Evidence for God from Science

In my usual, somewhat lazy manner I prefer to listen to audio/visual presentations on the net such as the Lee Strobel Videos. (I read a ton and my eyes get tired easily these days.) Some very interesting one's indeed but in one, and I forget which one, someone mentioned the significant problems with the book of Daniel. I googled this and there does appear to be many discrepancies of significance dealing with this book of the Bible. I was unable to search any answers of comments on this here on the God from Science Site. One of my previous concerns was the assembly of the Bible by man making determinations as to which writings were divinely inspired and which were not. God would not make such mistakes but it appears that Daniel may have. Perhaps he misinterpreted what God was saying?

Most of the inconsistencies which I find mentioned on the internet have been adequately answered by the moderators, at least adequately to my standards, again I am trusting that the research and scholarly work has been done adequately, accurately and most importantly, honestly.

Would someone care to weigh in on the questions regarding the inaccuracies of Danie? I am sure you know the basic ones to which I am referring.

Thanks

W

Actually, the alleged inaccuracies in the book of Daniel really turn out to prove its historicity, because they have turned out to be correct upon more research! A few examples:

The most famous is the argument the Belshazzar was the last king of Babylon (ch 6), when history tells us that Nabonidus was. For many years, people didn't even know that Belshazzar existed, so they assumed that he was a made up character. We have now proven, however, that he was a co-regent with his father, which is especially fascinating since in the story he promises to make whoever can interpret the writing on the wall the third highest kingdom in the land. Why not the second? Because Nabonidus was the first, and he the second--that would make Daniel the third. So, the critics were wrong here.

Another example relates to Belshazzar, in which he is called the son of Nebuchadnezzar, which he was not. He was the son of Nabonidus, and Nabonidus was not even in Nebuchadnezzar's bloodline. But the word "son" has since been found to refer to kingly lines more generally, and thus, the title is perfectly applicable to Belshazzar.

The identity of Darius the Mede has been the subject of great controversy. Critical scholars love to argue that this is a clear instance in which the second century author confused Darius the Great with this individual, and thus Daniel was wrong. They go on to point out that history knows of know king named Darius who followed Belshazzar and preceded Cyrus' assent to the throne. But, again, history has proven Daniel accurate even here. First, we now know that there was a man named Gubaru (who may or may not be the same as another named Ugbaru) who was one of Cyrus' generals. There are extra-biblical accounts that describe this Gubaru serving as the governor of Babylon for Cyrus. But we can go further than this. There are two important Greek historians who need to be considered: Herodotus and Xenophon. They have very different accounts about the rise of Cyrus the Great and his conquest of Babylon.

All agree that Cyrus was the child of the Median king Astyages' daughter Mandane, whom he married to the Persian prince Cambyses I. If we follow Herodotus, we see that Astyages tried to kill Cyrus, fearing that he would grow up and overthrow his kingdom. The plot failed, and Cyrus did, in fact, overthrow Astyages in 550 BC, yet he did not kill his grandfather, but treated him kindly until his death. Other than Mandane, Herodotus tells us nothing of any children, and leaves us to believe that he was the last Median king. But if we follow Xenophon, we get a slightly different picture. Here, Astyages has a son named Cyaxares II, brother of Mandane and uncle of Cyrus. Xenophon describes him as cooperating with Cyrus in the overthrow of Babylon, yet by then, he was a very old man. Cyrus offered to give him Babylon to rule over. Now, for many reasons I don't have the time or space to go into, I find Xenophon's account more complete than Herodotus on this, and linguistically, there are many connections between the Persian and Median terms that should give any serious historian pause before throwing out Darius the Mede from the pages of history. It seems, rather, that this Darius is to be identified with this Cyaxares II, who received Babylon from Cyrus in his old age, just as Daniel describes. Score another for our author.

