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The book of Daniel is a fabulous prophetic book. The prophet lived
in 6th-century B.C. Babylon. Daniel's inspirational foresight
of later historical periods has proved to be so minutely exact
that the work has testified for centuries to the verbal inspiration
of the Bible.
Consequently, Daniel has been hacked to pieces by the sharpest
critical knives, wielded by those who have a problem with the
notion that God moves in the affairs of men. Beginning in the
3rd century A.D., with the skeptical notions of the Neo-platonist
philosopher Prophry, Daniel was again mercilessly cast into the
lions' den, this time occupied by liberals, who have sworn not
to let him out until every vestige of the miraculous is extracted
from his book by their theological thimble-rigging. Consequently,
a 2nd-century B.C. date has been assigned to the book, and anyone
who challenges it has thrown into question his academic reputation
(See R.K. Harrison, Introduction to The 0.T., p. 1111).
The "surety" of these radical results is not as "sure"
as they would have us believe. At risk of my academic reputation,
which I never possessed anyway, I will insist that the "sharp
critical knives" used by critics to mutilate the book are
really only plastic knives which cannot cut an honest figure,
let alone damage the integrity of the 6th-century B.C. work -
Daniel.
For instance, Brevard Childs, a liberal, supposes:
The later (Maccabean, BL) author was neither creating new prophecies
on his own, nor consciously employing a clever literary ploy.
Rather, he was confirming and elucidating the visions of Daniel
in ch. 2 for the benefit of his Maccabean audience on the basis
of further revelation of scripture (Introduction, p. 616).
Of course, serious readers must be disgusted here, for he does
not even begin to explain why his so-called Maccabean author purposefully
wrote in the past tense in Daniel's name.
Truly, the great scholar, Edward Pusey, was exactly right when
he hinged the entire battle between faith and infidelity upon
the views accepted regarding the book of Daniel:
The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a most frightful
scale, ascribing to God prophecies which never were uttered, and
miracles which are assumed never to have been wrought (Daniel
the Prophet, 1885, p. 75).
Arguments Answered
Arguments for a late date on Daniel range from external to internal
peculiarities. In this article, I have only space to examine one
aspect of the assaults. It has to do with internal "problems."
In the work of Daniel, two languages are used, Aramaic and Hebrew.
Furthermore, Daniel contains several Greek words, called "loan
words" which critics tell us could not have been used in
the eastern countries of Babylon and Persia until the time of
Alexander the Great's conquering expeditions from Greece. Therefore,
Daniel, it is urged, could not have been written before the Greeks
moved eastward in the period of Grecian ascendancy. For example,
in 1897, Samuel Driver, in a popular commentary, argued that this
proves the late date for the literary work (Driver, The Book
of Daniel. It has also been pointed out, although this argument
has been answered for many years, that recent commentaries such
as the one by Louis Hartmann and Alexander Di Lella in the Anchor
Bible Series, continue to repeat the "conventional critical
position."
In a recent work called Persia and the Bible, the author,
Edwin Yamauchi, lays the matter to rest in conclusive fashion.
The following is wholly gleaned from his excellent volume.
First, in Daniel 3:5, three Greek words are used to describe musical
instruments. Far from pointing to a 2nd-century B.C. date of Daniel,
Yamauchi explains that "foreign musicians and their musical
instruments played a prominent role at royal courts among the
Egyptians, Kassites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians as indicated
by both textual and ichnographic evidence" (p. 381). He goes
on to give many illustrations of foreign "loan-words"
from the Greek long before the invasion of Alexander the Great.
Second, even Ezekiel (27:13) speaks of Tyre's trade with Greece,
and Joel accused his brethren of selling kinsmen as slaves to
the Greeks (3:6). Therefore, there was much contact with Greece
long before the name of Alexander was ever heard among men.
Third, archaeological and textual data now show that the Assyrians
and Babylonians each had much contact with Greece during the 7th
and 8th centuries B.C. How can one propose to deny the possibility
of Greek words in the book of 6th-century Daniel?
Fourth, archaeology has discovered the influence of Greek culture
in Persia by means of Ionian workmen in the temples, Greek art,
Greek ware at the capital in Susa, Greek mercenary soldiers, Greeks
of affluence who served in Persian courts, and the presence of
Greek artists, doctors, lawyers, and philosophers in early Persia.
