Biblical Hebrew Forum

[rochelle altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>]

Harold,

Any good author includes historical backgrounds for versimilitude. The fact 
that Daniel contains historical data is not proof that Daniel is a "true" 
story. .In fact, Daniel, Job, and Jonah are works of fiction.with a moral. 
The moral of Job was considered so important that it even turns up as one 
of the 6 books written in Paleo-Hebraic -- along with the Pentateuch.

For that matter, when considered as literature, Daniel is inferior to all 
the other books in the MT..

Josephus? So, Joe seems to accept Daniel as having existed. Where ws 
Josephus when Daniel was written? His opinion is not evidence for D's 
actual existence; it only tells us what Josephus  thought/believed..or 
wanted his Roman friends to believe. ..

I shouldn't stick my two cents in, but sometimes it becomes impossible to 
sit on my hands.
 ....
Rochelle, wearing her literature hat...


Harold Holmyard wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________