Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Was Daniel a prophet?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: rochelle altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Was Daniel a prophet?
  • Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:15:50 +0200

Harold,

Any good author includes historical backgrounds for versimilitude. The fact that Daniel contains historical data is not proof that Daniel is a "true" story. .In fact, Daniel, Job, and Jonah are works of fiction.with a moral. The moral of Job was considered so important that it even turns up as one of the 6 books written in Paleo-Hebraic -- along with the Pentateuch.

For that matter, when considered as literature, Daniel is inferior to all the other books in the MT..

Josephus? So, Joe seems to accept Daniel as having existed. Where ws Josephus when Daniel was written? His opinion is not evidence for D's actual existence; it only tells us what Josephus thought/believed..or wanted his Roman friends to believe. ..

I shouldn't stick my two cents in, but sometimes it becomes impossible to sit on my hands.
....
Rochelle, wearing her literature hat...


Harold Holmyard wrote:
Yigal Levin wrote:

>I'd go even further: my guess is that the rabbis (or whoever) realized that
>Daniel was a late, fictional, composition, which does not preserve the words
>of someone who actually acted as a messenger for God. They included it in
>the canon nevertheless, because they considered its message about the end of
>days to be important, but they did not wish to give its author prophetic
>authority. In this way. Daniel is like Job, which the rabbis also considered
>to be "a Mashal" rather than a historical text.
>As I wrote, just a guess, which I expect some on this list to take exception
>to.
>
>

HH: Collections of writings come about historically and possibly for
recondite reasons. Just because the Book of Daniel was not placed within
two collections of books dubbed the the Former and the Latter Prophets
does not mean that he was not historical or was not a prophet. Josephus
considered him to be an historical figure and also a prophet. For
example, he wrote:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/works/files/ant-10.htm

Moreover, he took Daniel the prophet, and carried him with him into
Media, and honored him very greatly, and kept him with him; for he was
one of the three presidents whom he set over his three hundred and sixty
provinces, for into so many did Darius part them. . . .

But it is fit to give an account of what this man did, which is most
admirable to hear, for he was so happy as to have strange revelations
made to him, and those as to one of the greatest of the prophets,
insomuch, that while he was alive he had the esteem and applause both of
the kings and of the multitude; and now he is dead, he retains a
remembrance that will never fail, for the several books that he wrote
and left behind him are still read by us till this time; and from them
we believe that Daniel conversed with God; for he did not only prophesy
of future events, as did the other prophets, but he also determined the
time of their accomplishment. And while prophets used to foretell
misfortunes, and on that account were disagreeable both to the kings and
to the multitude, Daniel was to them a prophet of good things, and this
to such a degree, that by the agreeable nature of his predictions, he
procured the goodwill of all men; and by the accomplishment of them, he
procured the belief of their truth, and the opinion of [a sort of]
divinity for himself, among the multitude. He also wrote and left behind
him what made manifest the accuracy and undeniable veracity of his
predictions;

HH: The Ketubim contain many historical works, and if the reasons
Shoshanna has already given are not enough, it is conceivable that the
ancients viewed Daniel as a later historical book, and so to be classed
with Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Chronicles. The Book of Daniel consists
of historical narrative for the first six chapters, and the visions of
the later chapters are not only dated historically but concern future
history.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
_______________________________________________






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page