Is anyone going to mention that the Roman military conquest of Palestine began in 63BCE?
In 200BCE, Rome was still a Republic, and had just finished conquering Italy (believe it or not, not everybody there wanted to be ruled by Rome either, arguably still the case in Naples and Sicily today).
So that’s some pretty nifty advance planning there. Or would be, if Jews hadn’t gone right on thinking of Romans as idolatrous usurpers, and there is zero evidence any Jew ever thought Rome was what the author of Daniel was talking about. (Definitely what the author of Revelation was talking about, but that’s a different thread.)
To robert
I should have clarified myself better. Separate times seperate agenda. I believe the key design of the Book of Daniel was to influence the Hellenized Jews back into the fold. At this time the Maccabean Jews and the Romans were allies against hellenization. Rome had no desire to take over the religion at this time, in my opinion.
Come forward in time to 70AD and the Jews and Rome were enemies. I believe Rome wanted control after the war.
To Godspell
The Roman–Jewish Treaty was an agreement made between ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Apparently at 161BCE Rome was on hand at the Maccabean Revolt after the dates proposed by scholars.
If we accept the dating by the Scholars is correct (164-167 BCE) then we have forgery. If its a forgery who wrote it? Seems to me that only empires were bold enough to make these texts up.
robbeasley said
To Godspell
The Roman–Jewish Treaty was an agreement made between ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Apparently at 161BCE Rome was on hand at the Maccabean Revolt after the dates proposed by scholars.
If we accept the dating by the Scholars is correct (164-167 BCE) then we have forgery. If its a forgery who wrote it? Seems to me that only empires were bold enough to make these texts up.
If there is no claim of authorship in the text itself–which there isn’t–then by definition, it’s not a forgery. That’s like saying an unsigned 19th century check for a million dollars found in a storage locker is forged if the person who found it claims it was written by John D. Rockefeller, but he forgot to sign it. You don’t even know what the term forged means. You just like the way it sounds. Sort of Ehrmanesque. But the real Ehrman would be rolling his eyes at you.
I don’t know what you’re bringing up an obscure treaty for. Or what Hellenized Jews have to do with anything–Rome is behind Hellenization? 200 years before Christ, having finally solidified control of the Italian peninsula, Rome is just starting to think about making a move on the Greek speaking world. So yes, makes sense they’d sign a treaty with people who are hostile to Greek influence outside Greece. Rising powers do the same thing today. But they don’t try to plant religious works in those countries, because they’d be found out, and it would screw up diplomacy something fierce.
It makes no sense at all that they would or could invent a Jewish holy book that Jews would all accept as scripture. It’s not how they operated, and they wouldn’t be able to do it if they wanted to.
And btw, how’s your ancient Hebrew?
Do you even know Latin?
Robert said
Do you think the Romans also wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
No. I think a community ,possibly Essenes, could have been the authors. Further In a house keeping operation Rome massacred this Qumran Community.
I have a theory that Jesus was the righteous teacher of this group. Paul was the liar and Herod Agrippa 1 was the wicked priest.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
godspell said
robbeasley said
To Godspell
The Roman–Jewish Treaty was an agreement made between ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Apparently at 161BCE Rome was on hand at the Maccabean Revolt after the dates proposed by scholars.
If we accept the dating by the Scholars is correct (164-167 BCE) then we have forgery. If its a forgery who wrote it? Seems to me that only empires were bold enough to make these texts up.If there is no claim of authorship in the text itself–which there isn’t–then by definition, it’s not a forgery. That’s like saying an unsigned 19th century check for a million dollars found in a storage locker is forged if the person who found it claims it was written by John D. Rockefeller, but he forgot to sign it. You don’t even know what the term forged means. You just like the way it sounds. Sort of Ehrmanesque. But the real Ehrman would be rolling his eyes at you.
I don’t know what you’re bringing up an obscure treaty for. Or what Hellenized Jews have to do with anything–Rome is behind Hellenization? 200 years before Christ, having finally solidified control of the Italian peninsula, Rome is just starting to think about making a move on the Greek speaking world. So yes, makes sense they’d sign a treaty with people who are hostile to Greek influence outside Greece. Rising powers do the same thing today. But they don’t try to plant religious works in those countries, because they’d be found out, and it would screw up diplomacy something fierce.
It makes no sense at all that they would or could invent a Jewish holy book that Jews would all accept as scripture. It’s not how they operated, and they wouldn’t be able to do it if they wanted to.
And btw, how’s your ancient Hebrew?
Do you even know Latin?
