The Prophecy of the 70 weeks of Daniel

For the 8th time,What is the date of the earliest extant texts of the Book of Daniel?

I take it you are agreeing that the DSS texts of Daniel are the earliest existing texts of Daniel?

Why isn't 'Daniel's' book included amongst the prophets in the Hebrew Bible?

Cheers Buz,So, what do we have so far?We have extants texts from centuries after these 'predictions' were made.We also have the fact that the Book of Daniel is never mentioned anywhere at all until the mid 2nd century BCE, well after the 'predictions' as well.So far then we have two pieces of evidence that *suggest* that the text was late, and no good reason to believe that the author(s) were contemporaries of the events in Daniel.Let's add another piece of evidence for the late date for Daniel.From the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: When the OT canon was fixed at the Synod of Jamnia, ca. A.D. 90, Daniel was included in the Writings or third section - not the Prophets or second section. The reason for this was that the second section had come to be regarded as closed since ca. 200 B.C., and the Synod was only concerned to adjudicate on the still fluid third section. The attempt to show that Daniel was originally amongst the Prophets fails on the evidence of the talmud (B.B. 15a). That Daniel was widely recognised as scripture from the second and first centuries B.C. onward can be in no doubt. Thus far, and we havent even looked at the historical errors yet, we have:1. No mention of the Book of Daniel at all until the mid 2nd century BCE2. No texts in existence that date any older then the mid-2nd century BCE.3. Daniel's book was not included in Jewish Scripture that was closed in ca. 200 BCE.4. There is no evidence that the Book of Daniel was considered to be scripture before the 2nd century BCE.We have 4 pieces of evidence that all point to a date of later than 200 BCE for the construction of Daniel, and not a single piece of evidence to accept that it was written before that time.I have only scratched the surface here, the evidence pointing to a mid 2nd century origin of the text is really overwhelming, but I do not want to post too much at one time because Starman has great difficulty in answering any questions put to him, so I'd rather focus on one or two points at a time so we can construct a picture of what went on with the book.

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1. No mention of the Book of Daniel at all until the mid 2nd century BCE
1) - Support for this claim?

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Are you being serious?How can I prove a negative?Here’s the logic for you. There was a time when there was no Jewish literature, and then there was Jewish literature. Of all the Jewish literature we have there is no mention of the Book of Daniel until the mid-2nd century BCE. That is the argument, and, since it is falsifiable, all you have to do is provide one piece of literature from before the mid-second century BCE and you have proven my argument incorrect.Look at it this way, if there are NO mentions of Daniel’s book before the mid-2nd century BCE, how can I show you them?We go with the evidence we have, not the evidence we don’t have. Now, in the future there may well be evidence of Daniel’s book being mentioned before the mid-2nd century BCE but at the moment there are none.So, let’s see you provide something of substance for a change and provide a piece of evidence that The Book of Daniel was mentioned before the 2nd century BCE.

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2. No texts in existence that date any older then the mid-2nd century BCE.
Support for this claim? Says WHO?

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Anyone who has a clue about biblical studies knows that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest biblical texts we have.I have asked you 8 or 9 times for the date of the oldest existing text of Daniel and your persistent childish refusal says a great deal about your character.Let’s try again shall we?What is the oldest extant text of the Book of Daniel?Once you have dealt with these two issues we can move on to the other two, we don't want to overload that superbrain of yours do we?

