Bias in biblical scholarship

[Mithrae]

Edit: I've cluttered up the screen a bit with my detailed explanations, so for everyone's sanity, here's a link to the last (and shortest) of my explanatory posts
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 759#465759



Almost eight years ago I departed from the Christian faith; I considered myself an 'agnostic theist' for a few months after that, then an atheist/agnostic for seven years or so, and over the past few months have become persuaded that theism is a more reasonable worldview. But on and off through that period (and obviously when I was a Christian) I've been interested in discussing and learning about the origins of Christianity and earlier Jewish history.

While I'm obviously no expert, I've found over the years that there's a few points on which the scholarly 'consensus' views - though to be fair, in most cases I doubt there's anything more than a significant majority - simply doesn't seem compelling to me. Since this is hardly a concrete subject like physics or chemistry, on those issues where I've considered my views carefully enough I've been content to hold my own tentative opinions until shown otherwise.

But we all, myself included, are often heavily influenced by majority scholarly views in areas which we haven't examined extensively, and indeed often very much guided by them even when we do look up things for ourselves. So it troubles me that there's not just one or two points on which I think reference to the scholarly majority is inadequate (or even incorrect), but several - and on each issue, it seems to me that mainstream scholarship's suggestions deviate more from historical/traditional perspectives than I myself would endorse.

The main examples would probably be these:

• 1) Dating of Mark (and Matthew) (link)
  Majority scholarship suggests that Mark was written after 70CE, and that consequently Matthew was written after 75 or even 80CE. My view is that thematic features suggest Matthew was almost certainly written 70-73CE, and Mark could very plausibly have been written before 70.
  
  2) Gospel of John (link)
  Majority scholarship suggests that the fourth gospel was written by a community aligned with or previously led by a disciple of Jesus, rather than the 'beloved disciple' himself. I find no strong evidence to support that view (a couple of possible redactions aside), and quite a solid balance of evidence suggesting that it was indeed written primarily by a disciple.
  
  3) Book of Daniel (link)
  Majority scholarship suggests that the sections of Daniel dealing with events of the Greek period were written in the 2nd century BCE, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Obviously I see things differently, though I haven't yet had the opportunity to test my views on this forum; the lack of response even in McCulloch's recent thread on prophecy was actually the catalyst for this thread.
  
  4) History of Israel (link)
  Majority scholarship (or so I've read) suggests that the peoples who became known as Israel and Judah were not foreign to Canaan, but in fact emerged from native populations whose religion they persisted in until the time of Hezekiah (c 720s BCE) and beyond. The presence of Canaanite religion is certainly acknowledged in the bible, but I believe that the earlier prophets, the J and E sources of the Pentateuch and perhaps external history or even archaeology could imply the influence of an originally foreign culture with monotheistic tendencies.

To keep the OP brief I'll post more detailed comments on these points separately. So without further ado I ask:

Is it plausible that majority or 'mainstream' scholarship may be subject to some (minor) anti-traditional bias? Why or why not?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

If I gave an accurate written account, in considerable detail including (unlike Daniel) various dates, names and so on, of the actions of a person, and said I'd written it many months ago, would you say that my claim must be false because if true I would have violated the known laws of the universe?

What if I claimed that I had spoken to someone (a parent, manager or whatever) who had a great deal of influence in making those things occur?

It would depend on the specifics. If your predictions were things that could reasonably be guessed based on information known to be available to you, then guessing may be a reasonable explanation.

- people have claimed to be able to predict the future via magical means throughout history.
- whenever it has been possible to test such claims, they have been shown to be false.

I'd suggest that it has far more often been the case that such predictions are dismissed as too vague or subject to intentional fulfilment to meaningfully qualify as predicting the future in a 'magical' sense. It's a bit of a catch 22, wouldn't you say? If it's vague it's dismissed as luck, and if it's specific it violates the known laws of the universe.

Still, the point remains that whenever it has been possible to test claims of magic future predicting abilities, those claims have shown to be false. When it has not been possible to test the claims, they are indeed often ambiguous and indistinguishable from chance. When they are specific enough to be potentially magical, there is never enough evidence available to show that they are true. So, to clarify our situation:

- people have claimed to be able to predict the future via magical means throughout history.
- whenever it has been possible to test such claims, they have been shown to be false.
- of all the remaining untestable claims, none have ever been shown to be true.
- thus we should reasonably treat such claims with great skepticism when we find them.

What you call a "catch 22" I would call not being gullible to the point of crippling the discipline of history altogether. What's the problem? Should we accept vague prophecies as evidence of magic? Should we accept unproven specific prophecies as evidence of magic?

You agree, presumably, that there's money, respect and influence to be had from convincing people you can know the future (or that they can learn how to know the future). So surely on face value we should expect most such claims to be false? But then we have here at least one example (if my arguments are correct) where a claim of that type has not been shown to be false; the evidence may in fact imply the opposite. Yet since mainstream scholarly sources present the late-date of Daniel as fact, surely we should be asking ourselves whether there might not be other such examples, rather asserting that the falsity of all such claims justifies the presumption in this case? Your reasoning seems somewhat circular.

Other examples of where historical facts might be wrong if magic is real? If the question is what date we should place on Daniel, the evidence doesn't point to an earlier date unless we include "a miracle happened" as one of our assumptions. We avoid explanations that include violations of the known laws of the universe based on our experience. Other than the whole time moving forward thing, our experience also includes no person claiming a magical ability to predict the future ever being proven right, and many, many of them having been proven wrong. It's not circular, it's making probability judgements based on our experiences and observations.

The approach of source makes a claim about personal experience -> that experience contradicts certain worldviews -> the claim is dismissed as false -> a rather unlikely alternative scenario is put forth as fact does not seem unbiased, to my mind. I'm not saying scholars should say that Daniel really saw an angel - that's obviously more than we can know - nor even that they should affirm that the work was written in the 6th century - that's just a strong contending possibility. But to put the 2nd century theory forward as fact, using that presupposition as the primary evidence, without ever mentioning the rather significant weaknesses in the theory... no, that is not what I would call unbiased scholarship.

The experience doesn't simply contradict certain worldviews, unless by "certain worldviews" you mean everything we know about how the universe works. The point is that the rather unlikely scenario is still more plausible than the scenario that invokes either magic or extreme coincidence. I don't see that it helps much for scholars to point out that the theory has difficulties that can be solved by magical explanations because every difficulty in every theory can be solved by magical explanations.

Who is this 'we' who knows that no power influences history like this? I certainly don't know that. What evidence do these people have to demonstrate that knowledge?

We don't know that there is no such power (same deal with Russel's teapot), but we have not found any such power through our investigations. How's that?

If I may correct that last sentence for you, it should have been "I don't see that it helps much for scholars to point out that [their theory dismissing the ancient source's claim of personal experience] has difficulties that can be solved by [accepting the ancient source's claim] because every difficulty in every theory can be solved by [accepting the ancient source's claim]." Do I need to point out that the bit in italics is dubious at best? I suspect that it's never the case that every difficulty can be solved by accepting the ancient source on face value, and it is often the case that alternative explanations pose fewer difficulties. I contend that this is not the case regarding Daniel, so the theory dismissing the work's claims should not be presented as a solid scholarly conclusion - it's a consequence of presupposition.

I'm a bit confused by your edit of my sentence. Can you explain how your "correction" relates to what I said? You seem to have been making a point about either agreeing or disagreeing with the source's claims as more parsimonious, but evidently I have missed it.

I think I could agree that it's a consequence of presupposition. The problem is that to avoid that presupposition you have to take magical explanations to be just as likely as mundane ones, and then you can't do history anymore (or at least you can't do history as we now know and love it).

Your references to 'magical explanations' seem to be simply a rhetorical tool, both in attempting to trivialise and misrepresent the claim made by our ancient source, and in obfuscating which theory actually involves more elements of personal speculation and divergence from the available evidence.

It's not a rhetorical tool. It's magic, and from where I sit it seems you are the one trying to hide this beneath rhetoric. You're suggesting your theory is more parsimonious while one of your assumptions is that someone had powers like Sylvia Browne (except they actually worked).

How am I misrepresenting anything?

[Names_Bob]

Ok, first off, what I do is red down until I want to post. I cut out any stuff I won't comment on. Undoubtedly I should not comment on a LOT more than I actually don't comment on. Anyway, when I get to the end of your post there I type the end quote. [/... quote] minus the ... That cuts off all the above in the blue, and leaves my statement in the open. THEN to put it back in blue, do the [.....quote] again, read down to where I want to blab and do the

I called myself doing that, at least in principle. But I use an iPhone, so it can get dicey on the small screen. I need to get an app that supports this forum.

Forget anyone but the text... read it....
Mat 24:16 then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

for the rest.... http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cf ... SB#conc/34

and then...Mat 24:34 "Truly I say to you, this [fn]generation will not pass away until all these things take place.


