Bible foresees Alexander the Great in the book of Daniel

Василий · #1 by **Василий** » Nov 27, 2011 11:57 am

So friend of mine claimed that Daniel foresaw Alexander the Great. I looked up that the book of Daniel was written in the second century BCE and Alexander the Great lived before that (all according to Wikipedia). Is that all there is to it? Or is it more complicated?

chairman bill · #2 by **chairman bill** » Nov 27, 2011 11:59 am

Sounds about par for the course.

Scot Dutchy · #3 by **Scot Dutchy** » Nov 27, 2011 12:05 pm

Just another fairy story.

spin · #4 by **spin** » Nov 27, 2011 1:17 pm

Vasili, the scholarship is in. Daniel is a composite work, written partly late in the 3rd c. BCE and the rest (chapters 7-12) slightly before 164 BCE. It knows its history in the 3rd/2nd c. BCE but not the 6th c. BCE. The scholarship is rejected by fundamentalist and other literalist christian perspectives.

willhud9 · #5 by **willhud9** » Nov 27, 2011 6:39 pm

The secular scholarship and some liberal Christian scholars hold that Daniel is a Maccabean text. However, the answer is not clean cut. The entire book of Daniel is a mess of literary puzzles that dating the entire book seems trivial. However, if we assume the authorship is after Alexander it clears up confusion in why Greek loan words, Persian loan words and Aramaic words were chosen during the authorship of the book: Hellenism.

Sovereign · #6 by **Sovereign** » Nov 29, 2011 1:00 am

Shrunk · #7 by **Shrunk** » Nov 29, 2011 1:22 am

In situations where sanity prevails, if a book describes actual historic events, that is taken as pretty conclusive evidence it was written after those events occurred. Not saying that Daniel actually describes Alexander. But if it did...

willhud9 · #8 by **willhud9** » Nov 29, 2011 1:33 am

Well in Jewish culture and the Talmud, Daniel is not prophecy, but history. It is in the Christian Bibles that Daniel is taken as a prophetic book.

paarsurrey · #9 by **paarsurrey** » Dec 12, 2011 2:35 am

Did Daniel mention Alexander by name?

I don't think he mentioned about him.

spin · **#10** by **spin** » Dec 19, 2011 2:14 pm

paarsurrey wrote:Did Daniel mention Alexander by name?

That is not the style of the so-called prophecies. However, Dan 11:1-4 is a synopsis from the arrival of the reign of the Persians to the time when Alexander "stood up" and the division of his kingdom among the diadochi, the "successors". This is followed in v.5 on by the conflicts between the kings of the north (Antioch) and the kings of the south (Alexandria), the two diadochi that came into contact with the Jews. The events that follow can be mapped to the Seleucid/Ptolemy struggles with accuracy down to the arrival of Antiochus IV on the Judean scene. Of course, the horn of the he-goat in 8:5 is also Alexander (the goat being Greece) that put an end to (the Medes and) the Persians. The name is not used, but the figure of Alexander is there.

mikegage · **#11** by **mikegage** » Dec 20, 2011 4:57 pm

I would say Shrunk is right. This is usually a very strong indicator that it was written after the describe event. Historians, much like scientists, assume a sort of methodological naturalism. Another hotly debated example is Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple. Most scholars accept that this means that book was written after the temple was destroyed since we have no real reason to believe in prophecies.

paarsurrey · **#12** by **paarsurrey** » Jan 14, 2012 12:56 pm

mikegage wrote:Another hotly debated example is Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple. Most scholars accept that this means that book was written after the temple was destroyed since we have no real reason to believe in prophecies.

That is a wrong way of putting things.