I disagree with your claim that Daniel 4 and 5 both simply refer to an immediate fulfillment of prophecy with an immediate fate for the then ruler for Daniel 4 discloses much more than what was foretold in ch. 5.
There is nothing in ch. 4 that points to an application beyond that which Daniel gives. The same is true with ch. 5. Whereas in ch. 2 and 7, if the fulfilment extends beyond the immediate present, the author says so. Can you point to any contemporary scholar who interprets the dream in ch. 4 as having another secondary fulfillment pertaining to the establishment of God's kingdom on earth?
In fact, ch.4 has more in common with ch2 as many early commentators who believed in the Gentille Times used ch2 as the foundation of the doctrine rather than ch.4.
Are you referring to the writers who influenced Pastor Russell? Source?
The critical literature on Daniel is quite clear on the closer relationship of ch. 4 with 5 than with ch. 2. The Aramaic apocalypse has a transparent chiasmatic structure, with ch. 4 and 5 being parallel with each other (both tales pertaining to the loss of power of certain Babylonian kings, with Daniel foretelling the loss of power), ch. 3 and 6 being parallel with each other (both being martyr tales involving Daniel and his friends being tested for their faith and being delivered from death by God), and ch. 2 and 7 being parallel with each other (both being apocalyptic surveys of history that relate the succession of four kingdoms that are then replaced by the eschatological kingdom). Chapters 4-5 are at the center of this structure, and ch. 5 directly references the events of ch. 4. Chapters 2 and 4 both involve the interpretation of dream visions given to Nebuchadnezzar, but the content of each is more different than similar, whereas the content of ch. 2 has its natural counterpart in ch. 7.
The major difference between ch.4 and 5.is that there is no mention or significant allusion to God's Kingdom except where Daniel refers to the previous history of Nebuchadnezzer's chastisement described in ch4. Refer to ch.5:18-21.
There is no mention of God's kingdom in ch. 5 except for the passage that mentions it? This makes no sense. BTW, you missed a few other allusions. In v. 23, Daniel refers to God as the "Lord of heaven" who "holds in his hand your life and all your ways". This links back to ch. 4 in which Nebuchadnezzar must "acknowledge that heaven rules" in order to have his kingdom restored to him (v. 26), and v. 37 when Nebuchadnezzar decides to "praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven". In both cases, it is the kingdom of heaven that rules in the present; Belshazzar has his own "Lord" in heaven who rules above him. Then in 5:26, Daniel declares to him that "God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end," the same theme in ch. 4 that "the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes" (4:32).
Further, what these accounts have in common is the fact that both rulers were forced to recognize the Kingdom of God as ruling and superior to their sovereignty andboth men were forced to recognize this fact by divine intervention.
Yeah. The two accounts are closely parallel in that respect. That is why the author in ch. 5 directly alludes to the events of ch. 4 to invest meaning in Belshazzar's loss of power.
Daniel 4 requires interpretation just as Daniel had to interpret the dream in the first place and such required interpretation proves that something beyond the obvious is intended
This is nonsense. All the visions in the book are given explicit interpretations by the author. That is why it is an apocalypse. If you think the mere fact that the book gives interpretations of its visions "proves" that something else is needed, then it would equally require the same for any of the other visions described therein. Not even the Society claims that the mene-mene-tekel-parsin vision or the ram/he-goat vision has some other fulfillment than the one given in the text. Nor does any contemporary scholar I know of intimate that there is a hidden meaning to the vision of ch. 4, much less a chronological one.
I am not surprised by the fact that commentators do not interpret the tree dream as JW's and the Early Bible Students have done because they have graet difficulty with the concept of God's Kingdom.
No. It's because there is absolutely nothing in the text that connects the tree with God's kingdom. The JWs and the like read such concepts into the text. As I said, I have a dozen commentaries on Daniel. If you read their discussions of ch. 4, they generally discuss how the tree is a symbol of hubris. A pride in one's own power that is so vast that it reaches up to heaven. This is especially obvious since the symbol of the tree is taken directly from Ezekiel 31 where it similarly was a symbol of Pharaoh's hubris as king. You can best see this in George Wesley Buchanan's Intertextual Mellen Biblical Commentary (1999, pp. 113-115).
Ezekiel 31:3, 6: "Look! I will compare you to a cedar of Lebanon. Its branches were beautiful, a forest shade. It was very tall...In its branches all the birds of heaven made nests, and under its branches all the wild beasts gave birth".
Daniel 4:6-8: "Look! A tree in the midst of the land. It was very tall. The tree grew and became strong, its height touched heaven....Underneath it was sheltering the wild beasts and in its branches the birds of heaven were living, and all the flesh were obtaining food from it".
Like the tree in Daniel 4, it is cut down because of hubris: "Because it towered on high, lifting its top above the thick foliage, and because it was proud of its height, I handed it over to the ruler of the nations, for him to deal with according to its wickedness. I cast it aside, and the most ruthless of foreign nations cut it down and left it" (31:10-12). From the start, the image of the tree is intelligible as a symbol for Nebuchadnezzar's pride. What contextual reason is there to take it as simultaneously a symbol of God's kingdom at the same time?
I have at my disposal all of the major technical commentaries on Daniel and I have found interesting bits and pieces that serve illuninate our interpretation and I am happy with that. One commentary that stands out from all others is the Heremeneia commentary by John Collins who is a prominent scholar on Daniel and I find his observations on the background of the dream most informative.
