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  • From: peter_kirk AT sil.org
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[2]: Hasmonean Bible
  • Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 12:26:05 -0400


Dear Ian,

Thank you for your response. I have not yet had time to look at your
web pages, but if the argument for the dating of Daniel (I didn't
mention any particular books, by the way) is based (as have been most
of the arguments I have seen) on the impossibility of genuine
predictive prophecy, and silence in the lack of early citations, don't
expect me to be convinced by it.

You asked: "While I don't exclude the possibility, could you tell me
some way of ever testing the genuineness of such "prophecy"?"

Your question was posed and answered by the author of the book of
Deuteronomy (18:21-22), a passage which incidentally shows that
prophecy was expected to have a predictive element. If we find a
manuscript or inscription with a firm date containing a prophecy of an
event which is known to have taken place after that date, that is a
good test of the genuineness of that prophecy. We find a possible
example of this in the Qumran Isaiah scroll which apparently contains
(especially in chapter 53) prophecies of the life and death of Jesus
Christ.

Meanwhile, if all we have to go on for the dating of Daniel, Ezra etc
is silence, e.g. the absence of citations in Josephus, we can say
nothing more than "we don't know" in support of the late dating of
those books. But I, unlike you, take into account the internal
evidence of the books, as a priori evidence that the events described
in them actually took place unless demonstrated otherwise. I think
this would be the normal historian's approach to a historical
document; I suspect that if it were not our history books would be
very thin. But then this is going back over old arguments which I
don't want to restart.

Peter Kirk





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