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  • From: Robert Heard <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dating Daniel - Response
  • Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:19:24 -0700 (PDT)

Rolf Furuli wrote:
>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?

I chimed in at this point when this was first brought up, and the
discussion seems to have quickly turned to issues about the origins of
apocalyptic literature and faith claims regarding predictive prophecy.
So let me reiterate my original question/claim: There are *no*
authorship claims in the book of Daniel--sixth century or
otherwise--for modern scholars to reject! The only possible hint of an
"authorship claim" inside the book of Daniel is the use of first-person
discourse chapters 7-12. However, as the books of Enoch, Esdras, etc.
(not to mention scads of modern novels) clearly show, the use of
first-person discourse cannot hold water as an authorship claim. In
order to substantiate and uphold a claim that the book of Daniel claims
that a historical person named Daniel wrote the book, one would have to
show that the use of first-person discourse necessarily implied such a
claim (since the book of Daniel nowhere says anything like "a
historical person named Daniel wrote this book" or even "I, Daniel,
wrote down my visions and these reflections on them"). I don't think
that implicit claim can ever be substantiated, though I'd be more than
willing to look at evidence in favor of it.

On a related note, with all this talk about faith claims and
inspiration and such being tossed around, I would like to point out
that some of the comments I've read on this thread seem to presuppose
that "divine inspiration" rules out pseudepigraphical first-person
narration. That's as huge a "leap of faith" as ruling out predictive
prophecy (be it 30 years in advance or 300 years in advance). I don't
know of any good reason to suppose that God could not inspire someone
to write a first-person pseudepigraphical discourse.

So far, in my opinion, the most illuminating post on this thread has
been an earlier one, by Rolf I believe, commenting on the chronological
typology of Aramaic. *That* is the sort of thing that potentially
counts as good evidence for dating the composition of the book of
Daniel, not repeated references to supposed internal authorship claims
that simply don't exist.

- Chris (cranky at the end of a long hot day, in case the above sounds
a bit testy)


-------------------------------
--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA 90263-4352
http://www.heardworld.com
http://www.iTanakh.org




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