He had just explained a ton of events this generation would suffer. "THIS" generation is the one that goes through those events. There are probably 50 times in history since the days of Christ, that you could argue those events took place. I don't think they have yet, but they could have. A strong argument is it was fulfilled with the breaking of the temple. I don't care to make it for them, but it's logically sound.

This isn't intended as catty.
Do you put more faith in c s lewis or the Bible. Does his thoughts dictate your thoughts, or do you ask seek knock?

So what. Who cares what lewis thought. He was a staunch atheist for most of his life. He wrote out of guilt for his previous disbelief. Brilliant mind, grant you that.
Would love to sit at a table with him, tolkien, and bonhoeffer which could have happened in those days and just chat theology. Now, I have mad respect for the man, but I want his comments put into perspective.... He's not an authority. He's an opinion giver. AUGUSTINE was a more brilliant mind, and Augie screwed up the faith radically, as did athanasius, I can go on.

What does the words say is all that matters. Quoting lewis is an appeal to authority. He has no authority over me, nor over you. Work out the scripture on it's own merits before you seek opinions of others. Those other opinions are ONLY valuable if you
use them as devils advocate for your own due diligence.

Okay, but I'm making the same "look at what the words say" argument...exactly the same. Only we see the interpretation of those exact same words differently. I quoted Lewis to make the point that even the brightest and the best and the most sincere see things differently. So how could any rational person claim that the bible is clear?
Same goes for Luther and Calvin and Wesley and John MacArthur and hundreds of others. All smart guys...all interpreting what "the Greek really means" here and there and almost everywhere....differently.

That's why I think critical scholarship has been important and valid in the modern era. It has shined an honest light on scripture and proven that there isn't one message, nor one theology, nor perfect compliment, nor historical or scientific soundness.

And as a Christian I frankly believe the faith will lose virtually all rational individuals in future generations by attempting to pretend this isn't so. Much better to be truthful that, for example, Acts says Paul met with the disciples in one place, and Paul himself writes that he went somewhere else and "never" met with them. I could provide a dozen more totally opposite and contradictory examples, from nativity to death and resurrection, to genealogies to OT kings and chronicles.

I find that childishly naieve and simple. Especially since Jesus didn't say anything simple, using metaphors, avoiding direct statements, leaving it for people to figure out, so to take this ONE out of MANY statements and read it in the most simplified of meanings, well, that seems just silly.

I agree. (Well, except for John's gospel, where Jesus is a totally different person, expounding on himself at every turn, when the Synoptics have no such record of 90% of these claims.)
But are you not being contradictory here yourself? You said earlier I should just "read the text". Now you say Lewis can't just do that....he must read the code or something.

What could the code be for "some of you are gonna be around to see this event"?

Surely you don't believe every line in the New Testament is some Gnostic secret, revealed only to those "with eyes to see"?

And even so, answer me this:
Who is to know which of the thousands of interpretations are correct? There's a lot at stake here, wouldn't you agree? And either I have to choose the right one from thousands, all who say they know the "real" reading.
OR, God chose who got the "eyes that see" to begin with...which would mean I never had free will to begin with, thereby never had a chance, and thereby was created purely for the purpose of suffering eternal torture.

Disturbing, no?

Before ascension, right? Christ returned, right? Christ is LORD right? Where the LORD is, there is the Kingdom. On Earth as Jesus He was the word made manifest, the son of Mary and Joseph, the son of Man. After death He was the son of God. He was the next incarnation of the WORD which all was created through. He returned from death, thus the Kingdom began, and His Church was established. Some believe until the temple fell, and the Church was rooted and growing, was when the Kingdom was established. Either way, some of the apostles lived for both, and also, rather than just apostles, could be disciples as well. Either way, it NEED NOT refer to the Theocratic reign of God on earth. ALTHOUGH... I could make the case for that too since the Church is now established and HE is head of the Church. Those are all logical possibilities. They all have merits. They all have demerits as
well.

Again, then how can we know? I believe this verse is clearly a prophecy of returning on the clouds with angels, post resurrection. You don't.

For me, this is a supposing verse, quite simply almost a repeat of the "generation" quote, except that he actually narrowed it down for them. He didn't stop at "some in this generation" will still be around. He said some of YOU will still be around.

You can nit pick at words to the point of just being silly.

In my experience the nit picking is much more imperative for a literalist. After all, the literalist must always nit pick the particular use of words so that it gives them the outcome they need. The critical scholar (I am not one...I'm no scholar of any kind) isn't married to any particular outcome, therefore she plainly states her criteria. (Example: The story with the least embellishment is the most original, because embellishments are always added, not removed.)

Whether you agree with her criteria or not, she must state them beforehand, rather than the criteria being that the outcome must put the faith in the best light.

[Mithrae]

If I gave an accurate written account, in considerable detail including (unlike Daniel) various dates, names and so on, of the actions of a person, and said I'd written it many months ago, would you say that my claim must be false because if true I would have violated the known laws of the universe?

Sorry to interrupt. But the answer is obviously yes it is literally false. Contravening the known laws of the universe is just about the strongest reason for discounting the literally truth of your account. It is a stronger reason that say finding out you have previously written many false accounts about mundane stuff.

You missed the comment after that, by the looks. If someone has a great deal of influence in making certain things occur, it does not violate any natural laws to receive accurate information from them about what will occur. Indeed while it's somewhat off-topic, I would say that there's no laws of nature I've ever come across which eliminate possibilities (however unlikely they may be) such as psychic powers or the like. We've had that discussion before of course: It's my view that we should base our knowledge on what we observe and infer, not presume that our current scientific understanding is absolute and dismiss anything which goes beyond it. In the case of Daniel however, the ancient claim we've got to work with is nothing more nor less than receiving information from a being which claimed to be a messenger of God. That claim does not violate any natural laws, merely the naturalist worldviews which some folk hold.

--

So what historians need to do is turn over every material stone. Look at the writer, their worries, prejudices, conceits, social expectation, ideologies, incompetency and competency, economic and political circumstances etc. If that job is done thoroughly we never ever approach anywhere near having to worry about
disturbing the known laws of the universe.

Exactly!

The term "bias" in the topic title is interesting also.

If a scientist discovers an ancient dig where it appear many animals were killed, is he biased because he doesn't hypothesize that Zeus used lightning to strike all the creatures dead?

Do you have an example in mind of an ancient account in which someone observed Zeus throwing his lightning, or are you talking about an ad hoc hypothesis here?

Unlike archaeology or paleontology, we're talking about a field of study in which our information comes primarily (and often exclusively) from what people of the era claimed in their writings. As Furrowed Brow has noted, working with that material historians attempt decipher the circumstances, motives, ideologies and so on of the writers of the source material in order to contextualise and best understand the accounts - whether as genuine belief, or deliberate fiction, or myth, or historical accounts, or propaganda etc. etc.

It's my tenative opinion, pending contrary information, that in the case of Daniel the late-date hypothesis fails in this attempt on at least two very significant counts: It implies that the alleged author wrote 'predictions' which were both counter-productive - suggesting that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed and it'd be over a century before God made everything wonderful again (9:24-27) - and counter-intuitive - predicting that Antiochus IV's determined hellenising policies would be suddenly reversed in favour of a foreign god of fortresses (11:36-38). Secondly it requires that that the author's contemporaries of that and the next few decades acted all but incomprehensibly, in attaching such significance to a recent work whose irrelevant and possibly blasphemous (false prophecy) nature was proven within just a few years of its composition.

--

- people have claimed to be able to predict the future via magical means throughout history.
- whenever it has been possible to test such claims, they have been shown to be false.

I'd suggest that it has far more often been the case that such predictions are dismissed as too vague or subject to intentional fulfilment to meaningfully qualify as predicting the future in a 'magical' sense. It's a bit of a catch 22, wouldn't you say? If it's vague it's dismissed as luck, and if it's specific it violates the known laws of the universe.

Still, the point remains that whenever it has been possible to test claims of magic future predicting abilities, those claims have shown to be false. When it has not been possible to test the claims, they are indeed often ambiguous and indistinguishable from chance. When they are specific enough to be potentially magical, there is never enough evidence available to show that they are true. So, to clarify our situation:

- people have claimed to be able to predict the future via magical means throughout history.
- whenever it has been possible to test such claims, they have been shown to be false.
- of all the remaining untestable claims, none have ever been shown to be true.
- thus we should reasonably treat such claims with great skepticism when we find them.

What you call a "catch 22" I would call not being gullible to the point of crippling the discipline of history altogether. What's the problem? Should we accept vague prophecies as evidence of magic? Should we accept unproven specific prophecies as evidence of magic?

Ah! I think I can see where a bit of the problem is creeping in. As I understand it, it isn't the historian's job to show whether or not 'magic' exists. It's their job to attempt to discover, as best they can, what probably happened in history. If, as you seem to be implying, they also concern themselves with what philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research, then that would appear to be the very exemplar of bias in the field.

If historians decided that they had nigh on absolute proof that Daniel was written in the 6th century BCE, would that prove that 'magic' or God exists? I myself think it would be rather compelling evidence, but on the other hand past conversations suggest that Furrowed Brow for one would be more likely to reach the conclusion that Daniel must have been a member of a top-secret society of wealthy ninjas who were controlling world events from behind the scenes.

