Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Dating the book of daniel

Dating the book of daniel

Dating the book of daniel


Among them are Daniel and his three companions, who refuse to touch the royal food and wine. Their overseer fears for his life in case the health of his charges deteriorates, but Daniel suggests a trial and the four emerge healthier than their counterparts from ten days of nothing but vegetables and water. They are allowed to continue to refrain from eating the king's food, and to Daniel God gives insight into visions and dreams.


When their training is done Nebuchadnezzar finds them 'ten times better' than all the wise men in his service and therefore keeps them at his court, where Daniel continues until the first year of King Cyrus. Daniel 2 In the second year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. When he wakes up, he realizes that the dream has some important message, so he consults his wise men.


Wary of their potential to fabricate an explanation, the king refuses to tell the wise men what he saw in his dream. Rather, he demands that his wise men tell him what the content of the dream was, and then interpret it. When the wise men protest that this is beyond the power of any man, he sentences all, including Daniel and his friends, to death.


Daniel receives an explanatory vision from God: Nebuchadnezzar had seen an enormous statue with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and clay, then saw the statue destroyed by a rock that turned into a mountain filling the whole earth. Daniel explains the dream to the king: Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges the supremacy of Daniel's god, raises Daniel over all his wise men, and places Daniel and his companions over the province of Babylon.


Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Daniel's companions Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue and are thrown into a fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar is astonished to see a fourth figure in the furnace with the three, one "with the appearance like a son of the gods. Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake between c. Daniel is summoned and interprets the dream.


The tree is Nebuchadnezzar himself, who for seven years will lose his mind and live like a wild beast. All of this comes to pass until, at the end of the specified time, Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges that "heaven rules" and his kingdom and sanity are restored. Fall of Babylon Belshazzar and his nobles blasphemously drink from sacred Jewish temple vessels, offering praise to inanimate gods, until a hand mysteriously appears and writes upon the wall.


The horrified king summons Daniel, who upbraids him for his lack of humility before God and interprets the message: Belshazzar's kingdom will be given to the Medes and Persians. Belshazzar rewards Daniel and raises him to be third in the kingdom, and that very night Belshazzar is slain and Darius the Mede takes the kingdom. Daniel in the lions' den Darius elevates Daniel to high office, exciting the jealousy of other officials.


Knowing of Daniel's devotion to his God, his enemies trick the king into issuing an edict forbidding worship of any other god or man for a day period. Daniel continues to pray three times a day to God towards Jerusalem; he is accused and King Darius, forced by his own decree, throws Daniel into the lions' den.


But God shuts up the mouths of the lions, and the next morning Darius rejoices to find him unharmed. The king casts Daniel's accusers into the lions' pit together with their wives and children to be instantly devoured, while he himself acknowledges Daniel's God as he whose kingdom shall never be destroyed.


Four kingdoms of Daniel In the first year of Belshazzar Daniel has a dream of four monstrous beasts arising from the sea.


The Ancient of Days judges and destroys the beast, and "one like a son of man " is given everlasting kingship over the entire world. A divine being explains that the four beasts represent four kings, but that "the holy ones of the Most High" would receive the everlasting kingdom. The fourth beast would be a fourth kingdom with ten kings, and another king who would pull down three kings and make war on the "holy ones" for "a time, two times and a half," after which the heavenly judgement will be made against him and the "holy ones" will receive the everlasting kingdom.


Daniel 8 In the third year of Belshazzar Daniel has vision of a ram and goat. The ram has two mighty horns, one longer than the other, and it charges west, north and south, overpowering all other beasts. A goat with a single horn appears from the west and destroys the ram. The goat becomes very powerful until the horn breaks off and is replaced by four lesser horns.


A small horn that grows very large, it stops the daily temple sacrifices and desecrates the sanctuary for two thousand three hundred "evening and mornings" which could be either or days until the temple is cleansed. The angel Gabriel informs him that the ram represents the Medes and Persians, the goat is Greece, and the "little horn" is a wicked king.


Prophecy of Seventy Weeks In the first year of Darius the Mede, Daniel meditates on the word of Jeremiah that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years; he confesses the sin of Israel and pleads for God to restore Israel and the "desolated sanctuary" of the Temple. The angel Gabriel explains that the seventy years stand for seventy "weeks" of years years , during which the Temple will first be restored, then later defiled by a "prince who is to come," "until the decreed end is poured out.


Daniel's final vision Daniel In the third year of Cyrus [Notes 5] Daniel sees in his vision an angel called "a man", but clearly a supernatural being who explains that he is in the midst of a war with the "prince of Persia", assisted only by Michael , "your prince. Daniel A future king of Persia will make war on the king of Greece , a "mighty king" will arise and wield power until his empire is broken up and given to others, and finally the king of the south identified in verse 8 as Egypt will go to war with the "king of the north.


He will defeat and subjugate Libya and Egypt, but "reports from the east and north will alarm him," and he will meet his end "between the sea and the holy mountain. At this time Michael will come. It will be a time of great distress, but all those whose names are written will be delivered. Daniel fails to understand and asks again what will happen, and is told: Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1, days.


Deuterocanonical books The Greek text of Daniel is considerably longer than the Hebrew, due to three additional stories: Historical background Daniel refusing to eat at the King's table, early s Bible illustration The visions of chapters 7—12 reflect the crisis which took place in Judea in — BC when Antiochus IV Epiphanes , the Greek king of the Seleucid Empire , threatened to destroy traditional Jewish worship in Jerusalem.


