Jonathan McLatchie recently wrote an article about the dating of the book of Daniel. The article makes a lot of good points and is well worth reading. He's written a lot of other good material as well, which you can find here. He also has a YouTube channel.
Steve Hays wrote a lot about Daniel and the dating of the book. There's a section in the post here that links several examples. You can find more by searching our archives. The page just linked also cites posts we've written on other issues related to prophecy more broadly, and those have some relevance to Daniel. See here, including the comments section of the thread, for other online resources on when Daniel was written. For example, Glenn Miller has written a lot about the manuscript evidence and pre-Maccabean use of Daniel.
I've done some work on the evidence for prophecies of Daniel fulfilled after the Maccabean era, meaning that the fulfillments offer evidence for Christianity even if we accept a Maccabean date for Daniel or a portion of it. You can find some examples here. The post here discusses problems with arguing that Jesus fulfilled Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy by natural rather than supernatural means. When a fourth kingdom arises after Greece, in the form of the Roman empire, Jesus announces the coming of a kingdom of God during the days of that empire, that kingdom becomes popular to the point of being accepted by billions of Gentiles, Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man of Daniel 7, he dies during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2, that death is perceived early on as making a final atonement for sin, and the Romans go on to destroy both the city of Jerusalem and the temple, you can't explain that series of events that line up so well with Daniel's prophecies by dating the book or a portion of it to the second century B.C.
I really appreciate the thoroughness of Jonathan's survey of pro and con reasons on this topic, which I've not researched for myself. Upon reading his post, here were a few thoughts that I posted on his Facebook thread that might be of interest here as well: A 2nd-century forgery seems like a *very* elaborate hoax for relatively small payout. If I understand correctly, since this text is a crux of the whole argument, the idea of the 2nd century dating is that a Jew in late 165 or early 164 forged an entire book (Daniel is a long book), filled this chapter with artfully-coded fake prophecies ex eventu, and included vss. 40-45 to encourage (?) fellow Jews being persecuted by Antiochus. Interestingly, vss. 40-45 actually show this ruler as being quite successful militarily, with the only hint of his downfall being the very last sentence of v. 45, which merely says that he will come to his end with none to help him. It's not clear to me how encouraging this would even be to Jews under Antiochus' persecution. The verses even seem to show him successfully and triumphantly setting up his "tent" right in the land of Israel itself. In fact, reality turned out far more positively for the Jews at that time than these verses would indicate, if they are attempted future prophecy faked for purposes of propaganda.
ReplyDeleteSo we should note that these considerations seem to tell against the theory, whether one regards this as lowering its prior or its likelihood. For example, if the book was forged at just that time for some Jewish political purpose, one would (I would think) expect more encouraging "prophecies" of the immediate future, and more of them. Certainly one would think the author would have more to say about the death of such a hated persecutor and the restoration of the people to enjoyment of their own land in peace, even if the details were left vague. Indeed, that sort of restoration is a frequent theme in Jewish prophecy, so it's rather surprising *not* to see it here.
And of course it would be a pretty audacious hoax. The author would have to be hoping to induce the Jews around him to believe that he or someone in league with him or someone he duped had discovered this whole extremely important ancient work from the time of Daniel, which had been lost for all the intervening centuries. On the theory, he was remarkably successful in this hoax, but the very improbability of its succeeding would seem, in prospect, to render the effort involved hardly worth trying. And for what end? Just to make his surrounding Jews feel a little better in the midst of a conflict? Better because, even though Antiochus is going to be very successful and set up his residence in Judea, he'll somehow vaguely come to his end in the end? Everybody dies! Of course they know he's going to die sometime! And it doesn't even predict things getting better after that.
If I'm not mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong), it looks like Antiochus' persecution of the Jews had not gone on for very long in 164--only about 3 or 4 years. Faking an entire prophetic book hardly seems like a reasonable use of one's time under the circumstances, when one wouldn't know how things were going to go in the immediate future and when any attempt at prophecy might be a colossal failure (as indeed scholars are claiming this was). In fact, he could have simply waited a few years to see how the Maccabean revolt turned out. (cont.)
Is there any enlightenment from Chapter 12? It refers repeatedly to "the end" in ways that seem apocalyptic, but begins "at that time," which one could think of as referring to the time of 11:45, perhaps? 11:40 also begins "at the time of the end." 12:13 definitely connects "the end" to the final resurrection of the just, as does 12:2-3. Based on those considerations, right now I'd lean toward saying that the eschatological interpretation of 11:40-45 is less "costly" than the scribal interpolation auxiliary, because (among other things) if we go with the former we can connect 11:40-45 to 12:1ff.
ReplyDeleteThose are good points, Lydia, and I agree that there was no interpolation. My view is that the end times are in view from 11:36 onward. I think 11:35 is best understood as referring to a lengthy period of time.
DeleteAnother problem with a Maccabean date is that Daniel and his companions are such poor figures to use in such a context. They were largely deferential to the pagan authorities and weren't involved in any armed resistance. Similarly, the closing verses of chapter 11 and the entirety of chapter 12 have a lot to say about understanding, righteousness, and such, but not much about fighting.
True, there's nothing ad-hoc in suggesting a break between v35 and v36. Till v35, the only kings in view are "the king of the North" and "the king of the South".
Deletev36 introduces a new character called "the king", simpiciter. It describes him in v36-39, and v40 distinguishes him from both "the king of the South" and "the king of the North".
I should mention that Jonathan's article doesn't make reference to a large commentary on Daniel that recently came out, written from a conservative Evangelical perspective, J. Paul Tanner, Daniel (United States: Lexham Press, 2020). It's close to 800 pages long. I haven't read a lot of it yet, so I can't say much about the quality of it.
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