See how easy it is to come up with entirely naturalistic (albeit improbable) explanations out of thin air? Heck, every difficulty in every theory can be solved by naturalistic explanations!

The experience doesn't simply contradict certain worldviews, unless by "certain worldviews" you mean everything we know about how the universe works. The point is that the rather unlikely scenario is still more plausible than the scenario that invokes either magic or extreme coincidence. I don't see that it helps much for scholars to point out that the theory has difficulties that can be solved by magical explanations because every difficulty in every theory can be solved by magical explanations.

Who is this 'we' who knows that no power influences history like this? I certainly don't know that. What evidence do these people have to demonstrate that knowledge?

We don't know that there is no such power (same deal with Russel's teapot), but we have not found any such power through our investigations. How's that?

By the by, nor have we found any 'laws of the universe' in our investigations. However a lot of people believe, quite reasonably in my opinion, that these 'laws of the universe' are a very good explanation of why things behave as they do. A lot of people believe, also quite reasonably in my opinion, that this God of Daniel's is a good explanation of why things exist at all.

If I may correct that last sentence for you, it should have been "I don't see that it helps much for scholars to point out that [their theory dismissing the ancient source's claim of personal experience] has difficulties that can be solved by [accepting the ancient source's claim] because every difficulty in every theory can be solved by [accepting the ancient source's claim]." Do I need to point out that the bit in italics is dubious at best? I suspect that it's never the case that every difficulty can be solved by accepting the ancient source on face value, and it is often the case that alternative explanations pose fewer difficulties. I contend that this is not the case regarding Daniel, so the theory dismissing the work's claims should not be presented as a solid scholarly conclusion - it's a consequence of presupposition.

I'm a bit confused by your edit of my sentence. Can you explain how your "correction" relates to what I said? You seem to have been making a point about either agreeing or disagreeing with the source's claims as more parsimonious, but evidently I have missed it.

I think I could agree that it's a consequence of presupposition. The problem is that to avoid that presupposition you have to take magical explanations to be just as likely as mundane ones, and then you can't do history anymore (or at least you can't do history as we now know and love it).

Where did I (or anyone) say that we should take 'magical' explanations to be just as likely as naturalistic ones? To refresh your memory, I said:
I'm not saying scholars should... affirm that the work was written in the 6th century - that's just a strong contending possibility. But to put the 2nd century theory forward as fact, using that presupposition as the primary evidence, without ever mentioning the rather significant weaknesses in the theory... no, that is not what I would call unbiased scholarship.

If, after all the usual critical analysis of texts and sources, we are left (as seems to be the case here) with the options either of truth in the ancient source's 'supernatural' observation, or a rather unlikely naturalistic hypothesis, the honest answer would be that short of assigning an arbitrary probability to the 'supernatural' and attempting to compare the two, the scholar simply cannot pass judgement on which is the better option. You seem to favour assigning a probability of zero to 'supernatural' observations, or near enough to it, and by your references to magic misrepresenting the ancient source's actual claim.

You agree, presumably, that there's money, respect and influence to be had from convincing people you can know the future (or that they can learn how to know the future). So surely on face value we should expect most such claims to be false? But then we have here at least one example (if my arguments are correct) where a claim of that type has not been shown to be false; the evidence may in fact imply the opposite. Yet since mainstream scholarly sources present the late-date of Daniel as fact, surely we should be asking ourselves whether there might not be other such examples, rather asserting that the falsity of all such claims justifies the presumption in this case? Your reasoning seems somewhat circular.

Other examples of where historical facts might be wrong if magic is real? If the question is what date we should place on Daniel, the evidence doesn't point to an earlier date unless we include "a miracle happened" as one of our assumptions. We avoid explanations that include violations of the known laws of the universe based on our experience. Other than the whole time moving forward thing, our experience also includes no person claiming a magical ability to predict the future ever being proven right, and many, many of them having been proven wrong. It's not circular, it's making probability judgements based on our experiences and observations.

I don't disagree with probability judgement as a guideline for evaluating hypotheses - remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. But the weaknesses of the late-date theory of Daniel make it a rather remarkable claim itself, and as far as I can tell in the case of Hebrew Daniel there is no evidence to support it besides the presumption (based on the falsity of other predictive claims) that the alternative is false. That is blatantly circular.

And you're still claiming that knowledge from a source with the power to influence history is a "violation of the known laws of the universe," are you?


Given the options that all the stuff in the universe with its considerable array of properties just happened to be, or that a being with the properties of thought and choice just happened to be, some folk might say that the latter is more probable. And since choice is the only observed causal process which doesn't wholly depend on prior or existing factors, some folk might say that it makes choice even more plausible as a cause which preceded everything else.

No need to rebut that, I'm just curious:
- If on the basis of current knowledge you had to lay odds on the existence of aliens with the ability to reach Earth, what would you guess I wonder? 10% chance? 20%? 1%?
- And if you had to lay odds on the existence of a thinking, choosing being which explains why things exist, what would you guess? I'd probably go with 60% or so, but no doubt you're not so optimistic. 40%? 30%?

For the sake of argument let's say they both even out at a comfortably low 10% or so. In both cases, there are many reported encounters with said beings, alien or divine. In both cases, many such reports have been conclusively debunked and most others are viewed with justifiable scepticism because of their nature and the paucity of evidence.

Now, we have an ancient Hebrew text, in which an alleged Daniel claims to have personally conversed with a messenger from the divine being.
Let's suppose that a Japanese fellow, let's call him Akira and say that he's employed in a big electronics corporation, claimed to have been visited by alien beings.

The evidence that this alleged Daniel did in fact converse with such a messenger is that he allegedly was told what God would cause to happen in future centuries.
Our friend Akira, unlike most other alien encounters, has some concrete evidence of his experience; they gave him some futuristic technology. Nothing more than a few decades ahead of our technology; let's say an Iron-man type generator of zero-carbon, practically limitless and cost-effective power, a handy solution to the climate change crisis.

We want to know from historians (more precisely, biblical scholars) whether the alleged Daniel actually did know of these future events.
Once the story goes global, a horde of rabid reporters converge on the White House wanting to know the president's views regarding this first contact with advanced alien life.

Biblical scholars, not wanting to endorse the 'supernatural,' tell us that the work was actually written in during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, with all the weaknesses in that theory mentioned above.
The president, knowing that most claimed alien encounters are delusions or hoaxes, doesn't consider it appropriate to endorse this one either. Therefore, he tells the reporters that the device had been developed by a leading Japanese technological company.

What do you think? Sound analogy?
Weak theories, ad-libbed to avoid what is believed to be an inappropriate conclusion, are all well and good as personal opinion. But presented as truth or sound knowledge from folk we look to for such answers? That is inappropriate, and whether the source is educational, methodological or whatever else, it's looking like a distinct element of bias in this corner of biblical scholarship.

[Xian Pugilist]

I need to get an app that supports this forum.

There is one, but I haven't used it on my Droid 4 yet. I really should. I totally get the 4" screen though.

Forget anyone but the text... read it....
Mat 24:16 then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

for the rest.... http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cf ... SB#conc/34

and then...Mat 24:34 "Truly I say .... Those other opinions are ONLY valuable if you
use them as devils advocate for your own due diligence.

Okay, but I'm making the same "look at what the words say" argument...exactly the same. Only we see the interpretation of those exact same words differently.

Yes, and my way makes much more sense than yours. Ok, seriously, I think I admitted both ways were possible. And tried to take the discussion to which is more probable. There is only one meaning intended by the author. We should be able to beat around the bush to the point of getting progressively closer. I presented a way for what you to be considered impossible to be possible, did you rescind any of your suggestions regarding your position? I think at that point you should have. Seeing another possibility and just dismissing it isn't a way to get to the truth, agreed? And I'm not picking at you, but using this event as an example.

I quoted Lewis to make the point that even the brightest and the best and the most sincere see things differently. So how could any rational person claim that the bible is clear?

Yes, but disagreement among brightest scholars, doesn't mean the answer isn't evident. In fact, I'd say the hubris involved with them would make it more UNlikely to find agreement.

Same goes for Luther and Calvin and Wesley and John MacArthur and hundreds of others. All smart guys...all interpreting what "the Greek really means" here and there and almost everywhere....differently.

Great examples of hubris, bonhoefer is probably the only humble, but acknowledged "great mind" that I know of, and that doesn't mean he's without flaws.

That's why I think critical scholarship has been important and valid in the modern era. It has shined an honest light on scripture and proven that there isn't one message, nor one theology, nor perfect compliment, nor historical or scientific soundness.

Well, let me throw this monkey's wrench in the tool shed... The more the western thinking Church tries to explain God, the further from God they get.
1) rather than being a faith about life changes, it's become a philosophy over who has the best theology. I don't think they even believe in a God, they just like the warm fuzzy and the debate over words.
2) Scripture says you grow more in knowledge, THROUGH WORKS than study. And I find it's irrefutably true.

