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TommyR wrote:

Religion (IMHO) is complete BS. I love the so-called "End times" idiots! They are a great supply of entertainment and laughter to me!

Some people believe in the most rediculous nonsense!

The sky is falling! The end is near!

Here's a gun, shoot yourself and avoid your agony.

Tom

Hi and welcome to the thread.

TommyR wrote:

Religion (IMHO) is complete BS. I love the so-called "End times" idiots! They are a great supply of entertainment and laughter to me!

Some people believe in the most rediculous nonsense!

The sky is falling! The end is near!

Here's a gun, shoot yourself and avoid your agony.

Tom

Let's not be a jerk, please.

The rules.

1) Don't be a jerk (DBAJ)
- The MacAddict forums-wide edition of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
- When in doubt, DBAJ.

How the hell do you expect us to understand the intricacies of time travel?

bratboy wrote:

Yes, there seems to be an inherent problem with prophecies...

What, that they are so vague?

bratboy wrote:

sturner wrote:

bratboy wrote:

Yes, there seems to be an inherent problem with prophecies...

What, that they are so vague?

I was thinking more about the fact that they can be self-fulfilling.

*bing*

Points awarded to brattie. I would appreciate a person with faith, and belief in the Book of Revelation and the End o' Times, to put together a rational response to my thrice posted comment.

bratboy wrote:

sturner wrote:

bratboy wrote:

Yes, there seems to be an inherent problem with prophecies...

What, that they are so vague?

I was thinking more about the fact that they can be self-fulfilling.

Some of them can be.
The prophecies in Daniel, for example, detailed and precise - no way can they be self fulfilling, specifically the stuff in Daniel 11.

Thus - either Daniel is genuine prophecy, or it was written after the fact.
Those who do not believe in the supernatural insist it was written after the fact.
The evidence though overwhelmingly points to it being written beforehand.

resedit wrote:

Thus - either Daniel is genuine prophecy, or it was written after the fact.
Those who do not believe in the supernatural insist it was written after the fact.
The evidence though overwhelmingly points to it being written beforehand.

I would like to see some real evidence.

Otherwise I'll believe that it was written after the fact like the rest of the bible.

Chickenhawk wrote:

resedit wrote:

Thus - either Daniel is genuine prophecy, or it was written after the fact.
Those who do not believe in the supernatural insist it was written after the fact.
The evidence though overwhelmingly points to it being written beforehand.

I would like to see some real evidence.

Otherwise I'll believe that it was written after the fact like the rest of the bible.

It is the second most common document at Qumran, second only to Isaiah.
The Qumran community called Daniel a prophet - using phrases like "As spoken by the Prophet Daniel" - which is never used for any of the known 2nd century apocraphyl authors, it is only used for the Canon prophets.

Additionally - Daniel disagrees with the known historical record at the time.
All historians at the time had a different account of the events in Daniel. In fact, that use to be used as evidence against Daniel - until they found out Daniel was correct, and all the historians of that time were completely wrong.

Daniel does not use 2nd century palestinian aramaic, he uses 5th century eastern aramaic - which was the lingua-franca of ancient Babylon and used for official documents. Furthermore - several of the words and phtases used in Daniel had completely changed by the 2nd century BCE, yet daniel uses them in the way they are known to have been used in 6th/5th century BCE. Sentence structure is also ancient eastern aramaic, not late palestinian aramaic.

All persian loan words are ancient persian, not a single was modern persian. There use to a few that scholars argued were evidence of a late authorship, but then they found some old persian that contained them.

All greek loan are ancient greek except for three. They use to say all except 22, but then they found some 5th century BCE greek document that had 19 of them.

The three that aren't known to be early - all musical instruments that probably existed in 6th century BCE but that we don't have reference to.

It would be impossible for someome in 2nd century palestine to write that document without a computer to find and remove modern loan words, find modern uses of old words that had changed, etc.

Apocalyptic literature generally is history re-written as prophecy. The problem - Daniel doesn't fit the apocalyptic genre.

Apocalyptic authors used people of historical importance, such as enoch. But without the book of Daniel, there is no one of historical importance by that name.

Then there is the problem of the 70 weeks. We know it has to be as early as 2nd century BCE because we have fragments and references to it from Second Century BCE. Yet the
seventy weeks of Daniel could not have been over at 2nd century BCE, the 69th week comes to about AD 26 or AD 33 (depending upon how you count them) - the time when Christ was crucified (as prophecied by Daniel, btw)

The arguement is that the four kingdoms were: Babylon, Medes, Persians, Greece.
But the text itself specifically states that the medo-persian empire was one empire, which it was - so the four kingdoms HAVE to be Babylon, medo-persian, Greece, Rome - at which point it can not be history re-written as prophecy. The text itself does not support Greece being the fourth kingdom.

The arguement is that he gets the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes wrong in Chapter 11, and that therefore it must have been written before Antiochus IV Epiphanes died.

But again - that is not supported by the text. Where they think it is talking about the death of A.E. IV - it is prophecy that has yet to happen.

The death of A.E. IV actually is in Daniel, but it is in Chapter 8 - not 11 - and it is correct.

Metacell wrote:

Prior to Daniel 11:40, the author(s) has been recording past events under the Babylonian, Median, Persian and Greek empires. In Daniel 11:40-45, he really attempts to predict the future. He prophesizes that a king of the south (of the Ptolemaic dynasty) will attack the Greeks in Palestine, under Antiochus. The Greeks will win, will lay spoil to all of northeast Africa, and return to Palestine where Antiochus will die. The end of history will then occur. The author(s) appeared to be a poor psychic because none of these events actually happened. Antiochus did die in 164 BCE, but it was in Persia. Thus, the book was apparently completed before 164.

Obviously, that is one way to interpret it, however, it is also possible to match up these figures instead:

Daniel 11
:5 - North= Seleucus I Nicator; South= Ptolemy I
:6 - North= Antiochus II (wife Laodice); South = Ptolemy II (daughter Berenice)
:7-9 - North= Seleucus II; South= Ptolemy III
:10-12 - North= Antiochus III; South= Ptolemy IV
:13-19 - North= Antiochus III (daughter Cleopatra I), successors Seleucus IV & Antiochus IV; South= Ptolemy V, successor Ptolemy VI
:20 - North= Augustus
:21-24 - North= Tiberius
:25, 26 - North= Aurelian; South= Queen Zenobia
Breakdown of Roman Empire leads to formation of the Germanic Empire and Britian, followed by Anglo-American world power
:27-30a - North= German Empire (WW I); South= Anglo-American world power
: 30b, 31 - North= Hitler's Third Reich (WW II); South= Anglo-American world power
:32-43 - North= Communist bloc (cold war); South= Anglo-American world power
:44,45 - North= yet to rise; South= Anglo-American world power

Metacell wrote:

Actually many Christians believe Daniel was written after the fact or was in fact a work of fiction based on long standing myth much like the myth of King Arthur and Camelot.  And it's not because of the "accuracy" of the prophecies.  It's because of many historical inaccuracies indicating it was not written when claimed:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/daniel.htm

And here's the kicker:

Prior to Daniel 11:40, the author(s) has been recording past events under the Babylonian, Median, Persian and Greek empires. In Daniel 11:40-45, he really attempts to predict the future. He prophesizes that a king of the south (of the Ptolemaic dynasty) will attack the Greeks in Palestine, under Antiochus. The Greeks will win, will lay spoil to all of northeast Africa, and return to Palestine where Antiochus will die. The end of history will then occur. The author(s) appeared to be a poor psychic because none of these events actually happened. Antiochus did die in 164 BCE, but it was in Persia. Thus, the book was apparently completed before 164.

That is flawed because in Daniel 8 - he did correctly prophecy the death of A.E. IV - and it clearly is A.E. IV - therefore, the interpretation you are quoting requires that the author gave two different and incompatible ways in which A.E. IV would die.

Your interpretation, while common - is flawed. The text does not support it. The text literally demands otherwise because it specifically (and correctly) predicts the death of A.E. IV in a different manner in Chapter 8.

resedit wrote:

Chickenhawk wrote:

resedit wrote:

Thus - either Daniel is genuine prophecy, or it was written after the fact.
Those who do not believe in the supernatural insist it was written after the fact.
The evidence though overwhelmingly points to it being written beforehand.

I would like to see some real evidence.

Otherwise I'll believe that it was written after the fact like the rest of the bible.

"evidence"

Thanks, res, I will hand it to you that you didn't base your evidence solely on the bible.

Since, as usual, you didn't provide links to back up your assertions, I had to do some searching myself. I found multiple threads in other forums debating those points. Apparently the evidence is not conclusive and is prone to many interpretations (as we are seeing in this very thread).

Zombie ??