spin wrote:You are showing a resilience to reading texts objectively.
I assume you meant "resistance"?
resilience
n.E17. [f. as RESILIENT: see -ENCE.] 1 a The action or an act of rebounding or springing back. E17.
b Recoil from something; revolt. M19. 2 Elasticity; spec. the amount of energy per unit volume that a material absorbs when subjected to strain, or the maximum value of this when the elastic limit is not exceeded. E19. 3 The ability to recover readily from, or resist being affected by, a setback, illness, etc. L19.
The metaphor is stronger than resistance, a structural imperviousness, returning to original state notwithstanding [in this case the content of what is read].
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
The only passages of Daniel that we can be sure were known in the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were compiled are:
Name
Contents
Date Copied
1QDana (1Q71)
Dan 1:10–17; 2:2–6. Confirms the shift of language from Hebrew to Aramaic, and omits the phrase ‘in Aramaic’ at 2:4.
50–68 A.D.
1QDanb (1Q72)
Dan 3:22–30. Four fragments on vellum in Aramaic. Confirms the absence of the apocryphal “Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Men.”
50–68 A.D. or earlier
4QDana (4Q112)
Dan 1:16–2:33; 4:29–30; 5:5–7; 7:25–8:5; 10:16–20; 11:13–16. Note that portions of these verses are incomplete. Confirms the shift of language from Aramaic to Hebrew. The manuscript has a blank line between the end the Aramaic section and beginning of the Hebrew.
50 B.C.
4QDanb (4Q113)
Dan 5:10–12, 14–16, 19–22; 6:8–22, 27–29; 7:1–6, 26–28; 8:1–8, 13–16. Confirms the shift of language from Aramaic to Hebrew.
50–68 A.D.
4QDanc (4Q114)
Dan 10:5–9, 11–16, 21; 11:1–2, 13–17, 25–29. The oldest known text of Daniel.
Late 2nd century B.C.
4QDand (4Q115)
Dan 3:23–25; 4:5?–9; 4:12–14. Fragments, the largest of which contains five partial lines in severe decay.
4QDane (4Q116)
Dan. 9:12–14?, 15–16?, 17? … Five tiny fragments from chapter nine.
6QDana aka 6QpapDan (6Q7)
Dan 8:16, 17, 20, 21; 10:8–16, 11:33–36, 38. This cave contained papyrus manuscripts rather than leather parchment.
50–68 A.D.
But for other passages, there seemed to be variants available. For example, Dan 4:1-4:27. Nothing is known of Nebuchadnezzar being waylaid for 7 years in any manner. However, this -was- the case with Nabonidus for a period of 10 years. In the DSS, there is a fragment usually entitled “The Prayer of Nabonidus” (4Q242, Aramaic) that may have served as the base for the story told in Daniel ...
"The words of the prayer of Nabunai king of the l[and of Ba]bylon, [the great] king, [when he was afflicted] with an evil ulcer in Teiman by decree of the [Most High God]. “I was afflicted [with an evil ulcer] for seven years ... and an exorcist pardoned my sins. He was a Jew from [among the children of the exile of Judah, and he said], ‘Recount this in writing to [glorify and exalt] the name of the [Most High God.’ And I wrote this]: ‘I was afflicted with an [evil] ulcer in Teiman [by decree of the Most High God]. For seven years prayed to the gods of silver and gold, [bronze and iron], wood and stone and clay, because that they were gods...' "
I am inclined to think that some sections (primarily the Hebrew ones) have expanded on older Aramaic stories, nor am I reluctant to think the later Hebrew editor(s) were limited to only Aramaic stories to include in their final work, so I would not be surprised to see commonalities between the Aramaic and Hebrew sections, mixed in an interpretive manner.
semiopen wrote:... It seems most likely that Alexander totally bypassed Judah, maybe sending a couple of agents to make sure there was no trouble. Kind of the opposite humiliation that Jews were used to ...
It must be fun rewriting history. Kinda like being a historical fiction writer?
Ged, I shall be very interested in any comments you may have to the discussion of historical methodology that I linked here:
Thanks Jayson for the article. It raises the following question which the late authorship proponents need to answer.
Walter Wegner wrote:If the Book of Daniel was written around 165 B.C., and if the script of two of these fragments is similar to that of the Isaiah scroll, which is dated about 125 BC., then we are less than a century from the original—which no one thought possible in Old Testament studies. ... having manuscript fragments of a Biblical book which are only some forty years younger than the literary composition of the book itself.
Dr. Young refers to the fact that on the basis of paleographical evidence the Daniel fragments from Qumran have been dated “in the late second century B.C., less than a century after the date ‘critics’ give for the origin of the book itself.” He adds the comment: “This is most striking, for it apparently shows that two copies of the book were in circulation very shortly after the alleged time of its composition. It begins to look as though this consideration will make more difficult the maintaining of a late date for the authorship of the prophecy of Daniel.”
