Book of Daniel

[Mithrae]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04621b.htm
http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/daniel.html
I'll try to keep the OP brief, while giving at least an overview of some of the main issues and arguments on the topic. Obviously there'll be plenty of things still left for discussion.


Content and background
The book claims to have been written by a Jewish noble during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. It is written partly in Aramaic (2:4b to 7:28) and partly in Hebrew. The first six chapters are mostly narrative content and the last six are mostly vision/prophetic content. Based largely on one or both of those divisions in content, many theories of the origin of the work involve authorship by writers at different periods in history. Many scholars believe that the Aramaic/narrative sections (chapter 2-6) were written, together or separately, in the 3rd century BCE or earlier - possibly with chapters 1 or 7 also, or not.

The most common view of mainstream scholarship is that the Hebrew/prophetic portion (chapters 8-12) was written in a very specific time-frame around 168-165 BCE. The primary reason is simple: Chapters 8 and 11 accurately 'predict' events under the reign of Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (notably his defiling of the temple in 167BCE), but don't accurately predict his death in 164BCE or any subsequent events of the period.

Other evidence that the book wasn't written in the 6th century include things like historical inaccuracies, Greek loan-words, theological views and so on. From what I've learned so far, I believe these may provide sound reason for believing the Aramaic/narrative to be later works. However I also believe that aside from anti-supernatural presuppositions, there is little or no good reason for a 2nd-century date of the Hebrew/prophetic section - and indeed good reasons to believe it was written earlier (perhaps even in the 6th century).


Mainstream scholars' view
As a starting-point for discussion, let's pretend this is more of a parody. Essentially the theory is that around 168-165 BCE, the period in which Antiochus IV Epiphanes was enforcing policies in Judea aimed at Hellenizing the Jewish population and the Jewish Maccabean resistance movement was growing, a Jew wrote this work which shows God's power and foreknowledge in order to encourage his compatriots and offer hope for the future.

Notable components include God's foreknowledge of Alexander's conquest of Persia, the division of his kingdom and the persecution of Antiochus IV (chapter 8); a prediction in chapter 9 most obviously interpreted as saying that some 70 'sevens' after the end of the Babylonian exile God would make everything hunky-dory for his people (that is, around 50 BCE give or take); God's foreknowledge of the interactions between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic Greek kingdoms (ch11); and the prediction that after Antiochus IV's determined efforts to impose Greek culture on the Jews, at "the time of the end" he would abandon the gods of his fathers, exalt himself above every god and honour a foreign 'god of fortresses' (11:35ff). These genuine predictions were known to be obviously and blatantly irrelevant within less than a decade of writing, yet the Jewish community still valued the work so highly that it became part of the official canon of scripture.

Needless to say, while I can appreciate that accurate predictions of the future by an earlier-date Daniel might be considered 'supernatural' and thus not acceptable according to some philosophies, the alternative theory does not on face value seem very compelling.


Alleged evidence for later date
Historical inaccuracies - To my knowledge these are all in the Aramaic/narrative section, and include things such as the 7 years of Nebuchadnezzar's madness (ch4, which may be based on the illness of the later king Nabonidus); naming Belshazzar as the 'son' of Nebuchadnezzar; naming Belshazzar as the last king of Babylon (ch5 - not sure how valid this one is, since he was co-regent with his father Nabonidus); and having Darius the Mede as a king and conqueror of Babylon for the Medo-Persian empire (ch6), rather than Cyrus the Great. But in the later chapters of the book the only issues I know of, such as they are, are that Belshazzar is again called 'king' (8:1, which I'll argue is actually evidence for authenticity), and Darius the Mede is said to have been "made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom" (9:1) - strange, but not quite the same as being king of the Persian empire, especially since after leaving Babylon Daniel more conventionally dates the year by the reign of Cyrus (10:1).

Exclusion from the Nevi'im - The Tanakh is divided into the Torah (law), Nevi'im (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings), which many scholars believe represent successive stages of canonisation. The Nevi'im include the 'former prophets' (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the 'later prophets' (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Treisar, the twelve minor prophets). Unlike the Christian bible, the Jews place Daniel amongst the Ketuvim rather than the prophets. However the simple fact is that Daniel was not a prophet by Hebrew standards - he didn't pass on the 'word of the Lord' to the people, he simply had his own predictive visions. Even assuming some validity to the notion that the Nevi'im were 'canonised' at some point before the Ketuvim, it's hard to imagine why Daniel should have been included amongst the former or later Prophets rather than kept aside for another designation like Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth or Lamentations.

Theology/genre - Some argue that elements like belief in a resurrection (ch12) or the general vision/apocalyptic nature of the work are evidence for a later date. There are precursors (if not definite examples) of resurrection-type theology in Ezekiel and even Isaiah, and in any case the concept was important in the Persian culture with which a historical Daniel would have become acquainted. Likewise, while still prophets in the traditional sense Ezekiel and Zechariah are solid evidence for 6th century Jewish apocalyptic-type visions and content, so the argument is weak against Daniel.

Exclusion from Sirach's list - Around 190-180 BCE, Jesus ben-Sirach's work includes a list of the great figures of Jewish history, but with no mention of Daniel. The simple response is that the list doesn't include Ezra either, and Ezra is universally acknowledged as a pre-Maccabean figure. We can certainly speculate on the reasons for these omissions, be they theological, polemical or even simply forgetful, but the omission of Daniel clearly is not a significant or strong argument from silence.


Alleged evidence for earlier date
Widespread acceptance - Implied earlier, it's hard to imagine Daniel would be widely embraced by Jews if the most significant 'prophetic' sections had been written early in the 160s BCE and found to be useless later in that decade. Yet we can easily confirm from later in that same century that the book is used/referred to in 1 Maccabees, and by the contrasting perspective of the author/s of 2 Maccabees, and even by the separatist group with founded the Qumran community c. 150BCE. Others also; anyone impatient for more detail can have a read of this site. With inaccurate or at least irrelevant 'predictions' from 164BCE onwards, and only a year or three before that in which to supposedly gain acceptance, it's inconceivable that this supposedly 2nd century work would be embraced by any wide sampling of later 2nd century Jews. Yet this is what the evidence shows. This suggests the work was well-known before Maccabean times and had gained enough 'authority' that the divergence of the predictions after 164 was merely strange, rather than being proof of false prophecy.

Thematic incongruencies - It's not so much positive evidence for an earlier date as the problems, mentioned above, with a 2nd century theory for date of authorship. Why would a king who was devoting his efforts to imposing Greek culture on the Jews be predicted as abandoning the gods of his fathers and honouring a foreign god (11:35ff)? Why would a Jew under Antiochus IV's oppression write the vision of chapter 9, suggesting that more than a century into the future God will finally make everything wonderful? Many 'scholars' dismiss this as being a product of the author's extreme ignorance of the historical time-frame since the exile, and he'd actually meant to refer to his own day.

Knowledge of Belshazzar - Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, who was the last king of Babylon. Many 19th century scholars believed he was fictitious, since known history from the likes of Herodotus, Xenophon, Ctesias and so on make no reference to him. It was only with the discovery of a couple of cuneiform inscriptions in Mesopotamia (the Nabonidus cylinder and the Nabonidus chronicle, if memory serves) that it was discovered not only was Belshazzar an historical figure, but he was actually ruler or co-regent in his father's place while Nabonidus was ill for almost all of the last decade of his reign. More on this later, including references once I re-discover them: But the central point is that while 'king' Belshazzar makes a lot of sense for a 6th century Babylonian court official, without authentic information from Hebrew Daniel even the name Belshazzar would probably have been unknown to a 2nd century Jew, never mind considering him royalty!



