Leolaia now speaks with great authority!
What silliness. I am simply giving my view in this thread. Whereas you continually argue from authority as a self-professed "scholar".
Why should the Society extend any future warning to Belshazzar when in Daniel 5 all that it it discloses is an immediate fate to the city of Babylon and its ruling dynasty?
LOL, that's precisely my point. In the story, Daniel gives a prophecy (through interpreting a written message) of the immediate fate of the ruler of Babylon. That is "all that it discloses". I agree. But you do not notice that it is the same thing with the story in ch. 4. In that story concerning Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel gives a prophecy (through interpreting a dream) of the immediate fate of the ruler of Babylon, who shortly thereafter undergoes what Daniel foretold. That is all that the story discloses. Just like the story of Belshazzar, it foreshadows the coming removal of power of the fourth kingdom, as related in ch. 2 and 7. But neither the stories of Nebuchadnezzar nor Belshazzar in ch. 4 and 5 refer to anything other than what they relate. The notion that the tree represents God's kingdom in addition to Nebuchadnezzar (and that Nebuchadnezzar's period of madness is representative of a period of Gentile hegemony) is something eisegetically read into the text. I own a dozen commentaries on Daniel and no contemporary scholar I know of takes the story of the debasing of Nebuchadnezzar as referring to what happened to "God's kingdom" on earth. Do you know of any who does?
Daniel 4 is clearly eschatological because it carries the theme of God's Kingdom which is clearly eschatol.ogical by its own defintion.
Wrong. The focus is on the person of Nebuchadnezzar and on his present; there is no content referring to a future establishment of the heavenly kingdom on earth, unlike the eschatological chapters (ch. 2, 7). The theme in context pertains to God's rule in the present: "Your kingdom will be assured to you after you recognize that it is Heaven that rules" (4:26), "the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever he wishes" (v. 32),"His dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation" (v. 34), "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt and honor the King of heaven" (v. 37). The only aspect of this reference that reaches into the future is the enduring permanence of the kingdom in v. 34, but this has nothing to do with an eschatological change of affairs (as the Gentile Times dogma holds). That the kingdom could involve an eschatological change in affairs, as ch. 7 relates, does not imply that any reference of the kingdom is eschatological. Chapter 4 discusses it solely in terms of the present. The kingdom already is, but in heaven not on earth. Of course, the Society teaches this as well. The Gentile Times is not construed as a period when the kingdom has no existence whatsover but that it has no earthly representation. It is a big leap to go from saying that the kingdom described synchronically in ch. 4 has an eschatological aspect (developed later in ch. 7) to saying that because the kingdom has an eschatological aspect the story in ch. 4 must be prophecy of the eschatological future of the kingdom. Elsewhere, the author gives explicit interpretations of what the dream visions or other symbols are supposed to represent....the dream in ch. 2 is eschatological, the same goes with the dream in ch. 7 and the ram and goat in ch. 8, and the interpretation of the seventy years in ch. 9. All are given eschatological interpretations. Daniel's interpretation of the handwriting on the wall in ch. 5, on the other hand, was not eschatological. It pertained to what was to befall the king he was speaking to. Nothing more. The same goes with the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in ch. 4. There is absolutely no interpretation in the text applying the dream to a time beyond that of Nebuchadnezzar.
I agree with you that in some narrow sense Daniel 4 presages the events of Daniel but I would arguue that Daniel 4 along with the dream image of Daniel 2 are predictive of the rest of Daniel with its description of World Powers right up to the Time of the End.
