactly where it is entirely in his interests to insist upon it. Even if Josephus were unusually honest (and as we’ll see shortly, few historians today believe so; the current consensus is that he has to be approached with considerable skepticism and critical distrust), no human being is so honest for us to simply “trust” a statement they are making about events they are separated from by hundreds of years yet need to believe happened even though they can cite no evidence at all for them actually having happened. This is an apologist citing an apologist for the authenticity of apologetics. That’s little better than a circular argument. Which is why no real historian today ever does this.
Another element of apologetic methodology is to cite sources for a claim that actually do not support it. Such as claiming the Jewish Scroll of Fasting mentions the book of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great, as evidence supporting that really having happened. Now, citing an undatable collection of unsourced religious myths is not anything a real historian would even do in the first place, but the kicker here is that the Scroll of Fasting never mentions this anyway. It says a legend (which it does not describe) about Alexander’s leniency toward the Jews at some point came to be celebrated on the Jewish holy calendar; no mention of his being shown the Book of Daniel. So why would anyone cite this as evidence for that? This is not the behavior of a historian. It’s the behavior of an apologist. And it’s not legitimate. Yet you will find this invalid method deployed over and over again. For example, any early claim to the careful preservation of the scriptures will be treated as if it mentioned Daniel as among those then being preserved, when it didn’t; and worse, they’ll ignore how many false scriptures there were that were by this or that sect deemed authentic, further acting as if late decisions about what to declare official can be conflated with earlier such decisions, or even as evidence of there being earlier such decisions, when no evidence exists even of that. This is simply not valid reasoning. Yet it typifies apologetics.
Another example is the claim that Daniel describes the complete destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which didn’t happen when indicated, so “doesn’t that suggest it was really predicting the actual destruction in 70 A.D. instead?” Never mind that this is logically invalid—allowing a prediction to be “prophesy” that gets a date wrong by over two hundred years, and of an event that is not inherently improbable across such spans of time (as most temples got destroyed eventually), is simply not rational (nor is allowing a prophecy to be “multi-valent,” i.e. realized multiple different ways across multiple different periods—what some apologists call “micro-fulfillments”—as that simply multiplies the retrofitting fallacy: see Newman on Prophecy as Miracle). Apologetic methodology is therefore itself not rational. Real historians do not behave this way. But it’s all the worse that this claim is actually false. The destruction of the Jewish Temple is never mentioned in Daniel. Across all six mentions of the Temple in Daniel, not once is it said it will be destroyed. That’s not mentioned in Daniel 9:27 or Daniel 11:31 (which only mention ending of the sacrifices there, and defiling the holy site; which Antiochus did in fact do). “But Jesus later acted like this passage referred to a still-future event.” Yes. As all Jews did after Daniel’s prophesied end of the world didn’t happen; so they all started assuming this must have meant some other event still in the future. This is how all cults operate when prophesies fail. As elsewhere, the apologist does not reason logically, but illogically, imagining facts into existence (no destruction of the temple is predicted in Daniel), and ignoring common, well-established background knowledge (such as how people often respond when beloved prophesies fail). It should disturb them that they ever convinced themselves by such illogical reasoning. Because if they are doing that here, how many other beliefs are they defending with similarly irrational logic? Their whole epistemology is broken. And that should alarm them into retooling it from the ground up; not continuing to use it.
There is of course also the methodological naturalism of the contemporary sciences, which apologists find vexing and annoying, even though it is the only reasonable position to take as a historian now. Notice I never once appealed to it until now (though I could; there is plenty that “happens” in Daniel that is not at all realistic, by the laws of nature or even human psychology, and that is in itself a red flag for it’s being made up). But I don’t need to, and haven’t. So it’s irrational of an apologist to cite that as an objection to the modern consensus about Daniel, as that in no way requires any presumption of naturalism. But it is nevertheless true: across countless examples in history, ordinary, human, political causes of the invention and dissemination and acceptance of holy texts across all religions turns out routinely adequate, and even in many cases well-supported, by far more evidence than any alternative “supernatural” causes promoted by a document’s faithful believers. We can explain the entire content of the Quran or the Book of Mormon or Daniel on an ordinary theory of its human political context; we have no need of “Daniel exists because its author magically saw the future,” nor any evidence backing such a thing even being a thing that happens in the world, much less a thing that happened in this case. There is a reason real historians pay a lot of attention to the historical context of a document’s construction or appearance, while apologists ignore that in favor of the myths and legends a document’s creators or promoters sold it with. What separates critical historians from gullible dupes is that we don’t believe such propaganda—until you can prove it’s historically true, with real, actual evidence.
Apologists will also commit a cardinal sin of critical history: citing documents we don’t have and thus don’t know the contents of. “But wouldn’t someone have gainsaid it” is never a valid argument (see OHJ, Chs. 6.7, 7.7, and 8.12)—unless you have access to documents where we would get to read what an opposition said. Because if you don’t have that, you don’t know what that opposition said. We don’t get to read an account of the Maccabean war from the people (Jews included) who sided with Antiochus. So you cannot claim to know what such an account would have said. This is all the more obvious for claims made that were never written down. There could have been all manner of attempted campaigns to discredit the release of Daniel as war propaganda; but if none of it got written down, how would we know what any of it was, much less whether it included any good arguments or not? And even if any was written down, we have no surviving documents that would include it. Indeed we have no documents even referring to what the Antiochene party was saying about Daniel, much less containing an actual record of it. Yes, surely they had something to say about it. But you don’t know what it was. So you cannot claim to know what it was (much less wasn’t). So don’t.
Another common apologetic tactic is to accuse anyone whose conclusions they don’t like of being “biased,” when in fact those scholars have shown clearly the evidence and logic by which they reached their conclusion and it is observably sound, thus no amount of bias they have can even be relevant. For example, Daniel apologists have accused all mainstream historians of being “biased” against Daniel by treating it differently than other historical texts, by applying an “exceptional skepticism” to Daniel they apply nowhere else; but that’s false. Historians treat all texts by the exact same standards and with the exact same skepticism as Daniel. The reason they conclude Daniel is a forgery is because the evidence shows that it is. We do not have that evidence for, say, the Histories of Herodotus, so no historian concludes that was forged. Because real historians reach conclusions based on the evidence. That is not bias. That is sound, critical, universal historical method. The apologist is the one allowing bias to corrupt their methods, by special pleading for Daniel, asking that we treat it differently than we do all other ancient books.
Another very common apologetic tactic is to conflate modal with empirical arguments. “It’s impossible that anyone could get away with a forgery” is a modal argument: it asserts something about what is possible or impossible, rather than something as having happened or not happened. All we need to refute a modal impossibility is a possibility. I do not have to show that it is “probable” that a Maccabean-supporting priesthood forged and campaigned for the authenticity of Daniel, because it’s merely being possible is sufficient to refute the claim that succeeding at that is “impossible.” If the apologist could produce empirical evidence that the Maccabees didn’t do that, then they’d have an effective counter-argument. But they don’t have any evidence of that. They can make no empirical argument that the Maccabees did not do that; nor even an argument to a low prior probability of their doing that, because that is exactly the kind of thing religions and political regimes throughout history do, and forging scriptures (indeed even Hebrew scriptures) was in fact demonstrably rampant in that very era. By contrast, when the apologist says “it is possible” that a real Darius the Mede existed that Daniel could be referring to, that all contemporary Babylonian and Persian records fail to mention, and who somehow still (?) created all the satrapies and ruled the Persian Empire, contrary to all Babylonian and Persian records, that is not a valid argument—because it does not matter what is “logically possible,” what matters is what is probable, and this hypothesis simply isn’t probable. There is no evidence for it, and even some evidence against it. You can’t bootstrap something you dreamed up, into an “established fact,” without evidence (much less contrary to).
And that is what plagues almost all Daniel apologetics: assertion after assertion will be made (there are countless I could mention, such as attempts to insist that “Darius the Mede” means “Cyaxares II”, or Gubaru, or any number of “X must instead have been Y” type of arguments), but they will never present evidence any of those assertions are true. They will list tons of “facts” that they claim are “evidence” for their theory, but none of it evinces their theory at all—and often contradicts it, by saying something completely different (e.g. Xenophon does talk about Median kings, including Cyaxares, but none of them ruled Babylon much less the Persian Empire, nor created the satrapies in it, and none were named Darius, nor did anything related in Daniel—there is literally no evidence or record of any such equation ever, it’s just completely made up by apologists, medieval or modern). As a real historian, I need to see evidence. Real evidence, which means evidence that actually evinces your theory—not isolated facts “mentioned” in your theory, but the theory itself. Quite simply, it’s evidence, or GTFO. Christian apologists should be operating no differently. So why don’t they? Because they aren’t historians and what they are doing isn’t history. It’s apologetics.
Another defining feature of apologetics is what I call the “conceptual slide,” where when evidence is presented that what they are saying is wrong or improbable, they will “rebut” that by changing the subject, “sliding” into a completely different issue that doesn’t really even relate to the original point made, but is designed to escape the cognitive dissonance it created by convincing the apologist (and hopefully their intended audience) that they have made a valid point and thus have “rebutted” the point that was made—when in fact no such thing has happened. But now that this move has happened, everyone is expected to forget what was being discussed originally, and are now busy debating this “slide” point instead. This is hand waving; cognitive prestidigitation. An example is when, after just showing how the particular arrangement and sequence of errors in Daniel has no probable explanation but that Daniel was forged during the reign of Antiochus, the response is something like “but Herodotus makes a bunch of errors in his Histories about contemporary events, and you aren’t declaring that a forgery.” This is a completely irrelevant point. But now we are debating Herodotus; the subject has been conveniently changed, and the point actually made safely avoided.
In actual reality, a source merely getting things wrong about their own time does not make that source a forgery. That is not the point that was just made to the apologist. What makes Daniel a forgery is the specific coincidence and particular impossibility of the mistakes made. For example, we do not expect Herodotus to get right things he is not directly privy to but has by report many times removed; but we do expect a top-ranking Babylonian-Persian official to get right things directly in their purview. It is also really strange that this would happen, but then they would get exactly right events in a ten-year span hundreds of years later; and then get everything after that wrong again. This simply is improbable—unless Daniel was forged by someone living in exactly that decade. Where it is inaccurate and accurate, and how inaccurate it is and about what, despite purporting to be a direct, eyewitness, official source: that can only plausibly be explained by the forgery hypothesis. None of the inaccuracies in Herodotus, for example, evince such a coincidence or such a contradiction between what Herodotus would have been witness to or had access to and what he reports. His errors all relate to things he himself says he has only by hearsay or wasn’t witness to, or that served his own interests to distort. They are therefore fully explicable without any forgery hypothesis. The content of Daniel, by contrast, is not. But by ignoring the point actually made, pretending a completely different point was made, and then attacking that new fake point that was never made, is a typical apologetic device for avoiding rather than getting at the truth.
Finally, yet another strange feature of apologetics is what I call “reverse incredulity,” a repeated declaration of “incredulity” that something would happen, that in factual reality easily happens and happened all the time. For example, apologists will claim it’s “impossible” that Daniel could have been forged in, say, 165 B.C. and there already be several copies of it (and commentaries on it) in the caves at Qumran. I am not aware of any of the Qumran manuscripts of Daniel having been carbon dated. But “palaeographically,” as Eugene Ulrich summarizes, “their dates span from the late second century B.C. to the middle of the first century A.D.” A “late” second century date would mean forty-to-sixty years after Daniel was forged: then an average human lifetime. That’s a looong time. A whole human lifetime is time enough even to have composed whole commentaries on Daniel (e.g. 11Q13), and even more literature attributed to Daniel, also found at Qumran. But that doesn’t really matter, as a text intended to motivate a whole nation during an ongoing rebellion would have been widely disseminated quite rapidly. Every major city and base of leadership in Judea would have at least one copy within mere weeks of its promulgation. And from there, dozens of copies could be made a year. But if there were even just ten “initial edition” copies disseminated to elite centers, and then each was in turn copied only twice a year, after just ten years (much less forty), there would be over ten thousand manuscripts of Daniel in Judea (a relatively small geographic era I should remind you; little bigger than Vermont). I need not claim there were so many; my point is that it makes no sense to claim such a book couldn’t or wouldn’t be all over Judea in no time at all. Hence this is a common weird tendency among apologists, to hugely mis-estimate the sheer scale of time in antiquity—imagining “a hundred years ago” is like “yesterday,” or that “ten years” is not enough time to generate and distribute thousands of copies of a book across even a whole empire, much less a tiny province of it.
Example 1: Josephus the Fabricator
Historians today are deeply skeptical of Josephus’s histories. For example, his accounts of Masada and Gamala are doubted, because they suspiciously both sound exactly alike: both famous “patriotic mass suicides,” both attested to by “two women,” in each case conveniently escaping to recount the tale. Many other examples can be adduced; modern historians are very distrustful of Josephus, but especially in respect to distance: the further back in history Josephus goes, the less reliable he is, depending as he does more and more on myth and legend and his own apologetic “fixing” of stories and accounts, than on actual records and sources, or anything like a legitimate critical method. Likewise, the more what Josephus writes is in his own interests, the less reliable it becomes; the more he depends on unreliable sources, the more unreliable his accounts are in turn; the more Josephus tries to dumb things down or simplify or dramatize them for his Greek readers, the more inaccuracies enter his accounts; etc. See: Zuleika Rodgers, ed., Making History: Josephus and Historical Method (Brill, 2006), particularly the chapters by Uriel Rappaport and Kenneth Atkinson; Gregory Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke–Acts and Apologetic Historiography (Brill, 1992); and Eric Huntsman, “The Reliability of Josephus: Can He Be Trusted?” Brigham Young University Studies 36.3 (1996-97), pp. 392-402.