While this is just an opening overview, I think it's a good basis on which to wonder: How reliably can we conclude that Hebrew/prophetic Daniel was written sometime before the 2nd century?

For that matter, what can we reasonably conclude about the Aramaic/narrative portions? Were they written separately or as part of the whole? Were they written in the 6th century, the 4th or 3rd, or were they added to an older Hebrew predictive work during Maccabean times, when so many of the predictions were fulfilled?

[historia]

But more importantly, as noted, Isaiah for one (and the others) did speak of the far-flung future - in Isaiah's case, for example, that Babylon would always be desolate and that the righteous kingdom would last forever.

I would say that the devil (or rather the apocalyptic) is in the details.

I don't think we see in Isaiah, or the other prophets, the exactness in prediction you see in Daniel, ostensibly about events hundreds of years into the future. Certainly nothing that would allow us to do the kind of detailed analysis you just provided above, tying each verse to specific, known historical events.

And yet this is common in apocalyptic writings.

Knowing of the fall of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, surely it's entirely to be expected that some 6th century Jews would predict the fall of the Persians also?

I would say it's not at all unreasonable to believe a 6th Century Jew might predict the fall of the Persian empire. But, as your analysis above shows, Daniel is far more concerned with the fall of the empire after the Persians (i.e., the Greeks) in his visions.

It's hard to imagine a 6th Century audience finding much personal relevance in such a prediction. It would be like me telling someone who is unemployed and desperately looking for work today that 400 years in the future there will be a really bad depression and then a super abundance of jobs. Thanks for nothing!

The difference, as far as I can tell, is that Isaiah is a prophet delivering a message which to some extent will be sealed up and hidden, partly by the people's obstinacy and partly by God's will, until some future time. Daniel is a visionary who is told to seal up his visions until some future time. While we might interpret different themes or emphases from the two works, from what is written it seems to be a difference simply between passively and actively hidden truths; and if Isaiah's came first, in a chapter referencing a seige and humbling of Jerusalem (29:1-4), I'm not sure how persuasively we could argue that Daniel's comments are out of place in the 6th century.

My argument here -- unlike the arguments above about genre -- is not that these words seem out of place in the 6th Century. But rather that these passages from Isaiah don't shed much light on the meaning of Daniel 12:4.

Whereas the 'sealed scroll' in Isaiah functions as a metaphor for the people not understanding Isaiah's message, the scroll in Daniel should be taken literally as the text of Daniel itself. Daniel is being told not to publish his book; that must wait until the 'time of the end'.

So what does that mean? If Daniel (or at least chs. 8-12) really was written in the 6th Century, presumably it would have been published (i.e., copied and distributed), since that's usually how ancient texts survived the span of centuries. If that was the case, does that mean the author didn't take this command, or his own vision, seriously?

Or are we to assume that the book really was sealed and kept from the public until 'the end'? By whom? And, if so, can we even then talk about Daniel as a text written to a 6th Century audience, speaking to their issues and concerns? No one in the 6th Century was intended to read it!

It seems to me, either way, the real audience for Daniel is Jews living in the 2nd Century. The text speaks to their needs much more than the needs of their 6th Century ancestors. It's always the audience at 'the end' to which apocalyptic works are written, and, of course, the time in which the author himself is writing.

I disagree that we can infer Revelation's author understood Daniel 12:4 to mean that it'd been written in hindsight.

Yes, sorry, I phrased that awkwardly. What I meant above is that the author of Revelation understands Daniel 12:4 to be about the publication of the book itself, rather than some other (metaphorical?) meaning. His own work is to be published right away, so the angel instructs him, since 'the end' is in his own day.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

The presence of information about 2nd century events would be the obvious one.

And...?

Once again, this forum involves non-professional discussion of Christianity and the possible arguments/evidence for it, which we can approach from numerous different angles - what scholars say, what philosophers say, ethical aspects, social aspects and so on. Regarding a proto-Christian work which purports to contain revealed information about future centuries, you appear in the above to be saying that information about future centuries is positive evidence for the falsehood of that claim!

Surely you can see the circularity of that argument, in this context? Especially since you have already dismissed as "an assumption" "not based on any evidence" the possibility of redaction in an older work, which accounts (albeit with fewer difficulties IMO) for precisely the same data in precisely the same manner! Is there any positive evidence that you know of for the 2nd century date, or only what you have characterised as assumptions based on no evidence?

The presence of information about second century events is good evidence for second century composition. It's not circular to conclude that by far the most likely way for an author to have knowledge of the events in question is that the events already happened (by putting forth a redactor you appear to agree with this). That is not an assumption based on no evidence, that's reasonable analysis of the evidence as per the historical method. What you're doing with the redactor is taking the same first "assumption" (knowledge of events is more likely if the events had already occurred) and then adding another assumption (phantom redaction) on top of that.

You really can't be saying that the idea that the idea that angels or prophecy are improbable compared to everyday events isn't based on actual available evidence? It's really simple. You look at the evidence. You note that we have mountains of evidence for everyday events. You note that we have no confirmed case of angels anywhere, ever, likewise for predictive prophecy.

I suspect that a quick Google search would reveal more than a couple of multiple-witness accounts of angels or demons. I myself have never encountered such things, but there've been three people I've known quite well and respected as intelligent and sensible folk who have claimed such; one of revealed knowledge, the other two of spiritual encounters, though only one of them was Christian (or should I say, became Christian as a result).

Yes, and the same can more or less be said for bigfoot, aliens, Elvis lives, etc. The paucity of evidence is why we put angels in a category with that stuff and not, say, books or chairs.

For your part you may have certain criteria by which you consider something 'confirmed,' and thus you state that "we have no confirmed case of angels anywhere, ever." But that is not a particularly strong argument.

The "certain criteria" I am using are the findings of scientific inquiry. If you want to use more relaxed criterea so that we can call angel anecdotes "confirmed" based little or no evidence then it's up to you to show that productive historical inquiry is possible with such an approach.

Do you think angels have been confirmed? By what standard? If you agree that we have no confirmed cases of angels you should also agree that this is an extremely strong argument against using one as an assumption when arguing the date of an ancient text.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly convinced by any of these accounts myself. However I don't think it's a valid argument to draw a line in the sand this side of all angelic or prophetic claims, and consider that to be evidence applicable to another such claim. Probability for the purposes of forming opinions? Certainly. But it's not evidence about Daniel's composition, is it?

What it seems to me you're arguing against is learning from experience, or applying experience to new situations. You want us to forget everything we know about angels, future prediction, etc. before we analyze data. But that's a gullible approach, not a rational one, it's relaxing the standards we would normally use.

I don't understand what that has to do with anything.

The Jews counted among their most sacred scriptures a command that false prophets should be put to death (Deuteronomy 18). Yet the Qumran community (founded c.150BCE), which though they preserved it did not name the late 3rd/early 2nd century apocalyptic 'book of Enoch' or its sections to be prophetic, did refer to Daniel as a prophet. Countering this point, you stated that "They accepted other then-recent works as well" - I'm simply curious which ones you were referring to.

I had Jubilees in mind. Didn't quite realize you were referring to specifically prophetic works, but I don't see what difference it makes. Clearly, the Qumran community accepted other new texts.

Presumably you have other examples in mind where a much later author used an apellation which would be incorrect except perhaps in a close or familiar context, concerning a figure otherwise all but lost to history?

I'm not sure why that would be relevant. All the 2nd century theory requires is the author to have access to a document or tradition with the guy's name on it.

