Dark_Sponge Yes, it was specifically the prophesies in Daniel and Isaiah I was referring to. However, I find this argument weak and uncompelling. How can we be sure those Greek words were unknown to the writer of Daniel?
Your counter argument does not accurately present the language issue. The presented argument is not that some Israelite farmer could not have known Greek words. The point is that the words, written in 2d Century Greek would have been extremely unlikely to show up in 6th Century Hebrew or Aramaic when Greek influence did not even enter the Levant for several hundred years. It would be like 15th century references to a piano (c. 1700) instead of some other stringed instrument. Or a 15th century reference to “battleship” in a French document when the word fist appeared in English at the end of the Eighteenth Century. What would be the point of using words (however brilliant the author) that the audience would not know?
Again, Daniel was originally omitted from the Hebrew Bible and there are no quotes from or references to it prior to the Second Century. The language issue is not a slam-dunk, but the history of it is. Regardless, the re-evaluation of the writing of Scripture arose among and is promoted by Jews and Christians, not non-believers.
Maybe some do, but many Protestant theologists know most of the OT was written much later, and likely not by Moses.
Here is Belief net
The Book of Job is estimated to have been written in the time of the Patriarchs, between 1900 and 1700 B.C. …Job is written in a form of Hebrew that is even older than the ancient Hebrew that makes up most of the Old Testament. In fact, the language used in Job is not even usually referred to as ancient Hebrew. Instead, it is called “Paleo-Hebrew.” The book also contains Syriac and Arabic expressions which point to a period of time between 1900 and 1700 B.C. when the Shemitic tribes had not yet separated into speaking separate Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic dialects. Instead, they still shared a common language.
The language in which Job was written is not the only clue to its age. In addition to using a language that differs from the Hebrew used in other Old Testament manuscripts, Job also mentions several creatures and conditions that are unknown today. …The age of the book of Job can also be found in what is noticeably missing from the book. There are no mentions of the covenant, the Law of Moses or the priesthood. There are not even any mentions of the Israelite people or the Promised Land. Instead, Job offers sacrifices himself for his sons without the use of a priesthood, temple or consecrated altar. His wealth is measured by the size of his herds and the amount of “qesiytah,” unique silver coins, he possesses. Both herds and silver were used as ancient systems of money between 1900 and 1700 B.C. …
Exactly when the book of Job was written remains something of a mystery, but there is no doubt it is the oldest book in the Bible. While the early chapters of Genesis cover events that happened before Job, the actual written accounts of those events were not recorded until after the book of Job had already been composed. In fact, Job is over 400 years older than Genesis.
The late date of Daniel was supported by scholars who claimed that the Aramaic sections in Daniel belonged to a later period. However, more recent studies have found that the Aramaic used in Daniel was used in the courts and chancelleries from the seventh century BC on, and tends to support an early date for Daniel.[313]
The presence of Persian and Greek loanwords in the text of Daniel, primarily in the words for musical instruments, was long taken as a proof that Daniel was written in the Greek period after Alexander’s conquests. It is now generally recognized that there were many earlier contacts with the Greeks and Persians, including Greek colonies in Egypt in the mid-seventh century BC and Greek mercenary troops in the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC. Also, the names of musical instruments could well be found along with the instruments at the Persian court.[314] Today, linguistic arguments for a late date of Daniel are considered quite weak.
The fundamentalists I know believe that there are a half dozen fundamental beliefs (including biblical inerrancy), but the timeline of the literal inspiration of the bible is not one of them. In this aspect, fundamentalists are in contrast with people like the high church wing of the Anglican church, who don’t believe in biblical inerrancy, but do believe that the history and authority of the church, as expressed in thing like liturgy and apostolic succession, and even the church’s authoritative position on the history of the bible (if it has one), are important.
There’s the line in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where they cannot hear the Sermon on the Mount very well…
“Blessed are the cheesemakers???”
“It’s obviously not meant to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products…”
This I assume is the difference- there are sects and denominations which see the Bible as literally and fundamentally correct and the word of God, so everything it says is correct. Therefore the words were written around the time they happened, by Moses, Daniel, etc.