And as a Christian I frankly believe the faith will lose virtually all rational individuals in future generations by attempting to pretend this isn't so.

Read the book unChristian. You'll find that the best studied people, are bearing fruit that stinks to hell of rot in the eyes of the world. The more they learn, the worse they do.

Much better to be truthful that, for example, Acts says Paul met with the disciples in one place, and Paul himself writes that he went somewhere else and "never" met with them.

That's only a problem if one makes a lot of assumptions. He went somewhere else first, THEN went to the Disciples. two different trips, there's no rule that every fact need be written down.

???

I could provide a dozen more totally opposite and contradictory examples, from nativity to death and resurrection, to genealogies to OT kings and chronicles.

Well, I guess if we are going to read the Bible as a strict history book. I don't seem to get the feeling it was written as a history book as we have them today. Nor that it was written as a blue print to creating the universe. So things like being off on .1456 on PI just don't mess with me. What I find is the lifestyle message it gets across is spot on, and if inerrant. The only relevant parts of the genealogies are right in all counts. The rest is just trivialities.

I find that childishly naieve and simple.... it in the most simplified of meanings, well, that seems just silly.

I agree. (Well, except for John's gospel, where Jesus is a totally different person, expounding on himself at every turn, when the Synoptics have no such record of 90% of these claims.)

How is that a difference? That's just silly. The first three were written, each seems to have a little different interest, so the story weighs one way or the other. John was written much later, the other three already existed, we didn't need another. So it was written for a different purpose. Thus it had different focii and interests.

EXAMPLE:
In the Battle of Thermopylae Leonidas was betrayed by his brother.
One author may make 8 chapters of that betrayal as it was of particular interest to him.
Another may only mention him in one chapter, the downfall.
Another may not mention him at all, because he wrote about battle tactis.

All are right. Because one differs from the other isn't a contradiction, it's another dimension and could be reconciled.

But are you not being contradictory here yourself? You said earlier I should just "read the text". Now you say Lewis can't just do that....he must read the code or something.

Lewis didn't just do that. Had he just read the text as I put above, the possibility would be apparent to him of a different meaning. It's reading it with the intent you will find what you expect that throws people off.

In hermeneutic teaching, a drill they do in class is to take one verse, and write down every possible interpretation of the verse. This is to teach people to separate their preconceptions out of the way and dig themselves out of their box. If c s lewis, couldn't even acknowledge other possibilities were potentially onto something, he had a block getting in his way, and it would discredit him, not support him as a great mind.

In the big picture, I'm not arguing with, brilliant people draw different conclusions. But I will not, and can not, rely on another man to read the Bible for me. Ask, seek, knock.

What could the code be for "some of you are gonna be around to see this event"?

no clue what you are asking here... there was no code. Your misapplied, manufactured rule on this / that, is false, and that is what you rely on for the interpretation you provided.

Surely you don't believe every line in the New Testament is some Gnostic secret, revealed only to those "with eyes to see"?

if I was a sensitive man, I'd whine about the insult. But, if you ask around I'm somewhat insensible. or insensitive, or.... something....

My explanation proffered no Gnosticesque explanation, it used third grade english, and then stepped up to your Greek argument. So, this is a bit of a strawman, please burn it at the bonfire of eisegetical proportions.

And even so, answer me this:
Who is to know which of the thousands of interpretations are correct? There's a lot at stake here, wouldn't you agree?

I am correct. I have the Spirit, you don't, you can't be right if you don't agree with me. (see my comments in the good ole fundy boy post, just making an example here, not a claim...)

A lot at stake.... who Paul meant first, who is Jesus' great great great great 3x grandfather, isn't putting much at stake. It has nothing to do with the relevant stuff of how to live your life. While you search for the right interpretation, OR the person who can tell you what it means.... I'm going to focus on applying what I do understand in my life. Through life, the rest of the message will be made clear, through application, not study. The knowledge puffs up, the works build up.

Semantical, pedantical, who made the longer yellow line in the snow arguments, really get a person no where. It's about how you live, not what you know. And if you want to know more, live more, and you'll be trained. if you need scripture for that, ask.

And either I have to choose the right one from thousands, all who say they know the "real" reading.
OR, God chose who got the "eyes that see" to begin with...which would mean I never had free will to begin with, thereby never had a chance, and thereby was created purely for the purpose of suffering eternal torture.

false dilemma. The actual stated option from the bible is mentioned above. FOund in Eph 4 mid chapter, knowledge through works. Understanding to the same level as Christ had.

.... Those are all logical possibilities. They all have merits. They all have demerits as
well.

Again, then how can we know? I believe this verse is clearly a prophecy of returning on the clouds with angels, post resurrection. You don't.

Yes I do. WHEN-- after resurrection is the question. The text allows it to be back then, or in the future with its wording. You apparently won't even admit to any possibility that doesn't fit your presupposition. ( I don't know that to be the case for sure, but it seems that way.)

For me, this is a supposing verse, quite simply almost a repeat of the "generation" quote, except that he actually narrowed it down for them. He didn't stop at "some in this generation" will still be around. He said some of YOU will still be around.

I can't imagine a scenario the verse you mentioned to be an exact quote since the context and the words are different, sorry. Eisegesis..... really corrupts perception.

You can nit pick at words to the point of just being silly.

In my experience the nit picking is much more imperative for a literalist.

Take that up with them.

After all, the literalist must always nit pick the particular use of words so that it gives them the outcome they need.

As you are doing here. Words have a meaning. Words can be applied in many ways to give a shallow difference, but the root is always the same meaning. Stake in tent, stake in business both have a deeper shared meaning. The bottom line is, you express confusion, and there is some confusion in the Bible, but your confusion is because you don't have people agree with your view. There is a context, a message, an author, lots of things to find consistency. And it is workable outable. (luv making up words)

You have to do the work. It comes down to, you learn more knowledge from works than study. You can study yourself into a hole, and have.

The critical scholar (I am not one...I'm no scholar of any kind) isn't married to any particular outcome, therefore she plainly states her criteria. (Example: The story with the least embellishment is the most original, because embellishments are always added, not removed.)

Whether you agree with her criteria or not, she must state them beforehand, rather than the criteria being that the outcome must put the faith in the best light.

Not sure what you were getting at in the last statements, although I agree with most of it for what it's worth.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

It's my tenative opinion, pending contrary information, that in the case of Daniel the late-date hypothesis fails in this attempt on at least two very significant counts: It implies that the alleged author wrote 'predictions' which were both counter-productive - suggesting that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed and it'd be over a century before God made everything wonderful again (9:24-27) - and counter-intuitive - predicting that Antiochus IV's determined hellenising policies would be suddenly reversed in favour of a foreign god of fortresses (11:36-38). Secondly it requires that that the author's contemporaries of that and the next few decades acted all but incomprehensibly, in attaching such significance to a recent work whose irrelevant and possibly blasphemous (false prophecy) nature was proven within just a few years of its composition.

So, the problems with the late date hypothesis as you see it are it assumes:

a) somebody made bad predictions
b) people accepted a book which had bad predictions in it

I don't think this is incomprehensible. People make bad predictions all the time, not much of a stretch there. And as for people accepting a book which has bad predictions in it, we also have plenty of examples of that: people accept the gospels. Religion has a remarkable way of rationalizing such difficulties away by reinterpreting texts as necessary. This is far more parsimonious than the early date hypothesis, which assumes a miraculous event of which we have no examples and no explanation occurred.

Still, the point remains that whenever it has been possible to test claims of magic future predicting abilities, those claims have shown to be false. When it has not been possible to test the claims, they are indeed often ambiguous and indistinguishable from chance. When they are specific enough to be potentially magical, there is never enough evidence available to show that they are true. So, to clarify our situation:

- people have claimed to be able to predict the future via magical means throughout history.
- whenever it has been possible to test such claims, they have been shown to be false.
- of all the remaining untestable claims, none have ever been shown to be true.
- thus we should reasonably treat such claims with great skepticism when we find them.

What you call a "catch 22" I would call not being gullible to the point of crippling the discipline of history altogether. What's the problem? Should we accept vague prophecies as evidence of magic? Should we accept unproven specific prophecies as evidence of magic?

Ah! I think I can see where a bit of the problem is creeping in. As I understand it, it isn't the historian's job to show whether or not 'magic' exists. It's their job to attempt to discover, as best they can, what probably happened in history. If, as you seem to be implying, they also concern themselves with what philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research, then that would appear to be the very exemplar of bias in the field.

I don't know what you are referring to when you say that I'm implying they are concerning themselves with philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research. What does that mean and how am I implying it?

If historians decided that they had nigh on absolute proof that Daniel was written in the 6th century BCE, would that prove that 'magic' or God exists?

I don't know whether it would prove it, but it would be the best evidence for it we have. When throughout history every single claim of this sort has been either false or inconclusive, undeniable evidence like that would be a spectacular find.