And "all but lost to history"? For all we know the name was still common knowledge.

And for all we know angels visit dozens of people every year, all dismissed as hallucination or fraud.

Right, except you forget to point out that our evidence for angels is negligible, while our evidence that people used to know things that have since been forgotten is absolutely overwhelming.

It's an interesting approach to probability which you're adopting: The actual presence of numerous angelic accounts are dismissed as 'unconfirmed,' whereas the absense of any Greek or Hebrew reference to Belshazzar invites speculation that the knowledge may have been common.

My question is relevant because you stated that "This is, again, something that happens all the time." Did you make that claim without even a single example in mind?

I made the claim thinking it was so obvious that no example would be necessary, but here are a bunch.

If I propose a lost tradition, I can point to all the other lost traditions we know of as supporting examples. If I propose an angel, I can't point to anything remotely as substantial. Thus the latter assumption strains belief to an exponentially greater extent than the former.

The "unusual choice of words" being the ones appearing in all these different documents? Given that it is uncertain whether there even is a textual connection, and that assuming there is it is uncertain which came first, this seems to be a pretty negligible point in favour of either a 6th or 2nd century date.

I'd say that borrowing does seem more plausible, and that Daniel to Sirach is the less problematic direction, and thus that it is a point in favour of an earlier date. I agree that it's not a strong one however.

It is only a point in favour of 6th century Daniel if you assume borrowing occurred and assume the borrowing went a certain direction. I can't really see how this meaningfully contributes evidence to the 6th century date.

[Mithrae]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll just comment on Fuzzy's post for now and get back to Historia's later

I suspect that a quick Google search would reveal more than a couple of multiple-witness accounts of angels or demons. I myself have never encountered such things, but there've been three people I've known quite well and respected as intelligent and sensible folk who have claimed such; one of revealed knowledge, the other two of spiritual encounters, though only one of them was Christian (or should I say, became Christian as a result).

Yes, and the same can more or less be said for bigfoot, aliens, Elvis lives, etc. The paucity of evidence is why we put angels in a category with that stuff and not, say, books or chairs.

For your part you may have certain criteria by which you consider something 'confirmed,' and thus you state that "we have no confirmed case of angels anywhere, ever." But that is not a particularly strong argument.

The "certain criteria" I am using are the findings of scientific inquiry. If you want to use more relaxed criterea so that we can call angel anecdotes "confirmed" based little or no evidence then it's up to you to show that productive historical inquiry is possible with such an approach.

Do you think angels have been confirmed? By what standard? If you agree that we have no confirmed cases of angels you should also agree that this is an extremely strong argument against using one as an assumption when arguing the date of an ancient text.

Specific ancient historical knowledge mostly depends on anecdotal evidence at best, and often second- or third-hand reports and guesswork, both types of sources having been hand-copied half a dozen odd times through the centuries. Of the many first-hand reports of angel sightings out there, there's undoubtedly more which are probably not deliberate hoaxes than there are first- or second-hand reports of the existence of Socrates or Jesus, or indeed both of them combined. Obviously many of us put the angel stuff in a different category, and quite reasonably treat them with more scepticism. But in attempting to exclude them as a possibility, you seem to be inadvertently appealing to some rather specious reasoning. For starters Daniel's angel is not an assumption, it's the claim of the ancient text; and your reason for dismissing it is not even an argument from silence, but an argument from excluding-all-the-noise-as-not-quite-loud-enough!

The presence of information about 2nd century events would be the obvious one.

And...?

Once again, this forum involves non-professional discussion of Christianity and the possible arguments/evidence for it, which we can approach from numerous different angles - what scholars say, what philosophers say, ethical aspects, social aspects and so on. Regarding a proto-Christian work which purports to contain revealed information about future centuries, you appear in the above to be saying that information about future centuries is positive evidence for the falsehood of that claim!

Surely you can see the circularity of that argument, in this context? Especially since you have already dismissed as "an assumption" "not based on any evidence" the possibility of redaction in an older work, which accounts (albeit with fewer difficulties IMO) for precisely the same data in precisely the same manner! Is there any positive evidence that you know of for the 2nd century date, or only what you have characterised as assumptions based on no evidence?

The presence of information about second century events is good evidence for second century composition. It's not circular to conclude that by far the most likely way for an author to have knowledge of the events in question is that the events already happened (by putting forth a redactor you appear to agree with this). That is not an assumption based on no evidence, that's reasonable analysis of the evidence as per the historical method. What you're doing with the redactor is taking the same first "assumption" (knowledge of events is more likely if the events had already occurred) and then adding another assumption (phantom redaction) on top of that.

If we were to exclude the possibility that Daniel really was visited by an angel, then I agree that 2nd century influence is a reasonable analysis of the evidence. Assumption, here as with Daniel's angel, was your word not mine. I'm simply pointing out that (given that exclusion of possibilities) a 2nd or late 3rd century redactor is at least as reasonable an analysis of the evidence as a 2nd century author, since it better accounts for elements not comfortably at home in the 2nd century such as the use of 'king' Belshazzar, the 50BCE or so end-point of the 70 sevens and the absurd policy reversal predicted if the evil 'king of the north' was deliberately meant as Antiochus IV. (We might add the fact that Seleucus IV's rule is drastically incorrect or missing from the predictions, and the evil king is implied not to be royalty whereas Antiochus IV was son of Antiochus III.)

Obviously I'm not quite convinced by your argument from insufficient volume regarding angels. But it's a common view, so even if we go with it on a provisional basis, I reiterate that you still have not yet shown 2nd century composition to be the preferrable theory.

I don't understand what that has to do with anything.

The Jews counted among their most sacred scriptures a command that false prophets should be put to death (Deuteronomy 18). Yet the Qumran community (founded c.150BCE), which though they preserved it did not name the late 3rd/early 2nd century apocalyptic 'book of Enoch' or its sections to be prophetic, did refer to Daniel as a prophet. Countering this point, you stated that "They accepted other then-recent works as well" - I'm simply curious which ones you were referring to.

I had Jubilees in mind. Didn't quite realize you were referring to specifically prophetic works, but I don't see what difference it makes. Clearly, the Qumran community accepted other new texts.

It would make a big difference I think, but Historia has pointed out that the DSS manuscript calling Daniel a prophet is from the 1st century AD (like other such comments), far too late to be relevant to our discussion.

Presumably you have other examples in mind where a much later author used an apellation which would be incorrect except perhaps in a close or familiar context, concerning a figure otherwise all but lost to history?

[Snip. . . .]

It's an interesting approach to probability which you're adopting: The actual presence of numerous angelic accounts are dismissed as 'unconfirmed,' whereas the absense of any Greek or Hebrew reference to Belshazzar invites speculation that the knowledge may have been common.

My question is relevant because you stated that "This is, again, something that happens all the time." Did you make that claim without even a single example in mind?

I made the claim thinking it was so obvious that no example would be necessary, but here are a bunch.

If I propose a lost tradition, I can point to all the other lost traditions we know of as supporting examples. If I propose an angel, I can't point to anything remotely as substantial. Thus the latter assumption strains belief to an exponentially greater extent than the former.

