The Righter Report

Was Daniel a real Individual in History?

The Prophet Daniel is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

Comment: It is interesting to note that every chapter of Daniel is represented in these manuscripts, except for Dan 12. However, this does not mean that the Book lacked the final chapter at Qumran, since Dan 12:10 is quoted in the Florilegium (4Q174) – (Dead Sea Scrolls), which explicitly tells us that it is written in the Book of Daniel the Prophet.

Jesus confirms Daniel is a Prophet

The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of Daniel “the prophet” (Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14).

Alexander the Great and Daniel

JOSEPHUS [Antiquities, 11.8.5] mentions that Alexander the Great had designed to punish the Jews for their fidelity to Darius, but that Jaddua (332 B.C.), the high priest, met him at the head of a procession and averted his wrath by showing him Daniel’s prophecy that a Grecian monarch should overthrow Persia. Certain it is, Alexander favored the Jews, and JOSEPHUS’ statement gives an explanation of the fact; at least it shows that the Jews in JOSEPHUS’ days believed that Daniel was extant in Alexander’s days, long before the Maccabees.

The Talmud refers to Daniel as a Prophet

Hatach. Hatach is another name for the prophet Daniel. He was called Hatach (related to the Hebrew word for “cut”) because he was “cut down,” demoted from his position of greatness, which he held at the courts of the previous kings (Megillah 15a).

What you have to believe if Daniel didn’t write the Book of Daniel

The (critics of Daniel) cannot believe in miracles and predictive prophecy which involve nothing but a simple faith in a wise and mighty and merciful God intervening in behalf of his people for his own glory and their salvation; BUT THEY CAN BELIEVE that a lot of obstreperous and cantankerous Jews who through all their history from Jacob and Esau down to the present time have disagreed and quarreled about almost everything, or nothing, could have accepted, unanimously and without a murmur, in an age when they were enlightened by the brilliant light of Platos philosophy, and Aristotles logic, and the criticism of the schools of Alexandria, a forged and ficticious document, untrue to the well remembered facts of their own experience and to the easily ascertained facts concerning their own past history and the history of the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks of whom the author (of the book of Daniel) writes. R.D. Wilson, Studies in the Book of Daniel, pages 268, 269

The Sanhedrin of the second century B.C. was composed of men of the type of John Hyrcanus; men famed for their piety and learning; men who were heirs of all the proud traditions of the Jewish faith, and themselves the sons of successors of the heroes of the noble Maccabean revolt. And yet we are asked to believe (by the critics of Daniel) that these men, with their extremely strict views of inspiration and their intense reverence for their sacred writings.used their authority to smuggle into the Jewish Canon a book which, ex hypothesi, was a forgery, a literary fraud, and a religious novel of recent date. R. Anderson, Daniel in the Critics Den, pages 104-105

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March 2, 2022 - Posted by Pete Righter | Uncategorized