@Kosonen
Hi, Kosonen,
I'm also glad to see that someone is searching and thinking about the Bible. That's why every post like yours always gets my like 😊 even if I don't fully identify with it, I still think it's meaningful for both sides (for the one who writes it to form his opinions and for the one who reads it to clarify his).
Now to Daniel: as you point out, the book is inaccessible, shrouded in mystery. The book of Revelation is open to scrutiny, and even what is written there can somehow be applied to life...
So I started with Revelation. In Daniel, I just did a kind of probing, exploratory drilling 😊 For example, as you mention "the abomination that shall be set in a holy place", it's quite difficult (for me) to put the context of Daniel with the statements of Jesus, who warned of "the abomination of desolation" in his discourse to the apostles. What I write below is actually a description of a failure (I feel that way), because despite the search, more questions than answers arose. That is: which text from Daniel did Jesus mean, which βδέλυγμα was it? Three passages come to mind: Dan 9:27 or 11:31 or 12:11. According to the context of the word βδέλυγμα as used by the Septuagint in the Mosaic Law, this is what I looked for and roughly understood: the term is used for a religious-moral description of anything that is abominable before God: it is any contact with carrion, human excrement, and refers to forbidden types of food from certain animals (see, e.g., Lev 11:10 ff).
The sacrifice of lame sacrificial or otherwise unfit animals is considered an abomination (Deut 17:1 cf. 23:19). Also abominable are sexual contacts outside of intimacy between a woman and a man (homosexuality, sexual relations with animals, etc. Lev. 18:22-29; Lev. 20:13) or the attempt to induce such sexual practices: by confusing and wearing male and female clothing of the opposite sex (Deut. 22:5). Idols also become abominations (Deut 7:25-26; 17:4), especially magical practices (Deut 18:9-12) and the burning of children as sacrifices to pagan gods (Deut 13:31). The big issue then is honesty in business dealings: any double weights or measuring objects are also an abomination (Deut 25:16).
From these findings, the following picture can be drawn: an abomination is directly some human action that provokes in others (humans or God) a strong revulsion escalating to mortal hatred (see Deut 17:4-5). Thus, for example, homosexuality, magic, divination, burning one's own children, or some single act (contact with something unclean) is considered an abomination. Objects can also be an abomination - typically idols, which, in conjunction with idolatry, "complete" the abominable act.
Idols, as imitations of something real (either existing entities: the statue of an animal) or non-existent (false gods), are, in their essence, very similar to, for example, false weights, which someone deliberately made indistinguishable from the real ones, in order to steal from another and gain dishonest gain for himself (see Proverbs 11:1). Some items may not be directly objectionable (e.g., dresses or lame sacrificial animals), but when combined with sexualized behavior and actions-for example, if a man puts on a woman's dress-the entire activity, like the sacrifice of lame animals, is considered an abomination.
If I transfer this to the eschatological statement of Jesus, who quoted one (which one? ) passage from the book of Daniel: that in the context of βδέλυγμα we might expect some very sophisticated action which - if we didn't know that it was an "abomination" and the one doing so took care to cover it all up, so that we would first regard the action as normal, normal, and only later discover that it was a fraud or deception (as in the use of false weights and measures). The one who acts heinously will seek to weaken, refute, or otherwise deny the reasons that would point to his pathological actions. If we know what is abomination in God, it is easier to see that the person in question, often acts in direct association with something that is itself abominable, or so that through his abominable activity, his "instruments" become abominable as well. I associate this with the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, the beast with two horns.
In the New Testament, the word "abomination" βδέλυγμα (apart from Mt 24:15; Mk 13:14) occurs in Luke 16:15 and in Rev 17:4-5 (about Babylon the Great) and Rev 21:27. (In the context of Luke 16:15, it is the seeming, hypocritical righteousness of the Pharisees that seems to serve God but at the same time serves mammon cf. Rom. 2:22) This description is also common to Babylon the Great, the harlot, who is described in Rev. 17:5 as "the mother of...the abominations of the earth."
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What I have described is really just a probe into the book of Daniel. And it reaffirms to me how complicated this thing is. I haven't gotten into the next one yet. Therefore, I have no more to respond or react to. But thanks again for your time.
I will hopefully finish a few comments on my view of the identity of Babylon the Great, and perhaps then it will be clearer what positions I am starting from.
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p.s. yesterday's bell. I come out and there's two JWs. They said that two of their members visited me (yes, sometime a month ago) and talked to me. I didn't tell them anything about my past. I told them in response to their questions about how I view the present and future that I think there is a symbolic darkness here. That the evidence that says it's over, that it's difficult to evaluate, and it may be true, but it may as well be just one historical stage again. The ambiguity of the situation around us does not, in my opinion, absolve us from the commitment that we must, above all, keep changing ourselves if we want to be called Christians. They liked it and sent another couple. And I, as the bell rang, got up from the computer with this web-site open and went to talk to the other side of the barricade😊 😊 and talked again about eschatology and what I write here, telling them too...
Then at home everyone laughed at me for telling her who I was, because they will, from now on, keep bothering us. But I told them that although it was such a funny thing, the fun-factor was there, but on the other hand, although I have no missionary ambitions, my humble intention was to show them now, or maybe in the future I want to show them, that it is possible to be outside the organized church and still read the Bible and do something with yourself. That churches are good, but not necessary. Kind of a modest goal: look, you have a strong organization behind you and I have no one. And yet we can talk at the same eye level... 😊 😊 😊