They're rather more vague examples than I'd hoped for, but fair enough. So what it boils down to is that you consider the reference to 'king' Belshazzar weak evidence for 6th century authorship because as an alternative we can assume that some lost work used that term and our later author knew and used it instead of extant works like Herodotus. We evidently don't quite see eye to eye on how warranted and how big that assumption is; but on a subjective question like this I admit it's not particularly unreasonable to consider it closer to the weak end than the middle.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Specific ancient historical knowledge mostly depends on anecdotal evidence at best, and often second- or third-hand reports and guesswork, both types of sources having been hand-copied half a dozen odd times through the centuries. Of the many first-hand reports of angel sightings out there, there's undoubtedly more which are probably not deliberate hoaxes than there are first- or second-hand reports of the existence of Socrates or Jesus, or indeed both of them combined. Obviously many of us put the angel stuff in a different category, and quite reasonably treat them with more scepticism. But in attempting to exclude them as a possibility, you seem to be inadvertently appealing to some rather specious reasoning. For starters Daniel's angel is not an assumption, it's the claim of the ancient text; and your reason for dismissing it is not even an argument from silence, but an argument from excluding-all-the-noise-as-not-quite-loud-enough!

Again, no one is attempting to "exclude" them as a possibility. I am recognizing that as far as possibilities go, angels are extremely small ones, because what evidence we have for them is negligible (ie on the same level as bigfoot).

If you are going to argue for a sixth century date, you need to make assumptions. Since you need to explain how the sixth century author received knowledge about 2nd century events, a possible explanation is communication from an angel. Since you apparently recognize the weakness of this assumption, you propose a redactor as a more reasonable one. But that said, I'm not sure about distinction you make between assumption and ancient claim. What is the importance of this distinction in your view?

If we were to exclude the possibility that Daniel really was visited by an angel, then I agree that 2nd century influence is a reasonable analysis of the evidence. Assumption, here as with Daniel's angel, was your word not mine. I'm simply pointing out that (given that exclusion of possibilities) a 2nd or late 3rd century redactor is at least as reasonable an analysis of the evidence as a 2nd century author...

The big problem with the redactor that you're not pointing out here is the lack of evidence for one. Which passages would you propose redacted, and why? I'm sure you can see the problem if you're selecting passages not based on any textual indications but instead on whether they conflict with the rest of your theory of authorship.

...since it better accounts for elements not comfortably at home in the 2nd century such as the use of 'king' Belshazzar, the 50BCE or so end-point of the 70 sevens and the absurd policy reversal predicted if the evil 'king of the north' was deliberately meant as Antiochus IV. (We might add the fact that Seleucus IV's rule is drastically incorrect or missing from the predictions, and the evil king is implied not to be royalty whereas Antiochus IV was son of Antiochus III.)

I think these minor items (which the 2nd century theory also handles without much difficulty) hardly outweigh the more significant problem I mention above.

Obviously I'm not quite convinced by your argument from insufficient volume regarding angels. But it's a common view, so even if we go with it on a provisional basis, I reiterate that you still have not yet shown 2nd century composition to be the preferrable theory.

"Insufficient volume" is a strange way of putting it. "Insufficient evidence" is more like it - again, it's just applying our understanding of reality to the text. At this point, I'd think it sufficient to reiterate that the 2nd century theory does not require an unevidenced redactor to explain away numerous problematic verses.

It would make a big difference I think, but Historia has pointed out that the DSS manuscript calling Daniel a prophet is from the 1st century AD (like other such comments), far too late to be relevant to our discussion.

Why would it make a big difference?

They're rather more vague examples than I'd hoped for, but fair enough. So what it boils down to is that you consider the reference to 'king' Belshazzar weak evidence for 6th century authorship because as an alternative we can assume that some lost work used that term and our later author knew and used it instead of extant works like Herodotus. We evidently don't quite see eye to eye on how warranted and how big that assumption is; but on a subjective question like this I admit it's not particularly unreasonable to consider it closer to the weak end than the middle.

The reference to king Belshazzar is weak evidence for 6th century authorship because as an alternative we can assume the author had access to:
- some lost textual source containing the name
- some lost oral tradition using the name

Basically, we know with certainty the the author would have had access to many sources which we no longer know about. For one of these sources to recall king Belshazzar would not be especially surprising or notable.

[Mithrae]

But more importantly, as noted, Isaiah for one (and the others) did speak of the far-flung future - in Isaiah's case, for example, that Babylon would always be desolate and that the righteous kingdom would last forever.

I would say that the devil (or rather the apocalyptic) is in the details.

I don't think we see in Isaiah, or the other prophets, the exactness in prediction you see in Daniel, ostensibly about events hundreds of years into the future. Certainly nothing that would allow us to do the kind of detailed analysis you just provided above, tying each verse to specific, known historical events.

And yet this is common in apocalyptic writings.

Agreed, though some of the Pentateuch's blessings on Jacob's children and the tribes, and particularly some of the curses if they broke the covenant do portray some degree of supposedly far-flung specificity. The question again is whether we can with confidence say that the style of Daniel necessarily reflects later composition, or whether it might be somewhat distinct but not entirely anomalous work of the late 6th century on which many later works were modelled.

Knowing of the fall of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, surely it's entirely to be expected that some 6th century Jews would predict the fall of the Persians also?

I would say it's not at all unreasonable to believe a 6th Century Jew might predict the fall of the Persian empire. But, as your analysis above shows, Daniel is far more concerned with the fall of the empire after the Persians (i.e., the Greeks) in his visions.

It's hard to imagine a 6th Century audience finding much personal relevance in such a prediction. It would be like me telling someone who is unemployed and desperately looking for work today that 400 years in the future there will be a really bad depression and then a super abundance of jobs. Thanks for nothing!

Our 6th century circumstances - of many Jews hoping or even expecting that they'd regain an independant kingdom - would be more a matter of racial and cultural relevance than personal, I think. Perhaps a closer example might be folk who'd hoped/expected a golden age for humanity after the Great Depression and WW2 being told as the Cold War wound up tough luck, we'll have to stick it out for another few centuries and some even tougher times before that'll happen, but it will happen. Star Trek might be a good example here; a message ultimately of hope for the species, and a certain "it could be worse" cheeriness for the interim.

The difference, as far as I can tell, is that Isaiah is a prophet delivering a message which to some extent will be sealed up and hidden, partly by the people's obstinacy and partly by God's will, until some future time. Daniel is a visionary who is told to seal up his visions until some future time. While we might interpret different themes or emphases from the two works, from what is written it seems to be a difference simply between passively and actively hidden truths; and if Isaiah's came first, in a chapter referencing a seige and humbling of Jerusalem (29:1-4), I'm not sure how persuasively we could argue that Daniel's comments are out of place in the 6th century.

My argument here -- unlike the arguments above about genre -- is not that these words seem out of place in the 6th Century. But rather that these passages from Isaiah don't shed much light on the meaning of Daniel 12:4.

Whereas the 'sealed scroll' in Isaiah functions as a metaphor for the people not understanding Isaiah's message, the scroll in Daniel should be taken literally as the text of Daniel itself. Daniel is being told not to publish his book; that must wait until the 'time of the end'.

So what does that mean? If Daniel (or at least chs. 8-12) really was written in the 6th Century, presumably it would have been published (i.e., copied and distributed), since that's usually how ancient texts survived the span of centuries. If that was the case, does that mean the author didn't take this command, or his own vision, seriously?

Or are we to assume that the book really was sealed and kept from the public until 'the end'? By whom? And, if so, can we even then talk about Daniel as a text written to a 6th Century audience, speaking to their issues and concerns? No one in the 6th Century was intended to read it!

It seems to me, either way, the real audience for Daniel is Jews living in the 2nd Century. The text speaks to their needs much more than the needs of their 6th Century ancestors. It's always the audience at 'the end' to which apocalyptic works are written, and, of course, the time in which the author himself is writing.

