Bible prophecy debate

[TimCallahan]

Ross is an old earther, right? Does he squeeze a gap into verse 2, or are his yoms long time spans?

No gaps. He's into long yoms.

 

[TimCallahan]

What were his reasons for doubting Antiochus Epiphanes? was this a substantiated doubt?

Unfortunately, this came up right as time was called on our debate. Up to that point I was rather pleased that Ross didn't seem to buy into making the last of the great empires in Daniel's symbolic visions into the Roman Empire. So I had assumed he accepted ti as Alexander's empire, followed by the Seleucids, Ptolemies and Antigonids. We spent most of the debate on Daniel on whether the book was written in the fifth or second century BCE (although, out of courtesy to my hosts I used the terminology B.C.).

 

[TimCallahan]

Except that the Book of Daniel says that Daniel did well under both Darius the Mede and Cyrus of Persia, which would be rather unimpressive if they were the same guy.

Yeah, I thought the assertion was a bit lame. He really didn't explain why he thought Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were the same. He only insisted that it was the Persians and the Medes who took Babylon. Perhaps he saw him s being called Darius by the Medes and Cyrus by the Persians.

I also pointed out that the story of Belshazzar's feast at least implies a violent taking of the city by surprise. However, the Cyrus Cylinder records that the city surrendered to the Persians without a fight, seemingly the Babylonians (i.e. specifically the residents of the city) looked on the Chaldeans as intrusive upstarts and saw the Persians as liberators. Ross argued that, just becase the city was taken "that very night" doesn't mean it it was taken violently, and that Belshazzar was slain, only referred to his fate.

 

[TimCallahan]

Did they take up an offering?

No offering, only an opening prayer, no closing prayer. Ross and his people were very gracious about everything.

 

[joobz]

Yeah, I thought the assertion was a bit lame. He really didn't explain why he thought Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were the same.

Not knowing the original hebrew, could this simply be a manifestation of poetic repetition? Much like Jesus riding a donkey and an ass?

 

[TimCallahan]

Not knowing the original hebrew, could this simply be a manifestation of poetic repetition? Much like Jesus riding a donkey and an ass?

No. Definitely not. And I wish I had seen this verse before the debate (Dan. 6:28):

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

I'll e-mail Hugh Ross about this and see what his response is.

 

[joobz]

No. Definitely not. And I wish I had seen this verse before the debate (Dan. 6:28):

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

I'll e-mail Hugh Ross about this and see what his response is.

Keep me informed. I'm very interested in the results.
Thanks for the cool work, Tim!


ETA: how does that verse not represent the repetitive verse form?

 

[TimCallahan]

Keep me informed. I'm very interested in the results.
Thanks for the cool work, Tim!


ETA: how does that verse not represent the repetitive verse form?

I assume you're referring to what we see in Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

Since Zion is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion and the daughter of Jerusalem are one and the same. Also, the ass and the "colt the foal of an ass" are the same beast.

While Zech. 9:9 is definitely poetry, Dan. 6:28 appears to be prose. It does follow a proclamation supposedly made by "Darius the Mede" that everyone in his kingdom should honor the God of Daniel. The proclamation (Dan. 6:26, 27) is given in verse form. However, Dan 6:28 is not part of the proclamation. Given that it follows the proclamation, however, I suspect that believers could take that as being part of the poetry and thus retionalize it as repetitve verse form.

 

[TimCallahan]

This is a bit of an update. During the debate Hugh Ross made a point that the style and grammar of the Aramaic used in Daniel 2 through 7 was of the sort used in the sixth century BCE (of course, he used the notation B.C., which I did during the debate as well, as a matter of courtesy). That took me back a bit, even though the flawed history (Darius the Mede, etc.) pointed to a second century authorship.

Looking up the Aramaic of Daniel on the net, I found that there is a fair body of expert opinion favoring that view. However, I also found a number experts who didn't agree with that position. One of these was John J. Collins, who wrote in a 1993 exposition of Daniel that the Aramaic of Daniel 2 through 6 dated from the third century, hence prior to Antiochus Epiphanes, but after the time of Alexander the Great, while the Aramaic of Daniel 7 dated from the second century. More telling than Collins, however, was the conclusion reached by K. A. Kitchen in a 1965 article. Kitchen said the Aramaic of Daniel was impossible to date and could be from anywhere from the sixth to the second century.

Kitchen's view is particularly telling, since he has argued against the Documentary Theory and for the (basically) Mosaic authorship of the Torah. Thus, his finding that the Aramaic of Daniel could easily be from the second century cannot be dismissed as ideologically motivated. I have e-mailed Hugh Ross regarding these findings, however, I have not yet received a reply. Considering that he runs a full time ministry and that it took him a while to answer my fist e-mail following the debate, it may be a while before he will be able to respond. I'll keep everyone posted as to his response.