Dating of Daniel

[semiopen]

Jayson,

Prior to the exile we don't see the term Jew.

So while your comments make sense, they do not account for the absence of the use of the term. In fact, outside of Nehemiah and Esther we barely see it at all. We never see it in Daniel.

There is the famous line in 2 Kings and Isaiah

Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah replied to the Rabshakeh, "Please, speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it; do not speak to us in Judean in the hearing of the people on the wall." (Isa 36:11 TNK)

Speak in Judean, which I guess people figure is Hebrew, apparently no one having the slightest idea what else that could mean.

I'm not sure what this does about the many interesting points you raise, but I'm not sure we can speak of the term Jew in the same way as Israelite and Hebrew.

PS. An odd example is that the word appears once in Zecharia

Thus said the LORD of Hosts: In those days, ten men from nations of every tongue will take hold -- they will take hold of every Jew by a corner of his cloak and say, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."
(Zec 8:23 TNK)

That's an interesting place because it comes in just before Zecharia 9.

Zecharia

Zechariah 1–8, sometimes referred to as First Zechariah, was written in the 6th century BC.[6] Zechariah 9–14, often called Second Zechariah, contains within the text no datable references to specific events or individuals but most scholars give the text a date in the fifth century BCE.[7]

My hero Konrad Schmid might date this to the Ptolemaic period - at least Zechariah 9-14.

[Jayson]

Quite right; the "Jew" label appears to derive after and applies apparently to the "Judaic", or "Judah" political geography; however, at the time of the split between the two Kingdoms we have no verification of such terms being employed. This term only came later as well, and shares a similar mix of confused applications as "Hebrew", for many of the same reasons.
When I stated that the application of "Jew" and "Israel" was short as was the division of Kingdoms, I realize now that made it sound as if the terms were being employed during the divisional time, but this is not the case.
The point was that the terms appear to be eventually used in such reference of application whereby one can be a Jew, but perhaps not an Israelite, and there's a bit of a mix on the inverse of this application, but that such practice of notating such difference didn't seem long lived and that is probably related to the relevance of the Kingdom of Israel not being great due to the short-lived division between the two Kingdoms and leaving only Judah standing in the end thereby leaving "Israel" open to the employment of legend and myth.

Again, most during their own time, prior to (and respectively during) the Hasmonean, era appear to refer to the Tribal name and not a universal name as was done later (and the later applications centered around the surviving singular power of Judah; Samaria having no relation anymore between Judah and Israel - which, Israel, had died and re-birthed as Galilee during the Hasmonean era).


I wish we could find just more textual material from the Kingdom of Israel, as it would help greatly in informing the construction of identity, but this has been a frustrated endeavor.

[semiopen]

Speaking of Daniel, I actually looked at part of it last night and Jews is mentioned twice 3:8 and 3:12 - needless to say I saw this immediately after my incorrect comment above.

This section is written in Aramaic so the spelling is different - יְהוּדָיֵֽא .

We also see the same spelling in the Aramaic parts of Ezra.

It's quite interesting that we'd see the term in both, but only in the Aramaic sections. Biblical_Aramaic briefly discusses the possible ramifications.

It's hard to take this web site seriously but -

Why are sections of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic? -http://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/ ... n-aramaic/

The reason for inclusion of Aramaic in the books of Ezra and Daniel is clearly different. The reason Ezra has Aramaic text is that the original letters contained in it were in Aramaic. In order to have the Aramaic parts of be in Hebrew would have required that the letters be translated into Hebrew. Because the majority of Jews at that time spoke Aramaic, it would have been superfluos to translate the Aramaic letters. The reason that part of Daniel is in Aramaic is less clear. This requires some speculation. In my book, I speculate that the entire book was in Aramaic and that, for some reason, when an editor collected the final book of Daniel, he decided to include some material in Aramaic and some in Hebrew.

The letters explanation for Ezra sort of makes sense but any of his speculations on Daniel I'd tend to dismiss on general principles.

The wiki gives this link

Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/book_daniel.html

A cursory examination on the web doesn't show any comments of the use of "Jew" in Aramaic but not Hebrew.

[Jayson]

You weren't in error, actually.
Daniel and Esther are later than the Judah/Israel Kingdom division.
Part of the reason we can place them after such is because of their employment of "Jew" in the collective singular.
Though Kings has "Jew" technically in it, it's use is in reference to the Tribal designation, unlike Daniel and Esther.
In fact, Esther is the first text we see the term arrive in the way we are familiar with today.

We have to keep in mind that all of the texts we have today are copies from post-Hasmonean era, and as such have that era and new culture's perspective overlayed across everything - even if any texts may have had a prior era of providence.

There is a very curious question regarding whether or not the Kingdom of Israel would even recognize most of what we think of today as what every "Jew" (and most think of Kingdom of Israel included in that in our common day today) just openly accepts as the "Law".

But to the point; the term arrives, but this is not until after the first exile period, so you are not in error in that assertion.