There's certainly quite a bit of 2nd century focus, as a time of trouble leading up to the Jews' long-awaited autonomy. But how much we can make of that depends quite a bit on interpretation I think, most especially in the presumption that the 70 sevens of ch9 were really meant to refer to the 2nd century, rather than the mid 1st century (or later). As it stands the earliest possible start date 538 minus 490 gives 48BCE for the end of the last seven, and since ch11 skips over any number of Persian monarchs and several Seleucid kings also, we don't have great reasons for supposing that the complete reversal of hellenizing policies (11:36-38) was ever intended for Antiochus IV or even an immediate sucessor. In fact as I mentioned to Fuzzy, issues like the omission of Seleucus IV and uncertainty over the evil king's royal status don't fit perfectly with a 2nd century focus either.

I disagree that we can infer Revelation's author understood Daniel 12:4 to mean that it'd been written in hindsight.

Yes, sorry, I phrased that awkwardly. What I meant above is that the author of Revelation understands Daniel 12:4 to be about the publication of the book itself, rather than some other (metaphorical?) meaning. His own work is to be published right away, so the angel instructs him, since 'the end' is in his own day.

Obviously if Hebrew Daniel were written in the 6th century we could only speculate on when (posthumously?) and how limited/widely it was copied and preserved. One possible advantage of keeping such fanciful visions quiet during the author's own life, of course, could be avoiding any embarassment if they're ridiculed or turn out to be hopelessly wrong. In fact as the discussion goes on its becoming more apparent to me how large a role speculation and educated guesswork plays in either theory, early or late date. I can't pretend that I'm making a convincing case for the former, but I think I've raised some points worth considering and there do seem to be significant problems with the late-date theory also.

------

Specific ancient historical knowledge mostly depends on anecdotal evidence at best, and often second- or third-hand reports and guesswork, both types of sources having been hand-copied half a dozen odd times through the centuries. Of the many first-hand reports of angel sightings out there, there's undoubtedly more which are probably not deliberate hoaxes than there are first- or second-hand reports of the existence of Socrates or Jesus, or indeed both of them combined. Obviously many of us put the angel stuff in a different category, and quite reasonably treat them with more scepticism. But in attempting to exclude them as a possibility, you seem to be inadvertently appealing to some rather specious reasoning. For starters Daniel's angel is not an assumption, it's the claim of the ancient text; and your reason for dismissing it is not even an argument from silence, but an argument from excluding-all-the-noise-as-not-quite-loud-enough!

Again, no one is attempting to "exclude" them as a possibility. I am recognizing that as far as possibilities go, angels are extremely small ones, because what evidence we have for them is negligible (ie on the same level as bigfoot).

An argument from scientific silence actually has some merit in the case of an organic creature/species in a particular region - we have good reason to expect that if it were real, we'd find some scientific evidence. The same can not be said when neither the habitat nor the precise nature of the beings in question is known.

That said, I've already tried to point out the subjective nature of your views here; to a person convinced that they've seen an angel, it's not negligible evidence or an extremely small possibility, it's all but certain. You or I might not put so much trust in their perceptions, recollections or integrity, but we can hardly claim that all angel sightings are deliberate lies. Perhaps someone honest, smart and level-headed believed they saw an angel - how probable is it that they really did? What if we looked at five or six angel sightings?

If we guessed there were just a 20% chance that an angel sighting were genuine, but we had four such sightings to work with, that would give us a 59% probability that angels exist (1 minus 0.8^4). And yet there are hundreds, probably thousands of reported angel sightings out there. So you must be saying of one such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and of the next such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and so on down the line. You have not, I imagine, examined all or even most of these alleged angel sightings, so in order to assert that angels are an extremely small possibility it would seem that you must be dismissing each and all of these reports as extremely unlikely out of hand.

I'm just gonna go back to my original comment here:

That's certainly a valid opinion. Another valid opinion is that the claim made by Daniel could possibly be true. As I initially replied to you, discussing the probability of angels vs. the probability of counter-productive and counter-intuitive 'prophecy' vs. the probability of redactorial correction of earlier visions is much more about our (or scholars') guesses than about actual available evidence. You're obviously welcome to your opinion, but pending something more substantial I don't think it provides fertile ground for discussion in this thread.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Again, no one is attempting to "exclude" them as a possibility. I am recognizing that as far as possibilities go, angels are extremely small ones, because what evidence we have for them is negligible (ie on the same level as bigfoot).

An argument from scientific silence actually has some merit in the case of an organic creature/species in a particular region - we have good reason to expect that if it were real, we'd find some scientific evidence. The same can not be said when neither the habitat nor the precise nature of the beings in question is known.

An extreme lack of evidence is an extreme lack of evidence. If you think it's a good argument that the magical nature of angels make them more mysterious and hard to find evidence for, I will direct you to the concept of Russel's teapot.

That said, I've already tried to point out the subjective nature of your views here; to a person convinced that they've seen an angel, it's not negligible evidence or an extremely small possibility, it's all but certain. You or I might not put so much trust in their perceptions, recollections or integrity, but we can hardly claim that all angel sightings are deliberate lies. Perhaps someone honest, smart and level-headed believed they saw an angel - how probable is it that they really did? What if we looked at five or six angel sightings?

If we guessed there were just a 20% chance that an angel sighting were genuine, but we had four such sightings to work with, that would give us a 59% probability that angels exist (1 minus 0.8^4). And yet there are hundreds, probably thousands of reported angel sightings out there. So you must be saying of one such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and of the next such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and so on down the line. You have not, I imagine, examined all or even most of these alleged angel sightings, so in order to assert that angels are an extremely small possibility it would seem that you must be dismissing each and all of these reports as extremely unlikely out of hand.

The whole point of the scientific, and by extension historical, methodologies in play here is to strive to be as objective as possible. When we analyze historical texts, we aren't just analyzing them for people who believe in angels. We're just analyzing them as objectively as possible. That means unconfirmed subjective beliefs are out of place. The whole point of scientific knowledge is that it is common between everyone. If you want to analyze the text in light of not our shared knowledge, but instead in light of the special knowledge of people who believe in angels, that's ok - but then you aren't doing history, you're doing theology.

When we have an angel claim, such as that in Daniel, we would be astronomically overstating the odds if we said there was a 20% chance for it to be genuine. To say there is a 20% chance the claim is genuine implies that in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 20% of them have turned out to be genuine. In reality, in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 0% have turned out to be genuine.

There is absolutely no dismissing out of hand going on here. Do you have any confirmed angel sightings to share with us? If not, the only responsible way to approach the text with a provisional probability of ~0% for angels (not quite zero, since we can't say angels are impossible, but low enough to reflect our experience). There is no need to dismiss any claims, there is no reason to investigate every single claim and prove it to be a hoax. We just note that there are no angel claims with evidence differentiating them from deception/delusion/etc.

This is why the 6th century date is so problematic and unpopular. If you are going to follow the same rules we follow when we analyze the rest of history, then you're going to have to assume some kind of magic like angels or some miraculous series of coincidences like your redactor.

I'm just gonna go back to my original comment here:

That's certainly a valid opinion. Another valid opinion is that the claim made by Daniel could possibly be true. As I initially replied to you, discussing the probability of angels vs. the probability of counter-productive and counter-intuitive 'prophecy' vs. the probability of redactorial correction of earlier visions is much more about our (or scholars') guesses than about actual available evidence. You're obviously welcome to your opinion, but pending something more substantial I don't think it provides fertile ground for discussion in this thread.

You're still incorrect. Angels are taken to be unlikely entirely based on available evidence (or lack thereof).

I only hope that you can recognize how crippling your approach is for our ability to do history. In history, we don't forget everything we know about the world when we analyze a text, instead we take what we know and apply it to what we don't.

