Book Study Week 2 (7/4): Pay Attention To Daniel's Prophecy
The Daniel book is a verse-by-verse. I'll be highlighting each verse each week. Sometimes if I have time I'll add comments.
Chapter Two
Daniel—A Book on Trial
IMAGINE yourself in a court of law, attending an important trial. A man stands accused of fraud. The prosecuting attorney insists that the man is guilty. Yet, the accused has a long-standing reputation for integrity. Would you not be interested in hearing the evidence for the defense?
2 You are in a similar situation when it comes to the Bible book of Daniel. Its writer was a man renowned for integrity. The book that bears his name has been highly regarded for thousands of years. It presents itself as authentic history, written by Daniel, a Hebrew prophet who lived during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. Accurate Biblical chronology shows that his book covers the period extending from about 618 to 536 B.C.E. and was completed by the latter date. But the book stands accused. Some encyclopedias and other reference works imply or assert outright that it is a fraud.
3 For example, The New Encyclopædia Britannica acknowledges that the book of Daniel was once “generally considered to be true history, containing genuine prophecy.” The Britannica claims that in reality, however, Daniel “was written in a later time of national crisis—when the Jews were suffering severe persecution under [Syrian King] Antiochus IV Epiphanes.” The encyclopedia dates the book between 167 and 164 B.C.E. This same work asserts that the writer of the book of Daniel does not prophesy the future but simply presents “events that are past history to him as prophecies of future happenings.”
4 Where do such ideas originate? Criticism of the book of Daniel is not new. It started back in the third century C.E. with a philosopher named Porphyry. Like many in the Roman Empire, he felt threatened by the influence of Christianity. He wrote 15 books to undermine this “new” religion. The 12th was directed against the book of Daniel. Porphyry pronounced the book a forgery, written by a Jew in the second century B.C.E. Similar attacks came in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the view of higher critics and rationalists, prophecy—the foretelling of future events—is impossible. Daniel became a favorite target. In effect, he and his book were put on trial in court. Critics claimed to have ample proof that the book was written, not by Daniel during the Jewish exile in Babylon, but by someone else centuries later. Such attacks became so profuse that one author even wrote a defense called Daniel in the Critics’ Den.
5 Is there proof behind the confident assertions of the critics? Or does the evidence back the defense? A lot is at stake here. It is not just the reputation of this ancient book but also our future that is involved. If the book of Daniel is a fraud, its promises for mankind’s future are just hollow words at best. But if it contains genuine prophecies, doubtless you will be eager to learn what these mean for us today. With that in mind, let us examine some of the attacks upon Daniel.
6 Take, for example, the charge made in The Encyclopedia Americana: “Many historical details of the earlier periods [such as that of the Babylonian exile] have been badly garbled” in Daniel. Is this really so? Let us consider three alleged mistakes, one at a time.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING MONARCH
7 Daniel wrote that Belshazzar, a “son” of Nebuchadnezzar, was ruling as king in Babylon when the city was overthrown. (Daniel 5:1, 11, 18, 22, 30) Critics long assailed this point, for Belshazzar’s name was nowhere to be found outside the Bible. Instead, ancient historians identified Nabonidus, a successor to Nebuchadnezzar, as the last of the Babylonian kings. Thus, in 1850, Ferdinand Hitzig said that Belshazzar was obviously a figment of the writer’s imagination. But does not Hitzig’s opinion strike you as a bit rash? After all, would the absence of any mention of this king—especially in a period about which historical records were admittedly scanty—really prove that he never existed? At any rate, in 1854 some small clay cylinders were unearthed in the ruins of the ancient Babylonian city of Ur in what is now southern Iraq. These cuneiform documents from King Nabonidus included a prayer for “Bel-sar-ussur, my eldest son.” Even critics had to agree: This was the Belshazzar of the book of Daniel.
8 Yet, critics were not satisfied. “This proves nothing,” wrote one named H. F. Talbot. He charged that the son in the inscription might have been a mere child, whereas Daniel presents him as a reigning king. Just a year after Talbot’s remarks were published, though, more cuneiform tablets were unearthed that referred to Belshazzar as having secretaries and a household staff. No child, this! Finally, other tablets clinched the matter, reporting that Nabonidus was away from Babylon for years at a time. These tablets also showed that during these periods, he “entrusted the kingship” of Babylon to his eldest son (Belshazzar). At such times, Belshazzar was, in effect, king—a coregent with his father.