Still another example is the supposed contradiction in the first chapter and first verse of the book. Nebuchadnezzar is said to conquer Judah in the third year of king Jehoiakim, but the book of Jeremiah says it happened in the fourth (Jer 25:1). But this is proven non-contradictory and speaks in favor of Daniel's authenticity on two levels. First, if the book were a second century forgery as is commonly supposed, we would expect our forger, who clearly relies on the book of Jeremiah is the latter half of the work, to be sure that, at minimum, these dates would match! Such a mistake would be careless indeed. Second, we have discovered in the past few decades that the southern kingdom of Judah and Babylon had different methods of dating. Judah used what was called an accession year, in which they counted the first part of a year as a full year, whereas the northern kingdom Israel (probably following Babylon and Assyria) used a non-accession year system, meaning they did not start counting the king's years until the first say of the new year. As such, when Jeremiah writes, he uses the accession method, calling it the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign, whereas Daniel, in Babylon, uses the non-accession year system. But why would a forger intentionally use the Babylonian system when it appeared to contradict Jeremiah? Answer: he wasn't a forger! Score again for Daniel.

Another common argument is the presence of Greek and Persian words that are found in Daniel. Yet it has been demonstrated that Greek mercenaries served in the Persian armies and thus it is not surprising to find some Greek words in an essentially Persian/Babylonian text. Second, Daniel did not write his book until after Peria had conquered Babylon. That is, he wrote during the reign of Cyrus, so you would expect him to use Persian words, given that he was living in the Persian empire at the time of writing. In fact, this again argues for the historicity of the book, because if it had been written in the second century, one would not expect many Persian words at all and a much higher frequency of Greek words. As it stands, the sixth century BC fits the frequency of such words rather well. Score, yet again, for Daniel.

Other issues, such as Daniel being in the Kethubim rather than the Navi'im (the Writings rather than the Prophets), his usage of the word "Chaldeans" to refer to a special class of men, etc. have been answered as well.

Against all this, Daniel has much to commend it concerning a sixth century date.

We have already seen that Daniel correctly identified both Darius the Mede and Belshazzar, both of which are very important points. We've seen that he uses the correct accession year method. Neb's insanity of chapter 4 is usually rejected as mythical, but a clay tablet called BM34113 describes it, and, rather conveniently, we have no decrees from him between 582 and 575, or seven years, just as described by Daniel. Other examples could be multiplied, but this is good for now.

One last thing, though, is worth noting, namely, that the second century date has a lot against it even considering what it tries to explain. The entire reason it is regarded as a second century forgery is that the prophecies are so exact that they must have been written after the fact, it is argued, and the book seems to match both the apocryphal style of the second century and seems to speak very well to the conditions Jews were facing under Antiochus Epiphanes. But even this does not work, because it would require understanding the forth kingdom in both chapters 2 and 7 to refer to Greece (and the little horn to Epiphanes), but such attempted readings have utterly failed. For example, the second beast in chapter seven--the bear with three ribs between its teeth--would have to correspond to a Median empire. But history knows of know such kingdom. And in such a reading the three ribs become meaningless. If, though, you take it as the Medo-Persian kingdom (not allowable under the critical view), then the three ribs become the kingdoms conquered by Cyrus and his son: Babylon, Libia, and Egypt. Another example of this is found when considering the ten horns of the fourth beast. If this beast is taken to be Greece, they also mean nothing, because there is absolutely nothing in history to which they can correspond. Alexander's empire was divided into 30, not 10, regions. Seven kings, not ten, have been identified.

On the whole, the book reads much, much better in the traditional view. Against this, the problems associated with the critical view are severe. I've only covered a few of these here. There are many others. We can discuss the matter some here, but for a more detailed discussion, I would recommend Keil's commentary on Daniel (from his ten volume set on the OT). It's older, but still answers the questions many have today.

God bless

Jac
Thank you very much. I am amazed at what some people know about these things. I have much to learn and much to read, understanding can be quite difficult at times.

W