[Bernard Muller]

hello there,
This is what Collins wrote about the dating of Daniel:
John J. Collins Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) p. 38.
"The Hebrew–Aramaic text of Daniel evolved through several stages:
1. The individual tales of Chaps. 2–6 were originally separate ...
2. There was probably an initial collection of 3:31–6:29, which allowed the development of two textual traditions in these chapters.
3. The Aramaic tales were collected, with the introductory chap.1, in the Hellenistic period.
4. Daniel 7 was composed in Aramaic early in the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, before the desecration of the temple. Chapters 1–7 may have circulated briefly as an Aramaic book.
5. Between 167 and 164 B.C.E. the Hebrew chapters 8–12 were added, and chap.1 was translated to provide a Hebrew frame for the Aramaic chapters. ..."

I found out about Collins after I wrote my webpages on Daniel http://historical-jesus.info/daniel.html and that was the same thing that I "discovered" on my own:
Part 1 (Ch 1 to 6) was written soon after the death of Alexander the Great, Chapter 7 between the two forays of Antiochus IV in Jerusalem, Part 2 (Ch 8-12) mostly in 167 BC (after the desecration and massacres of Jews, during and months after Antiochus second foray) but with small "updates" up to the reconsecration and the death of Antiochus.
Also Part 1 was slightly interpolated to make it sketch the prophecies of Part 2.

Cordially, Bernard

[Kris]

But if that is the case---- how could Alexander have read about himself???

Just giving you a hard time!!

[semiopen]

Aramaic is tricky to date.

There is the well known case of Gershom_Scholem who famously dated the Zohar to the 13th century and authored by Moses_de_León

I

n the mid-20th century, the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem contended that de Leon himself was the most likely author of the Zohar. Among other things, Scholem noticed the Zohar's frequent errors in Aramaic grammar, its suspicious traces of Spanish words and sentence patterns, and its lack of knowledge of the land of Israel. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, noted professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, claimed that "It is clear that the Zohar was written by de Leon as it is clear that Theodore Herzl wrote Medinat HaYehudim (The Jewish State)."

It turns out that the Aramaic isn't as shitty as Scholem claimed, although his major conclusions about the date, etc have not been seriously challenged - contrary to the wiki which suggests that there might be some old stuff.

The Aramaic of Daniel is also not clear.

While the ideas Bernard Muller and John Collins seem reasonable, I'm not sure what they are specifically based on.

[Bernard Muller]

While the ideas Bernard Muller and John Collins seem reasonable, I'm not sure what they are specifically based on.

And I explained that on my website: http://historical-jesus.info/daniel.html
Cordially, Bernard

[semiopen]

While the ideas Bernard Muller and John Collins seem reasonable, I'm not sure what they are specifically based on.

And I explained that on my website: http://historical-jesus.info/daniel.html
Cordially, Bernard

I've looked at your website several times.

You refer to Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/book_daniel.html which I also noted a few posts up.

You quote Kitchen's article about his "agnosticism" about the Aramaic. It seems to me you are pretending that this is a good thing, however his main point is that the Aramaic from Daniel might be very old. He wrote this article to refute the famous 1929 assertion of S.R. Driver that the Aramaic can be dated to the 2nd century BCE.

You also refer to The Hebrew of Daniel by W.J. Martin (from the same link) and use this quote which seems outrageously out of context -

And S.R. Driver wrote: "The verdict of the language of Daniel is thus clear... the Hebrew supports... a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (332 BC)"

Maybe I'm reading Martin's article wrong but I think he is trying to prove that Driver's statement is full of shit.

I'm not saying that your opinion about Daniel is wrong, but you seem to be giving two sources that you claim are favorable to your view who are actually opposed to it.

[Bernard Muller]

I do not know why that would get against my views:
d) It has been argued that the Aramaic and Hebrew of 'Daniel' are close to the ones written in the 6th/5th century B.C.E. But a later author would use ancient forms of these two languages in order not to betray a late composition!
Furthermore K.A. Kitchen concluded:
"What, then, shall we say of the Aramaic of Daniel? It is, in itself, as long and generally agreed, integrally a part of that Imperial Aramaic which gathered impetus from at least the seventh century BC and was in full use until c. 300 BC ... there is nothing to decide the date of composition of the Aramaic of Daniel on the grounds of Aramaic anywhere between the late sixth and the second century BC. Some points hint at an early (especially pre-300), not late, date—but in large part could be argued to be survivals till the second century BC ... The date of the book of Daniel, in short, cannot be decided upon linguistic grounds alone."
The Aramaic of Daniel, K. A. Kitchen
And S.R. Driver wrote: "The verdict of the language of Daniel is thus clear... the Hebrew supports... a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (332 BC)"
The Hebrew of Daniel - W.J. Martin

I quoted those in order to refute that the Aramaic and Hebrew of 'Daniel' point to the late Babylonian and early Persian period for its writing.

My main reasons for the dating of Part 1 is explained at " 4. Empire of Alexander the Great " (search on that) in http://historical-jesus.info/daniel.html

Cordially, Bernard