Daniel
The Book of Daniel consists of twelve chapters of which only the first half, the narrative portion concerns us here. Like Jonah, it pretence at being a historical work is foiled by the author�s poor knowledge of history. That he profoundly ignorant of the history of 6th century BCE can be seen in the following errors he made:
- Mistakes in Details Regarding the Fall of Jerusalem
- Mistakes Regarding Belshazzar
- Mistakes Regarding the Succession of Babylonian Kingdoms
Mistakes in Details Regarding the Fall of Jerusalem
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Daniel 1:1-2 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord have Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. |
The passage is filled with historical errors and anachronisms:
- First he god the name of the king of Judah during the seige wrong. II Kings 24:8-13 showed that it was during the reign of Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim�s son, that Nebuchadnezzar laid seige on Jerusalem. Furthermore, the third year of Jehoiakim�s reign would be 606BC. Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king of Babylon at that time! Nebuchadnezzar only become king in 605BC, the fourth year of Jehoaikim�s reign.
- Secondly the use of the term Shinar is an anachronism. The name was used to refer to Sumeria during the time of Abraham. During the exilic period, around the time the book of Daniel was supposed to have been written, the correct term was Chaldea, not Shinar.
- And finally, the correct spelling for the neo-Babylonian king was Nebuchadrezzar. We noticed that books that were actually written during the exilic period such as Jeremiah (25:9) and Ezekial (26:7), got this spelling right at least some of the time. Daniel always incorrectly spells the name with an �n� rather than �r�. [1] [a]
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Mistakes Regarding Belshazzar
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Daniel 5:1-2 King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in front of the thousand. Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and silver which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought... |
This innocent looking passage is simply loaded with historical errors.
- Belshazzar, or more correctly Bel-shar-utsur ("Bel, Protect the King"), was never a king. He was a crown prince but never became king of Chaldea, for the kingdom collapsed during the reign of his father.
- Nebuchadnezzar was not the father of Belshazzar. In fact there is no family relation at all between the two. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562BC leaving the kingdom to his son Amel-Marduk. Amel-Marduk, in turn was murdered by his brother-in-law Nergal-ashur-usur two years later. Nergal-ashur-usur reigned for only four years. After his death in 560BC, his son, Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Labashi-Marduk became king. There was a revolt, and Labashi Marduk was dethroned. The new king was Nabu-naido ("Nabu is glorious"), or in its Greek form Nabudonius. Nabudonius was not related at all to Nebuchadnezzar. He was the last king of the Chaldean Empire, and Belshazzar was his son. [2]
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Mistakes Regarding the Succession of Babylonian Kingdoms
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Daniel 5:30-31 That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom... |
Again another statement that is historically false. In the first place the Chaldean Kingdom, fell not to the Medes but to the Persians (in 538 BC). The King who conquered Chaldea was Cyrus the Persian. There was no historical Darius the Mede who conquered Chaldea! There was however a Persian king named Darius who became king in 521 BC, seventeen years after the fall of Babylon. Darius was a renowned king in antiquity and it is obvious that the author of Daniel erroneously thought he was the conqueror of the Chaldean Empire. [3]
The author of Daniel revealed further his ignorance of history when he wrote:
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Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede... |
Now, if he is referring to the historical Darius (the Persian) this is another false statement. The father of Darius was Hystaspes. Ahasuerus, based on Ezra 4:5-6, can be correctly identified with Xerxes I. But Xerxes I was the son of Darius, not his father! [4]
As a coup de grace, the author of Daniel wrote the passage below:
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Daniel 6:28 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. |
A fitting "tribute" to Daniel's monumental ignorance of history. The passage above clearly shows that he believed that the Chaldean empire fell first to the Median Empire and this, in turn, fell to the Persian. This is clearly unhistorical. History tells us that the Chaldean and the Median empires existed together and both fell to the Persians. [5]
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The Dating of Daniel
The book of Daniel is so filled with historical errors and inaccuracies that most biblical scholars (always excepting the fundamentalists, of course) now conclude that Daniel was written very much later (between 167 to 164 BCE) than the period it pretends to be (sixth century BC). How do the scholars know this? Let us digress because it is worth knowing [6]:
- First we know that the book could not have been written in the 6th century BCE because it made errors that anyone living during that time would know. (see above)
- Second is this statement from Daniel 9:2;
I was studying the sacred books and thinking about the seventy years that Jerusalem would be in ruins, according to what the Lord had told the prophet Jeremiah.
This is revealing. The prophet Jeremiah lived during the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 587BCE. Thus he was a very near contemporary of Daniel. The time of the supposed Daniel was simply too soon for the book of Jeremiah to be considered scripture (which is another word for "sacred books") In fact we know that the book of Jeremiah was only canonized, i.e. widely considered as "scripture", around 200BCE. Thus Daniel could not have been written earlier than that. - Daniel was very accurate in "predicting" events leading to and including the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by Antiochus in December 167 BCE.[b]
- After this Daniel starts to go wrong again. Daniel 11:45 predicted that Antiochus IV would die "between the sea and the mountain on which the temple stands", i.e. between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean sea. Yet Antiochus IV died in Persia in 164BCE.
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Reason for Daniel's Pretense
The question then, is this: why did the author of Daniel adopt this pretence of writing in the 6th century BCE? For a simple (but dishonest) reason; by the time it came to be read, many of the so-called �prophecies� would have already been �fulfilled�. This would thus lend credence to the book and add more weight behind the prophecies yet to be fulfilled. In a nutshell, the author of Daniel tried to fool his readers into believing that the book is of an ancient origin in order to have them believe his future prophecies.
The summary below on the book of Daniel, made by the historian Robin Fox, is apt:
| The book [of Daniel] has the familiar ingredients of a biblical success story: its hero probably never existed; he was credited with visions he never saw and actions he never did; ...while its dates and kings are incorrect and its setting is a fiction, posing as history. [7] |
In short, the author of Daniel is a fraud.
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Notes
| a. | Due to Daniel�s error, the use of Nebuchadnezzar is now more common than the correct term Nebuchadrezzar. Thus the former is now more commonly used. I have decided to follow this convention. However, note that the latter is actually the correct form. |
| b. | Some examples:
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| c. | Around the end of the third century AD a pagan critic named Porphyry called attention to the fact that Daniel�s prophecy stopped being accurate for events after the year 167BC. He thus, rightly concluded that Daniel must have been written around that time. Of course, when Christianity became the dominant power in the Roman Empire, the �Christian thing� was done: Porphyry�s books were burned. It was only around the nineteenth century that biblical scholars began to accept Porphry�s views as the correct one. |
References
| 1. | Asimov, Asimov's Guide to the Bible: p599 Helms, Who Wrote the Gospels: p20 Roux, Ancient Iraq: p349 |
| 2. | Asimov, Asimov's Guide to the Bible: p605-606 Andersen, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament: p210 Roberts, The Pelican History of the World: p129 |
| 3. | Asimov, Guide to the Bible: p608 Andersen, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament:210 Roberts, History of the World: p129 |
| 4. | Asimov, Guide to the Bible: p609 |
| 5. | Ibid: p609 |
| 6. | Helms, Who Wrote the Gospels, p29-34 |
| 7. | Fox, The Unauthorized Version: p331,337 |
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