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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] RE-Dating Daniel

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Stoney Breyer <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] RE-Dating Daniel
  • Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 01:37:33 +0100

On 08/07/2005 22:11, Stoney Breyer wrote:

...

SBL OK, I confess to (and apologize for) being a little elliptical (and
possibly a little frivolous) here - but the equation of poetic truth and
prosaic fact pretty much disappeared with the Renaissance (Sidney is
only the most readable critic on the subject). In that context the
notion of "fraud" simply evaporates.


Stoney, I wonder what the reaction in a court of law would be to someone who told a lie to the court and then tried to justify himself by saying that he was only speaking poetically? The trouble with your argument from Sidney and others is that it is a very quick way towards the complete loss of the concept of absolute truth and truthfulness. Of course in certain genres it is accepted that people can say certain things which are not literally true - but only some things, but not other things. Indeed I would even accept that that might be true of the *content* of an apocalyptic work, but that doesn't mean it is true also of attributions of authorship. If I write a novel and say things within the novel which are not perfectly true, that is expected (although it is interesting that Dan Brown has got into a lot of trouble for saying things in the *introduction* to his novel The Da Vinci Code which are supposed to be untrue - because he is explicitly claiming that they are true). But if I put on the cover "by Charles Dickens" and passed off my composition as a genuine work of Dickens, then I would be rightly condemned as a forger (that is, in the unlikely event that I did a good enough job that anyone took my claim seriously!). That is the point here. A claim is made, within the book of Daniel, that parts of the book are the words of Daniel. If that claim is untrue, then the book is unreliable, whatever its genre.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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