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  • From: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dating Daniel - Response
  • Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 09:39:47 +0100

Dear Jack,

See my comments below.


Believing that Daniel is wholly or partially 2nd century
does not automatically make one an atheist. Believing that
Daniel is wholly or partially 6th century does mean one is
automatically a believer.


As I stated originally, if one is interested in dating the
composition of the Book of Daniel, examining the faith of
the investigator serves no useful purpose. It is far more
useful to examine the text and historical records.

You are perfectly right, the faith of a scholar is not necessarily linked with his or her dating of Daniel. But the faith of scholars working with the book of Daniel regarding the existence of God is not the primry issue.
The real issue is: Why do scholars date the book of Daniel to the second century B.C.E.? Or put differently: Why do modern scholars reject the claims in the book of Daniel of a sixth century writing? These are important questions, because few people are able to work with the original text of Daniel and original archaeological and historical findings. Most people, therefore, must build on the experts. And because of this it is important to understand the paradigms/models that the experts use as axioms.

A dating of the book of Daniel on the basis if its Hebrew and Aramaic text is impossible. Some traits suggest an early dating and others a late one. As for the prophecies/"prophecies" ex eventu, they tell us nothing definite regarding the date of their writing. And I am not aware of any other trait that can be used for dating purposes. So the question remains: Why do scholars reject the claims of the book itself and use a second century dating? The answer is that they do so because of their axiom that prophecies regarding future events do not exist. Daniel chapter 11, therefore, must have been written after the events (save the last few verses, which are real predictions that were not fulfilled). And this brings them to the middle of the second century B.C.E.

People relying on the experts will benefit from an understanding of the primary role played by the mentioned axiom. This will help them to be more critical to the dating arguments used, ascertaining that these often are secondary arguments, and that they without the mentioned axiom as their foundation are very weak indeed. If someone thinks that I am overstating the case, I repeat the simple test for showing this: Just point to one or two scholars who date Daniel to the middle of the second century B.C.E., and who accept the *possibility* that the history/"history" of Daniel chapter 11 was written by a Daniel before the events happened.




Jack Tladatsi
_______________________________________________


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




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