Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Silver Eiger" <silver.eiger AT mail.ee>]

Ian Hutchesson wrote:

>RF
>The Hebrew and Aramaic word )B ("av") can refer to one's father,
>grandfather, great grandfather etc. Some researchers have claimed that
>Nabonid was married to to Nitocris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. So
>there is no real evidence against the designation "son".

[IH]
This is of course itself an argument from silence, as are all those you
have put forward on this matter. The text says that Belshazzar was son of
Nebuchadnezzar. The text also shows the immediate successor of
Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar. To make all this fit with what we know of
the history, we have to assume that the writer didn't mean that Belshazzar
was sired by Nebuchadnezzar although there is no indication to take "av"
any way other than the literal sense. We have to assume that Nabonidus, who
is not known in the text, was married to the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. As
there is no evidence to contradict the assumptions necessary to arrive
here, the logic holds sort of, yet I think the relevant literal
understanding of the indications of the text are being put aside for
tendentious reasons and nothing else.
---------------

I would (humbly) remind that in a previous message it was pointed out that
Belshazzar offered Daniel the *third* place in the kingdom. Why not the 
second?
Because the first two were already occupied. Thereby Daniel indicates his
awareness of both Belshazzar and his actual father Nabonidus. It seems that
Professor E. B. Pusey of Oxford got quite appropriately one possible reason 
why
it may be pretty hard to accept any amount of evidence for the statements of
Daniel. He put it this way: "Nothing is gained by a mere answer to objections,
so long as the original prejudice, 'there cannot be supernatural prophecy,'
remains" (Daniel the Prophet--Nine Lectures, preface). That may have some
bearing on the pointlessness of discussing the matter of Daniel's historicity 
by
this List.


Silver Eiger