9 Still unsatisfied, some critics complain that the Bible calls Belshazzar, not the son of Nabonidus, but the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Some insist that Daniel does not even hint at the existence of Nabonidus. However, both objections collapse upon examination. Nabonidus, it seems, married the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. That would make Belshazzar the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. Neither the Hebrew nor the Aramaic language has words for “grandfather” or “grandson”; “son of” can mean “grandson of” or even “descendant of.” (Compare Matthew 1:1.) Further, the Bible account does allow for Belshazzar to be identified as the son of Nabonidus. When terrified by the ominous handwriting on the wall, the desperate Belshazzar offers the third place in the kingdom to anyone who can decipher the words. (Daniel 5:7) Why third and not second? This offer implies that the first and second places were already occupied. In fact, they were—by Nabonidus and by his son, Belshazzar.
10 So Daniel’s mention of Belshazzar is not evidence of “badly garbled” history. On the contrary, Daniel—although not writing a history of Babylon—offers us a more detailed view of the Babylonian monarchy than such ancient secular historians as Herodotus, Xenophon, and Berossus. Why was Daniel able to record facts that they missed? Because he was there in Babylon. His book is the work of an eyewitness, not of an impostor of later centuries.
WHO WAS DARIUS THE MEDE?
11 Daniel reports that when Babylon was overthrown, a king named “Darius the Mede” began to rule. (Daniel 5:31) Darius the Mede has not yet been found by name in secular or archaeological sources. Thus, The New Encyclopædia Britannica asserts that this Darius is “a fictitious character.”
12 Some scholars have been more cautious. After all, critics once labeled Belshazzar “fictitious” as well. Undoubtedly, the case of Darius will prove similar. Already, cuneiform tablets have revealed that Cyrus the Persian did not assume the title “King of Babylon” immediately after the conquest. One researcher suggests: “Whoever bore the title of ‘King of Babylon’ was a vassal king under Cyrus, not Cyrus himself.” Could Darius have been the ruling name, or title, of a powerful Median official left in charge of Babylon? Some suggest that Darius may have been a man named Gubaru. Cyrus installed Gubaru as governor in Babylon, and secular records confirm that he ruled with considerable power. One cuneiform tablet says that he appointed subgovernors over Babylon. Interestingly, Daniel notes that Darius appointed 120 satraps to govern the kingdom of Babylon.—Daniel 6:1.
13 In time, more direct evidence of the precise identity of this king may come to light. In any case, the seeming silence of archaeology in this regard is hardly grounds to label Darius “fictitious,” much less to dismiss the entire book of Daniel as fraudulent. It is far more reasonable to see Daniel’s account as eyewitness testimony that is more detailed than surviving secular records.
THE REIGN OF JEHOIAKIM
14 Daniel 1:1 reads: “In the third year of the kingship of Jehoiakim the king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and proceeded to lay siege to it.” Critics have found fault with this scripture because it does not seem to agree with Jeremiah, who says that the fourth year of Jehoiakim was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar. (Jeremiah 25:1; 46:2) Was Daniel contradicting Jeremiah? With more information, the matter is readily clarified. When first made king in 628 B.C.E. by Pharaoh Necho, Jehoiakim became a mere puppet of that Egyptian ruler. This was about three years before Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father to the throne of Babylon, in 624 B.C.E. Soon thereafter (in 620 B.C.E.), Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah and made Jehoiakim a vassal king under Babylon. (2 Kings 23:34; 24:1) To a Jew living in Babylon, Jehoiakim’s “third year” would have been the third year of that king’s vassal service to Babylon. Daniel wrote from that perspective. Jeremiah, however, wrote from the perspective of the Jews living right in Jerusalem. So he referred to Jehoiakim’s kingship as starting when Pharaoh Necho made him king.
15 Really, then, this alleged discrepancy only bolsters the evidence that Daniel wrote his book in Babylon while among Jewish exiles. But there is another gaping hole in this argument against the book of Daniel. Remember that the writer of Daniel clearly had the book of Jeremiah available and even referred to it. (Daniel 9:2) If the writer of Daniel were a clever forger, as the critics claim, would he risk contradicting so respected a source as Jeremiah—and in the very first verse of his book at that? Of course not!
END OF STUDY
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