Introduction to Daniel - For Fun and Prophet
When I was a dubbie, I considered reading the Bible books to be a major and boring chore, mainly because I was required to believe all that stuff I was reading. Trying to make sense out of nonsense is always a frustrating chore. But nowadays, I consider my Bible reading to be fun! Whenever I get down in the dumps I pick up my Bible, flip it open randomly and start reading. Within minutes I'm chipper and grinning from ear to ear! You just never know what wacky, goofy stuff you will find when you read it for what it is, and not for what it is supposed to be. It's like when you first discover that "Gulliver's Travels" was serious satire and not a children's fantasy book: you see the material in a totally different light. Likewise with the Bible. You are reading the same material, but with new eyes and you'll find all sorts of unexpected goofy stuff."
Please follow along with me on this little Bible-reading adventure and when you're finished, tell me you still don't think reading the Bible can't give you as many laughs as a first-rate stand-up comic.
In "Prophecy for Idiots" we saw the numerous conundrums that emerge when "God" gets into the prophecy business.
Today we will examine the events around another wacky prophecy which is attributed to the "prophet" Daniel, or "Dano" as his friends called him. If the events around the prophecy turn out to be wacky, what might that tell you about the prophecy itself?
The Watchtower Printing and Marketing Corporation states in their "Onslaught on the Scriptures" book that Dano was the author of the book which bears his name and that the time period covered by the book is from 618 B.C.to 536 B.C. Keep in mind that people in those days were very backward compared with today. They were so backward that they even counted years backwards.
The Watchtower "Bible scholars" don't state how they know that Dano was the author of this book, just that he somehow must be the author, probably because his name is attached to it. But we shall see we have more reason to believe that he was not the author than we have to believe that he was.
The book starts out by telling us that Nebuchadnezzer the King of Babylon (fondly known as "Nezzy"), thrashed Jersusalem and that God was then so kind as to hand over to him the King of Judah and give him many treasures from the ruins of Jerusalem. God is such a prankster with his chosen people.
"1 In the third year of the kingship of Je·hoi'a·kim the king of Judah, Neb·u·chad·nez'zar the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and proceeded to lay siege to it. 2 In time Jehovah gave into his hand Je·hoi'a·kim the king of Judah and a part of the utensils of the house of the [true] God, so that he brought them to the land of Shi'nar to the house of his god; and the utensils he brought to the treasure-house of his god." (One cannot have too many silverware place settings, you know. It's also nice to know that Israelite and Babylonian gods like to wheel-and-deal with each other from time-to-time.)
The lesson here for the Israelites is a simple one: it's a good idea to think twice before you accept the offer to become "God's chosen people(tm)." It's a lesson the Watchtower Society has yet to learn.
The book goes on to tell us that the Nezzy decided to gather a group of Israel's brightest and best and give them three years of training and education in the ways of the Chaldeans and then bring them before him. This of course, was long before Jehovah decided to put a ban on higher education.
Chapter 1 verse 6 continues:
"6 Now there happened to be among them some of the sons of Judah, Daniel, Han·a·ni'ah, Mish'a·el and Az·a·ri'ah. 7 And to them the principal court official went assigning names. "
Here we notice our first problem. Dano, the so-called "author" of this book is writing in the third person! This problem is associated with most of the books of the Bible where it is assumed that the name of the book is also the name of the author. When the author writes about "himself" in the third person, it doesn't give much credence to the authorship as opposed to writing in the first person: "I, Daniel am writing this to tell you folks stuff I personally witnessed and I SWEAR I'm not making this stuff up!" would get my attention more than what looks to be someone else anonymously writing about the events witnessed by a guy named "Daniel." (Why didn't "God" figure this authorship problem out before I did?)
It gets even more confusing than this. In chapter 10 vs. 1 of Daneil, Dano is also referred to in the third person, but in the very next verse he jumps to the first person. Dano definitely suffered from multiple personality disorder.
Verse 7 tells that Nezzy renamed Dano to Belteshazzar and renamed his three friends to "Hat'rack", "Flea'shack" and "A-bed'we'go."
The King offered Dano and his friends all sorts of "delicacies" to eat and wine to drink, but Dano was a teetotaller and didn't like the delicacies. Why? He was a KID, that's why! Most kids don't like wine. If Nezzy tried to make a kid drink wine today, they'd put him away for child abuse.
"10 So the principal court official said to Daniel: “I am in fear of my lord the king, who has appointed YOUR food and YOUR drink. Why, then, should he see YOUR faces dejected-looking in comparison with the children who are of the same age as YOURS, and [why] should YOU have to make my head guilty to the king?”
So at Dano's insistence (in the third person, of course), he was given vegetables to eat instead of rack-of-lamb and chicken dumplings, and after a short time he looked fit as a fiddle!
"15 And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the children who were eating the delicacies of the king. 16 So the guardian kept on taking away their delicacies and their drinking wine and giving them vegetables."
See? What did I tell you? Isn't this book just a HOOT to read? Rack-of-lamb and chicken dumplings soaked in grease makes you SKINNY. Carrots and turnips make you FAT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
"20 And as regards every matter of wisdom [and] understanding that the king inquired about from them, he even got to find them ten times better than all the magic-practicing priests [and] the conjurers that were in all his royal realm. 21 And Daniel continued on until the first year of Cyrus the king."
There it goes again with that writing in the third person, but at least we know that Dano had developed a trade which was TEN TIMES better than anyone else in that trade. This new trade would soon come in handy for him.
What does it mean that Dano "continued on" until the first year of Cyrus? Dano not only "continued on" past that point, he was still "contnuing on" with his rants when Cyrus was King and then when Darius was King! I don't get it.
We will next discover that Nezzy was a very, very stupid guy. He was so stupid, it's a wonder how he could be a King of Babylon when he probably couldn't even pass an entry-level test to be a meter maid.
This idiot has a dream that really bothers him, but he can't remember the dream. He can only remember the "bothers him" part.
Chapter 2 vs. 3: "3 Then the king said to them: “There is a dream that I have dreamed, and my spirit is agitated to know the dream.”
What does Nezzy do about it? Does he call in Dano who is TEN times better than all of his own conjurers? NO! He calls his other wimpy conjurers and makes them an offer they definitely CAN'T refuse:
“5 The word is being promulgated by me: If YOU men do not make the dream known to me, and its interpretation, dismembered is what YOU will be, and into public privies YOUR own houses will be turned. 6 But if the dream and its interpretation YOU will show, gifts and a present and much dignity YOU will receive on my part. Therefore show me the very dream and its interpretation.”
In short: "Tell me what I dreamed and what it means, and I'll give you some gifts. If you can't do that, I'll dismember you and turn your houses into shitters." Nezzy may not have been very bright, but he was a GREAT motivater!
It turns out that all of his conjurers were even more stupid than the King, because they asked the King to tell them what the dream was and that pissed off the King, because he had forgotten his dream. What a bunch of idiots. Here they had the perfect opportunity to make up a dream and then make up some fake interpretation of the fake dream they made up and the King wouldn't know the difference! But, no. They blew it. So the King ordered all the wise men in Babylon destroyed and their houses turned into shitters. This would include Dano and Hat'rack, Flea'shack and A-bed'we'go.
But Dano talked himself out of his dilemma by stating that he could figure out the dream. He did this by having a dream about the dream! Or, more precisely a "vision." So, he comes before the King.
Chapter 2, vs. 26: " 26 The king was answering and saying to Daniel, whose name was Bel·te·shaz'zar: “Are you competent enough to make known to me the dream that I beheld, and its interpretation?”"
Nezzy, you freakin' moron! You ALREADY SAID Dano was a TEN times better conjurer than all your other wise men! Why didn't you call this guy in the first place, you bozo? You never even called him at all!
Dano then proceeds to tell the King that Dano's God was a revealer of secrets, thus implying that Nezzy's God was NOT a very good revealer of secrets. Dano wisely didn't remind Nezzy that this same God was also the God who let Nezzy's own Babylonians screw up this God's chosen people and their temple and their capitol city. At the same time, Nezzy was probably so stupid, he didn't think of that fact, either. Or maybe Nezzy concluded out that while Dano's God was an excellent dream interpreter, he was a lousy warrior.
The dream itself is then revealed in Chapter 2, together with my perfectly unbiased commentary::
"31 “You, O king, happened to be beholding, and, look! a certain immense image. That image, which was large and the brightness of which was extraordinary, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was dreadful.
Ok. We have a large, bright, dreadful image.
32 As regards that image, its head was of good gold, its breasts and its arms were of silver, its belly and its thighs were of copper,
Note that the head was made of good gold. Is there such a thing as "bad" gold?
33 its legs were of iron, its feet were partly of iron and partly of molded clay.
Ok..Gold head, silver arms and chest, copper thighs and belly and clay feet. Doesn't sound so dreadful to me, but as we have learned, Nezzy's bulb wasn't all that bright.
34 You kept on looking until a stone was cut out not by hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and of molded clay and crushed them. 35 At that time the iron, the molded clay, the copper, the silver and the gold were, all together, crushed and became like the chaff from the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them away so that no trace at all was found of them. And as for the stone that struck the image, it became a large mountain and filled the whole earth.
Big stone smashes and crushes image to dust, blew the dust away and then the stone turned into a mountain as big as the earth. Since verses 37 and 38 tells us Nezzy was the head of this image, he was probably in for a change of underwear when he heard this.
Note: if the mountain was as big as the earth, there could be no bottom to the mountain (the whole earth would BE mountain), so therefore there could be no mountain as the mountain would have no bottom to it! All self-respecting mountains have bottoms, you know. That is why they are called "mountains." No bottom to the mountain, no mountain. Simple.
Verses 39-45 is a bunch of gibberish about Kingdoms that will come after Babylon and there is enough wiggle room in those verses for people to make up just about any kind of shit they want to make up. But nonetheless, Nezzy was impressed by Dano's interpretation.
Now, what amazes me about all of this is at NO time did Nezzy say, "Yeah! I remember it now! THAT was my dream!" Since he didn't do that, then it could mean that unlike those other idiot conjurers, Dano was clever enough to make up a shit dream from thin air and then make up a shit "prophecy" about it. Perhaps Dano had already figured out that Nezzy was a few fries short of a happy meal. No WONDER he was 10 times smarter than the other guys. Besides that, Dano's "prophecy" wouldn't be completely fulfilled until way in the future, so there was no way to verify whether it was true or just a bunch of bullshit Dano made up. It was great scam and Dano pulled it off brilliantly.
As a reward, take a look at what Nezzy did for Dano:
"46 At that time King Neb·u·chad·nez'zar himself fell down upon his face, and to Daniel he paid homage, and he said to offer even a present and incense to him. 47 The king was answering Daniel and saying: “Truly the God of YOU men is a God of gods and a Lord of kings and a Revealer of secrets, because you were able to reveal this secret.” 48 Consequently the king made Daniel someone great, and many big gifts he gave to him, and he made him the ruler over all the jurisdictional district of Babylon and the chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon." 49 And Daniel, for his part, made a request of the king, and he appointed over the administration of the jurisdictional district of Babylon Sha'drach, Me'shach and A·bed'ne·go, but Daniel was in the court of the king.
(Note that after admitting how great Dano's God was and knowing that as the head of gold in the dream, he was eventually going to be toasted, Nezzy still didn't offer to give back the Israelite King and Jersusalem to appease that God. And he kept the silverware.)
Looks like Dano and his 3 pals really had it made, huh? Well, not exactly. In the next installment we shall look at the second wacko story that put a lot of heat on Dano's three buddies (pun intended). We shall also continue to pile up evidence about old Nezzy's incredible stupidity.
Don't you folks think stuff like this is fun? Maybe I'm crazy, but I certainly do!
In the final installment, we shall take another look at the lynchpin of the Jehovah's Witness religion, namely the famous "Genital Times" prophecy in Daniel 4 and discover some evidence (which has been staring at us for a long time) about "prophecy" that doesn't look good for the Watchtower God. I promise you, there will be NO discussion of chronology, either. I hate chronology.
Farkel