By the by, nor have we found any 'laws of the universe' in our investigations. However a lot of people believe, quite reasonably in my opinion, that these 'laws of the universe' are a very good explanation of why things behave as they do. A lot of people believe, also quite reasonably in my opinion, that this God of Daniel's is a good explanation of why things exist at all.

The difference being that the first group has an explanation that can be shown to work and is distinguishable from fantasy.

Where did I (or anyone) say that we should take 'magical' explanations to be just as likely as naturalistic ones? To refresh your memory, I said:
I'm not saying scholars should... affirm that the work was written in the 6th century - that's just a strong contending possibility. But to put the 2nd century theory forward as fact, using that presupposition as the primary evidence, without ever mentioning the rather significant weaknesses in the theory... no, that is not what I would call unbiased scholarship.

I see no way to put forth the early date hypothesis as "a strong contending possibility" without accepting magical explanations as about as likely. It really seems like you're saying it's incomprehensible that someone lied or that people were gullible, therefore it's more likely that an angel told Daniel the future.

If, after all the usual critical analysis of texts and sources, we are left (as seems to be the case here) with the options either of truth in the ancient source's 'supernatural' observation, or a rather unlikely naturalistic hypothesis, the honest answer would be that short of assigning an arbitrary probability to the 'supernatural' and attempting to compare the two, the scholar simply cannot pass judgement on which is the better option. You seem to favour assigning a probability of zero to 'supernatural' observations, or near enough to it, and by your references to magic misrepresenting the ancient source's actual claim.

I'll ask you again to explain how I'm misrepresenting the source.

Yes, supernatural explanations should not be considered probable. Given an unlikely natural explanation and a supernatural explanation, the natural explanation is still more likely. Explaining things in terms of things that we know can happen is more parsimonious than explaining things in terms of things that no one has ever shown to happen.

I don't disagree with probability judgement as a guideline for evaluating hypotheses - remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. But the weaknesses of the late-date theory of Daniel make it a rather remarkable claim itself, and as far as I can tell in the case of Hebrew Daniel there is no evidence to support it besides the presumption (based on the falsity of other predictive claims) that the alternative is false. That is blatantly circular.

You call it blatantly circular, but it's simply learning from experience. If you've been either swindled or disappointed by every fortune teller you've ever been to, aren't you going to stop believing them after a while?

I think we to really need to focus on why an angel telling you the future is a much more remarkable claim than a bunch of people believing a bad story. Things that are known to happen are less remarkable than things which aren't.

And you're still claiming that knowledge from a source with the power to influence history is a "violation of the known laws of the universe," are you?

So your early date hypothesis assumes a god powerful enough to influence the future, but not one that knows the future. I suppose the former is more parsimonious than the latter. I actually didn't catch that you were referring to Yahweh when you brought that up at first. Yeah, if Yahweh's just guessing and telling Daniel what he plans to do, that doesn't run into the time-moving-forward problem. Still a heck of a lot more spectacular of an assumption than some people liking a book for odd reasons.

Given the options that all the stuff in the universe with its considerable array of properties just happened to be, or that a being with the properties of thought and choice just happened to be, some folk might say that the latter is more probable. And since choice is the only observed causal process which doesn't wholly depend on prior or existing factors, some folk might say that it makes choice even more plausible as a cause which preceded everything else.

Ah yes, free will. If only someone could show it existed...

No need to rebut that, I'm just curious:
- If on the basis of current knowledge you had to lay odds on the existence of aliens with the ability to reach Earth, what would you guess I wonder? 10% chance? 20%? 1%?
- And if you had to lay odds on the existence of a thinking, choosing being which explains why things exist, what would you guess? I'd probably go with 60% or so, but no doubt you're not so optimistic. 40%? 30%?

For the sake of argument let's say they both even out at a comfortably low 10% or so. In both cases, there are many reported encounters with said beings, alien or divine. In both cases, many such reports have been conclusively debunked and most others are viewed with justifiable scepticism because of their nature and the paucity of evidence.

Now, we have an ancient Hebrew text, in which an alleged Daniel claims to have personally conversed with a messenger from the divine being.
Let's suppose that a Japanese fellow, let's call him Akira and say that he's employed in a big electronics corporation, claimed to have been visited by alien beings.

The evidence that this alleged Daniel did in fact converse with such a messenger is that he allegedly was told what God would cause to happen in future centuries.
Our friend Akira, unlike most other alien encounters, has some concrete evidence of his experience; they gave him some futuristic technology. Nothing more than a few decades ahead of our technology; let's say an Iron-man type generator of zero-carbon, practically limitless and cost-effective power, a handy solution to the climate change crisis.

We want to know from historians (more precisely, biblical scholars) whether the alleged Daniel actually did know of these future events.
Once the story goes global, a horde of rabid reporters converge on the White House wanting to know the president's views regarding this first contact with advanced alien life.

Biblical scholars, not wanting to endorse the 'supernatural,' tell us that the work was actually written in during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, with all the weaknesses in that theory mentioned above.
The president, knowing that most claimed alien encounters are delusions or hoaxes, doesn't consider it appropriate to endorse this one either. Therefore, he tells the reporters that the device had been developed by a leading Japanese technological company.

What do you think? Sound analogy?

No. You're comparing a case nothing but ancient claims with one with physical evidence. It's not like there's something the scholars are ignoring. There's just some claims in a book that could have been written who knows when.

Aliens are more likely than gods. We know life exists on one planet. We know there are other planets. We know that it is possible for living things to travel in space.

A disembodied mind? I don't think we've seen that.

The weaknesses in the theory are hardly crippling, and they are nothing compared to the weaknesses in the alternative. This isn't some example of scholars being hopelessly biased, it's an example of scholars using the same level of discretion you use every day when you don't spend a fortune calling psychic hotlines. We learn from our experiences and make inferences based on them.

Also: I've been looking through my textbooks a bit on this subject and I was wondering how the whole Belshazzar thing fits in with your position. Isn't that from the part of the text that you aren't suggesting an early date for?

[Mithrae]

Also: I've been looking through my textbooks a bit on this subject and I was wondering how the whole Belshazzar thing fits in with your position. Isn't that from the part of the text that you aren't suggesting an early date for?

Hey Fuzzy, sorry 'bout the delayed reply; I figured I should finally get 'round to re-doing some of the referencing I'd lost and just wasn't in the mood yesterday

Short of decisive manuscript evidence of inserted sections, a difference in the text's language is possibly the best face-value reason to suppose multiple authorship there could be. As you'd know and I mentioned earlier, the gross historical problems with Aramaic Daniel (notably Darius the Mede as king of the Persian empire at the time of Babylon's fall, and the madness and monotheistic conversion of Nebuchadnezzar) are a very good reason to suppose that it isn't a 6th century work.

The beginning of the main Hebrew section reads (1984 NIV):
Daniel 8:1 In the third year of King Belshazzars reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. 2 In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam; in the vision I was beside the Ulai Canal.

This accounts for why the linguistic division does not match the division in content (narrative vs. prophetic/visionary); if there were two authors, whichever came later presumably would have added either that first vision or the reference to it.

It also suggests that the author was familiar enough with Babylonian history to know that Elam was under their control, and perhaps even implies that the author was familiar with Susa itself. But most importantly, it implies a knowledge of the rulership in Babylon which it seems very unlikely that a 2nd century Jew would have.

This is what I've been able to discover of the sources pertaining to pre-Achaemenid Babylon from before the early/mid 2nd century BCE:

• Written histories (too lazy atm to confirm if they're all in Greek)
  The 5th century Greek Herodotus (Histories, 1.188-191) called both the last king of Babylon and his father Labynetos. According to Wikipedia "Labynetos is generally understood to be a garbled form of the name Nabonidus and the younger Labynetos is often identified with Belshazzar. Opinions differ however on how best to reconcile Herodotus with the Babylonian sources and an alternative view is that the younger Labynetos is Nabonidus."
  
  The 4th century Greek Xenophon (Cyropedia, 7.5.28-30) does not name the last king of Babylon or, of course, his son.
  
  The late 5th/early 4th century Ctesias of Cnidus recounted the reign of Cyrus the Great, but "From what we know of Ctesias' work, he did not describe Cyrus' greatest deed: the capture of Babylon." So it's safe to presume that his Persica did not mention the final Babylonian rulers.
  
  The 3rd century Babylonian Berossus - not extant, but quoted in Josephus (Against Apion, 1.20) - names 'Nabonnedus' as the last king of Babylon, and does not mention his son.
  
  Cuneiform inscriptions
  The Nabonidus Chronicle (fairly neutral religious account of his reign) names Nabonidus as the last king of Babylon, and says that for much of his reign he was in Tem while "the crown prince, his officials and his army were in Akkad" (Babylonia). It does not name Belshazzar, although there are considerable gaps in the account.
  
  The Cyrus Cylinder (pro-Cyrus) names Nabonidus as the last king of Babylon, but doesn't mention his son.
  