[Mithrae]

I'm just gonna go back to my original comment here:

That's certainly a valid opinion. Another valid opinion is that the claim made by Daniel could possibly be true. As I initially replied to you, discussing the probability of angels vs. the probability of counter-productive and counter-intuitive 'prophecy' vs. the probability of redactorial correction of earlier visions is much more about our (or scholars') guesses than about actual available evidence. You're obviously welcome to your opinion, but pending something more substantial I don't think it provides fertile ground for discussion in this thread.

You're still incorrect. Angels are taken to be unlikely entirely based on available evidence (or lack thereof).

I only hope that you can recognize how crippling your approach is for our ability to do history. In history, we don't forget everything we know about the world when we analyze a text, instead we take what we know and apply it to what we don't.

Since we can't truly know what happened, any discussion of ancient events must include the weighing of probabilities in the hopes of finding the most plausible explanations of the data. Ideally we'd like a single explanation which far outshines all others, though without corresponding archaeological data it's often the case that the most plausible theories available depend to a large extent on the tentative reliability and especially understandability of our ancient sources. For example we generally expect their information to be somewhat biased or inaccurate according to the authors' perspectives and reasons for writing, even though we know that they might have been wildly inaccurate against their own perspective or abnormally meticulous about accuracy.

But discussions of probability are limited by the fact that obviously not everyone agrees on how probable each type of event actually is. For example in this discussion I've raised the point that in the 2nd century Daniel's 70 sevens would be implying over a century of further oppression for his people, and abandoning the gods of his fathers to honour a foreign god (11:36-38) would constitute a complete reversal of Antiochus IV's hellenizing policies. I consider these to be significantly improbable and contrary to the purported understanding of the author's purpose which the 2nd century theory suggests. But you have characterized these counter-productive and counter-intuitive elements as something which "happens every day" and "not an especially problematic assumption."

A second example of differing views on probability is that what little I've learned from the field of ancient literary studies suggests to me that redactorial influence is not infrequently suggested as a plausible theory (and in the case of Daniel multiple authorship is already acknowledged), certainly far more commonly than a theory that the author just "wrote something that sounds dumb to us." But the (probably pre-187 BCE) touch-up which I consider - presuming a naturalist approach - a quite plausible explanation for all the data, you have characterized as an "assumption... not based on any evidence" and "some miraculous series of coincidences like your redactor."

So in the third and most controversial case obviously I don't expect that you'd ever acknowledge a probability greater than ~0% for angels. But what I would appreciate is if you were to actually read what I have written, many times, about the purpose of this thread:

• From the OP:
  ...aside from anti-supernatural presuppositions...
  
  From my first response to you:
  This thread was intended to discuss (as much as possible) the extent and limits of what is known about Daniel, prior to the supposition that visitation by angels is impossible/extremely improbable.
  
  From my next reply:
  Members of this forum are not participating in a context of professional scholarship, are they? Surely you're not suggesting that constraints of an academic field should limit what we here are supposed to think?
  Again, what you're saying might have some bearing on whether the academic discipline is justified in ruling out certain possibilities and presenting alternative theories as de facto truth. But that isn't the subject of this thread...
  
  From my next reply:
  Fuzzy Dunlop wrote: Surely I'm not. I thought we were talking about how professional scholars should present this issue?
  Mithrae wrote: That was the subject of the other thread
  (Also the quote above)
  
  From my next reply:
  Once again, this forum involves non-professional discussion of Christianity and the possible arguments/evidence for it, which we can approach from numerous different angles - what scholars say, what philosophers say, ethical aspects, social aspects and so on. Regarding a proto-Christian work which purports to contain revealed information about future centuries, you appear in the above to be saying that information about future centuries is positive evidence for the falsehood of that claim!
  Surely you can see the circularity of that argument, in this context?

But surprise surprise, here you are yet again appealing to the naturalist methodology of the academic discipline of history. Surely it can't be this hard to understand what I'm saying? My spelling, punctuation and grammar are reasonably accurate, I'm sure. Let me put it in nice blue letters for you:

This thread is not specifically about the discipline of history.
This thread does not presume the near impossibility of angels.

No-one is forcing you to participate, I'm sure. But if a basic and apparently ineradicable component of your debating toolbox is that we can't discuss some moderate possibility to such-and-such aspects of religions because it'd interfere with such-and-such academic methodologies, I'd suggest that you're doing yourself a disservice by not choosing more carefully how and in which threads you engage yourself in a Debating Christianity and Religion forum.

Again, no one is attempting to "exclude" them as a possibility. I am recognizing that as far as possibilities go, angels are extremely small ones, because what evidence we have for them is negligible (ie on the same level as bigfoot).

An argument from scientific silence actually has some merit in the case of an organic creature/species in a particular region - we have good reason to expect that if it were real, we'd find some scientific evidence. The same can not be said when neither the habitat nor the precise nature of the beings in question is known.

An extreme lack of evidence is an extreme lack of evidence. If you think it's a good argument that the magical nature of angels make them more mysterious and hard to find evidence for, I will direct you to the concept of Russel's teapot.

As we've been discussing, there is a plethora of alleged eyewitness and even photographic reports regarding angels. If you equate that with an extreme lack of evidence, or if you're unable to understand the difference between those types of reports and scientific evidence, I'm not sure there's any point in continuing the discussion. However I'll hope that you're merely being facetious in defence of your poorly chosen analogy - you are not, I hope, seriously suggesting that we should expect readily available scientific evidence on this subject even if it were true.

That said, I've already tried to point out the subjective nature of your views here; to a person convinced that they've seen an angel, it's not negligible evidence or an extremely small possibility, it's all but certain. You or I might not put so much trust in their perceptions, recollections or integrity, but we can hardly claim that all angel sightings are deliberate lies. Perhaps someone honest, smart and level-headed believed they saw an angel - how probable is it that they really did? What if we looked at five or six angel sightings?

If we guessed there were just a 20% chance that an angel sighting were genuine, but we had four such sightings to work with, that would give us a 59% probability that angels exist (1 minus 0.8^4). And yet there are hundreds, probably thousands of reported angel sightings out there. So you must be saying of one such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and of the next such report "That's either some kind of deception/prank or some kind of delusion/imagination" ... and so on down the line. You have not, I imagine, examined all or even most of these alleged angel sightings, so in order to assert that angels are an extremely small possibility it would seem that you must be dismissing each and all of these reports as extremely unlikely out of hand.

The whole point of the scientific, and by extension historical, methodologies in play here is to strive to be as objective as possible. When we analyze historical texts, we aren't just analyzing them for people who believe in angels. We're just analyzing them as objectively as possible. That means unconfirmed subjective beliefs are out of place. The whole point of scientific knowledge is that it is common between everyone. If you want to analyze the text in light of not our shared knowledge, but instead in light of the special knowledge of people who believe in angels, that's ok - but then you aren't doing history, you're doing theology.

It would be history with a small change in methodology from the academic discipline. Namely, that what ancient sources proffer as first-hand observation should not be slave to a prior distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' claims as a decisive factor in our theories, but evaluated on all their merits with 'supernatural' elements raising healthy scepticism along similar lines as propaganda bias or conflicts with other accounts. As I've pointed out above, since a single genuine angelic encounter would validate their existence, presuming a probability of ~0% for angels is not objective at all but rather is constitutes dismissal of all the many such alleged encounters.

When we have an angel claim, such as that in Daniel, we would be astronomically overstating the odds if we said there was a 20% chance for it to be genuine. To say there is a 20% chance the claim is genuine implies that in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 20% of them have turned out to be genuine. In reality, in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 0% have turned out to be genuine.

