Introduction 📜Gerald T. Sheppard writes:“Scholars have, for many years, observed that the latter half of the book addresses the conditions of people in the Babylonian exile; in the times of Isaiah, Assyria alone was a threat and Babylon was viewed as a friendly, historically minor nation (see Isa. 39). Furthermore, on its own terms, the…

Why Kratz disagrees with Segal:

Daniel Chapter 11 and “Failed” Predictions James Tabor talks about the failed prophecies in Daniel. – https://jamestabor.com/daniel-chapter-11-and-failed-predictions-some-hanukkah-thoughts/ It all has to do with the obvious historical fulfillment laid out in 11:1-35–a complex but quite accurate detailing of events from Alexander the Great to Antiochus Epiphanies in 165 BCE! It reads like a cryptic version of…

Academic scholars generally agree that the book was finalized near the end the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, i.e. 165 BCE when the Temple was rededicated after the Maccabean revolt. It was in this period when ch. 8-12 in Hebrew were written. Many scholars also believe that the chapters in Aramaic are older, particularly the stories…

Firstly, the book of Daniel is usually dated by scholars of Second Temple Judaism to the second century BCE, with ch. 8-12 in particular dating to the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, c. 165-164 BCE. Second, the kind of interpretation you give of ch. 9 is also widely rejected on internal and external grounds. Much…

It is quite clear that in Daniel 4-5 the character of Nebuchadnezzar replaces a more original Nabonidus, who was the historical father of Belshazzar. The tale in ch. 4 is a less historical adaptation of the story in the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242), with rather extensive parallels existing between the two stories. The affliction is…

First of all, there was some razing of Jerusalem in 168 BCE, so for the author of the Hebrew portions of Daniel it became one of the many successive desolations of Jerusalem (see the plural חרבות ירושלם in 9:2). Compare the various passages:1 Maccabees 1:29-31, 37, 44-46, 54: “Two years later the king sent to…

Dating 📜W. Sibley Towner writes:“Daniel is one of the few OT books that can be given a fairly firm date. In the form in which we have it (perhaps without the additions of 12:11, 12), the book must have been given its final form some time in the years 167-164 B.C. This dating is based…

William G. Dever states in this paper with regard to the Book of Judges: The continuing struggle with the surviving Canaanite culture in the period of the Judges can now be documented in extraordinary detail. The book of Joshua is largely a foundation myth; but the immediately following (!) book of Judges has the ring…

Origins 📜Chapter 21, “Son of God? The Suspicious Story of Samson’s Birth” from the book From Gods to God , by Yair Zakovitch and Avigdor Shinan, discusses the birth and possible links to Greek mythology in the Samson story. They discuss the possibility that the original story, perhaps cleaned-up a bit by the final editors…