I have it too. And nowhere does Collins even suspect that the story in context has an application beyond that given by the author (other than the possibility that it expresses a hoped-for humiliation of Antiochus Epiphanes, which he rejects). He does however mention how the story was subsequently allegorized by later Jews and Christians (p. 234). In none of these does the tree or Nebuchadnezzar stand in for God's kingdom -- but rather its opposite, i.e. Lucifer, the Emperor Titus of Rome, the Devil, etc. This illustrates the illogic I mentioned three posts ago about taking Nebuchadnezzar as a symbol for the earthly establishment of God's kingdom, rather than the antichrist or some force for evil. The Watchtower interpretation fits very poorly into the interpretation of the dream vision given by the author himself.
Again I take issue with you as to the fact of Daniel 4 has as its theme the eschatological kingdom of God which demotes both a present and future reality for the very fact that those Kingdom verses refer to God ruling from 'time indefinite and is kingdom is for generation after generation' proves the matter.
Hey, I already discussed this point in detail two posts ago. Please see what I wrote....you've completely missed my point.
Further, I draw your attention to the comments by Bruce K Waltke in his An Old Testament Theology, 2007, Zondervan, pp.158-159 whereupon he refers to verses form ch 4. highlighting the eschatological kingdom of God.
So what does he say? That the rule of God in ch. 4 has an estachatological aspect, as fleshed out more in ch. 7, or that the tree is a symbol of that kingdom such that the vision pertains to events beyond that of Nebuchadnezzar himself, with the vision spelling out the future history of the kingdom? I seriously doubt it is the latter. I've never seen anyone outside the Society or kindred groups make that claim. There is huge leap between one and the other, and you do not seem to notice the difference.
If in fact, Dan.4 is about rulership, the right to rule and God's authority over the nations as themes of this chapter and that this chapter is followed up by a description of worls powers by means of a vision and if the chapter 4 discloses the an interpreted Gentile Times-Luke 21;24 then clearly it is about World Powers and their relationship with God's Kingdom.
No. Is Daniel 4 about rulership and God's authority over the nations? Yes. But there is nothing in the chapter about the succession of world powers related in ch. 7. This discussion of world powers comes three chapters later. The story in ch. 4 is more directly followed by ch. 5 which gives another story about a proud king who loses his power. You are just trying to smuggle content into ch. 4 that does not exist in it.
I agree that the pesher is not found directly into the text and must be read into it and this is where interpretation becomes necessary on the other hand just reading the text directly and seeing just as a literal account of Neb's experience robs the text of any meaning and becomes nonsense because it ignores those themes that the text does deal with.
LOL, this is the funniest statement you've yet made in this thread. First you admit that the whole Gentile Times interpretation is "not found directly in the text" and that it "must be read into it". Yes, that's right, it is foreign to the text itself. But then you say that if we fail to import these foreign notions into the text in a pesher-style way, the text itself lacks any meaning and makes no sense. Sorry, pseudo-scholar, the text makes perfect sense as it stands. It just doesn't make sense to you because it lacks what you want it to mean. You are not satisfied with what it says on its own terms....simple as that. You'd rather it to be talking about something it really isn't talking about.
I cannot comment on Ginsburg because I do not have his reference to hand so if it is important then perhaps could you paste his comment in your reply.
Well, it's not a very significant point but he says:
"A few years ago I demonstrated that the phrase mr' mlkym (Dan 2:47) is to be vocalized mare molkin or m. mulkin and is an Aramaic rendering of kurios basileión 'lord of kingships,' the Aramaic protocol of the Lagid kings of Egypt. It is not the only translation-borrowing from the Greek that the book of Daniel contains. The Aramaic 'iddan and its Hebrew translation mo'ed mean properly 'time, season,' but the former in 4:13, 20, 22, 29; 7:25 and the latter in 12:7 -- not improbably in 11:29 too -- have the sense of 'year'. That this is purely an oracular affectation can not be plausibly maintained in the face of 4:22, 29. In the former verse Daniel is expounding to Nebuchadnezzar, who does not possess the gift of interpreting dreams, the purport of words heard by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream; yet instead of explaining that the phrase '7 iddanin' means '7 shnin "years" ' he merely repeats the former expression. It would therefore certianly seem that, so far as that expression was concerned, the angel 'had spoken in the language of men,' as the school of Rabbi Ishmael would have said. Again in v. 29, Nebuchadnezzar is not dreaming about an angel decreing something about a tree but being told directly and literally, while wide awake, what is about to happen to him. Here too shib'a 'iddanin would defeat its purpose if there were anything mysterious or ambiguous about it. A review of all the revelant passages suggests that 'iddan has more or less the nunance of the French année, while shna corresponds to the French an. Now, we do not find 'iddan (> mo'ed in the Hebrew sections of Daniel) employed in the sense of 'year' outside the book of Daniel, but we do find khronos, properly 'time,' used in the sense of 'year' in Greek[footnote:4]. Ergo, Daniel's Aramaic 'iddan 'year' is a Greek translation loanword, just like Koheleth's tahat hashshemesh (huph' hélió) "under heaven".[footnote:5]" (pp. 1-2).
Footnote 4 gives some references on the use of khronos in Greek.
I do not share your opinion that the 'trampling' in Dan.7 better equates with the 'trampling' of Luke 21;24 at the expense of Dan.4 but as I have to rush off to work rather unexpectedly I will take up your final comments in my next post.
Okay, but it cannot be stressed enough that there is no "trampling" whatsoever in Daniel 4 whereas there is both "trampling" and "times" in Daniel 7 that Luke 21:24 is allusive of. There is nothing "at the expense of" ch. 4, if ch. 4 has no "trampling" to begin with.