A classic example in this very context is when Josephus invents an apologetic to “fix” Daniel’s historical failures, by declaring the kingdom “came to Belshazzar, who by the Babylonians was called Nabodinus; against him did Cyrus, the king of Persia, and Darius, the king of Media, make war.” Josephus cites no source for any of this. And it is backed by no sources whatever; you won’t find any of it in Herodotus or Xenophon, or in any Babylonian or Persian records, or in fact anywhere at all outside Josephus. When we look at actual documents and sources from that period, there is no sense in which any Darius was a king of Mede or co-warred or co-ruled with Cryus, and in no way was Belshazzar confused with Nabodinus—that “the Babylonians” called Belshazzar Nabodinus is absolutely false. So we know this is all fiction Josephus is making up, to rescue his precious scripture from being exposed as fraudulent. Josephus is doing apologetics here. Likewise when Josephus says Darius “was the son of Astyages, and had another name among the Greeks” and “took Daniel the prophet…with him into Media…whom he set over his three hundred and sixty provinces, for into so many did Darius part them.” This is all bullshit. Josephus cites no source, and has no source. There is no source. This is all fake history, designed to cover up the mistakes in Daniel. When we look at the real sources, there were not “hundreds” of provinces, the Book of Daniel never describes anyone being taken to Mede or Darius’s father being named Astyages, Astyages had no son named Darius (much less one exalted to power), and the Greeks did not have “another name” for him. Josephus is literally just making all this up, as an apologetic maneuver to sweep under the rug all the errors in his beloved scriptures. And it is folly of a modern apologist doing apologetics and not history to cite another apologist doing apologetics and not history. That’s circular reasoning. Real historians do not do this; they full well know how apologetics works, that Josephus is an apologist, and is doing apologetics here. Because historians look at the evidence.
Ockham’s Razor is a tool of every science, history no exception. Such as when Josephus claims Cyrus the Great freed the Jews because he read the book of Isaiah (Josephus is unaware that Isaiah is actually the work of several authors, and the material he has in mind was written after Cyrus freed the Jews, in fact in response to it). Cyrus the Great himself says he did it as an empire-wide diplomacy campaign to gain the loyalty of disparate nations under his rule. And that’s the simplest explanation: it is what he says, it is entirely plausible in context, it is a known tactic of imperial powers, and it requires no additional “epicycles” or “angels pushing the planets” to explain the observed facts, such as his implausibly even reading Isaiah, much less being inspired by it to a radical decision regarding the imperial governance of a single minor province. That is wildly far-fetched and sounds like a made-up story, a product of Jewish propaganda. And all the evidence indicates that’s just what it is.
Thus, Ockham’s Razor: we have no need of far-fetched legends to explain what Cyrus did. His own explanation is fully sufficient:
[31] Agade, Ešnunna, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der, as far as the region of Gutium, the sacred centers on the other side of the Tigris, whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, [32] I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there, to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings. [33] In addition, at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I settled in their habitations, in pleasing abodes, the gods of Sumer and Akkad, whom Nabonidus, to the anger of the lord of the gods, had brought into Babylon. … [34] May all the gods whom I settled in their sacred centers ask daily [35] of Bêl and Nâbu that my days be long and may they intercede for my welfare. May they say to Marduk, my lord: “As for Cyrus, the king who reveres you, and Cambyses, his son, … [the text here breaks off]
This is the Cyrus Cylinder, published by Cyrus himself—so this is an eyewitness, essentially autograph text to the thoughts and intentions of Cyrus the Great. It declares religious freedom for all people, not just the Jews. In fact, when Cyrus does name nations he did this for (a list we know is incomplete; he is just selecting the most notable), Judea is nowhere mentioned. The Jews were a trivial afterthought, part of a campaign he directed to his whole empire, a general program of religious tolerance serving obvious political goals: securing the loyalty and gratitude of subject nations, to make them easier to govern and more prosperous to tax (and, as he avers, to gain the blessings of their respective gods). This is the simplest explanation of why he did all these same exact things for Judea (freeing them from exile, resettling them back home, granting them a measure of self-governance, returning sacred objects to their temples, and restoring their temples to glory). Cyrus says his own god, Marduk, commanded him to do this; by which we can conclude he understood the political genius of the move was inspired by his own god’s influence. No mention of “I read this weird book in an alien language by an obscure religious sect called the Jews who actually condemn me as a slave to demons and it gave me this great idea…”
Nor, obviously, is that far-fetched claim found anywhere else. It’s not in any recorder of Cyrus’s policies and philosophy or even biography—neither Herodotus, nor Xenophon, nor anyone else closer to that era than Josephus mentions any such thing. And accordingly, Josephus cites no sources for his claim. He just makes it up; or some Jews before him did, and it was passed down through oral lore or some trivial writing Josephus couldn’t be bothered to name. Either way, it’s obviously a myth. No real historian would ever be so gullible as to believe this tall tale, least of all in the face of all the direct evidence that it isn’t true. “But it’s possible he got inspired by reading…” No. Stop there. You aren’t doing history anymore. What’s “possible” is not what’s “probable.” To conflate those two things is apologetics, not history. The moment you resort to such a possibiliter fallacy, you expose the bankruptcy of your epistemology. You need to stop, purge that entire epistemology from your mind, and replace it with one that actually works. Because no competent historian will believe Cyrus really read Isaiah or got any ideas from it; and you really need to understand why that is.
This example is doubly important. Because it changes how we see things when we find Josephus inventing an identical story about Alexander the Great reading the book of Daniel. Come on. Two great emperors, persuaded to great magnanimity toward the Jews, each by reading a book of Jewish scripture? Just like “conveniently” two women in each case escaping both Masada and Gamala so that Josephus could have a narrative source for their defenders’ heroic suicides? Modern historians are not that gullible. And if you are that gullible, you are not a historian. “What a crazy story; that must be true!” If that’s how you think, you have a fatally broken epistemology. Fix it. Let’s look at how critical historians—real historians—approach this text (and here I am using—because, being a historian, I checked—the leading and most recent peer reviewed scholarship on this tale: Shaye Cohen, “Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest According to Josephus,” AJS Review 7/8 (1982/1983), pp. 41-68; Tae Hun Kim, “The Dream of Alexander in Josephus ANT. 11.325-39,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 34.4 (2003), pp. 425–442; Meir Ben Shahar, “Jews, Samaritans and Alexander: Facts and Fictions in Jewish Stories on the Meeting of Alexander and the High Priest,” Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great (Brill, 2018), pp. 403–426):
The legend of Alexander the Great related by Josephus mixes together three different myths—one in which the Jews simply surrendered; one in which Alexander is persuaded to accept their surrender by a miraculous prophetic dream, and not the seeing of a book; and then finally one in which what persuades him is being shown the Book of Daniel. For none of these three myths does Josephus cite any source, much less any we’d deem reliable. Nevertheless, apologists try citing this tall tale as evidence the Book of Daniel existed before the Maccabean era. This is gullibility of the first order. No source from that period says this—they are relying on a mythmonger, a Jewish propagandist, writing centuries after the Maccabean era—and this story has no plausibility to begin with. Alexander the Great would never believe such a book wasn’t just faked to trick him into acquiescing—he was not that much of an idiot (and the Jewish elite surely had a good enough meta-cognition to know that, and thus would have known it foolish to even try such a silly thing)—nor would Alexander need such a bizarre form of persuasion, as all he sought from these cities was surrender, and that’s exactly what the Jews were already offering him. Ockham’s Razor thus eliminates these stories as implausible Jewish propaganda. The simplest explanation of why Alexander accepted the surrender of Judea, is that Judea simply surrendered. And the simplest explanation of why Alexander treated them well for surrendering, is that Alexander always treated cities that surrendered well; this was his military policy throughout his campaign, and it was a common and popular one for conquerors across history. It was a standard “carrot or stick, your call” strategy.
On top of that, again, real historians notice that since the dream/vision version of the story shows no knowledge of the Book of Daniel story, that must have been a later myth, and thus cannot date to the actual conquest of Alexander. Historians place it either as propaganda spread during the Maccabean revolt precisely for the purpose of promoting the convenient “rediscovery” of the Book of Daniel, or as a tall tale Josephus himself invented. The latter is likely. We have evidence Josephus liked making up these kinds of tales—it is probably no accident that no other source ever mentions either this “Alexander and the Book of Daniel” story or the “Cyrus and the Book of Isaiah” story except Josephus (and people citing or using Josephus). The Alexander legend never contains this detail in other Jewish sources. For example, the Talmud (b.Yoma, 69a) contains only a variant of the “prophetic vision” tale; no mention of Alexander being shown the Book of Daniel.
Likewise, such an extraordinary story could not possibly have been omitted from the multiple eyewitness histories written of Alexander’s campaigns; they included many other religious miracles (such as his visiting and being confirmed by the Oracle of Amun), but nothing at all about this. It would otherwise have appeared in the synthesis of Arrian, for example; indeed, an Oracle of Daniel would have held the same propagandistic value as the Oracle of Amun, so it could hardly have escaped mention. But it doesn’t even show up in the original text of the Alexander Romance, an absurd collection of miracles and legends of Alexander’s journeys—despite apologists claiming otherwise. Another epistemic failure mode for Christian apologists is failing to check if the earliest extant redaction of a book they cite actually contains the material they claim, or if that was a medieval Judeo-Christian insertion. It’s quite evident even the original legends about Alexander and Jerusalem are bogus; details of the surrender might be somewhat true, but the rest looks like Anti-Samaritan and Anti-Seleucid propaganda, rife with ridiculous legendary material. The later myth involving the Book of Daniel, only more so.
That apologists believe ridiculous myths like this, rather than examine them critically in light of the evidence and well-established background knowledge, is why their judgment cannot be trusted. They simply are not doing history. And accordingly, they cannot recover any truth about history. All they can do is invent reasons to believe what they want to believe. That is all their methodology is capable of. And that’s just not the same goal as getting at the truth. It is, rather, a method of avoiding getting at the truth.
Example 2: Faking a History and Pretending It’s Real
To illustrate, consider the apologetic attempted at Bible Gateway, which consists of an attempt to “invent” a history of Persia (actually, more than one, so you can pick and choose I guess) that exists nowhere in the sources, and which consists largely of outright ignoring contrary facts:
Darius the Mede…is not depicted in the book [of Daniel] as a universal monarch. His subordinate position (under Cyrus) is clearly implied in the statement that he “was made king (Heb. passive, homlak) over the realm of the Chaldeans” (9:1 KJV). Also, the fact that Belshazzar’s kingdom was “given to the Medes and Persians” (5:28) and that Darius found himself incapable of altering the “law of the Medes and Persians” (6:15) renders the critical view [that Darius the Mede is a historical error] untenable.
Not a single thing claimed here is true.
We have extensive records from that period and there was never any such thing as a dual or subordinate “king” governing the Persian empire under Cyrus. This apologist is fabricating history that contradicts all primary records. A provincial satrap is not a king (even the authors of Daniel knew the difference). And there was never any such thing as a joint “rule” between Medes and Persians (Mede was a conquered province of Persia) nor any “law of the Persians and Medes” that governed that empire—this pairing of “Medes and Persians” here is a fabrication of Daniel; it is recorded nowhere else. Not even in Persia’s own laws, decrees, inscriptions and declarations; nor even in Greek histories of the period (neither Herodotus nor Xenophon mention any such thing). This apologist is thus, again, fabricating a history that contradicts all primary records. Notice they even, bizarrely, cite the author who makes this error (the author of Daniel) as evidence it’s not an error! This is not even remotely a sensible or sound way to do history.
Likewise, contrary to this apologist’s false claim, Daniel very clearly depicts “Darius the Mede” as a universal monarch, and never depicts him as a subordinate of anyone (Cyrus or otherwise). For example, Daniel credits this Darius with creating the satrapies the empire was divided into: “It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom” (Daniel 6:1) and “these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: ‘May King Darius live forever!'” (Daniel 6:6). This is most definitely depicting a universal monarch. In fact, the universal monarch. There is no other in the story. This is unmistakable throughout Daniel 6: after already having made Daniel a satrap or administrator (“satraps…and administrators, one of whom was Daniel”), Darius is about to make Daniel administrator over the whole kingdom (“the king planned to set [Daniel] over the whole kingdom”), meaning all the satrapies (not just one of them), and all the satraps and administrators come to Darius to try and persuade him not to do this, and get him to issue a royal decree making Darius the sole recipient of prayers (“the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that [no one] prays to [anyone] except to you, Your Majesty”). They do not go over his head to his superior Cyrus to forestall any of this (and evidently no one blinks at Darius, a subordinate, condemning all who pray to Cyrus, his superior—not even, for some reason, this very Cyrus who is supposed to be here, outranking Darius)—so obviously no such person is imagined to exist by these authors. The only king in this story who governs all the satrapies and issues empire-wide decrees (“King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth”) and can be appealed to as the empire’s ultimate authority and recipient of prayers is Darius. The authors of Daniel have unmistakably confused Darius the Great with Cyrus here. They even mention Daniel also serving under Cyrus, but seem to think Cyrus succeeded Darius (which is also not true), as they mention Daniel continuing to prosper under Darius and then under Cyrus (Daniel 6:28; in fact Daniel 1:21 implies Daniel would die sometime during the first year of Cyrus’s reign).
Real historical methods cannot produce this made-up, fact-contradicting history of Persia or these made-up, fact-contradicting claims about what the Book of Daniel says. Only apologetics can do this. Which exemplifies how apologetics is a methodology for avoiding, not finding the truth.
We see this again with the abuse of linguistics in this same paragraph. We’re told that in Daniel 9:1 homlak, the passive of “become a king,” means “made a king,” as it is commonly translated, but that’s not quite true in the sense the apologist requires. That is a loose translation into English, but “made” carries connotations in English here that are absent in the Hebrew, a common problem with translation generally. No translation is ever fully accurate to the original language, because words commonly carry different valences and connotations across languages and eras. So it is important to attend carefully to the original meaning of words when making an argument like this; you can’t just assume what you find in your English language Bible is exactly what the original meant. And when we look into this case we find it does not mean what the apologist wants it to mean (a reference to a superior appointing Darius to a position—a position, I’ll remind you, we can tell from contemporary records never existed). They are thus replacing facts with desires, through the methodological device of not even checking. As soon as anything sounds right, it is declared “right.” No actual method is deployed to find out if it is right. This is a method specifically designed to fail at determining the truth. It is thus the exact opposite of sound historical methods, which have entirely the opposite aim: to not fail at that.
So let’s do what we are supposed to do instead. I am not an expert in Hebrew, but I do know ancient languages and linguistics and understand how to read a lexicon. In the Strong’s lexicon the underlying word malak is indicated to mean to be or to become king. There is no connotation of making someone king (as an active causal event requiring an agent). This is even clearer in the more up-to-date Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (p. 572, § 4427), which explains that malak is actually just the verb form of king. In other words, it means, simply, “to king.” Which the experts there explain is of uncertain meaning (as in, we do not know exactly what the word is supposed to denote; we can only infer). They propose it probably indicates something like “to possess, own exclusively” or “counsel, advise” supremely or decisively (these being the fundamental actions of kings). I would suggest we just stick to what it plainly is: the verb form of king. So it meant more or less simply to reign as a king. In the passive voice it could perhaps be understood as “to be kinged,” as something that happens to you. Hence a closer English idiom would be “he was crowned king,” meaning his official date of formal accession, which state documents would declare the actual day his reign formally began (as distinct from, say, the day of the battle he won that made it possible for him to assume power).