I'm sorry, but this is absurd: Following that reasoning, we must suppose a probability of ~0% for every new thing which humans observe, since obviously there's never been such an observation before. That's not how any rational person guesses at the plausibility of another's claims, since the truth or falsehood of one person's claim is completely unaffected by the truth or falsehood of others' claims. At most similarity to other claims (whether the other claims are true or false) is a small factor increasing scepticism or trust, secondary to how we view the trustworthiness of the claimant's own integrity and level-headedness, the consistency and explanatory potential of their claims and so on. A girl at work today (who ridicules the idea of God incidentally) told me that she'd once seen an angel, but since she was younger than 12 at the time I presume a very low probability that it's a reliable account. On the other hand another person I knew for several years, a doctor (and also non-theist), told me of some spiritual encounters she'd had as an adult - a rather more plausible source obviously, and one for which I would guess upwards of 80% probability of genuineness were it not for some minor qualms about whether she was pulling my leg, even though I'd never known her to be deceptive.

There is absolutely no dismissing out of hand going on here. Do you have any confirmed angel sightings to share with us? If not, the only responsible way to approach the text with a provisional probability of ~0% for angels (not quite zero, since we can't say angels are impossible, but low enough to reflect our experience). There is no need to dismiss any claims, there is no reason to investigate every single claim and prove it to be a hoax. We just note that there are no angel claims with evidence differentiating them from deception/delusion/etc.

As I've explained at length above and of course in numerous earlier posts, for the purposes of this particular Debating Christianity thread I have not considered it valid to presume nigh impossibility for angels which must then be scientifically proven to have merit. For the purposes of this thread, the burden of proof regarding angels is not and never was intended to be on Christians. You have given no convincing argument or evidence to suggest that the probability of angels' existence is ~0% rather than ~1% or ~5%, ~10% or even higher. Therefore as I've said many times, however reasonable you might consider your opinion of nigh impossibility for angels to be, you have not managed to rule out the definite contending possibility that Daniel's claim could be true.

If you think you can actually show the probability of angels' existence to be extremely low, by all means feel free to make the attempt. But I hope all this has finally clarified that I do not, and never have, considered either academic historical methodology or a supposedly unmet burden of proof to be valid arguments that Daniel's angelic claim is probably false.

(BTW I apologise if frustration got the best of me too much earlier in the post, but it's late and I'm too lazy to fix it up )

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Since we can't truly know what happened, any discussion of ancient events must include the weighing of probabilities in the hopes of finding the most plausible explanations of the data. Ideally we'd like a single explanation which far outshines all others, though without corresponding archaeological data it's often the case that the most plausible theories available depend to a large extent on the tentative reliability and especially understandability of our ancient sources. For example we generally expect their information to be somewhat biased or inaccurate according to the authors' perspectives and reasons for writing, even though we know that they might have been wildly inaccurate against their own perspective or abnormally meticulous about accuracy.

But discussions of probability are limited by the fact that obviously not everyone agrees on how probable each type of event actually is. For example in this discussion I've raised the point that in the 2nd century Daniel's 70 sevens would be implying over a century of further oppression for his people, and abandoning the gods of his fathers to honour a foreign god (11:36-38) would constitute a complete reversal of Antiochus IV's hellenizing policies. I consider these to be significantly improbable and contrary to the purported understanding of the author's purpose which the 2nd century theory suggests. But you have characterized these counter-productive and counter-intuitive elements as something which "happens every day" and "not an especially problematic assumption."

On what basis can you possibly disagree with me? It's a bad prediction. People make bad predictions every day. I am having trouble understanding why someone making a bad prediction is so shocking and impossible to you.

A second example of differing views on probability is that what little I've learned from the field of ancient literary studies suggests to me that redactorial influence is not infrequently suggested as a plausible theory (and in the case of Daniel multiple authorship is already acknowledged), certainly far more commonly than a theory that the author just "wrote something that sounds dumb to us." But the (probably pre-187 BCE) touch-up which I consider - presuming a naturalist approach - a quite plausible explanation for all the data, you have characterized as an "assumption... not based on any evidence" and "some miraculous series of coincidences like your redactor."

An author writing something that sounds dumb in hindsight isn't an uncommon conclusion in history by any means and I'm not sure why you think it is.

"Redactor" isn't just a word that magically makes problems go away. If there are several verses that are problematic to your theory, you can't just say a redactor put them there. That's not an assumption based on any textual evidence, that's an assumption to fill inconvenient holes in your theory. Such assumptions, needless to say, greatly weaken a theory.

So in the third and most controversial case obviously I don't expect that you'd ever acknowledge a probability greater than ~0% for angels. But what I would appreciate is if you were to actually read what I have written, many times, about the purpose of this thread:

• From the OP:
  ...aside from anti-supernatural presuppositions...
  
  From my first response to you:
  This thread was intended to discuss (as much as possible) the extent and limits of what is known about Daniel, prior to the supposition that visitation by angels is impossible/extremely improbable.
  
  From my next reply:
  Members of this forum are not participating in a context of professional scholarship, are they? Surely you're not suggesting that constraints of an academic field should limit what we here are supposed to think?
  Again, what you're saying might have some bearing on whether the academic discipline is justified in ruling out certain possibilities and presenting alternative theories as de facto truth. But that isn't the subject of this thread...
  
  From my next reply:
  Fuzzy Dunlop wrote: Surely I'm not. I thought we were talking about how professional scholars should present this issue?
  Mithrae wrote: That was the subject of the other thread
  (Also the quote above)
  
  From my next reply:
  Once again, this forum involves non-professional discussion of Christianity and the possible arguments/evidence for it, which we can approach from numerous different angles - what scholars say, what philosophers say, ethical aspects, social aspects and so on. Regarding a proto-Christian work which purports to contain revealed information about future centuries, you appear in the above to be saying that information about future centuries is positive evidence for the falsehood of that claim!
  Surely you can see the circularity of that argument, in this context?

But surprise surprise, here you are yet again appealing to the naturalist methodology of the academic discipline of history. Surely it can't be this hard to understand what I'm saying? My spelling, punctuation and grammar are reasonably accurate, I'm sure. Let me put it in nice blue letters for you:

This thread is not specifically about the discipline of history.
This thread does not presume the near impossibility of angels.

No-one is forcing you to participate, I'm sure. But if a basic and apparently ineradicable component of your debating toolbox is that we can't discuss some moderate possibility to such-and-such aspects of religions because it'd interfere with such-and-such academic methodologies, I'd suggest that you're doing yourself a disservice by not choosing more carefully how and in which threads you engage yourself in a Debating Christianity and Religion forum.

I understand the approach you want to take. I have been and continue to point out the problems with that approach. I also feel it is important to point out that what you are doing (approaching the text with a pro-supernatural bias) is theology, not history.

As we've been discussing, there is a plethora of alleged eyewitness and even photographic reports regarding angels. If you equate that with an extreme lack of evidence, or if you're unable to understand the difference between those types of reports and scientific evidence, I'm not sure there's any point in continuing the discussion. However I'll hope that you're merely being facetious in defence of your poorly chosen analogy - you are not, I hope, seriously suggesting that we should expect readily available scientific evidence on this subject even if it were true.

I'm quite serious. Yes, I would expect scientific evidence for beings that have interacted with humans for thousands of years, and doing things like telling people the future. You wouldn't?