There is nothing in the text of ch. 4 that relates the tree or the madness of Nebuchadnezzar to the succession of "world powers" after him. This is injected into the text from outside. Not everything in Daniel pertains to "the time of the end". As I pointed out in my last post, one could just as well inject into ch. 5 a reference to future world powers and the establishment on earth of God's kingdom, taking the mene-mene-tekel-parsin message as a prophecy of the end of the Gentile Times. Or the martyr tales in ch. 3 and 6...why aren't they eschatological as well, if they are in the book of Daniel? Maybe Daniel being placed into the lion's den foretells God's kingdom being inactive on earth during the Gentile Times and Daniel's release foretells the birth of the nation in 1914? Maybe the story of Daniel and his friends in ch. 1 eating vegetables during their period of training foretells the spiritual fruitage provided by Jesus and his followers during the Gentile Times. See what kind of arbitrary interpretations pertaining to "Gentile Times" could be injected into the text?
the 'pesher' of the Gentile Times is very much consistent with both the literal and figurative meaning of the story. The abasement of Nebuchadnezzer prefigured the fact that Gentile hegemony would exist iover the earth for a period of seven times and after the expiration of those times as Nebuchadnezzer was restored to rulership so it was that God's Kingdom was now rightfuuly restored to rulership in 1914 CE thus ending Gentile domination or the Gentile Times.
As a pesher, it represents not what the text actually says but what the reader wants to read into it. What you describe here is not found in the text itself. I also notice that you passed over my comment about the illogic of the Society's pesher interpretation.
Whatever scholars say about chronos the fact is that kairos and is a suitable equivalent term for iddanim and so we must exegete with what the text actually says rather than a supposed reading as interesting as it may be.
LOL, after defending the Society's eisegesis in ch. 4, you are talking about limiting oneself to an exegesis of what the text "actually says"? That's actually pretty funny. In point of fact, what Ginsburg was discussing what not kairos (which is not part of the original Aramaic text of Daniel) means but the semantics of 'iddan which is used in an unusual way in Daniel (in contrast to how the word is used elsewhere in Aramaic). That is why bilingual interference with khronos is one possible explanation for this odd usage in the text itself. So it does indeed concern "what the text actually says".
To say that the kairos of Luke 21:24 can not be allusive of Daniel 4 but rather of Daniel 7 does not make much sense because the simple fact is that the Lucan passage refers to a kairoi ethnon, a period of time of trampling by Gentile nations on Jerusalem which was that original earthly Kingdom of God. That trampling is similar to that cutting down of the tree being banded for 'seven times. Clearly the events and imagery bare much in common.
You're kidding, right? The reference to "trampling" (in conjunction with kairoi) is what directly links the passage to ch. 7. "It devoured and crushed and trampled (katapatoun) down the remainder with its feet" (7:7 LXX), "the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful, with its teeth of iron and its claws of bronze, and which devoured, crushed and trampled down (katapatountes) the remainder with its feet" (7:19 LXX). This is an intensified form of the same word in Luke 21:24, "Jerusalem shall be trampled (patoumené) by the Gentiles (ethnón) until (akhris) the times of the Gentiles (kairoi ethnón) be fulfilled". Chapter 9 relates specifically the trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles before the completion of the "times": "And a king of Gentiles (basileia ethnón) will demolish the city and the sanctuary along with the anointed one, and his consummation will come with wrath even until (heós) the time of consummation(kairou sunteleias). He will be attacked through war. And the covenant will prevail for many, and it will return again and be rebuilt broad and long. And at the consummation of times (sunteleian kairón) even after seven years and seventy times (hebdomékonta kairous) and sixty-two years until the time of the consummation of the war (heós kairou sunteleias polemou) even desolation will be removed" (9:26-27 LXX). The wording in Luke 21:24 is close to the LXX of ch. 7 and 9 of Daniel. There is nothing to connect to ch. 4, other than kairoi which is already in ch. 7. It is pretty weak to prefer a parallel of the "trampling by Gentile nations" in the cutting down of the tree (how is cutting down a tree with an axe like stomping on someone with your feet?), when instead ch. 7 uses this same word and imagery.
Your linguistic considerations regarding the primacy of Daniel 7 and 9 at the exclusion of Daniel 4 with Luke 21:24 fail to convince me.
I am sure you can also check your commentaries on Luke and see which passages in Daniel are mentioned as allusions in 21:24. I bet they mention ch. 7 and 9 of Daniel while ignoring completely ch. 4. Those are the chapters most relevant to that verse, whereas ch. 4 (like other chapters like ch. 1 or 3 or 5 or 6) just isn't that relevant.