They there’s the more thoughtful denominations who are willing to concede that there are aspects of historical reality that must intercede - from details like “where did Cain and Seth’s wives come from…” to the double creation stories, to the reconciliation with aspects of archaeology - such as, there is no corresponding plagues and dead pharaoh as mentioned in Exodus, the earth did not stand still, some chronological anomalies, linguistic evidence, etc. Therefore the Bible can be interpreted as a document authored fallible by humans, albeit with divine inspiration, so can be interpreted as figuratively not literally true. Consequently they can give credit to evidence of when the details were written down. After all, there’s a good chance the contents were oral tradition for centuries before they were written down.
Pretty much, everything before David is myths and legends. And David- well, all we know is that there was a King David. So, until King Omri, the amount of legends varies.
However, look how many legends we have about Geo Washington. So, the fact there are a lot of legends doesnt mean there wasnt a real Geo Washington.
1776:John Adams: It doesn’t matter. I won’t be in the history books anyway, only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them - Franklin, Washington, and the horse - conducted the entire revolution by themselves.
No. The text is inspired by God. God has always been around.
I’m sure that you could find some sect or denomination that holds that Daniel was written at a particular time, and many individuals who hold that Daniel was written at a particular time, but you miss the point of biblical inerrancy
With the Old Testament, the dates of the writings aren’t considered super important to biblical inerrency and literalism, but it does show up in the New Testament, since part of the claim is that what is canon for the epistles is that they were written either by the apostles themselves or their apostles, and the histories (the gospels and Acts) were written either by eye witnesses or those who talked to eye witnesses. And this goes both ways: those who disregard the Bible tend to pick later dates for all the books, even the ones that are pretty well attested.
The Old Testament, on the other hand, is mostly attested to be the books accepted in Jesus’ day as Scripture, having God ('s son) himself provide the verification. So when they were written is less important–just that they are literally true. It’s fine if they were passed down orally.
I’ve yet to hear a claim that any of the OT books were made up full cloth at the time they were written. Letters, on the other hand, easily could be.
Letters by their very nature are “made up” at the time they were written. Are you saying that they could be falsely attributed to a different author at the time they were written?
This was my point. There are those sects that say that the totally contradictory or apparently nonsensical-seeming bits of the Bible are the literal truth (i.e. Pi=3, there are two contradictory creation stories in Genesis that are both true, there was enough water to completely cover the earth to a depth thousands of feet deep that appeared one month and vanished the next, Cain and Seth took wives who appeared from nowhere or were their sisters, the Earth stood still for an afternoon, olden days biblical types lived for hundreds of years…). Alternatively, there are those who while believing their religion, are willing to see these are allegories and myths among the true information - and there is some truth to the archeological evidence which points to where the stories and allegories came from and how they may have developed, without denying the basic truth they feel this content is meant to teach them.
Letters by their very nature are “made up” at the time they were written. Are you saying that they could be falsely attributed to a different author at the time they were written?
Attributing works to famous people was a time honored tradition since the dawn of history. It continues today in “famous quotes” misattributed to famous people. No surprise if someone wanted to give a work greater importance by attributing it to a great person.
Remember there were several other works allegedly written by “the apostles or their apostles” that were rejected by the council which assembled the official bible 300 years after the fact, because the books did not fit the party line of the dominant church sect.
Also, St. Paul totally concocted his own version of Christianity after his seizure on the way to Damascus - the apostles hanging around the temple in Jerusalem had an ongoing feud with him and were unconcerned and let him preach his version provided he stuck to gentiles, rather than misleading the Chosen People they were trying to convert. St. Paul had the last laugh so to speak, when the Jewish Christian sect was decimated with the destruction of the Temple and the sack of Jerusalem in the Jewish revolt.
So a lot of the NT content is coincidental as to what survived the vagaries of history.
This is untrue. The Gospels that were rejected were done so as they were repetitive or recent or doubtful. At that time, the “Church” was hardly monolithic. By 170AD or before the Four current Gospels had become canon. Irenaeus was one of the promoted for this, and his teacher was a apostle of John.
Only one Gospel claims to have been written by a Apostle- John, and the current prevalent thought is that indeed, John had a great deal to do with it, since it came out of John’s followers in Ephesus, of whom Polycarp (trained by John) and Irenaeus are the best known. That doesn’t mean that John personally put pen to parchment. Likely he dictated it to a secretarius, then it was edited by his followers.