  The Verse account of Nabonidus (pro-Cyrus, anti-Nabonidus) says that in Nabonidus' third year, he entrusted his army and kingship to his first son while he himself went to Tem. There's a large gap, though given the emphasis on Nabonidus there seems little reason to believe that it names Belshazzar.
  
  The Nabonidus Cylinder (Nabonidus' own inscription) does name his son Belshazzar, though it doesn't mention his co-regency.

We might expect an educated 2nd century Jew to know of the works by Herodotus or Xenophon. But given the absence of any known literary references or knowledge of them, the Nabonidus Chronicle and Verse account and particularly the Nabonidus Cylinder naming Belshazzar seem unlikely to have been known by this speculated late-date author. If his knowledge of rulership in Babylon at the end of its autonomy went beyond that of Herodotus, Xenophon or Ctesias, this would seem to be as compelling evidence for an early date as the inaccuracies in the Aramaic section are of a late date.

It's my tenative opinion, pending contrary information, that in the case of Daniel the late-date hypothesis fails in this attempt on at least two very significant counts: It implies that the alleged author wrote 'predictions' which were both counter-productive - suggesting that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed and it'd be over a century before God made everything wonderful again (9:24-27) - and counter-intuitive - predicting that Antiochus IV's determined hellenising policies would be suddenly reversed in favour of a foreign god of fortresses (11:36-38). Secondly it requires that that the author's contemporaries of that and the next few decades acted all but incomprehensibly, in attaching such significance to a recent work whose irrelevant and possibly blasphemous (false prophecy) nature was proven within just a few years of its composition.

So, the problems with the late date hypothesis as you see it are it assumes:

a) somebody made bad predictions
b) people accepted a book which had bad predictions in it

I don't think this is incomprehensible. People make bad predictions all the time, not much of a stretch there. And as for people accepting a book which has bad predictions in it, we also have plenty of examples of that: people accept the gospels. Religion has a remarkable way of rationalizing such difficulties away by reinterpreting texts as necessary. This is far more parsimonious than the early date hypothesis, which assumes a miraculous event of which we have no examples and no explanation occurred.

In general I'd agree that religion has a way of rationalizing difficulties in established texts, and also often has a way of hounding and persecuting blasphemous or heretical works - such as Hebrew Daniel would have been, if considered false prophecy in the decade/s after Antiochus IV's death.

By contrast with the alleged late-date Daniel, the importance of Jesus and many of the stories about him had some 30-40 years to gain a foothold before his eschatological predictions (reflected in Paul's writings; very much downplayed in Luke and John; and only a big problem in Matthew) could be seriously dismissed as false. A significant number of Christians would have spent years believing or even growing up being taught these gospel stories. The events of the Jewish revolt were viewed in eschatological terms by many Jews and Christians alike, and while the failure of those expectations were no doubt a serious issue for many, the gospels (unlike Daniel) hardly hang upon those concepts. I do consider the acceptance of Matthew somewhat curious, my best guesses being either that it was influential enough among Jewish Christians to warrant recognition, or that it represented the successor of apostle Matthew's sayings of Jesus which Papias mentions (presumably the Q source).

But even gMatthew can be contrasted favourably with a late-date Daniel in terms of importance of material (Jesus the Christ vs. 'predictions' of the future), content (mostly ethical and soteriological material vs. 'predictions') and establishment (perhaps 15-20 years for written material from Q, more with oral tradition, vs. 3-4 years at most before the Maccabean victory rendered Daniel 11:36ff obsolete).

What you call a "catch 22" I would call not being gullible to the point of crippling the discipline of history altogether. What's the problem? Should we accept vague prophecies as evidence of magic? Should we accept unproven specific prophecies as evidence of magic?

Ah! I think I can see where a bit of the problem is creeping in. As I understand it, it isn't the historian's job to show whether or not 'magic' exists. It's their job to attempt to discover, as best they can, what probably happened in history. If, as you seem to be implying, they also concern themselves with what philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research, then that would appear to be the very exemplar of bias in the field.

I don't know what you are referring to when you say that I'm implying they are concerning themselves with philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research. What does that mean and how am I implying it?

I might have misread you, but you were asking about vague or unproven specific prophecies as evidence of 'magic,' in connection with gullibility which would cripple the discipline of history. You seem to be of the opinion that the discipline of history would be crippled if scholars were so gullible as to suppose that the truth or falsity of one 'magical' (to use your term) claim could be considered independantly of the truth or falsity of other 'magical' claims.

If, after all the usual critical analysis of texts and sources, we are left (as seems to be the case here) with the options either of truth in the ancient source's 'supernatural' observation, or a rather unlikely naturalistic hypothesis, the honest answer would be that short of assigning an arbitrary probability to the 'supernatural' and attempting to compare the two, the scholar simply cannot pass judgement on which is the better option. You seem to favour assigning a probability of zero to 'supernatural' observations, or near enough to it, and by your references to magic misrepresenting the ancient source's actual claim.

I'll ask you again to explain how I'm misrepresenting the source.

In modern English 'magic' overwhelmingly refers to human arts or abilities to alter reality, which would be a mischaracterization of Daniel. But on looking it up further (Wiki again) -
Through late 14th century Old French magique, the word "magic" derives via Latin magicus from the Greek adjective magikos () used in reference to the "magical" arts of the Magicians (Greek: magoi, singular mgos, ); the Zoroastrian astrologer priests. Greek mgos is first attested in Heraclitus (6th century BC, apud. Clement Protrepticus 12) who curses the Magians and others for their "impious rites".
- your use is apparently correct. To be honest I'd still describe it as more rhetorical than anything else, but my apologies for implying dishonesty and for not double-checking on your first request.

I don't disagree with probability judgement as a guideline for evaluating hypotheses - remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. But the weaknesses of the late-date theory of Daniel make it a rather remarkable claim itself, and as far as I can tell in the case of Hebrew Daniel there is no evidence to support it besides the presumption (based on the falsity of other predictive claims) that the alternative is false. That is blatantly circular.

You call it blatantly circular, but it's simply learning from experience. If you've been either swindled or disappointed by every fortune teller you've ever been to, aren't you going to stop believing them after a while?

I think we to really need to focus on why an angel telling you the future is a much more remarkable claim than a bunch of people believing a bad story. Things that are known to happen are less remarkable than things which aren't.

If I were swindled by fortune tellers A through Y, once I got off the crack I probably wouldn't go to fortune teller Z. That doesn't mean that I should publish a professional opinion, without any evidence except my experience of other fortune tellers, that Z is a greedy charlatan.

Like I've said several times already, I'm not saying scholars should assert that Daniel was written in the 6th century (though as I've mentioned, even that doesn't irresistably imply the 'supernatural'). I'm not even saying that they shouldn't raise the 2nd century possibility. But asserting the weak latter theory primarily (perhaps only) on the basis of the generic improbability of the former is circular. Scepticism of one does not necessitate acceptance of the other. Surely this isn't hard to understand?

No need to rebut that, I'm just curious:
- If on the basis of current knowledge you had to lay odds on the existence of aliens with the ability to reach Earth, what would you guess I wonder? 10% chance? 20%? 1%?
- And if you had to lay odds on the existence of a thinking, choosing being which explains why things exist, what would you guess? I'd probably go with 60% or so, but no doubt you're not so optimistic. 40%? 30%?

For the sake of argument let's say they both even out at a comfortably low 10% or so. In both cases, there are many reported encounters with said beings, alien or divine. In both cases, many such reports have been conclusively debunked and most others are viewed with justifiable scepticism because of their nature and the paucity of evidence.

Now, we have an ancient Hebrew text, in which an alleged Daniel claims to have personally conversed with a messenger from the divine being.
Let's suppose that a Japanese fellow, let's call him Akira and say that he's employed in a big electronics corporation, claimed to have been visited by alien beings.

The evidence that this alleged Daniel did in fact converse with such a messenger is that he allegedly was told what God would cause to happen in future centuries.
Our friend Akira, unlike most other alien encounters, has some concrete evidence of his experience; they gave him some futuristic technology. Nothing more than a few decades ahead of our technology; let's say an Iron-man type generator of zero-carbon, practically limitless and cost-effective power, a handy solution to the climate change crisis.

We want to know from historians (more precisely, biblical scholars) whether the alleged Daniel actually did know of these future events.
Once the story goes global, a horde of rabid reporters converge on the White House wanting to know the president's views regarding this first contact with advanced alien life.

Biblical scholars, not wanting to endorse the 'supernatural,' tell us that the work was actually written in during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, with all the weaknesses in that theory mentioned above.
The president, knowing that most claimed alien encounters are delusions or hoaxes, doesn't consider it appropriate to endorse this one either. Therefore, he tells the reporters that the device had been developed by a leading Japanese technological company.

What do you think? Sound analogy?

No. You're comparing a case nothing but ancient claims with one with physical evidence. It's not like there's something the scholars are ignoring. There's just some claims in a book that could have been written who knows when.

Aliens are more likely than gods. We know life exists on one planet. We know there are other planets. We know that it is possible for living things to travel in space.