A passive form of this verb appears nowhere else in the Bible except here. So when apologists claim the passive of malak is used only for “appointed” rulers, they are lying: there is no instance of that usage anywhere. Since the only passive form appearing anywhere in the Bible is this one, to thus insist it refers to “appointment” is a circular argument, another common apologetic “method” of arguing. There is no example of that being the intended connotation. Since no agent is stated (Daniel does not say he was crowned “by” someone else or anything or anyone in particular), the author more likely intended the meaning of “crowned,” as simply an event that happened to Darius: he was made king by the course of events. Just as in English: “to be crowned” is in the passive voice, but does not mean some “superior” king did the crowning. It almost never means that. There could also be the implication of the agent being God (as in, God arranged for Darius to conquer Babylon and thus become its king; this is explicitly implied in Daniel 5:25-30), but the text does not say that either, so we can no more presume that than we can presume some unnamed other king (like Cyrus) was meant, or that any agent was meant (as with the word “crowned”). That is simply to go beyond the text, and to replace facts with wishes. All the same is true for Daniel 5:1 where Daniel is said to have “received” the kingdom, where the verb again does not imply receiving it by appointment rather than by fate, providence, or conquest. To assume any of these over the others is wishing that it be so, not establishing it’s so. You can’t get more out of a text than is there; but falsely thinking you can typifies apologetics. That the decision is always driven by what you want to see in the text, rather than any objective evidence, is why that method can never get to the actual truth of anything.
Conclusion
I discussed much of this on Samuel Nesan’s Explain Apologetics show recently, when I joined him and apologists Jonathan Sheffield and Dr. Stephen Boyce to review a recent debate Sheffield and Boyce had over the authenticity of Daniel with Dr. Josh Bowen and doctoral student Jim Majors. A variety of different theories and apologetic strategies get discussed in both videos. But the overall takeaway for me was the stark difference in methodology between how historians do history, and how apologists do apologetics (and then pass it off as doing history, which really it isn’t). I have since completed a mini-debate with Jonathan Sheffield where I point these distinctions out, item by item (see Debating the Authenticity of Daniel: Methodological Analysis of Sheffield’s Case). Historians want to know what’s likely, never implicitly trust human sources, and seek evidence to corroborate what they say or that we speculate happened, by comparing the relatively likelihood of different explanations and the relatively likelihood of extant evidence on those competing explanations. Historians know that most literature is self-interested propaganda, especially when claims are made in it without citing sources or even reasons to believe what they are saying is true. Historians are not gullible.
By contrast, apologists want certain things to be true, and thus search mightily for any excuse to maintain that; they are not looking to test their theories for their likelihood, but rather to convince themselves and others that their theories are correct, and they do this mostly by appeal to assertions and speculations rather than presenting evidence backing either. And all throughout they apply a double standard: all reasonable skepticism and acceptance of the unknown in any other historical inquiry they abandon when it’s a claim they need to be true; instead they then apply completely different principles (a fallacy of special pleading), principles specifically designed to “rationalize” their belief, rather than test it. For example, they will dismiss any evidence against their view, if they can invent any unevidenced reason to disbelieve it, but then they will believe anything any source says, hook-line-and-sinker, if it supports them, even when no evidence backs what that source is saying, and even when obvious reasons exist to suspect their source’s mendacity or gullibility, and even when there is a lot of evidence that what that source is saying isn’t likely to be true. Apologists are gullible. But only when it is convenient for them to be. They can be wise and critical in every other context. But not in the one where their needs and desires govern what must be true, rather than evidence and logic. This is a broken epistemology. And that’s not good.
For the book of Daniel, the actual evidence points in only one direction: Daniel is a forgery, a treatise of cultural and war propaganda created and popularized by the Maccabees, which became so moving and influential, such an emotional touchstone in how it galvanized the Jews and contributed to their rare victory against an oppressor, and such a politically essential text for the Hasmonean regime to subsequently venerate, that it became enshrined as trusted scripture and, like Jeremiah before, reinterpreted as still yet foretelling the final victory of the Jews against all future oppressors. All evidence points to there never even having been such a Jewish prophet before the book of Daniel was fabricated in the 160s B.C. (or, for maybe some of its earlier chapters, in the 4th century B.C., although that remains less certain). Legends of such a prophet may have circulated in previous centuries, evolving from the legendary Ugaritic Danel, just as Noah and Job are myths evolving from the likes of Jobab and Utnapishtim. Many of the tales in Daniel may derive from such oral myths, setting them now in a specific historical era that its authors did not actually know all that well but wanted readers to believe was historically legitimate, resulting in embarrassing and otherwise-inexplicable errors by which we are able now to detect the con. Just think how many forgeries didn’t make this mistake and thus have successfully tricked us into believing them authentic—maybe not many, but that this is an ever-present danger is why we need reasons to trust any text; gullibility is no virtue. And there just are no reasons to trust Daniel, and ample reasons to distrust it. All apologists have are convenient assertions and speculations, declarations without any evidence; which are mere baseless rationalizations of their desperately-needed selective gullibility.
That’s not doing history. It’s pseudohistory. If you want to know what is history, then Daniel is a forgery. No valid method leads to any other conclusion.
Sorry, what are you saying about 9:1 please?
The verb at 9.1 isn’t the just the root (‘qal’) but the active causative using the הִ (ha) hiphil prefix :
הָמְלַ֔ךְ hamalak – made king / caused to be king
this הָ changes the meaning not just ‘became king’.
( this ‘ha’ is all over the hebru Bibl eg jeremiah 19.9 I will cause them t eat their children.)
That’s just called the passive in grammar. It never entails a human agent. It just means something happened to someone. That’s my point. I am pretty clear about this so I do not understand how you can be confused by it.
’cause there’s a difference between passive and causative in semitic grammar.
Not that matters; because causes are not limited to agents. Again, that’s my point. I explicitly articulate that very point. You seem intent on ignoring what I wrote. Why?
I find it so telling that you ignore his point about reading the text in context. No one who is reading the text without some advance warning that it contradicts the evidence would think that Daniel was working for a subordinate king. Focusing on lines out of context is something that apologists pretend to think is a problem until it suits them. Does it matter to you, at all, that this apologetic strategy still describes a state of affairs that all the other history states never cohered in reality?
The vision of the statue of a man made of different metals also puts Daniel in the context of Greek culture: clearly a borrowing from Hesiod‘s five ages of man.
More likely Hesiod and Daniel’s authors are drawing independently on an older Ancient Near Eastern metaphor. It seems to have simply been a commonly used trope.
This is quite a feast, thank you. I had browsed (I can’t say “read” as the whole language thing is beyond my knowledge) Arthur Gibson’s “Text and Tablet: Near Eastern Archaeology, the Old Testament and New Possibilities” chapter 9 where he argues for an authentic (i.e. traditional, from a dating point of view) Danual. Given what I have read about the issues you have raised here, I was kind of surprised, but Gibson seems to be a linguistic/language analysis of the text. Maybe this shows that you have to go beyond the language (or maybe he got that all wrong too). Anyway, not sure if you know the work or author.
I had not heard of that before, but at a glance, it looks specious. For example, on the very first page he confuses the phrase “entrust the kingship to” as “made king” rather than viceroy, when in fact that phrase means viceroy, i.e. a viceroy is someone to whom is entrusted a kingship. That he does not know this, does not bode well for his competence. All of his arguments from there on seem to be similarly incompetent, making false comparisons between unrelated texts. This may explain why no one actually in biblical studies bothers citing him. That plus the fact that all it attempts is an apologetic to get Belshazzar to be a king, which does not address even half of the evidence Daniel is a forgery. So that entire chapter is a non sequitur. And it appears as if he does not even know this, which supports a suspicion of his incompetence.
Someone asked me off-thread whether Zdravko Stefanovic had proved the Aramaic of Daniel was 6th-5th century B.C. One need merely read Collins’ note on that (in the section where Collins examines the datable features of Daniel’s Aramaic):
Collins surveys the “datability” argument from the Aramaic throughout pp. 13-20. He surveys the peer reviewed scholarship and evidence and concludes the Aramaic of Daniel is distinctively between 4th and 1st century B.C. dialectical shifts (being closer to the Qumran literature than all previous, but still sounding more archaic, which is to be expected for a forgery attempting to sound archaic, and yet failing to get farther back than 3rd or 4th century Aramaic, owing to the lack of the sophisticated modern ability to access reliably historicized models and lexicons to work from, which is how we catch this out now).
Collins also is smart enough to distinguish early from late portions of Daniel (a point I mention in my article above). In short, Daniel 1-6 may have been written earlier and by different authors than Daniel 9-12 (though still not early enough). And importantly, all the evidence of anything resembling “early” Aramaic comes from Daniel 1-7, not 8-12 (which is entirely in Hebrew).
Although even then that consists mostly of administrative vocabulary and forms, for which there are no known later forms to have used without giving the text away as too modern, which mistake forgers would be inclined to avoid, wherever it is as obvious as this that such a mistake would betray them. So at most one could say they were partially successful at trying to emulate 4th century Aramaic; but alas, that still gives it away (as even if Daniel 1-6 was written then, it’s still a forgery, and indeed now two, as then Daniel 7-12 would be a later forgery tacked on to that one).
Accordingly, there is no salvation for the apologist in this tactic.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Jonathan McLatchie has written an article responding in part to your post. His article can be read here. I don’t mind granting most of his positive arguments for an early date because they’re mostly restricted to chapters 1–6 and thus are not of prophetic significance. However, he makes four interesting points on the later chapters that I’d appreciate your thoughts on. I’ve done my best to summarize those points below, but – and I apologize in advance – I do a bit of quoting because some of the points are more technical and I didn’t want to misrepresent them.
(1) Daniel 8:2 states that Susa is in the province of Elam. But Greek and Roman historians indicate that Susa (or Shushan) was re-assigned to a new province called Susiana during the Persian period, and McLatchie cites Pliny (Nat. Hist. 6.27) and Strabo (Geogr. 15.3, 12; 16.1, 17) to show that Elam had had been reduced to the region west of the Eulaeus River. [Note: I think that for Pliny, he may have meant to cite Nat. Hist. 6.31, at least according to the chapter divisions used here.] He quotes Gleason Archer’s remark that “[i]t is reasonable to conclude that only a very early author would have known that Susa was once considered part of the province of Elam.”
(2) Sirach – which is often dated before 175 BC – appears to show some knowledge of Daniel.
First, Sirach 3:30 (“Righteousness atones for sin just as water extinguishes a blazing fire.”) appears to be influenced by Daniel 4:27 (“Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”) McLatchie acknowledges that the Sirach verse is in Hebrew while the Daniel verse is in Aramaic, but he quotes the following argument from Andrew Steinmann:
“The question of whether the language of this passage in Ben Sira is drawn from Daniel revolves around the equivalence of Daniel’s Aramaic verb, פְּרַק, ‘break/tear away,’ and Ben Sira’s Hebrew verb, כִּפֶּר, ‘atone.’ Admittedly, פְּרַק is difficult to understand in this context. However, we should note that both the Old Greek and Theodotion translate this verb in Dan 4:24 (ET 4:27) in a way that is similar to the Hebrew verb in Ben Sira. Both Greek versions use λυτρόω, which normally means ‘redeem,’ but in the context of this verse can only mean ‘atone by your actions,’ that is, ‘your actions will pay the price to redeem you and therefore atone for your sins.'”
McLatchie goes on to note an additional argument from Steinmann: the Old Greek’s (πάσας τὰς ἀδικίας σου ἐν ἐλεημοσύναις λύτρωσαι) and Theodotion’s (τὰς ἁμαρτίας σου ἐν ἐλεημοσύναις) translations of Daniel 4:27 agree in translating the “righteousness” in the Aramaic text to be charitable giving. Because that same connection between “righteousness” and charitable giving seems to be made in the Greek version of Sirach 3:30, this is supposed to reinforce the notion that Sirach was using Daniel 4:27 in the same way as the Old Greek’s and Theodotion’s translations. He quotes Steinmann again for why Sirach was influenced by Daniel rather than vice versa:
“All of this evidence points in the direction of Ben Sira being dependent on Daniel, not the reverse. We can easily explain the extant texts based on the assumption that Ben Sira, the Greek translation of Ben Sira, and the two Greek translations of Daniel are dependent on the older, original Aramaic text of Daniel. The other scenario is highly improbable: that only fifteen years after Ben Sira was written, Daniel borrowed this thought and transformed its vocabulary into Aramaic, then thirty years later, Ben Sira’s grandson interpreted the older Ben Sira 3:30 in light of a younger book of Daniel, and that at about the same time Daniel was translated in the Old Greek with the same understanding. Therefore, we have ancient confirmation that Ben Sira 3:30 does reflect the language of Dan 4:24 (ET 4:27).”
Second, Sirach 36:10 (“Hasten the end, and remember the appointed time…”) appears to use language from Daniel 8:19 (“…for it refers to the appointed time of the end.”), 11:27 (“…for the end is yet to be at the time appointed.”), 35 (“…and made white, until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.”). Significantly, the collocation of the words קֵץ (“end”) and מוֹעֵד (“appointed time”) occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible except for Daniel 8:19 and 11:27, 35.