Okay, Josephus was born in 37 CE, which is even after Jesus died, so this doesn't apply. Indeed, and the oldest texts of the OT are the Dead Sea Scrolls! So I take it you agree that the oldest Daniel texts are the ones from Qumran, or are you having difficulty admitting this for some reason?Plus, The Book of Daniel did NOT enter the OT canon until 90CE! So, my claim that the Book of Daniel is not mentioned until the mid-2nd century BCE is unfounded because you CANNOT find any reference to the Book of Daniel before the mid-2nd century BCE! Plus, the Book of Daniel didn't enter the Hebrew Bible until 90 CE, and this somehow proves me wrong? I think you need to re-evaluate your conclusion here bud. But it is the none against that is proving a problem for you. I have the texts to support my position, you do not have ANY to support your position, so who has the strongest position regarding this issue? The person with the physical evidence or the person with NOTHING? The record is not being doubted 'for no reason at all', it is being doubted for dozens of reasons, which these two are nowhere near the strongest. And the earliest record we have are the DSS, which are not identical to the texts that we have from later periods. You, as a Christian, have a cheek accusing anyone of being anti-Semitic. Your faith has ripped apart the Scriptures of a whole nation, taken almost all of its prophecies out of context, changed the entire meaning of the messiah they are STILL waiting for, and if that wasn't enough, your faith's history is littered with ant-Semitism, including the slaughter of innocent Jews. The lack of a record before the mid-2nd century is only a tiny part of the whole argument though, these tiny parts when all put together make an overwhelming case against Daniel being written before the 2nd century BCE. In historical research you cannot ignore these small issues, you have to deal with everything, and don't think people are pinning all their hopes on this one issue because they aren't, it is just a small part of a very large body of evidence against the book being older than the 2nd century BCE.The thing about keeping info from your old hard drive and putting it on your new one is that there will be clues in the old info as to when it was written originally, and the info from Daniel suggests it was written in the 2nd century BCE, and as this discussion unfolds you will see (if you take your blinkers off and actually study the Bible that you love so much) just how much evidence there is for the mid-2nd century origin of Daniel's book.But so far, you really haven't provided anything substantial to counter these two points I have brought up, so it looks like we know 2 things for certain, so far, about the Book of Daniel.1. It is never mentioned before the mid-2nd century BCE
2. We have no 'hard copy' before the mid-2nd century BCENow I am not saying that these 2 issues will never be blown out of the water, who knows what may be found in the future, but at the moment these two points are unchallenged. What a ridiculous statement. Look bud, I know without any shadow of a doubt that there is nothing in this world I can say or do that will ever make you doubt ANYTHING in the Bible. I have debated too many fundies to know that they will ever change their mind about anything regarding their preconcieved ignorant ideas about the Bible.The reason I debate is not for the fundy, it is for the lurkers and other members here at evc. I do it because almost everything that a fundy posts here is complete ignorance, and the lurkers know it.On this thread alone you have achieved far more harm against Christianity than I could ever hope to do. So do keep it up.Anyway , to advance the discussion, do you concede that we have no mention of the Book of Daniel before the 2nd century BCE, and we have no hard copy older than the 2nd century BCE?Now neither of these mean that the Book wasn't written before the 2nd century BCE, I am just asking you if you agree with the statements.Edited by Brian, : spelin

Buz,Why do you think Daniel wasn't included amongst the prophets in the Hebrew Bible?

Is there a single prophecy (prediction) in the Bible that didn't fail?

I am still interested to know why Daniel wasn't included amongst the Prophets, and why it didn't enter the OT until 90 CE. do the fundies not find it strange that such an accurate, overwhelmingly important book was invisible until the 2nd century BCE.It's amazing that people who claim that the Bible is God's word, and it s so important to them, seem determined to misrepresent it. It is also amazing that they really do not study the Bible at all, they merely take one appraoch to it and stick with that regardless of the evidence.Starman, I don't think I have seem anyone's arguments so utterly whupped since Ray went on about the Great Pyramid!Why are you so determined to misrepresent the Bible?Why do you ignore the huge mountain of evidence that shows Danile was written in the mid-2nd century BCE, and that his prophecies completely failed?Does the FACT that the book of Daniel is such a mess mean that Jesus did not die on the cross and He didn't rise 3 days later?

What is the date of the earliest extant text of 'Matthew's' Gospel? Don't you find it strange that we don't know Jesus year of birth?

You are assuming that the disciple Matthew wrote anything. What we have is the Gospel according to Matthew, which is an anonymous work.Do you know the date of the earliest gMat we have?

All four Gospels are anonymous, a fact that isn't publicised very often. I suspect that he can tell me it is dated long after 70 CE.I also suspect that this will make no difference to his view that it was written before that date.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but to critical scholarship it matters a great deal. For example, if you could produce a contemporary gMat then that would give you a strong argument, as it is though, what is the earliest extant gMat, is it 300 or 400 years after Jesus died? That gives ample time for editing.We know it doesn't matter to you, as you are really not interested in reconstructing as accurate a history as we can, but to people who are truly interested in rebuilding the past the date of writing is very important. 'We' actually have a great many variant copies of all of the Gospels, which shows that they really weren't viewed as authoratative for a few centuries. Early xians certainly never put as much faith in these texts as you do. Indeed we don't. That is why the book is entitled 'according to Matthew'. There is no good reason to suppose its author(s) even knew Jesus. Given no reason for what?All I have asked is for you to tell me the oldest text of gMat that we have, and just like when I asked you the same question about Daniel's book, you really do not have a clue, so you dance around, waving your arms, showing your lack of subject knowledge, and we are supposed to be impressed.Why not just answer a Simple (get it? )question for a change without the smoke screens?Do you know the earliest gMat in existence that mentions the Temple 'prophecy'? Maybe if you answered the question I wouldn't need to keep asking the same thing over and over and over and over again. I didn't say I doubted anything, I only asked you the date of the oldest gMat text, then all your paranoia kicks in. Simple, everything you have ever posted at this site only demonstrates an ignorance of a collection of texts you explicitly adore far more than you adore the Man that 27 books of it are about.

At the same time you have read pro-christian literature and have a closed mind, so there's equally no point. So a man Eusebius, a noted liar, mentions this more than 300 years after Jesus died and this is good evidence?

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Origen (185-254) (as quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 6. 25.3-4) , said Matthew a former tax collector and apostle of Jesus wrote Matthew in Hebrew (Aramaic).

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Irenaeus (130-200) (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1; also quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 5.8.2): said Matthew brought forth a written gospel in Hebrew while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome.

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You do know that the gMat that we have shows no evidence of translation from Hebrew/Aramaic in to Greek, so it is unlikely that we even have the text that Papias allegedly mentioned? And then you would have to assume that the text we have was exactly the same as the one that 'Matthew' wrote, and we know that there are many variants of all of the Gospels, look at the long ending of Mark for eaxmple.Even if we accept that Matthew wrote a Gospel, there is nothing unusual about biblical books being edited time and again, so there is a possiblity that an anonymous author edited the book sometime after 70 CE. But not having any existing texts really doesn't help your case at all.

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Now just brush all that aside and say it is just christian tradition if you want.

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But until some good evidence is uncovered that is all this is, tradition.Do you approach all ancient texts in the same manner as you approach the Bible, or are you more critical of them?

It proves that the debate is far from as clear cut as you present it. It proves that there are doubts over the identity of the Gospel we have, so it is a very important point.

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Brian writes:

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And then you would have to assume that the text we have was exactly the same as the one that 'Matthew' wrote, and we know that there are many variants of all of the Gospels, look at the long ending of Mark for eaxmple.

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Icant "You mean to tell me science can assume a smear, a pea sized universe that our universe came from existed in an absence of No Thing.

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This is a fact we know it is, we are here.

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I don't mean to tell you anything about the BB, I didn't even mention it, I don't even think about it to be honest, it does not interest me at all. In historical research mate you really should not assume ANYTHING, what you should do is to look at the evidence and then come to a reasonable conclusion. Now look at the evidence I and others are being asked to accept without criticism. We are told that the author of Matthew foretold the fall of the Temple in 70CE and when we ask for the text that he wrote we are handed something written over 300 years after the fall of the Temple, can you blame us for being sceptical? I have it as well, but I have no idea if it is the same one that people were reading in the early church, and if you were being honest you would admit this too. Because you do not know when the Temple prophecy was included in the text. What if we found a pre-70 CE gMat and this prophecy wasn't in it? You are a student of the Bible, you must know that all books in it show signs of editing and redaction, why have a naive approach to studying the texts? There's only good evidence if you have already made up your mind that Matthew wrote gMat before 70 CE.The thing you seem to be unaware of is that it makes not one iota of a difference to my life if gMat was written by the disciple Matthew in the year 30, 40, or 50 CE, it would make no difference to my life at all.However, as it stands, we do have NO evidence of gMat before the mid 2nd century CE, we have no extant texts before the 4th century CE, we have mentions of a gMat whose description may or may not fit the gMat that we have in our Bibles. The evidence is not greatly in favour of your position. Well let's put it this way, there's more evidence that a Ferrari is faster than a Ford Mondeo than there is evidence for the Book of Matthew being written by the apostle Matthew, therefore the apostle Matthew could not have written the Gospel of Matthew.Silly argument though isn't it?Edited by Brian, : quote formatting error