Now, yes, Mark may have been one of the sources of “Q”, and so Clement, Papias and Irenaeus all attributed that Gospel to that Apostle. That doesn’t mean that Mark personally put pen to parchment. It could just be that Mark had jo
Around 367 AD the list becomes pretty formalized, but which of many Gospels to pick from was canon for two centuries before that. Some of the Letters had some arguments which were real and which, even if real- had important teachings, but there wasnt any conspiracy and not much of a “party line”.
Sorry, my bad - the earlier likely were oral tradition of the wandering tribes for centuries before someone made up Hebrew writing and decided to commit them to paper (papyrus?) Which of course brings up the question, when did Hebrew writing evolve? Presumably paleo-hebrew writing about 1000BC would put an early limit on when the bible was first “written down”. Meanwhile, the time of Moses is guessed to be somewhere between 1500 and 1200BC, so there’s a few centuries of oral action possible there… And of course, the earliest part of the bible would have been composed orally in 4004BC about 7 days after “October 23, 4004 BC on the proleptic Julian calendar”
This is basically a secular, liberal version of the “God of the gaps” theory that some people have used to argue against evolution.
I.e., “We don’t have any other evidence or explanation that such-and-such was used/practiced/available/etc., so we’re going to make potentially unwarranted assumptions about the reliability/dating of the Bible.”
Much like advancing scientific knowledge has provided reasonable explanations for things that once were thought to have needed Divine intervention, advancing scientific and archeological knowledge has filled in gaps relating to the Bible, and shown that certain things happened just like the Bible said they did–thus leaving the critics looking very foolish.
Read the Wikipedia entry of the book of Daniel for an interesting summary of the assorted details why the timeline is asserted. Different languages (Aramaic and Hebrew) its discussion of 2nd Century BC historical events ending at a discernable point, etc. All point to a collection of exile tales followed by additions of prophetic ramblings and what seems to be current events of the second century BC. At very least, based on this it seems to have been frequently embellished to add some author’s favorite extra pieces.
(The debatably apocryphal Book of Susannah seems to have been a favorite of renaissance painters - “let’s show a naked woman bathing and claim it’s a bible story depiction…”)
Not at all. “God of the gaps” appeals to supernatural explanations for things for which there is (as yet) no satisfactory natural explanation. As natural explanations are developed and extended, the space left for god is diminished.
But Tom isn’t asserting any supernatural or divine explanation to fill a gap left in our knowledge. He simply points out that the language used in Daniel, and the events recounted in it, are consistent with the hypothesis that it was written well after the sixth century BCE. That theory will need to be revisited if we find evidence that language which we think is from the second century was in fact current in the sixth century BCE, but as no superanatural explanation has been advanced in support of the view that it was written in or close to the second-century, none will be undermined in that event.
No, not the language. a few loan words for musical instruments.
The presence of Persian and Greek loanwords in the text of Daniel, primarily in the words for musical instruments, was long taken as a proof that Daniel was written in the Greek period after Alexander’s conquests. It is now generally recognized that there were many earlier contacts with the Greeks and Persians, including Greek colonies in Egypt in the mid-seventh century BC and Greek mercenary troops in the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC. Also, the names of musical instruments could well be found along with the instruments at the Persian court.[314] Today, linguistic arguments for a late date of Daniel are considered quite weak.
Now, there are other arguments for the late date of Daniel, and they stand up better. But a few loan words for musical instruments? That is a poor argument, as shown above in my cite.
Basically. What I’m getting at is the fact that nearly all the epistles have a name at the beginning, and all Pauline epistles have a verse claimed to be written in Paul’s handwriting. If the letters were falsely attributed, those parts could be either (1) part of the original letter from the start or (2) added on later due to tradition or whatever. I would consider (1) made up from the whole cloth, while (2) wouldn’t be.
I do think it’s possible that Paul did not write all the Pauline epistles. The Paul who wrote to the Galatians, saying “There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female since you are all one in Christ Jesus,” seems inconsistent with the one who wrote to Timothy, saying “I do not permit women to have any authority over men.” Plus he mentions deaconesses, puts Priscilla in front of Aquila, and otherwise seems okay with women.