Third, Sirach 36:22 (“Listen to the prayers of your servants…”) appears to use language – specifically the collocation of the Hebrew words שָׁמַע (“hear”), תְּפִלָּה (“prayer”) and עֶבֶד (“servant”) – found in the Hebrew Bible only in Daniel 9:17 and Nehemiah 1:6. But according to Steinmann, “Nehemiah uses the infinitive construct לִשְׁמֹ֣עַ, ‘to hear,’ whereas Daniel uses the imperative שְׁמַ֣ע, ‘hear, listen to.’ Since the imperfect תשמע, ‘may you hear, listen to,’ in Ben Sira 36:22 is probably to be understood as an injunction, that is, a request (the Greek translates it with the imperative εἰσάκουσον, ‘hear, listen’), Dan 9:17 has a much stronger claim as the source used by Ben Sira. Its syntax more easily aligns with the syntax in Ben Sira, whereas the syntax of Neh 1:6 is much more distant.” Steinmann then concludes:
“The parallel in Ben Sira 36:10 to Daniel 8 and 11 could possibly be seen as Daniel adapting an eschatological passage for his own use since his book is eschatologically oriented, and the author of Daniel might have been interested in using another well-respected book to boost his own. However, little reason could be found for adopting the two other passages. Indeed, given the interest in wisdom in the first part of Daniel, one would expect much more borrowing there, especially in the contexts where wisdom is explicitly mentioned. However, we find in Daniel only two other parallels to Ben Sira, and neither in the immediate proximity of references to wisdom. Indeed, Daniel 4 is a different kind of wisdom than found in Ben Sira—wisdom and insight that allow Daniel to interpret dreams, not the proverbial wisdom characteristic of Ben Sira. It seems that Ben Sira is adopting Daniel for his purposes, as he does other biblical books.”
(3) Daniel 2 and 7 form a chiasm and display other literary continuities:
“[P]arallels may be identified between chapters 2 and 7; 3 and 6; and 4 and 5. Chapters 2 and 7 both talk about four kingdoms and the coming Messianic kingdom. Chapters 3 and 6 concern the persecution of righteous Jews at the hands of gentile kings (Nebuchadnezzar and Darius respectively). Chapters 4 and 5 concern what happens to gentile rulers who are haughty and arrogant and lose their humility – that is, they are disciplined by God and removed from office. Since chapter 7 forms a part of this chiastic structure, this suggests that chapter 7 is part of the original composition of Daniel. However, if chapter 7 (which more closely resembles both the style and chronology of 8-12 than 1-6) belongs to the original composition of Daniel, then on what basis can one say that chapters 8-12 do not belong to the original composition?
McLatchie also quotes Harold Henry Rawley – who subscribed to a Maccabean dating for the entirety of Daniel – on the similar authorial tendencies in chapter 2 and 7, such as the tendency to include details in the dream interpretation not found in the dream itself:
“[I]t is characteristic of the author that in his repetitions or interpretations he introduces new elements which were not mentioned before. It has already been said that some scholars would eliminate some verses of chapter 2 on the ground that they introduce in the interpretation elements which did not stand in the account of the vision. [Note: I think he’s referring to 2:41b–43 and the phrase about toes in v. 41a, none of which correspond to details in the dream described in vv. 31–35.] Similarly, in chapter 7, new elements of the vision are introduced in verse 21 to prepare the way for the interpretation. In the same way in 7:19 we find an additional touch that did not stand in the previous account, in the nails of brass. This does not stand in one of the alleged interpolations, and it is clear that the supposed canon of dissection cannot apply. Ginsberg therefore proposes to apply it in reverse and to insert the reference to ‘nails of brass’ in 7:7 to make it agree with 7:19. But in 4:30 (E.V. 33), in the account of the fulfilment of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, we similarly find something which did not figure in the account of the dream, in the words ’till his hair was grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws’. Here there can be no question of an interpolator, since no point could be given to these words to explain their insertion as a reference to some historic situation, and there is no reason to insert them into the earlier account. In all of these cases we find a common mind at work, and parallel treatment should be given to them all.”
(4) If Daniel was completed in the Maccabean period, then the fourth kingdom in chapter 7 would have to refer to the Greeks. But McLatchie argues that there are several issues with that interpretation:
“If the Maccabean hypothesis is to work, it is necessary to interpret the fourth kingdom, represented in Daniel 2 by the legs of iron of the statue, as the Macedonians or Greeks, founded by Alexander the Great in approximately 330 B.C., since it is presumed on this theory that the book of Daniel does not contain historically fulfilled prophecies that post-date the Maccabean period. To quote John J. Collins, the leading exponent of the Maccabean hypothesis, “Within the chronological restraints of the Book of Daniel, the fourth kingdom can be no later than that of Greece (despite the longstanding tradition that identified it with Rome, beginning with Josephus).” On this theory, the other three kingdoms, represented by the head of gold, the breast of silver, and the belly and thighs of brass are thus interpreted to be the Babylonian, Median, and Persian empires respectively. However, the book of Daniel seems to portray the Medes and Persians as comprising one and the same empire. [Note: I think he’s referring to Daniel 6:8, 12; 8:20] There is no indication in the text whatsoever that there was ever a Median empire that was distinctive and previous to the Persian Empire.
Chapter 7 concerns the same four nations, symbolized by wild beasts, that are represented in chapter 2, but this text appears to exclude the notion that the second and third empires are Media and Persia. The first kingdom is universally acknowledged to be the kingdom of Babylon. The second kingdom is symbolized in chapter 7 by a bear devouring three ribs. This likely corresponds to the three major conquests of the Medo-Persian empire under Cyrus the Great and Cambyses, against Lydia, Babylon and Egypt. The third empire is symbolized by a leopard possessing four wings and four heads. It is widely known that Alexander the Great’s kingdom was, following his death, divided among four of his generals (see discussion of chapter 11 below). However, there is no evidence for a four-fold division of the Persian empire. This suggests that the leopard is intended to symbolize the empire of Greece. The fourth kingdom is symbolized by a ten-horned beast, who is described as being “terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it.’ (Dan 7:7). The ten horns recall the ten toes of the image of chapter 2, which have a close association with the two legs of iron. This is readily identifiable with the Roman empire, since it was divided into the Eastern and Western Roman empires during the reign of the emperor Diocletian. However, there is no obvious correspondence with the Greek empire.”
-:-
In response to two of these points, I think that a problem with (2) is that the even if Sirach was influenced by Daniel, the date at which Sirach was written is too uncertain for the literary links to be of any use here. (I’ve seen dates as late as 150 BC proposed for when Sirach was written in Hebrew.) (4) is interesting, but the interpretation in 2:39 already gives short shift to the second and third kingdoms by grouping them together, so their close association in other parts of Daniel is not as surprising. But I’m still thinking about (1) and (3), so any thoughts or expertise that you have here are appreciated.
Indeed. I noted this position in my article: “…many serious proposals have been made (and evidence adduced) that earlier parts of Daniel (much or all of Daniel 1-6) might date to around the 4th century (still, thus, forged), but that obviously does not include chapters 9-12, which can only date to the 2nd century, yet are the chapters Christian apologists most desperately need to be authentic…”
I don’t find the arguments particularly strong (more speculative than secure) but not so weak as to dismiss outright. Hence I grant it for the sake of argument. It doesn’t pertain, as you note, to the real issue (it also doesn’t rescue Daniel, since even 1-6 are still a forgery, just one of an earlier date; attempts to push it earlier run aground on all the evidence against; which is why mainstream scholars take the same position I do, and only demagogues and apologists attempt to escape it).
Incorrect. The forgers are simply trusting scripture. Note this belief, based on Ezra, is also repeated in the forgery of Jubilees, another Maccabean text. It was thus a trope in that period.
This runs into the problem that it could be the other way around (the authors of Daniel borrowing or inspired by material in Sirach). None of the arguments presented for the contrary are valid—as I note in this very article above (as an example under “reverse incredulity”) this apologetic rhetoric is based on a bizarre incomprehension of how long ten to thirty years actually is. And without evidence of causal direction, there is no argument to be had here.
It’s only worse that on top of that, as you note, we really don’t know that Sirach predates Daniel. And ignorance cannot produce knowledge. Apologists are behaving gullibly here: their date for Sirach is based on assuming everything in it (even its prologue) is authentic. There is no actual evidence of that. And as I have shown, the Maccabean period was rife with forgeries just like this. So suspicion, not trust, is warranted. And at any rate, what is not established, cannot be premised.
Which would be the intention of the second forgers: to build 7-12 onto 1-6, they looked for a way to link an earlier chapter in by chiasmic allusion. Note that if 7-12 didn’t exist, there would be nothing remarkable about 2 that would lead us to expect 7: 4 and 5 are adjacent chapters so sharing content is unremarkable, whereas 3 and 6 only straddle 4 and 5, thus producing the only actual chiasmus; there need not have been any intention to mirror 2, just as we find no mirror for 1—hence that could be invented later by the expanders of the text. Thus, any links between 2 and 7, are just as likely the construct of the authors of 7. And since that need not be the authors of 2 (there is no evidence it is, against all the evidence mainstream scholars adduce it isn’t), this point can’t establish anything.
Note how this is exactly the sort of thing forgers would do too. They are thus not actually testing their theory against the alternative. This is how apologetics works: it rationalizes positions; it does not test them. Their methods are simply illegitimate.
Only to a rationalizing apologist who needs that to be the case. They are here conflating Daniel’s ahistorical errors with actual history. No actual Median kingdom existed. Daniel’s authors however believe one did (they keep referring to it; as I note, likely to get Daniel to “fit” prior scripture, although Collins adduces many other ancient authors making this same error). “Daniel” thus has the Persian kingdom begin after Darius with “Cyrus the Persian” (6:28); whereas the previous kingdom began with the one whom they identify as “Darius the Mede” (5:31), not Darius the Persian, thus representing the second kingdom, and thence Persia the third. (It is thus a false statement that “There is no indication in the text whatsoever that there was ever a Median empire that was distinctive and previous to the Persian Empire.” The indication is plainly there right in the text’s own statements of succession. They are confusing the body of a nation, Media and Persia, with who is ruling it, a Mede or a Persian.)
On the theory that Dan. 2 was written in the 4th century, the fourth kingdom would be Alexander’s, whom the authors are pretending is being “predicted” (when in fact he is being retrodicted, as typically happens in apocalypses). This becomes obvious when you read Daniel’s “interpretation” which states that the fourth kingdom will consume and be larger than all the others, yet then dissolve into bickering sub-nations, before God’s apocalypse. This describes the fracturing of Alexander’s Empire, which was indeed larger than the Persian, into the Era of the Diadochoi in late 4th century. It does not describe Rome (certainly not of the first century, when Christians believe God’s “Rock” appeared). Or any other empire previous but Alexander’s. Also note the third kingdom does not conquer the second; it simply succeeds it. Whereas the fourth kingdom conquers (it “crushes” the ones before it). This exactly describes Daniel’s own imaginary chronology of the Nebuchadnezzar dynasty, then Darius the Mede, then Cyrus the Persian, then Alexander the Great.
Note the apologetical approach requires assuming the authors of Dan. 2 were actual supernatural prophets. Once you discard that improbability, it is obvious the first three kingdoms must be ones they will mention as known, so that they can set up the pretense that all three succeeding kingdoms are a prophetic prediction. This is how apocalypses were composed throughout antiquity. Historians follow established precedent in their interpretations, not whackadoo theories about psychics.
Not necessarily. If we are supposing 7 was introducing an annex written centuries later, it could be aiming to “retrofit” a new meaning onto 2. But that’s moot, since everything the apologist says here is mere speculation. They have presented no facts supporting what they are saying. There is no reason to read this chapter in any other way than once again describing the same mythical sequence of kingdoms in Dan. 2: Babylon, subsumed by Darius “the Mede,” succeeded by Cyrus “the Persian,” and crushed by Alexander the Great (it likewise describes the succession from Darius to Cyrus as political rather than military, but the fourth as a destructive conquest). Only the authors of 7 know about Antiochus and thus tweak that to include him at the end; that the authors of 2 didn’t is one reason some scholars suspect 1-6 was forged in the 4th century and 7-12 in the second (though IMO that’s a weak argument—just again, not a vacuous one—since it’s not implausible for vague points to be expanded into specific ones as an apocalypse proceeds).
That’s more of a modern myth. The Diadochoi were numerous and their conflicts and alliances convoluted and constantly changing. The usual “main” list of them is Antipater, Perdiccas, Ptolemy I, Seleucus I, Antigonus I, and Lysimachus, which is already more than four, and there were also Pyrrhus and Cassander and others. To anyone in antiquity, it would appear a chaos, not a neat division into four kingdoms.
But this is moot because there is no reference to a division into four kingdoms in Daniel. The apologists are just making this up. The four wings and heads on one ruler (not four rulers) just as likely represents the four corners of the Earth that they governed (as mainstream scholars conclude) and thus the extent of the kingdom of Persia, matching Dan. 2 (that the third kingdom “will rule over the whole earth”). Again, this is ahistorical, but matches the “history” that the authors of Daniel contrived.
This is a bizarre non sequitur. There is no number “ten” connected with Diocletian, even in their own statement, much less reality. This is again them just making shit up and pretending we won’t notice. Nor would it make sense to have Jesus come after the Diocletianic era, as their interpretation would require of the text. If Rome were meant, it could only be first century Rome. But there is nothing connecting to Rome here at all, even of the first century.
To the contrary, the authors of Daniel 7 tell us who the ten horns are: the Diadochoi. Hence they well knew there were way more than four of them (per above), certainly by the time of Antiochus; their choosing ten is likely just a round number, it means “a lot” or “about ten or so.” Since it was never possible to give a precise number of Diadochoi; they were constantly changing and their claims to authority often ambiguous.
This is obvious from the statement, “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it,” and he would be the last haughty ruler before the End Times, a clear reference to Antiochus, an “eleventh” horn arising later, who succeeded after three of the previous ten horns had been “uprooted,” i.e. destroyed, which could mean any of the previously deceased or vanquished Diadochoi depending on which events these authors knew about and considered most salient (Collins surveys the options). By contrast, this fits no Roman interpretation.
-:-
What you are getting from them is thus just more illegitimate apologetic methodology, not real historical methodology. They make up facts to support their predetermined position, ignore facts that undermine it, argue by non sequitur and “formalized gullibility”, never actually test their theories against alternatives (and when they pretend to, their tests are straw), and presume as given rather than, as in fact, wildly implausible, the existence and convenient operation of the supernatural.
From McLatchie’s post: “Daniel 1:1-2:3 is written in Hebrew; 2:4-7:28 is written in Aramaic; and chapters 8-12 are written in Hebrew”
Your proposal that the real chiasmus being around 3-6 instead of 2-7 seems a bit ad hoc given that the entire aramaic part is a chiasmus. Would be weird for the existing aramaic section to be chapter 2, and then a chiasmus. You said chapter 1 doesn’t need to be linked to anything, but that’s because chapter 1 is separate from the aramaic sections.
Thoughts?
This would require you to suppose all the Aramaic was written by different author(s) than the Hebrew, which simply reinforces the conclusion that there have been forged interpolations into the original. This destroys rather than rescues the authenticity of Daniel. It’s thus not a viable approach for an apologist.