Yamauchi concluded:
We may safely say that the presence of Greek words in an Old Testament
book is not a proof of Hellenistic date, in view of the abundant
opportunities for contacts between the Aegean and the Near East
before Alexander. The evidence which I have presented is but a
small fraction, which no doubt will be amplified many times by
future discoveries (p. 394).
In view of the above, it is exceedingly sad to hear so many "modem-day"
modernists ignorantly carry on with "already-been-answered
arguments" and even quip that the liberals have "broken
the back of conservative scholarship."
This is just a segment of the jaundiced impeachments by which
modernists wish to stigmatize the book of Daniel as a 2nd-century
B.C. production, deceptively issued in Daniel's name. The hypotheses
"took their rise in a non-Christian atmosphere and have been
ably advocated by men who were opposed to the supernaturalism
of Christianity" (Edward Young, Prophecy of Daniel, p.
24). They also convict our Savior with a falsehood in his mouth
at Matthew 24:15.
Brevard Childs makes the confession that in spite of all the elaborate
efforts to explain the prophecies of Daniel apart from revelation,
the issue still "continues to trouble the average lay-reader
of the Bible who has not been initiated into the critical approach"
(Introduction, p. 616). 1 suggest that it is "troublesome"
simply because, after Daniel's integrity has been bespattered
and besmirched, -ailed upon and fulminated against lampooned and
defamed by clamoring critics who turn right around and pretend
the book has a valuable contribution, they have a difficult time
convincing us little guys that it is worthy of our time and attention.
It is difficult to appreciate literature as valuable if it smells
of dishonesty. Perhaps "initiation into the critical approach"
will plug up our sniffers.
Let's turn the focus now to the person of Daniel. Not only did
Jesus refer to Daniel the prophet but Josephus, in Antiquities
of the Jews (vol. 10, ch. 11), speaks at length of Daniel.
His testimony, not so valuable as Jesus' of course, shows that
the Jews of his day believed that a 6th-century B.C. exilic personage
wrote the book that bears his name. Denials that Daniel was its
author arose in succeeding infidelic periods.
In other remarkable passages, Ezekiel insists that we believe
that a 6th-century contemporary of his, Daniel, was a great hero
for righteousness (Ezek. 14:14, 20). So plainly does the last-mentioned
passage testify to the existence of the great man of God in the
Chaldean courts, that false prophets and weaklings, like "foxes
in the waste places," suggest that this Ezekiel passage could
refer to a different ancient person named "Daniel" (or
Dan'el), who is celebrated in an old Ugaritic piece of literature
from the 15th century B.C., entitled Tale of Aghat. This
ancient text was unearthed by French excavators in 1930 and 1931
at the site of Ugafit (Ras Shamra) located on the Syrian coast
opposite the island of Cyprus. In this "tale" a "Dan'el"
makes ablations to false gods, becomes drunk, "consumes his
funerary offering in Baal's house," and is one given to violent
rage (Trans. by H.L. Ginsberg, Ancient Near Eastern Texts,
ed. James Pritchard, vol. 1, Anthology, p. 11 8-32).
As wicked as this Dan'el is, liberals would rather have Ezekiel
honoring him than allowing the possibility that the book of Daniel
was written in Ezekiel's day. I must here confess, with fribble
ideas like this coming forth from the "scholarly world,"
it is difficult to take them seriously in any matter. Yet in the
Anchor Bible (vol. 23) by H and DiLella, a popular series with
our own "scholastic set" and recommended by some of
our own schools as the summum bonum of great erudition,
it is concluded:
The absence of genealogy, contrary to custom gives probability
to the suggestion that the characters of Daniel and his pious
companions are legendary (p. 8).
Conclusion
Reader, it is "higher critical" guess-and-patchwork
like the above that is snuffing the life out of the church of
our Lord. The faith which once characterized God's people, in
taking Christ at his word - such as that Daniel wrote his own
book - is being corroded away by gimcrack-rubbish cloaked in elitist
robes parading through halls of preacher-training centers, all
the while feigning devotion to Christ. For all of that, the front-line
of attack is only galvanized with flimsy cobwebs of unproved and
wicked assumptions of theorists who love to have it so.
*This is the title of a book by Robert
Anderson written in 1895. Return to article.
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