The High Priestly family was split by rivalry, and one member, Jason, offered the king a large sum to be made High Priest. Jason also asked—or more accurately, paid—to be allowed to make Jerusalem a polis , or Greek city.


This meant, among other things, that city government would be in the hands of the citizens, which meant in turn that citizenship would be a valuable commodity, to be purchased from Jason. None of this threatened the Jewish religion, and the reforms were widely welcomed, especially among the Jerusalem aristocracy and the leading priests. Three years later Jason was deposed when another priest, Menelaus, offered Antiochus an even larger sum for the post of High Priest.


Development It is generally accepted that Daniel originated as a collection of Aramaic court tales later expanded by the Hebrew revelations. The book is a product of "Wisdom" circles, but the type of wisdom is mantic the discovery of heavenly secrets from earthly signs rather than the wisdom of learning—the main source of wisdom in Daniel is God's revelation. Chapters 10—12 must therefore have been written between and BC.


There is no evidence of a significant time lapse between those chapters and chapters 8 and 9, and chapter 7 may have been written just a few months earlier again. Daniel is, however, quoted in a section of the Sibylline Oracles commonly dated to the middle of the 2nd century BC, and was popular at Qumran at much the same time, suggesting that it was known from the middle of that century. Both Greek texts contain three additions to Daniel: Theodotion is much closer to the Masoretic Text and became so popular that it replaced the original Septuagint version in all but two manuscripts of the Septuagint itself.


Between them, they preserve text from eleven of Daniel's twelve chapters, and the twelfth is quoted in the Florilegium a compilation scroll 4Q, showing that the book at Qumran did not lack this conclusion. All appear to preserve the chapter Masoretic version rather than the longer Greek text.


None reveal any major disagreements against the Masoretic, and the four scrolls that preserve the relevant sections 1QDana, 4QDana, 4QDanb, and 4QDand all follow the bilingual nature of Daniel where the book opens in Hebrew , switches to Aramaic at 2: This section deals with modern scholarly reconstructions of the meaning of Daniel to its original authors and audience Genre The Book of Daniel is an apocalypse , a literary genre in which a heavenly reality is revealed to a human recipient; such works are characterized by visions, symbolism, an other-worldly mediator, an emphasis on cosmic events, angels and demons, and pseudonymity false authorship.


The four kingdoms and the little horn Daniel 2 and 7: The concept of four successive world empires stems from Greek theories of mythological history; [52] most modern interpreters agree that the four represent Babylon , the Medes , Persia and the Greeks , ending with Hellenistic Seleucid Syria and with Hellenistic Ptolemaic Egypt. The portrayal of God in Daniel 7: These people can be understood as the maskilim sages , or as the Jewish people broadly.


The "mighty horn" stands for Alexander the Great reigned — BC and the "four lesser horns" represent the four principal generals Diadochi who fought over the Greek empire following Alexander's death. The "little horn" again represents Antiochus IV. The key to the symbols lies in the description of the little horn's actions: Daniel reinterprets Jeremiah 's "seventy years" prophecy regarding the period Israel would spend in bondage to Babylon.


From the point of view of the Maccabean era, Jeremiah's promise was obviously not true—the gentiles still oppressed the Jews, and the "desolation of Jerusalem" had not ended. Daniel therefore reinterprets the seventy years as seventy "weeks" of years, making up years.


The point of this for Daniel is that the period of gentile power is predetermined, and is coming to an end. Chapters 10 to 12 concern the war between these kings, the events leading up to it, and its heavenly meaning. In chapter 10 the angel Gabriel? The wars of the Ptolemies "kings of the south" against the Seleucids "kings of the north" are reviewed down to the career of Antiochus the Great Antiochus III reigned — BC , father of Antiochus IV , but the main focus is Antiochus IV, to whom more than half the chapter is devoted.


The accuracy of these predictions lends credibility to the real prophecy with which the passage ends, the death of Antiochus—which, in the event, was not accurate. Biblical eschatology does not generally give precise information as to when the end will come, [62] and Daniel's attempts to specify the number of days remaining is a rare exception.


The angel is counting the two daily sacrifices, so the period is days from the desecration in December In chapter 12 the angel gives three more dates: Verse Religion The concepts of immortality and resurrection , with rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, have roots much deeper than Daniel, but the first clear statement is found in the final chapter of that book: In the Middle Ages Muslims created horoscopes whose authority was attributed to Daniel.


It was easily the most popular of the prophetic books for the Anglo-Saxons, who nevertheless treated it not as prophecy but as a historical book, "a repository of dramatic stories about confrontations between God and a series of emperor-figures who represent the highest reach of man".


Philosophers, such as Baruch Spinoza drew on it. In the 20th century its apocalyptic second half attracted the attention of Carl Jung. The book has also inspired musicians, from medieval liturgical drama to the 20th century compositions of Darius Milhaud.




Dating the book of daniel


It speaks of those who "pierced Dating the book of daniel. Theodotion is much closer to the Masoretic Text and became so popular that it replaced the original Septuagint version in all but two manuscripts of the Septuagint itself. Then, for a permanent solution, do these three things: Wiseman, D. Our next time statement is found in Revelation The evidences are counter-arguments which use recent archaeological findings to prove that Daniel is correct, and our previous information was incomplete. Four kingdoms of Daniel In the first year of Belshazzar Daniel has a dream of four monstrous beasts arising from the sea. Then we'll examine the facts which support the early date theory.






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