Whereas I think (as with most scholars) that some of the Hebrew is an uncompleted translation from an Aramaic original (or originals, if several sections were separately circulating), in an effort to make it look more coherent and authentic, so what is Aramaic vs. Hebrew does not as carefully demarcate different authors or periods (that all the Hebrew is in a late second-temple dialect supports this view).
But as I said, “any links between 2 and 7, are just as likely the construct of the authors of 7.” And this can be as true of Aramaic or Hebrew composers as anyone else. It doesn’t require the authors of 8-12 to be the same as the author of 7; nor does it require the authors of the chiasmus of 3-6 know anything about the add-on of 7. So even your hypothesis that either the Aramaic or the Hebrew is a late interpolation by different authors doesn’t really avoid that conclusion. More than one person in antiquity wrote in each language.
For a full treatment of all this, see Collins 1993, whose introduction thoroughly discusses all the possible ways the Aramaic and Hebrew came to be where they are and the implications this can or can’t carry vis-a-vis composition. He takes the position of multiple stages of compiling, redaction and back-translation (pp. 13-24, 37-38; see esp. his summary on p. 38, but the preceding material presents the evidence for that—I don’t think we need as elaborate a thesis as his, but his thesis is among those that carry the highest plausibility; the most we could improve it by is removing or compressing some steps; whereas any other thesis suffers from contradictions with the evidence as he lays out).
Thank you for this awesome article. What I like best is your emphasis on how Daniel 9’s details are more sparse and inaccurate as you get further from the proposed ~164 BCE authorship date. And then it gets EXTREMELY and immediately inaccurate and sparser in detail following 164 BCE!
This argument alone seems be the smoking gun, to indicate authorship of Daniel ch 9-12 to be very near to 164 BCE. Many other scholars seem to miss this very important argumentative point.
I find you to be the smartest among your peers.
Dial back the flattery, please. By this point it sounds clumsily manipulative. I don’t truck with that.
Hello Dr. Carrier. I had a question and was wondering what you think of this, as they appeal to prophecy for the historicity of Jesus, but it seems like a thorough research. (Have you ever read from this site, what are your thoughts in general?)
https://biblearchaeology.org/about/abr-research-projects/the-daniel-9-24-27-project
You might have to be more specific.
Are you asking about the general merits of a Christian apologetic website’s argument that Daniel’s prophecy proves Jesus real?
If that is what you mean, then please read the whole of Newman on Prophecy as Miracle, as it covers why apologetics like this is always bogus (Arguments from Prophecy always end up fallacious), and has a closing section and endnotes on why this specific version of it is just as bogus as the rest.
Also, note the article you are commenting on here above already points out the authors of Daniel meant their timetable to target 164 BC, and thus did not anticipate Jesus; and that the Dead Sea Scrolls’ attempt to “reinterpret” this failed prophecy in Daniel did not identify any date matching Jesus. Likewise, the “re-re-interpretation” of Daniel leading to messiah fever in the first century AD, with various different dates expected same reasoning as led to messiah fever, does not require a historical Jesus to fulfill, as explained in On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 5., Elements 23-28; I also discuss the “seventy sevens” prophecy and its role in creating messiah fever in the first century AD in Ibid., Ch. 4, Elements 4-7 (which is a more recent and peer reviewed account).
Hello Dr. Carrier,
thank you for that very interesting article, I saw your interview on the Lloyd Evans channel and came to read more of your content. I will definitely read your books when I get the time.
I tried to follow all your arguments, comparing to a Bible and to what I could find on the internet. I am having trouble understanding why is that “the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” corresponds in the mind of the author of Daniel to the prophecy of Jeremiah 25, where nothing is said about “restore and rebuild”. If that is what was intended, why didn’t the angel just said “from the word given to Jeremiah…”? Why isn’t it explained in Daniel what do the 7 weeks mean? Why isnt it explained in better detail that the 70 years of Jeremiah were actually part of 70 weeks of years? If Daniel wanted to be vague about the meaning of the prophecy, why is the failed prophecy of Jeremiah gets repeated with the exact same words, i. e. 70 years in Daniel 9:2? Wouldn’t it have been better to simply speak about 70 weeks as if that is what the prophecy was?
I get that the numbers fit perfectly, but I don’t quite get the process going on in the minds of the writers of Daniel.
Thank you very much in advance.
Matias
The chapter begins by saying this is all a discussion of, and attempt to reinterpret, Jeremiah (see Dan. 9:1-3), and following that is a long petition to God to explain why Jeremiah’s prophecy that Jerusalem would be restored didn’t come true, and then following that is a detailed explanation of how to re-interpret the number 70 in Jeremiah so as to make it work, delivered by the angel Gabriel (see Dan. 9:20-27).
In the process, it is evident “Daniel” (the character in the story) is regarding Jeremiah 29:10 as a coda to Jeremiah 25. That verse appears in a supposed letter Jeremiah sent explaining his prophecy in Jer. 25 (hence the seventy years reference) shortly after the exile had begun (the text is vague as to precisely when, which is why the precise date of the original prophecy given in Jer. 25 is being assumed by the authors of Daniel). Thus the authors of Daniel are simply assuming those are parts of the same prophecy (and quite possibly at the time, everyone was).
These same context-dependent assumptions explain the rest. Gabriel was specifically asked to explain the word of Jeremiah as to the restoration in seventy years (combining Jer. 25 and 29 on account of that number), and so when he says “from the word” any reader at that time would understand that to mean the prophecy of Jeremiah, especially since (as I note in the article above) that’s how prophecies were referenced, with just such a phrase.
Likewise, the point is to avoid having to explain why the math works out this way (because everyone knows that’s illogical); rather, Gabriel is simply telling Daniel this was the hidden mystery now being revealed to him (which is what the authors needed, so they could re-do the math to suit their second century agenda, again as I explain in the article above).
And vagueness is actually the standard style of prophecy, so efforts were made even to forge prophecies to “sound like that” because otherwise it would look suspicious and not like a real prophecy.
As to why Jeremiah didn’t explain any of this, that’s because none of this reinterpretive nonsense existed when he wrote. This is all a contrivance of the authors of Daniel centuries later.
I have several really big problems with what you’ve written & concluded in this article. I know my opinion won’t matter to you, because you have letters after your name, and I am a nobody. But a few things really stood out to me as I read your very long article (and the ensuing comments).
#1 – For all you purportedly know about the book of Daniel, you really don’t seem to know anything about it. Maybe it’s just not the focus of your article, but you really don’t seem to understand the content. How can you hope to explain the content (or debunk it, or dismiss it) if you don’t understand it yourself?
#2 – It seems like you’ve got an echo chamber set up for yourself. You refer to “scientists” that agree with your point of view as “mainstream”, “serious”, “academic”, etc. And, in contrast, you always disparage those whose views align with Christian Apologists. This is not a very highbrow way of arguing your point. Discrediting & labeling those who disagree with you seems to imply that you can’t trust your version of truth to stand for itself, and it seems to indicate you have a personal vendetta or bias. Suppressing part of the evidence because it doesn’t get you the conviction you want is not science either.
#3 – Speaking of bias…it is ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that you approach this topic with presuppositions and assumptions. That isn’t science. For instance: you assume that any prophecy which appears to be fulfilled must have been forged and written after the date of fulfillment. Since prophecy & fulfillment is “improbable” you dismiss it out of hand. You build a case which affirms & pseudo-validates your hypothesis. To achieve this, you proceed to discredit the written claims and attack them from every angle with “what is most likely”. But it’s only likely if your presupposition is true!
So you would present your conjecture as proof, to us, your readers. Do you think that little of our intellects? Even I have the sense to see you are simply choosing to exercise your faith in something you believe to be true but cannot prove. In that regard, you may have the makings of a devout Christian! (Wouldn’t that be rich?!)
#4 – You mention in several places that “Apologists desperately need _____ to be true…”, but it seems to me that YOU are the one who desperately needs the book of Daniel to be a forgery! If you discredit it (and its proponents) effectively enough, then you’ll never have to consider the import of its contents, and you can ignore any archaeological findings or corroborative mentions or historical fulfillment that doesn’t line up with your narrative…as well as any guilt you may feel over the sin you allow yourself to live in–you can ignore that too, as long as God is “not likely” and Daniel’s warnings were just some forger’s political wishful thinking. There’s nothing coming at the end of your life that you (or your readers) need be concerned about. Right? That is perhaps a logical conclusion from your vantage point, but I see a significant wrinkle in your viewpoint…
#5 – You are using “probability” to measure a deity that has self-identified as “The God of the Impossible”. All of the core doctrines of the Jewish & Christian faiths are built on miracles. If there IS a God, you will never approach him on the high-speed train of science, with you measuring out the track. On the contrary (according to the Bible), this God has stated plainly that he can only be approached on the liferaft of faith, which is drawn toward him by a tide or a current you cannot direct. What if the 1% happens? What if it’s all true, and you’ve talked yourself & everyone else out of it? It would be like the Cubs winning the World Series! Oh wait– Seriously though, if it was all 100% logic and science and we could prove it and clearly trace its provenance, then the Bible would have been entirely disproven in the act. See, then we could ALL acknowledge it and move toward it in our own agency. Yet the Bible says: the way to everlasting life is narrow, and few there be that find it, and those that DO get in can only do so by a Saviour’s work. The Bible isn’t geared toward probabilities and majorities. It seems silly to measure it that way. It’s like rating Franz Liszt’s music poorly on the Hip-Hop charts.
In faith, we all must make a choice to believe what was handed down to us over the centuries by a God who promised us he is big enough to “hold the raft together” in spite of the human element, OR we have to trust in your probabilities and in the studious writings of a bunch of men (who have been proven countless times to be liars about any number of small affairs–much less large ones). If I’m a student of probability at all, I lean toward the former.
#6 – In the spirit of the reasoning which progresses by the gait of “if…then…”, all of this stuff about Daniel is irrelevant, until you’ve explained where that 1st molecule came from, and what made it go BANG!!!, and how 1 molecule turned into EVERYTHING, and how (improbably) some of those molecules acquired LIFE, and how they managed to reconfigure themselves and proliferate before they expired. On the other hand, if Genesis is true, then the probability that Daniel is also true goes WAY up. This example does at least point to the action “behind the curtain” in your assertions. The truth is: you and many other very intelligent people like you only use probabilities when it suits you. The rest of the time you’re like Han Solo waving off C3PO: “Never tell me the odds!” You can accept the anemic probabilities of the big bang and evolution, but when similar probabilities are offered on the topic of fulfilled prophecy you get all smug and snarky and educated. Logically, that makes no sense.
One day, I hope you do find the truth and are able to lead others to it. Until then, I’ll think of you whenever I read II Timothy 3:7.
#1 – I extensively studied this, consulting abundant leading scholarship and the original language text. All of which is cited in the article, which indeed is merely summarizing all that peer reviewed work and primary evidence. Your just making false statements to the contrary is not a valid way to argue.
#2 – Anyone who does not rely on the latest, most up-to-date and professionally vetted expert knowledge on a subject, is the one who cannot claim to know anything about it. Your just making false statements to the contrary is not a valid way to argue.
#3 – You have identified no presupposition (as opposed to empirically well-established facts) underlying any point in my article. Your just vaguely claiming there must be some is not a valid way to argue.
#4 – I have no need of any outcome but the truth. If the evidence actually confirmed some supernatural conclusion, I’d be a supernaturalist. To claim that all the evidence I present doesn’t exist and that instead I’m just deciding based on some false need I supposedly have, rather than my beliefs actually being based where the evidence took me, is a lie you tell yourself, because it is a commonplace control belief among the delusional conspiracy theorist, whose behavior you are exhibiting here. It is impossible that the evidence doesn’t agree with you; therefore you have to tell yourself no one who concludes differently than you is following the evidence. That’s typical apologetics. It is not a rational way to approach the world.
#5 – You need to brush up on how probability works. See Everything You Need to Know about Coincidences, Advice on Probabilistic Reasoning, Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them, and Bayesian Counter-Apologetics.
#6 – You failed to produce a single example of your claim here as pertains to me. Which I notice describes your entire long-winded comment: lots of editorilizing, but never once did you identify any example, any actual specific example, in my article or my work generally, evincing any point you attempted to make. That is what arguing without evidence looks like. Sorry. I only accept arguments from evidence. Everything else is a grift.
Hello again, Richard. It was, I suppose, decent of you to respond to my previous comment. You didn’t have to–after all, you don’t know me, and you clearly don’t value my input or perspective, nor do you share my beliefs about the subject matter. It made me wonder why you DID respond?
Jesus said, in Matthew 12:34, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” My experience of life has proven this to be both wise & true–countless times. As such, it has become a very useful tool for me in my efforts to understand others. What I am getting from your words (in your 1st 3 points) is that you have determined my comments to be invalid & beneath your standard of respectful response. You have found a way to dismiss my points & my questions, which allows you the freedom (in your own mind) to not have to engage my input into the conversation. And let me be clear, I was just trying to treat you like a person–like a man–I wasn’t trying to “argue”. I thought I was discussing your article with you (which is what I thought the comments section was for).
The 6th point of your response further demonstrates that you have misapprehended my intentions. Because I did not pick at any specifics in your article, you assert that my own comments are unacceptable. I have no desire to pick you apart, or to criticize every little objection I have to your work. That doesn’t seem a productive course of action. Rather than argue with you, I’d much prefer to: build a rapport with you, see where you are coming from, and help you fill in the missing pieces in your search.
You say my own point #6 does not pertain to you. I mean–you’re a smart guy–if you can’t see that an argument about Daniel’s authorship is irrelevant–or at least a cart-before-the-horse conversation (as much as I love the subject matter) UNTIL you’ve explained the more foundational and elemental points I mentioned, then I can’t really figure out how you can consider yourself a logical being. It’s like debating about which seat you’re going to sit in before you even determine which stadium you’re going to, and when, and if the tickets are even available.
In your 4th point, you got pretty personal, framing for me an internal narrative. Thanks for that…but after all, that’s fair: my own 4th point was similar in tone. The problem I have here is that you didn’t seem to actually read what I wrote–you’re not engaging with my idea. See, I read your riposte, then in good faith I had to stop and do an honest self-assessment. “Am I lying to myself?” “Am I dismissing evidence?” “Is the church I belong to in any way controlling me for its own benefit?” Having done this, I feel a strong urge to tell you: you are quite the hypocrite to say such things.
