Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Dear Peter,

If you or anyone else thinks that my comments were "inflammatory", I 
apologize. I certainly had no intention of offending you or anyone else.
I did not intend to claim that early followers of Jesus were the first to 
consider Daniel to be a prophet. In fact, we have no way of knowing whether 
a lot of early Christian doctrine was "adopted" from other Jewish groups, 
from pagans who were co-opted into the early church, or original to them. 
That's not the issue. Other Jews could have considered Daniel a prophet, but 
those who did not eventually became the "normative" position. On the other 
hand, to early followers of Jesus, Daniel's predictions were important, and 
so when the Christian canon was formalized, Daniel was included in the 
"prophetic" books.
As far as Malachi, if you prefer "this may not have been by chance", so be 
it. I think that you are giving the church fathers less credit than is their 
due.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kirk" <peter AT qaya.org>
To: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
Cc: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Tanach book order - different in Christian Bibles


> On 01/09/2006 14:06, Yigal Levin wrote:
> > Peter,
> >
> > Whether the man Daniel was or was not a "prophet" depends on your 
> > definition of the word. However it is clear, that the rabbis did not 
> > consider the book of Daniel to have prophetic status (just like they 
> > considered Jeremiah, author of Lamentations, to have been a prophet, but 
> > did not consider the book of Lamentations to be a work of prophecy). The 
> > early followers of Jesus, however, felt that Jesus fulfilled many of 
> > Daniel's "prophecies", and it was thus critical that the book be 
> > considered authoritative.
> Indeed, but are you able to prove that the early followers of Jesus were 
> the first to consider Daniel a prophet? For example, what opinions of 
> Daniel were held at Qumran and by Josephus and Philo?
>
> In Christian thinking there is no difference between the authority of the 
> different books of the Hebrew Bible, and so there was no reason on that 
> basis to transfer the book of Daniel from one place to another.
>
> > As far as Malachi, it was the "re-orderers" who placed the prophetic 
> > books last in the OT, making them lead directly into the New. As I wrote, 
> > this was not by chance.
> What is your evidence for such a confident (and inflammatory) statement 
> "this was not by chance"? Or would you care to qualify it to "this may not 
> have been by chance"?
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/