Where did I say I expected you to do that?  I merely said it’s very easy to find threads here.  How you take that is up to you.  You seem to always take the most negative option on the table. 

Robb does not know what forged means in this context, and doesn’t want to know.  He’s a sensationalist, like all mongers of conspiracy theories.  He uses the word because it draws attention.  Frankly, though he does it much more credibly and respectably, so did Bart.  “Forged” is a great title to sell books with.  Bart isn’t the best-known person in his field among laypersons because he doesn’t understand promotion.

There is no claim of authorship in the interpolative text–the book in its final form.  We don’t know the intent of the underlying text (which was composed earlier, scholars agree), or in what context it was composed, or for what audience it was composed for. It could be forged, but we don’t have the context to make a solid case for forgery, which is why there is no scholarly consensus about it. 

And really, this isn’t hard.  Sometimes it seems like everything other than Greek is Greek to you. 

And now you can ask a lot more irrelevant niggling  little questions.  Might I suggest you stop wasting your time with those, and go read Satlow’s book?  I think we’re done here.  But let me ask one question–WHICH PART of Daniel is forged, and did the authors of the other two know that?  Now that would be some conspiracy–conducted over several generations.  Without any of the conspirators knowing each other. 

Fair enough (in spite of all the extraneous verbiage). 

And suppose the compiler/editor/publisher believed the earlier work was genuine?  As might well have been the case.  This is, after all, how we got most of the bible in its present form.  Not from people trying to deceive, but from being themselves deceived–without any intent, on either side, to do so. 

Somebody writes something for devotional/artistic purposes, without any idea of claiming authority.  (What exact authority could anyone claim from Ecclesiastes, more philosophical than religious, apolitical to the point of denying that even being a king is meaningful; viewing God as largely silent and uninterested in human affairs?)   It is read by a small appreciative audience who know the author–no title page is needed.  It’s not being published, per se–just distributed to the few capable of grasping its import.  Then it gets filed away somewhere to gather dust.  Years pass.  Somebody finds it.  It hits a responsive chord.  But there’s no author.  Nobody remembers who wrote it.  The people who knew are all gone. 

But the work has authority IN ITSELF.  As all great writing does.  A name worthy of the piece is attached.  Maybe the person or persons doing the attribution believe in it, maybe it’s just a symbolic flourish.  We can’t say.  But before long, nobody remembers that either.  And now it’s got the authority of that name, in addition to the inherent authority of the text that drew attention back to it.  With each generation, that authority grows, and you have scripture. 

There is no such thing as collective forgery.  As you say, we need to know the intent of a specific person, and we don’t.  We can’t.  With Pseudo-Galens, Pseudo-Pauls, we can make a very educated guess, reach a consensus.  Not here.  Probably not ever. 

I have made it very clear I do believe some books of the New Testament are forged.  I haven’t spent a lot of time considering what I believe about individual books of the Old Testament.  I find it a difficult charge to sustain against Ecclesiastes and Daniel, though not for precisely the same reasons. 

I’ve sat on three juries in my life, with two Guilty verdicts and one Not Guilty.  I believe I and my fellow jurors reached the correct verdict in each case, but I am never going to know for sure. Truthfully, in scholarship of this kind, if we had to decide on the basis of reasonable doubt, it would always be Not Guilty.  Or as they sometimes say in the Scottish system, Not Proven. 

Where precisely did I say the possibility of forgery should be excluded?  I’m sure you can find the relevant quote to refresh my memory.  Try Google.  😉

You don’t believe in a ridiculous Roman conspiracy to forge Hebrew texts for obscure propaganda purposes.  

You are open to different possible explanations for the existence of Daniel in its present form, as am I.

Assuming some or all of Daniel is a forgery (meaning that there was intent to deceive), what would be a credible reconstruction of how and why that might have come to pass, given that there are at least three different authors, who were not acting in concert?

That’s a reasonable reconstruction, but isn’t this like saying Josephus is forged if a Christian scribe appended a few words to his brief mention of Jesus?  Is the Pericope Adulterae a forgery, if the author of John never meant to include it in his gospel? 

You have established a motive, and a credible one.  However, that’s not the same thing as calling Daniel in its entirety a forgery, or even any of its three distinct components.  And, of course, there is not one author, but several. 

And I would ask you to explain why Bart says the gospels are not forgeries, even though they include ‘prophecies’ of events that had occurred before the time they were written, and even though they were attributed to significant early figures who did not write them. 

There is a third person narrator in Daniel.  The reader not indoctrinated with the belief that Daniel is the author understands somebody who is not Daniel has created this version of the book.  The same is true of the gospels.  Which certainly have propaganda elements to them.  So why aren’t they forged? 

Of course I realize that.  That was my precise point.  Again, everything not Greek is Greek to you.  😉

The gospel of John has extensive first person passages from Jesus, almost certainly composed by the author of that gospel (who isn’t John the Apostle, no matter what Bauckham thinks).  And again, the gospels contain incidents of Jesus prophesying events that took place decades after his death, but which were contemporary events for the gospel authors.  The difference being largely one of time elapsed. 

Suppose there actually was a text that might have been written by Daniel (nobody would know, of course).  And someone added to that text he believed was legitimate for purposes of his own, assuming Daniel would be on his side.  How is that different from the gospel authors–or their sources, same difference–adding sayings and events to the actual record of Jesus’ life and teachings?  Didn’t they have points of their own to get across as well?  Weren’t they trying to win arguments by putting words in the mouth of their master? 

I think the correct term to use–but so much less snazzy on a book cover–is pseudoepigraphy, which people deplored in those times as Bart has made clear–but which wasn’t an actionable felony, as forgery is now. 

And speaking of book covers, guess what just crossed my desk here at the library?

(Try not to faint when you see the price.)

So this was a very long-standing Jewish tradition, that Christianity inherited. 

This, for us two, has been a fun discussion.  But I feel like we’re reaching another of our famous impasses.  Finish up.  I have done.  🙂