A) You say, loftily: “I have no need of any outcome but the truth.” But you have already disavowed the very concept of truth, in favor of the latest peer-reviewed research and (alleged) evidence. Consider: if what you believe today to be truth is overturned by some acceptable academic’s next published article in your acceptable peer-reviewed publication…can’t you see that what you have held to so tightly today, looking down your nose at others, is NOT TRUE (according to your own paradigm)? Tomorrow’s new discovery overturns today’s truth, making it into fallacy, wrong assumption, etc.?
Will you come back and apologize to all of us for having had it all wrong, and for arguing for it so zealously, and for misleading all those who looked to you as an expert? And what about all of that “evidence” you claimed to have presented? It will have turned out to be MISrepresented evidence, won’t it? Moreover, wouldn’t you have to admit that it wasn’t strictly “evidence” you had presented, but–more accurately–it was your own INTERPRETATION of the evidence? (Or maybe you’d hide behind others, and say it was someone else’s interpretation of the evidence?)
My point is: in the end, you’ll have to admit you’re just interpreting evidence, and that you can never be sure you have the truth (simply due to the nature of your search). How many men, just as well educated as you, having died 100 or 200 years ago, have been proven wrong about SO MANY things they held to be truth, which they came to believe by the same methods you employ? In 100 or 200 years, that’ll be you. You will never have the truth. At best, you’ll have an educated guess, parading as the only intelligent possibility.
Decrying faith with every book you write, here you must admit YOU ARE, in fact, placing YOUR FAITH in peer-reviewed research and leading scholarship, hoping that it’s true, and then trying to live your life by that body of truth. In this respect, you and I are not very different after all. We are both men of faith. In that light, it seems irrational of you to be so condescending to others. Don’t you think so?
Hey, Richard, frankly, I think you’re “as lost as a ball in high grass”, but I’m not going to be rude & disparaging to you. I know you’re doing your best, and putting a lot of earnest effort into your search for truth. I respect that. I just think it’s silly for you to not admit that it’s faith you are exercising, here. And I feel I should point out that Psalm 14:1 says:
“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God…”
So, be careful. I know that’s the last thing you want to seem.
In case you don’t have someone in your life to really tell you what the Bible says, I feel it prudent to also point out that Psalm 77:13 says:
“Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary.” So, maybe don’t expect to decode and research Him in a library or a classroom (although He can meet you anywhere). If He tells you where He will meet you, and you decide to try meeting Him someplace else, that’s pretty irrational too! You’re setting yourself up for disappointment; you’ll never find what you say you are looking for if you don’t look where it is. If you willfully persist in looking for something, saying you are sincere, and expecting others to believe you, but refusing to search for it where it can be found, we must rationally conclude that either: (1) you are NOT an earnest man but a liar, or (2) you are a proud fool, or (3) you think all of your readers are fools whom you can deceive. (But NONE of these are you, right?)
Anyway, Romans 12:3 says: “God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” So, I can’t fault you for not “getting it” in what (to me) seems such evident truth. I have to recognize that maybe you’ve never met someone who took the time to really talk to you, and take your insults on the chin, and have compassion on you anyway. Maybe no one has ever shown you what the Bible is all about. Maybe God has not chosen you as one of His elect! (That’s a super sad thought.) But rest assured, if you come to the conclusion that all of this “supernaturalism” IS, in fact, truth, you still won’t know God.
You can’t leverage all of your scientific facts and rational philosophy and have it lead you into a real relationship with the invisible God of the Universe. Again, He is pretty clear when He tells us in Hebrews 11:6, that, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” If you don’t start with this presupposition, the Bible argues against your claim (if you would make such a claim) that you are trying to find God.
Furthermore, if/since the Bible was written by the Holy Spirit, through chosen men who believed, it cannot be expected to be understood fully by those who do not believe and who do not have the Holy Spirit to open it up to their understanding. After all, I Corinthians 2:11 warns: “The things of God knoweth no man; but the Spirit of God.” Be careful that you do not confuse understanding with knowledge. You have much of the latter and none of the former. But you can fix that, because in John 16:13 we learn that “The Spirit…will guide you into all truth,” and in John 14:26 we learn that “the Holy Ghost…shall teach you all things”. But you’ve got to show up to class, see yourself humbly as a pupil, and revere the Teacher.
Proverbs 14:12 and John 3:36 pose some big warnings, but I think the most alarming thing (in your case) is taught in I Peter 5:5, that: “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” That’s going to be a big hurdle for you to overcome–God up to this moment has been actively resisting you! Moreover, God plainly states that he “hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” and I know that’s not going to sit well with you, because those are precisely the persons you have a habit of dismissing. You have constructed for yourself this filtration mechanism whereby you will NEVER come face-to-face with the truth you say you are seeking. You have precluded for your own self the possibility of ever discovering God. Fortunately, II Corinthians 5:19 announces that Jesus is all about reconciling his enemies to himself, and I get to be a part of that ministry! (So, I’m sharing all of this with you–it’s not an argument; it’s a conversation.) And maybe this is your moment to have that cessation of hostilities between you & God by humbling yourself and shifting your faith from “peers” to the Peerless One by believing in Revelation rather than “research”.
Well, at least now you know what the Bible plainly says about how/where to begin seeking out the truth about God. I’d expect a reasonable, “sane” man to head in that direction. Hey, and I’ll meet you there! 🙂
NOTE: I actually had 2 other of your statements from point #4 (a “B” and a “C”) which I was going to object to, but this comment is already embarrassingly long, and what I’ve said already is more important than the remainder of what I think about your response to me. If you are interested in continuing this conversation in a more personal way, I invite you to e-mail me so we don’t have to muck up your comments section with the inevitable rabbit trails & personal details that will ensue. You need only ask.
I’m posting this comment through moderation because it is so completely fails to actually respond to anything I said or the article it purports to be commenting on as to prove to any capable reader you are off you’re rocker and have nothing to contribute here.
I won’t post any more of these vacuous wordwalls of yours, however. Please take your crazy somewhere else now.
Using chapter 11 to date Daniel is all wrong. No apologetics from me, but the case for the historicity of Antiochus iv invading Jerusalem and despoiling its temple is all wrong. The historians that SHOULD write about it don’t, then later historians like Tacitus mention Antiochus iv had an emnity with the Judean God. It literally mirrors the historicity of JEsus as far as sources go, with Greek historians mentioning Judean sources relaying a STORY about Antiochus iv invading JErusalem and despoiling the temple. I actually googled this because I thought that Richard Carrier, if any one, would clearly see right through this.
What kind of methodology is involved in ignoring the Greek historians writing about Antiochus Epiphanes despoiling temples? They rant about his despoiling temples as the cause of his downfall, and the downfall of the Seleucids as a whole. They mention Memphis, Heliopolis, Daphne, Babylon, and of they all mention Elam. His attack on the temple in Elam gave him the injuries that caused his death, according to our sources. No attack on the Temple in JErusalem is mentioned.
So what is Josephus, old reliable Josephus on about? Josephus seems to be quoting Diodorus book 31. The quote is partial to make it seem like evidence of Antiochus iv invading Jerusalem. Diodorus says that when Antiochus VII laid siege to Jerusalem, his friends told him a STORY about Antiochus iv despoiling the Jerusalem temple. (Btw, this would be the same time period the Babylonian chronicle detailing Antiochus iv’s death comes from, as it mentions Demetrius.)
There is one other greco-Roman writer often mentioned to support the historicity of Antiochus iv’s invasion of JErusalem and despoiling the temple. Porphyry. This writer is quoted in an argument by a later Christian scribe, but all Porphyry seems to be doing is trying to rationalize the literature we call Daniel, not relay any actual historical information from other historians.
So there is no good evidence that this invasion and despoiling happened in JErusalem. So what explains how Daniel 11 came to exist? All the clues are right there in the book of Daniel.
Daniel 8-12 is about dream Daniel is having. Daniel 8 mentions Antiochus iv, and Daniel is in Susa, which is in Elam. This is most likely the temple Antiochus attacked. This is the famous place where Alexander the great had the mass weddings and most likely where Antiochus iii also attacked and was repelled.
Daniel 11 is trickier, because it is part of a larger dream that begins on the Tigris, the eastern river that leads into Babylon, and where one would be if heading toward Susa. Much is made in chapters 10 -12 of Michael staying to help the Persian kings. Two Persian palaces are in Susa, Elam.
Jerusalem is only mentioned in 8-12 in chapter 9, where it is often mentioned. But its not mentioned in chapter 8 or 11, which mention Antiochus iv.
Then we have the “bad history” of chapter 11. I propose that this is instead rearranged history. All the parts of the Greek history of Antiochus iv are there, just rearranged. The third invasion is a reiteration of the first invasion, but its been moved. Antiochus iv despoils the temple of the most high god, but not just before his death in chapter 11 as we now have it. The death I will talk about later. So if you took a combination of Greek historians and put Antiochus’ life chronologically I think you would have what Daniel 11 was originally. But the someone thought the attack on the Temple of the Most High was the one in JErusalem – most likely a yahwist with less than cosmopolitan views on gods. The yahwist has to correct the geography, so he has Antiochus iv despoil the temple coming after he comes out of Egypt! In moving the temple attack from the end i am speculating that he left out part of his first invasion into Egypt, and tacks that on at the end.
How did Antiochus iv die? Polybius has him die in Tabae. Antiochus Cylinder says at sea. Another (Diodorus? Livy?) says he retreated to Babylon and died. So there is no reason to claim to be sure where he died. Considering that Chapter 11 might have been written from the thoroughly hellenized Susa, Elam, this might be the most accurate description of how antiochus died. He attacked in Elam, was seriously injured and fell back toward Elam’s port city at the sea. He died between the beautiful mountain (Susa, Elam) and the sea!
This actually fits in much better with the rest of Daniel, which is often derided as failed history, but is actually stories about failures to properly abide by cultic norms. Antiochus iv is of course one of the worst offenders, but another major offender is in the earlier part of Daniel under the guise of Nebuchadnezzar. It is Nabonidus, who Cyrus blames for the downfall of the Babylonian Empire!
Get this theory published under peer review in a proper academic journal and then I’ll read it.
In aid of that, you might want to make sure you deal with the point that the Maccabeean literature represents Jewish beliefs about the very same era at about the same time, and Daniel is keying to Jewish beliefs (which is also what Diodorus is attesting to). Hence, for example, it would not matter if outsiders, like Greeks and Romans, came up with a different correlation fallacy, blaming Antiochus’s death on his looting of their temples (pagan ones). No temple looting caused his death, because this is the real world, not Raiders of the Lost Ark; so observers could pick any atrocity they wanted near to his death and “blame” it for his death. That does not mean the other lootings did not occur. That’s a fallacy. And his looting of the Jewish temple in between his two Egyptian campaigns is not only attested in the Maccabean literature (representing Jewish beliefs at near the very same time, attested to as well by Diodorus), but also by a text at Qumran (M. Broshi & E. Eshel, “The Greek King is Antiochus IV (4Q Historical Text = 4Q248),” Journal of Jewish Studies 48 (1997)). And there is no specific evidence against this having happened. Possibly does not get you probably; so you need evidence to overthrow evidence, not mere possibilities. If you don’t attend to that, nothing you argue will pass peer review.
Mr carrier,
I’ve learned a lot just from this thread and article and the toing and froing in the comments section.
I’m just a guy in search of truth and you’ve certainly provided some cold hard truth’s here, thank you. “Not raiders of the lost ark”😂👍👊 .
Thank you for the work you do, taking the time to respond and the humour.
Ben
Modern scholarship on Daniel seems to be anti-apologetics, inherited from Porphyry’s literary analysis of Daniel being quoted as if he were doing history.
Chapter 11 IS key to the terminous post quem, but the chapter has all the elements found in Greco-Roman histories of Antiochus iv. This fact is shielded from the reader if you are focused on anti-apologetics. Daniel flat out tells us that he is standing in Elam when he prophesies about Antiochus iv in chapter 8. Chapter 11 carries on from chapter 10, where Daniel starts on the Tigris and is told that Michael is fighting for/against Persian kings. These later Persian kings have their palaces in Susa, Elam. So once again in chapter 11 it seems that Daniel has Susa, Elam as his backdrop for his story. The temple invaded is in Elam, so says all the Greco-Roman sources. But someone rewrote chapter 11, moving the parts around to make the temple in Jerusalem. While Jerusalem is not mentioned in the narrative 10-12, it looks like a later addition of chapter 9 was added to make us think of Jerusalem. It worked!
I put other evidence which I think is key, including dismantling Diodorus as a source (he would have been upset at our interpretation of his words, i think).
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/rv16v7/weekly_open_discussion_thread/hrfz78g/?context=8&depth=9
Get this theory published under peer review in a proper academic journal and then I’ll read it.
Hello Dr Richard have you read Uriah Smith of seventh day Adventist on Daniel and Revelation.
Daniel 2 present a prophecy so accurate of world kingdom.
How could one forge when the prophecy is accurate.
Babylon, Mede and Persia, Greece,Rome and ten toes devided Rome.
Daniel 7
Babylon, Mede Persian Empire, Greece,Rome, 10 horns ten divided western Roman empires and out of it came a little horn which is the Vatican which change times and law etc…read it all it might convince you to be genuine.
There was no “10 horns dividing the Roman Empire.” That’s made up. And there is nothing in Daniel that refers to the Vatican. That’s also made up. Actual honest experts recognize that passage was forged after the fact to represent, loosely, the state of affairs in either the 4th or the 2nd century B.C. when it was actually written (see Wikipedia). There is no reference to the Romans (at most Rome could be meant to be one of the toes, if the text was forged in the 2nd century, but the text does not explicitly identify Rome as any of them).
These are the same fallacies Christian apologists always rely on to gin up prophecy. See Newman on Prophecy as Miracle.
Daniel is not a forgery, and it didn’t cause Christianity.
Point #1¸- Daniel 9 clearly states the following, ”Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city…” Daniel 9:24
In short, it only applies to the Jews. Gentiles are not included. Whoever claims Jesus is the Messiah of Daniel 9 must affirm that he only died for Israel. Which is obviously not the Messiah we see in the Gospel.
The NT authors didn’t see Jesus in Daniel 9, they never claimed it was him. Unfortunately, later Christians forgot to take things in their proper context and started claiming it was Jesus. It’s not though, this idea is foreign to our faith.