A disembodied mind? I don't think we've seen that.

Are you saying that whenever we've seen a mind, we see a body associated with it? We could talk about this 'life' and 'mind' and 'bodies' you mention - whether we've ever seen the first two, or whether what our minds have 'seen' of the latter bears any close resemblance to the physical stuff you're apparently relying on. Considering questions like that led me towards considering theism more reasonable, certainly compared with physicalism.

But if at all relevant, that philosophical discussion would simply confirm the sequence which I initially mentioned, and which fits in quite well with my analogy above:
source makes a claim about personal experience -> that experience contradicts certain worldviews -> the claim is dismissed as false -> a rather unlikely alternative scenario is put forth as fact



I fear we may be heading towards simply repeating ourselves at each other, so I've skipped over a few of your comments - let me know if there's anything I ought to have answered. If I were to summarize my position in a sentence it would be:
On face value the 'eyewitness' claim of the ancient source seems improbable, albeit corroborated by some evidence, but that doesn't justify professionally asserting improbable modern theory (without other evidence) in its place.

It seems to me, let me know if I've got it wrong, that your position might be summarized as:
The 'eyewitness' claim of the ancient source is extremely or entirely improbable, which justifies professionally asserting improbable modern theory in its place.

It looks like the major difference in our views, highlighted in your response to my analogy, is whether Daniel's divine scenario is merely improbable or extremely improbable/impossible. I'd say that the latter is a philosophical stance - not a common one at that - and not a valid basis on which to completely overturn and counter-theorise what alleges to be a first-hand account from history.

[historia]

3) Book of Daniel (link)
Majority scholarship suggests that the sections of Daniel dealing with events of the Greek period were written in the 2nd century BCE, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Obviously I see things differently, though I haven't yet had the opportunity to test my views on this forum; the lack of response even in McCulloch's recent thread on prophecy was actually the catalyst for this thread.

If you are still interrested in discussing the dating of Daniel specifically, Mithrae, I would be interested as well. Let me know. If so, will respond to your thread from November 2011 rather than here.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Hi Mithrae, thanks for the reply.

We might expect an educated 2nd century Jew to know of the works by Herodotus or Xenophon. But given the absence of any known literary references or knowledge of them, the Nabonidus Chronicle and Verse account and particularly the Nabonidus Cylinder naming Belshazzar seem unlikely to have been known by this speculated late-date author. If his knowledge of rulership in Babylon at the end of its autonomy went beyond that of Herodotus, Xenophon or Ctesias, this would seem to be as compelling evidence for an early date as the inaccuracies in the Aramaic section are of a late date.

So, we have to weigh several possibilities:

1) The author had access to texts or traditions now lost
2) Lucky guess
3) Magic (an angel told him)

Texts are lost all the time. Traditions are lost all the time. Angels, not so much.

In general I'd agree that religion has a way of rationalizing difficulties in established texts, and also often has a way of hounding and persecuting blasphemous or heretical works - such as Hebrew Daniel would have been, if considered false prophecy in the decade/s after Antiochus IV's death.

By contrast with the alleged late-date Daniel, the importance of Jesus and many of the stories about him had some 30-40 years to gain a foothold before his eschatological predictions (reflected in Paul's writings; very much downplayed in Luke and John; and only a big problem in Matthew) could be seriously dismissed as false. A significant number of Christians would have spent years believing or even growing up being taught these gospel stories. The events of the Jewish revolt were viewed in eschatological terms by many Jews and Christians alike, and while the failure of those expectations were no doubt a serious issue for many, the gospels (unlike Daniel) hardly hang upon those concepts. I do consider the acceptance of Matthew somewhat curious, my best guesses being either that it was influential enough among Jewish Christians to warrant recognition, or that it represented the successor of apostle Matthew's sayings of Jesus which Papias mentions (presumably the Q source).

But even gMatthew can be contrasted favourably with a late-date Daniel in terms of importance of material (Jesus the Christ vs. 'predictions' of the future), content (mostly ethical and soteriological material vs. 'predictions') and establishment (perhaps 15-20 years for written material from Q, more with oral tradition, vs. 3-4 years at most before the Maccabean victory rendered Daniel 11:36ff obsolete).

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. Religion resolves cognitive dissonance. Religion turns failed prophecies into fulfilled prophecies. This isn't just in established texts, this is in all areas, and we have seen this throughout history. Remember Harold Camping? He predicted the end of the world last year. Lots of people believed him, even though he had predicted the end of the world before and was wrong. When his prediction failed, he made another prediction for later in 2011, and there were still people who believed him.

It seems overly naive to say that the late date hypothesis is improbable because it requires people to behave illogically. People behave illogically all the time. People don't predict the future or interact with angels and gods all the time.

Where are you getting your information on the acceptance of Daniel, anyway? What are the earliest references to it, and when did it become popular?

I don't know what you are referring to when you say that I'm implying they are concerning themselves with philosophical conclusions other people might draw from their research. What does that mean and how am I implying it?

I might have misread you, but you were asking about vague or unproven specific prophecies as evidence of 'magic,' in connection with gullibility which would cripple the discipline of history. You seem to be of the opinion that the discipline of history would be crippled if scholars were so gullible as to suppose that the truth or falsity of one 'magical' (to use your term) claim could be considered independantly of the truth or falsity of other 'magical' claims.

Right, because that would be ignoring our experience. When we consider such claims, it would be rather gullible of us to forget our experience with such claims, not a single one of which has ever been shown to be true and many of which have been shown to be false. How else can historians weigh probabilities, if not based on our experiences with such events?

In modern English 'magic' overwhelmingly refers to human arts or abilities to alter reality, which would be a mischaracterization of Daniel. But on looking it up further (Wiki again) -
Through late 14th century Old French magique, the word "magic" derives via Latin magicus from the Greek adjective magikos () used in reference to the "magical" arts of the Magicians (Greek: magoi, singular mgos, ); the Zoroastrian astrologer priests. Greek mgos is first attested in Heraclitus (6th century BC, apud. Clement Protrepticus 12) who curses the Magians and others for their "impious rites".
- your use is apparently correct. To be honest I'd still describe it as more rhetorical than anything else, but my apologies for implying dishonesty and for not double-checking on your first request.

The idea that biblical miracles are somehow distinct from magic is based only on the centuries of Christian bias that has been inflicted on our language. Some will still fight the idea that "myth" and "magic" can be found in the bible. I think it's important not to use euphemisms like "miracle" because it gives the erroneous impression that there is something special about the magic in the bible.

If I were swindled by fortune tellers A through Y, once I got off the crack I probably wouldn't go to fortune teller Z. That doesn't mean that I should publish a professional opinion, without any evidence except my experience of other fortune tellers, that Z is a greedy charlatan.

But the only reason you aren't going to fortune teller Z is anti-fortune teller bias, which is blatantly circular, right? The way you are arguing we should treat Daniel, I don't see what basis you have for not going to fortune teller Z. The only evidence you have against them is circular.

Like I've said several times already, I'm not saying scholars should assert that Daniel was written in the 6th century (though as I've mentioned, even that doesn't irresistably imply the 'supernatural'). I'm not even saying that they shouldn't raise the 2nd century possibility. But asserting the weak latter theory primarily (perhaps only) on the basis of the generic improbability of the former is circular. Scepticism of one does not necessitate acceptance of the other. Surely this isn't hard to understand?

First, let's be clear that you are, essentially, assuming the supernatural as part of your position. You're saying a god told him, and then a god went and influenced history so that those events would happen. That would be considered supernatural by most assessments, I think. I could posit that a ghost did it, and then posit that it was a natural sort of ghost, not a supernatural one, but this hardly makes my theory more parsimonious in any functional sense.

Also, I and most scholars would disagree that the theory is "weak", and the weaknesses you have thus far pointed out seem very unmoving to me (I think one can see why the argument has been settled for such a long time outside of the biblical inerrancy circles). I do think there is room for further discussion of the specific arguments you make, however.

What you are suggesting amounts to historians pointing out "if we assume that something magical happened, then we can date this text to the 6th century." Historians don't work this way, for reasons that I think I have pointed out well enough. You can either work on showing why the late date theory is so outrageous that magic must be considered a reasonable alternative explanation, or you can argue for the historical method to approach magical claims in a more credulous manner.

Are you saying that whenever we've seen a mind, we see a body associated with it? We could talk about this 'life' and 'mind' and 'bodies' you mention - whether we've ever seen the first two, or whether what our minds have 'seen' of the latter bears any close resemblance to the physical stuff you're apparently relying on. Considering questions like that led me towards considering theism more reasonable, certainly compared with physicalism.

You seem to be retreating into solipsism which I don't think to be specifically relevant to historical inquiry. I'm talking about physical stuff. Real stuff. The world as we know it. That is what history investigates. If you're inclined towards magical explanations in other areas, perhaps that is why you are having trouble with history's bias against them.