In the light of what scholars have reported to the effect that the Book of Daniel was apparently one of the most popular Biblical books in the Qumran library—reportedly ranking next to the books of Isaiah, the Pentateuch, and the Psalms—I believe it would be most difficult to account for such popularity if the Book of Daniel were only a few decades old at the time when the Qumran community flourished.
Ged
The science of arranging time in periods and ascertaining the dates and historical order of past events.
Reflect on what you know of the DSS and consider this possibility.
The Maccabees brought about many things, and that's another story, but two relevant events were eventually what would become the Hellenist party and the Hasmonean dynasty.
Overall, this did not go very well with at least some portion of the population of theocratic political powers.
Most notably, this really did not go well for Onias IV, who was the rightful heir to the High Priest for being of the Zadok bloodline.
Instead, the first Hellenist High Priest was put into the seat, Menelaus.
The general conduct of Menelaus is pretty shocking if you are a conservative Hebrew believing in the sanctity of the bloodline of Solomon's priests (Zadok).
Aside from regularly taking items from the Temple and selling them to pay for pro-Hellenist parties to entertain foreign powers, he is also accused of mass wrongful executions as well as assisting in a mass near-genocide and plundering of the Temple in response to Jason's push for control.
Onias IV, meanwhile, after failed attempts to militarily oust Menelaus previously, fled to Egypt.
Meanwhile in Egypt he erected a new Temple that was technically taller than the Jerusalem Temple by roughly one story.
He tried to convince sympathetic Hebrews from anywhere, including Judah and Galilee, to join him in the new homeland - which he claimed was the original homeland and to use the new Temple.
Some did, but not very many.
So, aside from Onias IV, what did other people do when the rightful Zadok line was usurped by a blasphemous Hellenist?
Well, the priests were theocratic politicians themselves, so if they lost the seat and truly felt the Hellenists took wrongful control, would it make sense for a small portion of conservative loyalists to secede from the Temple halls after being ousted or potentially attacked with an aim for death due to their affiliation and loyalty?
Now, I don't think it would be likely that such a group would also just happen to be fantastic bunker engineers, but the Maccabean army was and they came from the East when they attacked during the revolution and regained Hebrew sovereign control.
It is well within possibility for them to have the means and motive for such fortified structures.
Later, when some of the Zadok priests fled, such areas would likely be attractive hideouts for a while.
They would have also taken some works from the Temple library with them.
They would teach a new generation of pupils to preserve their perceived "righteous", right, lawful and just ideas and positions.
That generation would continue on and teach yet another generation.
Around this time Messianic fashion begins around the Levant region.
The younger generation probably begins to lose interest in waiting for a literal Zadok, since Onias IV is dead and his Temple in Egypt is a failure of little mention.
However, conveniently, most of the traditions of the Zadok fallaway priest culture they created revolved around awaiting for the return of Onias IV and rightful restoration of a divine and just Kingdom and mirrored many tangents of the Messianic fashions.
So it shifts over time from a literal hoping for a very specific leader's return to an iconic and vague leader to emerge and return justice once again.
Where the Hellenist party of the past was the foe of their founders, so still were they foes to the younger generation in the 1st c CE.
This would span from the late 2nd c CE to the 1st c CE.
In this way, we understand the material as material that represents not one finite identity of people and a finite point in time, but an expanse of differing peoples of relation over an expanse of time and cultural shifts.
I can't see how the Hasmonean usurping of the Zadok priesthood had anything to do with the authorship of Daniel. If the book had been written after 167 BC, everyone would have known it was a recent publication irrespective of whether they were 'hellenised' Jews or 'old style' Jews.
The science of arranging time in periods and ascertaining the dates and historical order of past events.
My apologies, sorry; that was a perspective of the DSS group since the question was in relation to the DSS copy of Daniel, and then the citation I offered was in reference to the dating of the DSS content.
So the relation to Daniel in this would be in a manner of the relationship of the DSS timeline proposition outlined above to any given texts.
Specifically this consideration:
I am reading that the earliest is dated to around 125ad, due to carbon dating, but I had read of one 4QDan e (or 4Q116) that might be earlier
Jayson posted: "The general conduct of Menelaus is pretty shocking if you are a conservative Hebrew believing in the sanctity of the bloodline of Solomon's priests (Zadok)."
What bloodline sanctity?
A field of biblical scholars have long maintained that Zadok's father Ahitub (2 Sam. 8:17) and the confusion of the genealogy of Abiathar strongly suggest, that Zadok's origins are non-Israelite/Hebrew.
Sincerely,
John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
At the very least, we're talking about perception of what such concepts mean to those of the time in a theocratic political nation where it was claimed that the first High priest was Zadok and from which the rightful caste of Priests derive.
In either regard, and again at the very least, a Hellenist sympathizer taking the High Priest line for the first time instead of the expected claimed Zadokite house - for which Onias IV is annotated as being from the Zadokite house and the last notable mention of the Zadokite dynasty - would be of impact.
