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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Was Daniel a prophet?
  • Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:49:37 -0500

Yigal Levin wrote:

I'd go even further: my guess is that the rabbis (or whoever) realized that
Daniel was a late, fictional, composition, which does not preserve the words
of someone who actually acted as a messenger for God. They included it in
the canon nevertheless, because they considered its message about the end of
days to be important, but they did not wish to give its author prophetic
authority. In this way. Daniel is like Job, which the rabbis also considered
to be "a Mashal" rather than a historical text.
As I wrote, just a guess, which I expect some on this list to take exception
to.


HH: Collections of writings come about historically and possibly for recondite reasons. Just because the Book of Daniel was not placed within two collections of books dubbed the the Former and the Latter Prophets does not mean that he was not historical or was not a prophet. Josephus considered him to be an historical figure and also a prophet. For example, he wrote:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/works/files/ant-10.htm

Moreover, he took Daniel the prophet, and carried him with him into Media, and honored him very greatly, and kept him with him; for he was one of the three presidents whom he set over his three hundred and sixty provinces, for into so many did Darius part them. . . .

But it is fit to give an account of what this man did, which is most admirable to hear, for he was so happy as to have strange revelations made to him, and those as to one of the greatest of the prophets, insomuch, that while he was alive he had the esteem and applause both of the kings and of the multitude; and now he is dead, he retains a remembrance that will never fail, for the several books that he wrote and left behind him are still read by us till this time; and from them we believe that Daniel conversed with God; for he did not only prophesy of future events, as did the other prophets, but he also determined the time of their accomplishment. And while prophets used to foretell misfortunes, and on that account were disagreeable both to the kings and to the multitude, Daniel was to them a prophet of good things, and this to such a degree, that by the agreeable nature of his predictions, he procured the goodwill of all men; and by the accomplishment of them, he procured the belief of their truth, and the opinion of [a sort of] divinity for himself, among the multitude. He also wrote and left behind him what made manifest the accuracy and undeniable veracity of his predictions;

HH: The Ketubim contain many historical works, and if the reasons Shoshanna has already given are not enough, it is conceivable that the ancients viewed Daniel as a later historical book, and so to be classed with Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Chronicles. The Book of Daniel consists of historical narrative for the first six chapters, and the visions of the later chapters are not only dated historically but concern future history.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard




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