But if at all relevant, that philosophical discussion would simply confirm the sequence which I initially mentioned, and which fits in quite well with my analogy above:
source makes a claim about personal experience -> that experience contradicts certain worldviews -> the claim is dismissed as false -> a rather unlikely alternative scenario is put forth as fact

The certain worldview in question being "reality exists." Until a god comes down to earth or Neo breaks into the matrix to save us, I don't think there's any need to take the other worldviews seriously when we're trying to do history.

I fear we may be heading towards simply repeating ourselves at each other, so I've skipped over a few of your comments - let me know if there's anything I ought to have answered. If I were to summarize my position in a sentence it would be:
On face value the 'eyewitness' claim of the ancient source seems improbable, albeit corroborated by some evidence, but that doesn't justify professionally asserting improbable modern theory (without other evidence) in its place.

It seems to me, let me know if I've got it wrong, that your position might be summarized as:
The 'eyewitness' claim of the ancient source is extremely or entirely improbable, which justifies professionally asserting improbable modern theory in its place.

I don't find the 2nd century theory improbable at all. People lying, people making mistakes, people believing things that would appear illogical - these are not incomprehensible, incredible events, these are normal mundane human behaviours. My position is simply that when exploring history, mundane explanations based on things that are known to happen are more probable than unique magical events that have never been shown to happen. Explanations where one of the assumptions is "a miracle happened" are necessarily avoided to consistently evaluate history. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

It looks like the major difference in our views, highlighted in your response to my analogy, is whether Daniel's divine scenario is merely improbable or extremely improbable/impossible. I'd say that the latter is a philosophical stance - not a common one at that - and not a valid basis on which to completely overturn and counter-theorise what alleges to be a first-hand account from history.

I think you're oversimplifying a bit. You're not talking about something that alleges to be a first hand account, exactly. You're talking about something that alleges to be a first hand account, dismissing those claims, and theorizing that a section of this first hand account may be authentic because it was written in a different language than the other sections (never mind that if we accept a 2nd century date for some sections, then we know a 2nd century redactor had ample opportunity to insert all kinds of "predictions" into the other sections). Then you're taking those selected claims at face value, more or less, and asking for evidence against them (other than the obvious). If we agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, then we should also agree that "you can't prove an angel didn't tell him the future" is not in and of itself much of a a reason to give credence to the claim.

I don't know if we need to discuss these general ideas on magical claims much more. I would, along with historia, have some interest in focusing on the specific details of Daniel either in this thread or another. We could continue to explore this issue along those lines.

[Mithrae]

It looks like the major difference in our views, highlighted in your response to my analogy, is whether Daniel's divine scenario is merely improbable or extremely improbable/impossible. I'd say that the latter is a philosophical stance - not a common one at that - and not a valid basis on which to completely overturn and counter-theorise what alleges to be a first-hand account from history.

I think you're oversimplifying a bit. You're not talking about something that alleges to be a first hand account, exactly. You're talking about something that alleges to be a first hand account, dismissing those claims, and theorizing that a section of this first hand account may be authentic because it was written in a different language than the other sections (never mind that if we accept a 2nd century date for some sections, then we know a 2nd century redactor had ample opportunity to insert all kinds of "predictions" into the other sections). Then you're taking those selected claims at face value, more or less, and asking for evidence against them (other than the obvious). If we agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, then we should also agree that "you can't prove an angel didn't tell him the future" is not in and of itself much of a a reason to give credence to the claim.

You are correct that the possibility of later redaction further illustrates the problems with your various claims regarding violation of the "laws of the universe," 'magic' and so on. Yet again I will recall your attention to the fact that I have several times said that a 6th century date does not preclude naturalistic explanations and that historians should not assert the angelic theory. It is you who brought up these objections, attempting to show the supposed impossibility of a 6th century date. While I contend that your arguments suggesting impossibility in Daniel's angelic account rather than mere improbability are dubious questions of philosophy which should not form the foundation of historical enquiry in any case, I think you've further confirmed here that as a reason for supposing a 2nd century date such arguments are extremely limited in scope and value.

Your other comments seem to implying a certain amount of arbitrariness and/or naivity in my views - which is fair enough, my above paragraph isn't too nice either I'll admit - but I'd like to reiterate my approach to avoid confusion:
There's two languages used in the text, which to a large extent also reflect stylistic/content differences.
- One language section offers evidence of inauthenticity (blatant historical inaccuracies and use of Greek words in ch.2)
- One language section offers evidence of authenticity (knowledge of Belshazzar and significant content/thematic problems with a 2nd century date)

- To my knowledge there is no evidence for authenticity in the Aramaic section
- To my knowledge there is only one form of 'evidence' for inauthencity in the Hebrew section, which involves the view that all of the following are impossible or very improbable:
* Daniel's claim of angelic visitation
* Daniel made very lucky guesses (in the bits which aren't vague or inaccurate)
* Daniel belonged to a secret group of wealthy ninjas or other wild naturalisms
* Daniel's work was editted a bit by a later (Aramaic) author

I reject that as evidence for a late date of Hebrew Daniel, and it seems to me that it reflects bias in the field if any majority of scholars do accept it as evidence. The external problems of late-date Daniel - acceptance by contemporaries of that and subsequent decades (eg. Qumran separatists) of a recent and almost immediately redundant 'prophetic' work - are quite significant (though I agree that they're not completely insurmountable), and seem to further highlight the bias apparent when scholars assert that weak theory as fact or a solid conclusion.

3) Book of Daniel (link)
Majority scholarship suggests that the sections of Daniel dealing with events of the Greek period were written in the 2nd century BCE, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Obviously I see things differently, though I haven't yet had the opportunity to test my views on this forum; the lack of response even in McCulloch's recent thread on prophecy was actually the catalyst for this thread.

If you are still interrested in discussing the dating of Daniel specifically, Mithrae, I would be interested as well. Let me know. If so, will respond to your thread from November 2011 rather than here.

I don't know if we need to discuss these general ideas on magical claims much more. I would, along with historia, have some interest in focusing on the specific details of Daniel either in this thread or another. We could continue to explore this issue along those lines.

That'll be a good opportunity to learn some more and see where I've gone wrong in my views (obviously I've been presuming a few things in this thread ). I'll bump the old thread with my list of historical references to Belshazzar to get the ball rolling

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

You are correct that the possibility of later redaction further illustrates the problems with your various claims regarding violation of the "laws of the universe," 'magic' and so on. Yet again I will recall your attention to the fact that I have several times said that a 6th century date does not preclude naturalistic explanations and that historians should not assert the angelic theory. It is you who brought up these objections, attempting to show the supposed impossibility of a 6th century date. While I contend that your arguments suggesting impossibility in Daniel's angelic account rather than mere improbability are dubious questions of philosophy which should not form the foundation of historical enquiry in any case, I think you've further confirmed here that as a reason for supposing a 2nd century date such arguments are extremely limited in scope and value.

Hold on a second here. Are you just suggesting that it is possible that some material in Daniel dates back to earlier centuries? If so, then you're agreeing with the consensus. I thought the question we were dealing with here was whether any of the predictions were actually made before the events they describe. The majority view is that Daniel is a compilation of traditions, at least some of which would have been known in some form to older audiences, packaged for a 2nd century audience. I don't think many propose it's a totally original 2nd century text if that's what you think you're arguing against.

Your other comments seem to implying a certain amount of arbitrariness and/or naivity in my views - which is fair enough, my above paragraph isn't too nice either I'll admit - but I'd like to reiterate my approach to avoid confusion:
There's two languages used in the text, which to a large extent also reflect stylistic/content differences.
- One language section offers evidence of inauthenticity (blatant historical inaccuracies and use of Greek words in ch.2)
- One language section offers evidence of authenticity (knowledge of Belshazzar and significant content/thematic problems with a 2nd century date)

I would agree with most scholars that these problems are not actually significant, but that ought to be discussed in the other thread.

- To my knowledge there is no evidence for authenticity in the Aramaic section
- To my knowledge there is only one form of 'evidence' for inauthencity in the Hebrew section, which involves the view that all of the following are impossible or very improbable:
* Daniel's claim of angelic visitation
* Daniel made very lucky guesses (in the bits which aren't vague or inaccurate)
* Daniel belonged to a secret group of wealthy ninjas or other wild naturalisms
* Daniel's work was editted a bit by a later (Aramaic) author

Later revision of an earlier work is consistent with the majority position, as mentioned above. Which leaves one with only improbable magical, coincidental, or pseudonatural explanations to explain detailed knowledge of future events.

I reject that as evidence for a late date of Hebrew Daniel, and it seems to me that it reflects bias in the field if any majority of scholars do accept it as evidence. The external problems of late-date Daniel - acceptance by contemporaries of that and subsequent decades (eg. Qumran separatists) of a recent and almost immediately redundant 'prophetic' work - are quite significant (though I agree that they're not completely insurmountable), and seem to further highlight the bias apparent when scholars assert that weak theory as fact or a solid conclusion.

Again I agree with most scholars that these are not significant problems, but this ought to be pursued in the other thread. I'm reading up a bit on the subject at the moment so I may not get around to posting there for a little while.