Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 02/09/2006 20:47, Yigal Levin wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
Thanks for the clarification. I accept your apology.

I note the following from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel:
> Daniel was considered a prophet at Qumran 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qumran> (4Q174 [4QFlorilegium]) and 
> later by Josephus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus> (/Antiquity 
> of the Jews/ 10.11.7 §266) and the author (the "Pseudo-Philo 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Philo>") of /Liber antiquitatum 
> biblicarum/ (L.A.B. ["Book of Biblical antiquities"] 4.6, 8), and was 
> grouped among the prophets in the Septuagint 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint>, the Jewish Greek Old 
> Testament, and by Christians, who place the book among the prophets.
If this is accurate, it was certainly not Christians who first called 
Daniel a prophet. I would suggest, although I would not expect Shoshanna 
to agree, that the reason he was ultimately rejected as a prophet in 
mainstream Judaism was because of the widespread and sometimes wildly 
speculative use of the book by fringe sects, including the very first 
Christians.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/