Point #2 – The angel doesn’t reinterpret Jeremiah’s prophecy. I read and re-read that part of the text numerous times, yet I couldn’t find the supposed reinterpretation.
The events go as follows: Daniel reads Jeremiah – he sees the exile ends after 70 years – he begins to pray and confesses the sins of his people, asking God to have mercy – an angel arrives with an answer to his prayer.
At no point was Daniel confused regarding the exile, he makes no mention of it ending sooner (or it being extended). It ends right on time, which is why he begins to confess the sins of his people.
As it’s written in II Chronicles 7:14, ”If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
And Daniel did just that, thinking the time has come to offer a prayer for the renewal, ”Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession…” Daniel 9:3-4
Neither Daniel nor the angel raised questions about Jeremiah’s prediction. Jeremiah wasn’t put on trial, nor was his prophecy altered in any way. Nothing of that sort can be found in the chapter. You have to read it in.
Point #3 – Does the angel say the 70 weeks are 490 years? No. This is assumed by most interpreters. The text implies that the restoration will soon take place (since Jeremiah wasn’t reinterpreted), which is why it’s probable that the angel meant days. And if this is the case, the authors didn’t stretch all the way to Onias’ death. They didn’t care about it.
Plus, Daniel 8:13-14 says the following, ”Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to him, “How long until the fulfillment of the vision of the daily sacrifice, the rebellion that causes desolation, and the surrender of the sanctuary and of the host to be trampled?” He said to me, “It will take 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary will be properly restored.”
The time period is described as ”evenings and mornings”, which indicates literal days. What we’re dealing with is a period of about 6 years in total. The Jews will return to their land and partially rebuild the city, but in a few years, their work will be nullified by the arrival of a foreign army. So not at all what we see in history.
Point #4 – This is more of a side note, but In his prayer, Daniel indicates that his people didn’t repent in those 70 years. They were in danger of receiving sevenfold curses described in Leviticus 26. It’s a bit odd that this threat isn’t discussed more in the OT, as it would pose a very big problem for the people.
It would need to be resolved in one way or another. Either through national repentance or through national destruction. And yet we hear nothing of it. Whether someone believes this is real or not doesn’t matter, once a narrative is set up it needs to be paid off.
Point #5 – And what do you know, we do have a book that focuses on the number seven and curses – Revelation. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls of God’s wrath. Revelation seems to pick up where Daniel left off.
What I’m suggesting is that people’s assumptions are all wrong; the authors of Daniel never intended the prophecy to be fulfilled during the first Babylonian exile, it was always about the second Babylonian exile (the future one). And interestingly enough, Revelation deals with another Babylon.
There are references in the OT of yet another gathering of the Jews, such as, ”In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.” Isaiah 11:11
Dr. Carrier, I don’t know your full view on Revelation, but I’ve heard you say that it’s about the first-century Romans and I couldn’t disagree more. The main antagonist is revealed in the opening chapters, and it’s not Rome.
”To the angel of the church in Smyrna write…I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.” Revelation 2:8-10
”To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:..These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.” Revelation 2:12-13
Satan, otherwise understood as ”the adversary”, is said to be located in Asia Minor. And it’s not a heavenly adversary either since he has a geographical location and a Thorne. We’re dealing with an earthly adversary. This is later confirmed in the symbol for the Dragon. He isn’t depicted as an angel or a spirit but as an earthly empire.
”Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads.” Revelation 12:3
This description fits with the beasts of Daniel 7, and we know what they represent. When we tie all of this together, the figure of Satan is actually a king from a northern kingdom. Both writings talk about the same time period and the same aggressor, who comes from the region of Asia Minor. His ethnicity? Most likely Assyrian (you’ll understand why in a moment).
Point #6 – The prince of Daniel 9 is not Cyrus, it’s likely the royal Messiah the Jews are awaiting – prince Immanuel, the rightful king of Israel once he comes of age. Why do I say that? Well, while Daniel is very unclear on who this person is, Revelation has more to say about it.
The birth of a boy in Revelation 12 seems to fit the promise given through Isaiah in chapter 7 (and Isaiah chapter 9). And this child’s birth is very interesting because it also serves as a sign.
Isaiah 7:14-17, ”Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria (and that’s why I suspect the king is Assyrian).”
Revelation calls this birth a sign as well, ”A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.”
What gives me confidence in this position is the fact that the Dragon gets very nervous after the woman gives birth. We read, ”But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” Revelation 12:12
How would he know his time is short? Why would he conclude that? The most simple answer is– he’s familiar with Isaiah 7. Once the child is born his demise draws closer, which is why he tries to kill the child in the first place. After all, no child means no fulfilled prophecy. And yet in Daniel and Revelation, this figure is stopped by Michael, right after a Messianic figure appears.
Coincidence? No, it’s not.
Neither Daniel nor Revelation are historical books, they only seem like it. Which is precisely the point, and thus historical objections have no bearing on their authenticity.
From the opening verses of the book of Daniel, it should be suspicious that the authors didn’t get the dates right. Even though they should’ve known better. So we have two options; one – they made up an elaborate story but forgot to pay attention to the basics. Or two – it’s a deliberate clue.
If the truth is closer to option number two, them using such a tactic wouldn’t be surprising. You have to leave bread crumbs that eventually lead to an epiphany. The style of these books is that of a code or a riddle, and in all good riddles, the most obvious answer is probably a trap. The bottom line is this; these books weren’t meant for a wide audience. It’s only for a select few. Which goes directly against the idea that these were written as easily accessible propaganda. They weren’t. The Jews openly proclaimed the downfall of foreign leaders on numerous occasions, so they had no reason to be shy all of a sudden.
If they truly meant to write about Antiochus Epiphanes there was no rule that said they couldn’t mention his name. The same goes for Onias. I mean, in the same book Daniel identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the man in question, which perfectly illustrates my point. So why didn’t they do this will all the figures? Because the point is to make people guess, it raises the odds of them getting ensnared by their own assumptions. And so the message of the book remains ”sealed”; until it’s time to ”unseal” it.
That’s just a bunch of made-up assertions that are either irrelevant to whether Daniel was a forgery or are refuted by all the evidence presented in the article you are commenting on; or ignore the way ancient prophecy was typically written as a genre.
This appears to just be a delusional stump speech by someone who isn’t even reading the material or engaging with it. I am not going to waste time responding to such things. Sane people can already tell it’s nuts and non-responsive to any of the actual evidence.
The first three points are assertions based on evidence, not mere opinions. The other three points paint a much broader picture, one that shows how a historical reading of Daniel (and Revelation) is not the only feasible option. If anything, it’s the less likely option. And since this is the case, historic objections are effectively nullified.
It’s a Biblical reality that another gathering awaits the Jewish people, and it’s not at all improbable that Daniel depicts said end-time gathering. Besides, you defined a forgery as a work that claims to be constructed in a time period from which it didn’t originate, so Daniel can’t be a forgery if it was never an ancient historical account.
Also, my position fits better with the secretive nature of the book. Frankly, saying a complex code is supposedly a clear war pamphlet is an oxymoron. Not to mention; the coding is useless if it’s as obvious as you claim it is. Might as well skip all the kerfuffle and write down, ”This be Antiochus, and we’re mad that Onias died.” And yet they didn’t, because it’s not about them.
And let’s not forget that your position hangs on this idea that the authors desperately tried to reinterpret Jeremiah, yet there’s not a hint of this in the text. If you’re saying I’m wrong, please, do show me the verses that correct me.
I listened to your interview on MythVision podcast where you stated something along the lines of, ”In Daniel 9 you see Daniel begging God to explain why? How did you let Jeremiah get it wrong? What’s going on? I don’t understand. And then Gabriel comes down and says let me tell you the secret, and then he reinterprets Jeremiah’s prophecy.”
None of this is an accurate portrayal of the text, it didn’t happen. So if the prophecy wasn’t being reinterpreted, this shifts the entire timeline of Daniel 9. It also becomes evident that Daniel 8 and 9 likely speak of literal days, not prophetic years. And if this is the case, this removes all possibility of Daniel being constructed as war propaganda for the Maccabeans.
And then there’s also the fact that none of the Apostles claimed Jesus is the Messiah from Daniel 9, especially not since it would mess with their message of a universal savior, not just a Jewish one. So much for Daniel ”being foundational” for Christianity, it simply isn’t. Provably so.
If you still want to pretend like these aren’t valid points and you refuse to engage, I’m not going to twist your arm. Though I expected far more from a scholar. And sure, let the people decide whether I’m delusional or if there’s substance behind my words. I’m all for it.
Continuing to ignore all the evidence against you and add even more unfounded or irrelevant assertions does not help your case. It only solidifies and confirms our conclusion that you cannot engage any discussion on this rationally.
”Continuing to ignore all the evidence against you”
You’re pretending like that evidence holds any weight. If your premise is successfully overturned (or at the very least called into question).. In that case, the evidence is no longer applicable. And you know it.
”…and add even more unfounded or irrelevant assertions does not help your case.”
Such as? Everything I’ve said so far was factual and supported by verses, which I’ve quoted precisely so these accusations can’t be held against me. You’re still trying, but it’s not holding up. I’m bringing valid arguments. And if I’m not, feel free to correct me.
As I’ve said before I won’t be forcing anyone, but you must know that your vague criticism and jabs at my state of mind aren’t doing anything to disprove my claims. They’re still sitting there, going unchallenged.
Is it wrong to say that the Apostles never saw Jesus in Daniel 9? No, it’s an easily provable fact. Again– feel free to correct me. I’m very big on evidence-based reasoning. If you show me I’m wrong I will possibly sulk a little, but in the end, I will deal with it. My goal is to be truthful.
And, is it truly irrelevant that Jewish prophecy predicts yet another Jewish gathering, one that’s right at the end of the age? How can this be trivial when the events of Daniel happen right before the end? These things matter a great deal.
By the way, did you know Jews believed that history repeats itself?
”What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”, Ecclesiastes 1:9
And this occurs because God directs the flow of human history.
”I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ Isaiah 46:10
Jesus had the same mindset, he was quite clear that the end will be similar to the beginning of human history.
”But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matthew 24:37-39
And what prominent story do we have at the very beginning of the Bible? The tower of Babel. Not only does the last book of the Bible speak of Babylon but also the first one. ”Declaring the ending from the beginning”’ seems like an appropriate way to put it, doesn’t it?
Seriously though, aren’t you the one who’s always going on about mystery cults? Doesn’t the style of Daniel fit the secrecy of such a cult? Is it so hard to believe that they managed to fool the entire world into thinking outsiders could understand a highly coded manuscript? Seems pretty plausible to me. After all, that was their goal. And they told you this directly, you just didn’t take them seriously. Which was your mistake. They were quite honest about it.
Gee, an obviously coded book turns out to be coded? Who would’ve thought?! Heh, excuse my sarcasm, but it’s humorous how the truth hides in plain sight without people acknowledging it. It’s quite fascinating.
Furthermore; is it unfounded when I point out that you, for the lack of a better word, ‘hallucinated’ an exchange between Daniel and Gabriel that never happened? And once again, I urge you to prove me wrong if you disagree. We’re both adults capable of rational thought and deduction. If you have a reasonable counterpoint, I’m listening. Maybe it’s my eyes that are playing tricks on me, but no matter how many times I read those passages I can’t for the life of me see the things you were talking about.
Where does Daniel say Jeremiah got it wrong? Where is he panicking and asking God to help with his confusion? Where does Gabriel say he came to reinterpret Jeremiah? Where does he state that 70 weeks and 490 years?
I don’t see any of it.
Also, Daniel 8:13-14 states that 2300 days will pass from the defiling of the sanctuary until its reconsecration. But according to history, it took about 3 years for the Maccabees to recapture Jerusalem and cleanse the temple.
You yourself stated the following; ”Daniel 11:1-4 is not so accurate, but Daniel 11:5-39 is spot on, and that chapter gets progressively more detailed and precise as it follows history along from the Persian to the Alexandrian and then the Seleucid eras, until it spends the most verses, and with the most verifiable detail, on the ten year reign of Antiochus, all the way up to just before his death (and the Jewish recapture of Jerusalem) in 164, during the Maccabean Revolt.”
So if they’re accurate until 164, how could they not be accurate about the amount of time that passed? Daniel isn’t just wrong about the distant past, it’s also wrong about the time period it supposedly originated from. The authors also made a mistake at the very beginning of the book which they should’ve known was a mistake. They get things wrong even when they should’ve gotten it right.
Why?
My stance on this is clear; they keep getting things ‘wrong’ because they’re not reporting about those time periods. I have no problem saying that the scholarly consensus on Daniel is wrong. I can point at the exact places where it’s wrong, and I can say why they’re wrong.
How is that not a rational discussion?
Dr. Carrier, if you’re once against going to disengage and say that I’m making baseless claims – don’t – we both know that’s not true. I’d prefer your silence if that’s all you’re going to offer.
This is your last post here.
Continuing to ignore what’s being told you and just continuing to send giant crazy wordwalls is not sane. And it is in violation of my comments policy.
Get help.
“…people’s faith in it was strong enough to motivate them to do what they did with all beloved but failed prophecies: try to reinterpret them as referring to yet a further distant time (exactly as Daniel 9 does with a failed prophecy of Jeremiah). And notably, it is precisely the effort to do that that caused Christianity.”
Some Scriptural evidence in support of this claim would be much appreciated.
What claim do you mean?
You quoted claims about history. Scripture isn’t history. Did you mean, cite historical evidence? And if so, for which thing?
There is abundant evidence subsequent Jewish exegetes tried reinterpreting Daniel 9 after it failed to predict the end, just as I said. Some of this evidence is covered in the peer-reviewed literature cited in this article. You can get started there.
Or did you mean the claim that Jeremiah’s prophecy failed? That’s explicitly stated in Daniel 9 (and verified in historical facts as well); it’s the very thing Daniel is begging an angel to explain to him, resulting in the angel’s convoluted explanation.
Or did you mean that ongoing efforts to reinterpret Daniel 9’s timetable caused Christianity? Historical evidence for that is surveyed in Elements 5 through 7 in Chapter 4 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus.
Or did you mean, where is the Christian pesher citing all the verses out of which they constructed their creed (as in 1 Cor 15 and Rom 16:25-26 and Gal 3:1-2)? It does not survive. Paul rarely mentions specific verses involved; he just declared they exist, and it is evident his readers knew which ones he meant. So we have to reconstruct it from historical evidence. Such as I provide in the reference above.