It would be history with a small change in methodology from the academic discipline. Namely, that what ancient sources proffer as first-hand observation should not be slave to a prior distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' claims as a decisive factor in our theories, but evaluated on all their merits with 'supernatural' elements raising healthy scepticism along similar lines as propaganda bias or conflicts with other accounts. As I've pointed out above, since a single genuine angelic encounter would validate their existence, presuming a probability of ~0% for angels is not objective at all but rather is constitutes dismissal of all the many such alleged encounters.

It doesn't constitute a dismissal. It constitutes recognizing that none of the encounters have been shown to be genuine. If no angel claim has ever been shown to be genuine, a theory that requires the assumption that an angel claim is genuine is a weak theory indeed.

Your "small change in methodology" turns history into theology. That's what happens when you do history while selectively placing certain parts of our common experience out of bounds.

When we have an angel claim, such as that in Daniel, we would be astronomically overstating the odds if we said there was a 20% chance for it to be genuine. To say there is a 20% chance the claim is genuine implies that in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 20% of them have turned out to be genuine. In reality, in the past we have analyzed angel claims and 0% have turned out to be genuine.

I'm sorry, but this is absurd: Following that reasoning, we must suppose a probability of ~0% for every new thing which humans observe, since obviously there's never been such an observation before. That's not how any rational person guesses at the plausibility of another's claims, since the truth or falsehood of one person's claim is completely unaffected by the truth or falsehood of others' claims.

I suppose that depends on whether you consider historians rational persons. Claims of unique events ought to be met with greater skepticism than claims of everyday events. This is a great way to avoid being swindled in your day-to-day life and is a principle that applies quite nicely to historical analysis.

At most similarity to other claims (whether the other claims are true or false) is a small factor increasing scepticism or trust, secondary to how we view the trustworthiness of the claimant's own integrity and level-headedness, the consistency and explanatory potential of their claims and so on. A girl at work today (who ridicules the idea of God incidentally) told me that she'd once seen an angel, but since she was younger than 12 at the time I presume a very low probability that it's a reliable account. On the other hand another person I knew for several years, a doctor (and also non-theist), told me of some spiritual encounters she'd had as an adult - a rather more plausible source obviously, and one for which I would guess upwards of 80% probability of genuineness were it not for some minor qualms about whether she was pulling my leg, even though I'd never known her to be deceptive.

In history, we don't just make up numbers based on how we feel about the source. We try to base those numbers on something - objective evidence. We consider the possibility of angels based on our common knowledge, not on how the historian happens to feel about angel stories.

As I've explained at length above and of course in numerous earlier posts, for the purposes of this particular Debating Christianity thread I have not considered it valid to presume nigh impossibility for angels which must then be scientifically proven to have merit. For the purposes of this thread, the burden of proof regarding angels is not and never was intended to be on Christians. You have given no convincing argument or evidence to suggest that the probability of angels' existence is ~0% rather than ~1% or ~5%, ~10% or even higher. Therefore as I've said many times, however reasonable you might consider your opinion of nigh impossibility for angels to be, you have not managed to rule out the definite contending possibility that Daniel's claim could be true.

If you think you can actually show the probability of angels' existence to be extremely low, by all means feel free to make the attempt. But I hope all this has finally clarified that I do not, and never have, considered either academic historical methodology or a supposedly unmet burden of proof to be valid arguments that Daniel's angelic claim is probably false.

There is no need to rule out the possibility that Danel's claim could be true. That's not how the burden of proof works (I mean the actual burden of proof, not the hypothetical burden of proof you've invented for the purpose of the thread). If you actually reject the burden of proof that would go a ways to explaining how you are able to rationalize your position.

The math is simple: out of all angel claims, 0 have been shown to be genuine. An historical theory that assumes the existence of something that has never been shown to exist is an extremely weak theory. On the other hand if you reject the approach of history you can do your own math, and if you think that angels probably exist then it isn't a problematic assumption to make.

As it stands, I'm mostly interested in how you think we should do history. It appears you are arguing for more credence being given to subjective viewpoints, and lower standards of evidence in general. There's nothing wrong with this, really, and I suppose it might allow you to hold to the 6th century date. I don't have any problem as long as you recognize that what you're doing isn't history.

[Mithrae]

I am having trouble understanding why someone making a bad prediction is so shocking and impossible to you.

I never said it was impossible. Try reading what I wrote.

An author writing something that sounds dumb in hindsight isn't an uncommon conclusion in history by any means and I'm not sure why you think it is.

It would be 'dumb' for the author's own day and purpose.

"Redactor" isn't just a word that magically makes problems go away. If there are several verses that are problematic to your theory, you can't just say a redactor put them there. That's not an assumption based on any textual evidence, that's an assumption to fill inconvenient holes in your theory.

As I've pointed out, by that criterion the whole 2nd century composition theory is an 'assumption' to fill holes. The 'analysis of the evidence' which you support is not a different type of approach in any way - though the theory does have more difficulties, it seems. Later redaction is not a solution to any problematic verses, it's a possible solution to the supposition that Daniel wasn't really told the future by an angel. You 'assume' c167-164 BCE century composition; I 'assume' c187 BCE or earlier corrections to earlier predictions. The only difference is that you theory is significantly weaker when it comes to explaining the 70 sevens, the omission of Seleucus IV, the implication that the evil king was not royalty and the policy reversal of 11:36-38.



You have not provided any arguments or evidence for the notion that the probability of angels' existence is ~0% rather than ~1%, ~10% or even higher, so I won't bother responding to the rest.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I am having trouble understanding why someone making a bad prediction is so shocking and impossible to you.

I never said it was impossible. Try reading what I wrote.

"Impossible" was an unfortunate rhetorical choice on my part. I'll rephrase:

I am having trouble understanding why someone making a bad prediction is so shocking and improbable to you.

An author writing something that sounds dumb in hindsight isn't an uncommon conclusion in history by any means and I'm not sure why you think it is.

It would be 'dumb' for the author's own day and purpose.

Even so, an author writing something that sounds dumb isn't an uncommon conclusion in history by any means and I'm not sure why you think it is. I also wonder whether we can understand the author's milieu to such a detailed extent as to say with much confidence what his exact mindset was or ought to have been, verse by verse. Which isn't to say that some remark may not be more at home several centuries earlier, just that such issues of human nature and worldview are much more flexible to interpretation than accurate information about the future.

As I've pointed out, by that criterion the whole 2nd century composition theory is an 'assumption' to fill holes. The 'analysis of the evidence' which you support is not a different type of approach in any way

Which "holes" do you think the 2nd century "assumption" fills? If we are discussing the date of authorship, we aren't assuming our conclusions. We are looking at some evidence and deciding which date best explains it.

- though the theory does have more difficulties, it seems. Later redaction is not a solution to any problematic verses, it's a possible solution to the supposition that Daniel wasn't really told the future by an angel.

It's exactly a solution to problematic verses. There are verses that contain information about second century events. That makes them problematic to a 6th century theory. How are you going to solve this problem?

- assume the existence of an angel, or

- assume the interference of a redactor in the problematic verses

You 'assume' c167-164 BCE century composition; I 'assume' c187 BCE or earlier corrections to earlier predictions. The only difference is that you theory is significantly weaker when it comes to explaining the 70 sevens, the omission of Seleucus IV, the implication that the evil king was not royalty and the policy reversal of 11:36-38.

I think it's been adequately explained that these issues are miniscule compared to the assumptions required to hold to the 6th century date (at least according to the criteria used in history).

You have not provided any arguments or evidence for the notion that the probability of angels' existence is ~0% rather than ~1%, ~10% or even higher, so I won't bother responding to the rest.

That's fine, I'm satisfied with the arguments I've made.