NEW ARTICLE - Commentary on Daniel chapters 2, 3 and 4.

by EdenOne 25 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  flamegrilled

  Eden

  But whether it's Nebuchadnezzer's rulership personally or the national rulership, it's still a head of gold. So the same argument applies against seeing it that way from God's point of view.

  I agree that historically it appears to be true what you say about how they treated God's people, but all of those nations suppressed their absolute freedom to worship as God intended. So I don't think the whole thing is about how hostile they were on a scale of 1-10 against God's people, but rather the quality of human rulership in relative terms only.

  Surely no human government is GOLD from God's POV so this all has to be relative in some way. Don't you think?

  FG
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  EdenOne

  Hence, since from God's point of view no government is "gold", the fact that the statue of the dream has Nebuchadnezzar as the "gold head" can only be understood as his reign being the apogee of glory of the Neo-Babylonian empire, represented by the statue in its entirety. The succession of increasingly poorer materials represents its decadence.

  Eden
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  flamegrilled

  Hence, since from God's point of view no government is "gold", the fact that the statue of the dream has Nebuchadnezzar as the "gold head" can only be understood as his reign being the apogee of glory of the Neo-Babylonian empire, represented by the statue in its entirety. The succession of increasingly poorer materials represents its decadence.

  I don't follow the logic.

  Why "since ... can only be understood ..."?

  Surely the exact same argument applies whether it is Nebuchadnezzar followed by his human successors, or Nebuchadnezzar's empire followed by the successive empires?

  Either way the succession of increasingly poorer materials represents a moving towards something inferior that would ultimately be removed.
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  EdenOne

  Flamegrilled,

  I'm sorry i should have been clearer, but I replied in a hurry.

  I've picked up one of your assertions from the previous post:

  Surely no human government is GOLD from God's POV

  If we make that our assumption, then Nabuchadnezzar being identified as the "gold head" of the statue cannot be equated with a divine evaluation of its intrinsic value versus the value of other world powers. It makes much more sense to interpret his "golden" status as a divine indication that Nabuchadnezar's reign represented the "gold standard" or the height of glory of the Babylonian Empire (since one can hardly claim that the Babylonian empire was the "golden standard" or the "height of glory" of all the world powers that ever existed since antiquity until our days), and that from his passing onwards, decadence of his empire would follow.

  Eden
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  flamegrilled

  Hi Eden

  One can hardly claim that the Babylonian empire was the "golden standard" or the "height of glory" of all the world powers that ever existed since antiquity until our days

  I agree with that, but on the other hand would you say that human rulership has been steadily improving over the last 2500 years, or steadily declining? And here I am talking from a theocratic point of view only. (Not a JW view, and not a secular point of view.)

  Now that doesn't mean that the decline has to be linear. There have been better and worse rulers in each worldly governmental power. None would be completely effective and some would be downright horrible. But if you drew the whole thing out, like you might graph a share price now, it might be a line with peaks and troughs, but always on the decline. But a dream that showed a stock market x-y graph wouldn't really fit well in the Hebrew/Aramaic scriptures, so instead a dream that simply shows base materials of diminishing value is understandable to any audience.

  That's the way I see it. But I remain open to persuasion.

  FG
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  EdenOne

  Flamegrilled,

  Again, what basis do you have to take the Babylonian empire under Nabuchadnezzar II as the starting point to measure the relentless tendency for decay of human rulership? What indicators can you provide to sustain such assertion? The Ockham's Razor principle may well be applied here: " among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected". How many assumptions you must make to back your statement? How many assumptions must be made to identify the statue with the babylonian empire?

  What do you understand as "declining" of human rulership? Even if you only see it from a "theocratic" point of view? In that perspective, how was Babylon under Nabuchadnezzar more valuable that the following empires that dominated God's people?

  All I'm asking is that you think about that.

  Eden