Ok, I am going to refute all your historical objections againts the authenticity of Daniel and show that the book could have been written in the 6th century BC:
It is not true that Nebuchadnezzar II did not besiege Jerusalem prior to 597 BC. We know from the Babylonian Chronicle ABC 5 (Jerusalem Chronicle) that Nebuchadnezzar conquered “all Hatti-land” (i.e., the Syro-Palestinian region) during his accession year in 605 BC. Likewise, the Chaldean historian Berossus also mentions the same campaign and relates that Nebuchadnezzar took captives “from the Jews, and Phenicians, and Syrians” (cf. Josephus, ‘Against Apion’, 1.19).
Daniel is not wrong when it says that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in “The third year of the reign of Jehoiakim”. It’s simply that Daniel made use of a different calendar than that of other Biblical writings. Daniel apparently counted the regnal years of Jehoiakim as starting in the month of Tishri (September), which means that on an accession year system Jehoiakim’s third year would spam from September 606 to September 605, which is when Nebuchadnezzar started campaigning in the Levant according to the Babylonian Chronicle.
Daniel does NOT state that Belshazzar succeed Nebuchadnezzar; it only moves its setting from the reign of the latter to that of the former without ever mentioning any kind of succession. Also, Daniel’s usage of the word “son” can also have the meaning of descendance (see 1 Chr 4:1; Gen 46:12), and it seems that Belshazzar’s mother may have been a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, since the Nabonidus Chronicle states that Belshazzar was a descendant of said king. Likewise, although Belshazzar never hold the title of king, he was entrusted with the kingship as recorded in the Verse Account of Nabonidus.
Darius the Mede was probably a throne name of Cyaxares II, a Median king mentioned by Xenophon (whose account is corroborated by other evidence). This is supported by extra-biblical references to Darius the Mede in the works of Berossus and Harpocration. Although Xenophon never describes Cyaxares II as king of Babylon, he could have exercised authority over that territory as he was Cyrus’ suzerain until the latter succeded him on the Median throne.
As you see, the Book of Daniel is historically accurate and thus probably authentic.
You aren’t reading the article you are commenting on. For example, the submission of Jerusalem before 597 is covered in the article. You are conflating submission without a siege with a siege. The difference is what is in error. So you aren’t helping your case here. You are only illustrating the error. Another example, the problem is “Belshazzar was neither his successor nor his son; and abundant contemporary records show he was never King of Babylon,” and you have failed to address this, the actual problem. Likewise there is no evidence “Darius the Mede was probably a throne name of Cyaxares II.” You just made that up. Made up things aren’t facts. This point is already addressed in the article you are commenting on, demonstrating that you didn’t even read it (“e.g. Xenophon does talk about Median kings, including Cyaxares, but none of them ruled Babylon much less the Persian Empire, nor created the satrapies in it, and none were named Darius, nor did anything related in Daniel.”).
Which means you aren’t interested in the truth, only in selling a propaganda line. But that line has already been refuted here. Go sell your snake oil somewhere else.
No, I have read the entire article several times, and I know what I am commenting about. It is not true that Nebuchadnezzar only ‘threatened’ to besiege Jerusalem in 605 BC; he did start a siege against the city, but Jehoiakim rapidly surrendered and became a vassal of the Babylonians (see 2 Kings 24:1a). According to Berossus, he took Judean captives from that campaign. Likewise, I have also adressed all the objections relating to Daniel’s depiction of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s “son” (the Hebrew term can also be understood as meaning that he was only a descendant of said king) and as King of Babylon (yes, he didn’t hold that title, but he was the de facto ruler of Babylon at that time). That Daniel knew about Nabonidus’ existence is evident from Dan 5:7, which mentions that Belshazzar turned Daniel into the “third in the government of the kingdom”. As it is known, Belshazzar himself was only second in rank under his coregent father, Nabonidus. Thus, “third” was the highest possible rank that Belshazzar could offer (compare with Gen 41:40). As for Darius the Mede, I also responded to all your objections back in my previous comment. Try to read it more carefully again, please.
There is no evidence of the siege you are speaking of. Babylonian records make no mention of it.
And no, you have not addressed “all the objections.” You are now adding more standard apologetic claims already refuted in the article you are commenting on.
This is how this always goes. You apologists simply ignore the arguments. When you are called out for that, you invent new arguments. But you never present any evidence for any of those arguments’ premises being true. You just make assertions. This is not how evidence works.
This article surveys the evidence and reaches a conclusion based on the evidence. You want to replace evidence with conjectures. But conjectural premises only get you conjectural conclusions. Possibly, therefore probably is a fallacy. It’s only the worse that the facts (not conjectures) establish your conjectures are simply improbable. And this is already demonstrated in the article.
Making more shit up cannot get you out of this.
Carrier, that Babylonian records do not mention Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem in 605 BC does not mean that said siege never happened. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The Babylonian Chronicle does not give many details about Nebuchadnezzar’s Levantine campaign of 605 BC, so it is more than expectable that such short-lived siege would not have been mentioned there.
Otherwise, we know from 2 Kings 24:1 that “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years” (New Jerusalem Bible). While that verse does not mention Jerusalem, it is obvious that if Nebuchadnezzar did invade Judah in 605 BC, then he must have attacked its capital city as reported in Daniel. History is about discerning what probably happened in the past, and that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in 605 BC is something highly probable.
That the Babylonians never heard of it is indeed evidence for the conclusion it never happened. Pretty good evidence in fact. There is no evidence to the contrary. So the propensity of evidence takes the day.
And no, one does not have to besiege neighbors to secure them as vassals. That in fact is the least common way to acquire them. You are again just making shit up. Shit contrary to all evidence and human history.
That is what apologetics has reduced you to. It’s bad. You should abandon this bankrupt methodology and start acting like a critical thinker instead.
No Carrier, it’s not that the Babylonians did not mention the siege of Jerusalem in 605 BC because they never heard of it. It’s that the Babylonians did not mention the siege of Jerusalem in 605 BC because it was a short-lived and somewhat insignificant event for them and because their records do not provide many details about the events of 605 BC.
The text of the Babylonian Chronicle ABC 5 is divided into 27 lines. Of these, only 2 (lines 12-13) mention Nebuchadnezzar’s Levantine campaign of 605 BC, and those 2 lines only provide scarce details about what Nebuchadnezzar did during that campaign; details that only focus on the length of said campaign and the tributes that he took from that region.
As I said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And this is especially true in cases where the evidence for a specific time or event are somewhat scarce, like in the case of Nebuchadnezzar’s Levantine campaign of 605 BC.
You are continuing to just make stuff up. These are “just so” stories you are now spinning. We only care about evidence. Not what possibilities you can conjure to rescue your thesis.
Well, Carrier. Have you provided any evidence in this article that Nebuchadnezzar ever “threatened to besiege Jerusalem” in 605 BC? I say this because you have made that statement very confidently in spite of the fact that no ancient source mentions that Nebuchadnezzar ever issued such supposed threat against the inhabitants of the city in that year. At least in the case of the siege we have Daniel 1:1-3 claiming that he did besiege Jerusalem in 605 BC.
You see, History is about deducing what probably happened in the past, especially when it comes to ancient history. There are many cases in ancient history where the evidences for specific times or events are somewhat scarce, and in those cases we can only guess how those events took place in reality. The fact is that it is perfectly possible that Nebuchadnezzar did besiege Jerusalem during his Levantine campaign of 605 BC, even if that campaign is poorly recorded and we only have one source (Dan 1:1-2) explicitly claiming that such siege took place. At least, it must be conceded that it is just as possible that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in 605 BC as it is that Nebuchadnezzar only issued an unrecorded threat against that city.
If you want to challenge the peer-reviewed historians and their evidence and arguments for their conclusions about Bayblonian and Ancient Near Eastern political history, please do: publish a peer-reviewed article listing and addressing all the pertinent historical literature arguing these conclusions.
Then I’ll evaluate that.
Everything else from you is just a waste of time. All you are doing is making up stories and advancing them as facts, rather than attending to the actual evidence, contextual and direct. You don’t even know how vassalage works, or what usually produced it in that theatre. You have a lot of learning to catch up on before you can start challenging its results. And you need yo learn that “possibly, therefore probably” is a fallacy; but “usually, therefore probably” is not. Until you understand why that is, you won’t be able to make any competent argument here.
Well, Carrier. If you are interested in peer-reviewed scholarship supporting the historical accuracy of the Book of Daniel, you can consult the following papers:
Edwin M. Yamauchi, “The archaeological background of Daniel: archaeological backgrounds of the exilic and postexilic era, pt 1,” Bibliotheca Sacra 137 (Jan.-March 1980): 3-16.
Alan R. Millard, “Daniel in Babylon: An Accurate Record?” James K. Hoffmeier & Dennis R. Magary, eds. Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? Crossway, 2012. Pbk. ISBN-13: 978-1433525711. pp. 263-280.
These papers are available on Internet as well.
These are precisely the papers addressed in my article by the scholarship already here cited.
So, do they make some other argument not already here rebutted?
Well, Carrier. I really doubt your claim that my papers’ arguments have been already addressed by the scholarship cited in the article. Let me explain; these are the principal sources that you say your article relies on:
“Principal peer-reviewed sources I rely on in this article are C.L. Seow’s Daniel by Westminster Knox Press (2003) and John Collins’ Daniel by Fortress Press (1993), part of the excellent Hermeneia commentary series. See also The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, vols. 1 and 2 (Brill, 2002), edited by John Collins and Peter Flint”
Now, the Yamauchi paper was written in 1980, so it is possible that your sources could have addressed the arguments of that paper. But the Millard paper was written in 2012, which is several years after all your sources were published. So, it is chronologically impossible that your sources could have addressed it.
Moreover, I really doubt that you have ever read any of these two papers, since what those papers do is refuting much of the arguments you have repeated in this article (and no, your article does not address any of those rebuttals). This is very disappointing given that you can find these articles freely with a quick search in Google.
Please answer the question. Present one sentence in those papers that isn’t already answered in my article or the scholarship it cites.
Ok, this is what the Millard paper says on Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign against Jehoiakim in 605 BC:
“The situation is complicated because there were also two ways of calculating the year. The spring New Year began in the month of Nisan (March-April); the autumn New Year began in the month Tishri (September-October). The book of Jeremiah uses the spring New Year, and the books of Kings use the autumn New Year, as appears from Jeremiah’s dating Jehoiachin’s capture in Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year, and Kings’ in his eighth (Jer. 52:28; 2 Kings 24:12). Now the spring New Year would mean Jehoiakim’s first year covered 609 to March-April 608 on the non–accession year system, his second 608–607, his third 607–606, and his fourth 606–605; on the accession year system his first year ran from March-April 608 to March April 607, his second 607–606, and his third 606 to March-April 605. Thus any advance by Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem after the Battle of Carchemish would have fallen in Jehoiakim’s fourth year (cf. Jer. 46:2). Equally, an autumn New Year would mean Jehoiakim’s first year could have fallen in 610–609 or 609–608, for we do not know exactly when he acceded, bringing his third year to 608–607 or 607–606, and his fourth to 607–606 or 606–605, on the non–accession year system. However, on the accession year system and with an autumnal New Year, his first year would run from September-October 608 to September-October 607, his second 607–606, his third September-October 606 to September-October 605. This last would just accommodate the statement of Daniel 1:1 in chronological terms.”
“The absence of any record of a siege of Jerusalem by Babylonian forces in this year is not a strong argument against its happening. There would be a few weeks after the Battle of Carchemish in which a Babylonian force might threaten Jerusalem and take hostages. Whether Nebuchadnezzar or his generals led the force, it could still be attributed to the king. Taking hostages from rulers previously subject to the defeated Pharaoh would be a means of trying to ensure they did not resume their loyalty to him. In the following years Nebuchadnezzar returned regularly to the Levant; in his first year local kings, probably including Jehoiakim, formally became his subjects, and he took their tribute. The town of Ashkelon had not submitted, so was captured, looted, and sacked. That is the only town named in the surviving lines of the Babylonian Chronicle covering the four years when the king campaigned in the Levant (“Hatti”). Nebuchadnezzar now held the entire region, restricting Egypt to her own land (cf. 2 Kings 24:7).”
Where does your article exactly address these arguments?
That simply repeats the fallacy I have been calling out (“possibly, therefore probably”). We base beliefs on evidence, not conjectures.
Please give me something new.
No, Carrier. That Nebuchadnezzar would have taken Judean captives like Daniel from his Levantine campaign of 605 BC is something very probable, not just possible. As Millard notes, this would be in line with the typical Ancient Near Eastern practice (“Taking hostages from rulers previously subject to the defeated Pharaoh would be a means of trying to ensure they did not resume their loyalty to him”). This is a case of an “usually, therefore probably” argument. Moreover, the Chaldean historian Berossus mentioned Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign of 605 BC and relates that he took captives “from the Jews, and Phenicians, and Syrians” (cf. Josephus, ‘Against Apion’, 1.19).
That does not make it probable. Hostages often resulted from diplomatic negotiations, not sieges. So you need evidence a siege caused this. There is none.
Well, the Babylonian Chronicle states that Nebuchadnezzar led military campaigns in the Levantine region, not peaceful diplomatic missions. If anything, there is no evidence for your alternative scenario.
The “Levantine region” is huge. You can’t bootstrap “campaigns in a vast region” into “siege of Jerusalem.” That is speculation, not fact. And we need facts.
You seem to be laboring under the false understanding that if there is no evidence for or against some claim P that therefore you can affirm or deny P. That’s not how evidence works. If you do not know that P, you cannot assert that P. And therefore you cannot get a conclusion from P.
No knowlege, no premise. No premise, no conclusion.
Well, Carrier. You can’t either bootstrap “campaigns in a vast region” into peaceful “diplomatic negotiations”. That is also speculation, not fact. If anything, there is no conclusive evidence to prove either of the two scenarios we have defended each of us, respectively. Nevertheless, since one cannot disregard the possibility that Nebuchadnezzar did besiege Jerusalem in 605 BC, I would not consider a description of this event in the Book of Daniel as anything like definitive evidence that the book could not have been written in the 6th century BC. That is my opinion.
And thus you are the one bootstrapping speculations into facts. I’m working with the unknowns as unknowns, as is proper.
Evidence or GTFO. No more speculations. This is GIGO. If your conclusion is built on speculations, then your conclusion is also a speculation.
I’m only interested in what we can honestly claim to know. Not in pretending speculations are knowledge. I suggest you do the same.