Again, if the dating of authorship is past the historical events and the author tries to suggest that Daniel (real or false) predicts these events then its a forgery of prophecy.
That treaty shows Rome was involved. There is also the reference to the ships of Kittim in the Book of Daniel. Professor Dale Martin says this refers to Ships of Rome.
No and No 
Oh right, we argued about Ecclesiastes (which as I’m sure you know, is probably Bart’s favorite biblical text).
To me, if there’s an anonymous third person narrator, it’s not a forgery. Of course, there’s at least three different authors of Daniel–author of the first part, author of the second, and interpolator of the two. This may be why Bart did not come out and directly say it’s a forgery in this thread from not so very long ago–even when asked directly if it was. Ecclesiastes has a single author, and Daniel does not, which makes it all much more complicated to even form an opinion.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
We know nothing about Daniel except what’s in the Book of Daniel. He was possibly only known to most later Jews through this book, which was cobbled together much later. (Are we 100% sure there was a Daniel?)
I think a lot depends on whether the original readership was supposed to be fooled into thinking the work was original. As I mentioned during the discussion about Qohelet, you could call I, Claudius a forgery, if you took away the opening material written by Robert Graves to explain how he came to write the book (Graves later claimed–humorously, I’m pretty sure–that he’d been visited by Claudius in a dream). The opeing of the novel has Claudius claiming he’s figured out a way to bury his memoirs so that they’ll be found 1900 years later in perfect condition. Forged? Not if you understand that people write things in the voices of people who have died, and that they are not necessarily lying when they do that. It’s all a matter of whether you’re supposed to believe these are the preserved words of an illustrious personage who is no longer around to claim or disclaim authorship.
We assume people back then were such rubes they took everything they read literally–but most people couldn’t read at all. These books were for a literate sophisticated audience, and only later–much later–became taken for inspired scripture. And part of the reason for that is that nobody remembered who wrote them, and they could be attributed to anyone.
Forgery, in the true sense, is writing in the name of a person who is already an authority of some kind, either for profit or for influence. Bart’s views on forgery are, in the main, convincing to me–but they are not universally accepted in scholarly circles. And frankly, it’s possible to argue it multiple ways, and particualrly with the OT texts, since their origins are more obscure than those of the NT.
It’s very hard to divine authorial intentions when you know nothing whatsoever about the author–and when they are in fact three of them, who all worked independently of each other.
Robert, obviously I was referring to a discussion I had with Bart on the main blog. I posted a link. Try to keep up. You get confused so easily. 🙂
Either you want to talk or you don’t. If you want to lecture, go back to school and get the credentials.
The problem with calling OT texts forgeries is that forgery requires intent. It is very hard to divine intent from texts whose origins are so murky. We can only guess. If the original audience wasn’t expected to believe Solomon or Daniel actually wrote these texts (and a third person narrator quoting them casts some serious doubt on that), then it isn’t forgery. Nobody forges with the intention of people of later generations coming to believe they are the person whose voice they are borrowing–they want to be taken seriously right there and then, while they are still around. Either to make money or win an argument. Forgery requires a deliberate attempt to fool your audience, and the original audience for most of the OT texts was probably tiny, and very likely in the know about their origins. Just as the gospels are not forged, because later generations of Christians ascribed them to various disciples, because their original authors had been forgotten.
Bart is capable of speaking for himself, and he held back in that thread. Because unlike Ecclesiastes, Daniel is a blending of several texts, and that makes authorial intent even harder to divine.
Why are there forged epistles of Paul? Because Paul was a great name in early Christianity, and nobody knew how many letters he’d written (possibly not even Paul, you know how correspondence can be). It was far from implausible that a new one could surface. He wasn’t around to disavow them. So an ideal opportunity, not to make money, but to essentially try and win an ongoing debate about this or that issue, by referring back to an authority (like editing fake authority records into Wikipedia, and who believes that’s never happened? There’s a reason they can get so persnickety about sourcing.)
Okay, so we understand that. We know why it happened, and we can guess how. But the OT texts are far more mysterious. It seems likely that they were just found in the court archives, rediscovered, got a new and much larger audience than they originally had, and there was no information about who wrote them. Those who wished them to enjoy greater authority in the larger Jewish community attributed them to great names. But were the works written with that intent? I don’t know. Neither do you. Neither does Bart. Unproven. All we know is that the works were powerful enough to survive the test of time. So whoever wrote them deserves at least the benefit of the doubt. Forgery is a serious charge, and you shouldn’t just throw it around.
And if you want to know where I got some of this–
Good book.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert