Robb, are you ever going to deal with the fact that Christians were imprisoned and killed by Rome?  There was no sense among Romans that it was a good thing, let alone something they’d created–Christians were failing to worship the gods of the polis, along with their own–and they were winning pagan converts.  Meaning that the gods the Romans believed in would be angry and ill fortune would result.  Romans were superstitious too, even those of high rank.  They were afraid of their own gods.  To worship just one god, for them, was being disrespectful to all the others, and their gods were very jealous and competitive, as their myths inform us.  

Some were more skeptical, sure–just as some Jews and Christians were–but under the veneer of skepticism, the old beliefs were there, and the more powerful Christianity became, the more disturbed the pagans were, because Christianity (as Bart has explained) was not tolerant of other gods, and insisted they all be abandoned.  You really think they wouldn’t have come out and said “Hey wait, this is all a big misunderstanding, we were just trying to control you and it got out of hand”?  The main Roman reaction to Christianity was “Where did this insane cult come from?”  They had no idea.  Nor did they think it was socially useful.  It was leading slaves to think they were better than their masters (which was probably true a lot of the time).  

There was no grand conspiracy–this was a troublesome cult that was sometimes left to its own devices, and sometimes singled out for persecution and mass murder.  For a long time, they saw it as just a subsect of Judaism (which is what it was, at first), but one they didn’t control the way they did the temple priests and the Sanhedrin.  When the Jewish uprisings happened, Christians might be killed as well, because they were perceived to be Jews.  Therefore, they had a strong motive to distinguish themselves from rebeling  nationalistic Jews, and say they were obedient subjects of Rome (while thinking to themselves Rome was just a temporary thing, which of course was also true).  Eventually, they began to stop believing the Kingdom was imminent, and to abandon Jesus’ contempt for money.  

What Jesus says in that passage you quote (which may nor may not be a legitimate saying of Jesus) is that the money Jews are forced to give to Rome belonged to the Emperor in the first place–and before it, to other rulers (it would be no better if they were paying taxes to Herod, which of course those in Galilee were).  It’s a corrupting influence.  In the Kingdom, there won’t be any money, any taxes, any government to pay taxes to.  

So by paying your taxes to this temporary overlord, you are unburdening yourself of worldly concerns, and thereby coming closer to the Kingdom.  Of course, if you followed Jesus’ advice wholly, and gave everything you had to the poor, you’d be paying no taxes at all, and Rome wouldn’t be very happy about that.  Rome wants people out there making money to fill its coffers, and serving in their legions–Christianity in its early days served neither purpose very well.  Rome was nothing if not materialistic, not to mention militaristic, and wanted its citizens to share those values–so they created the most anti-materialistic anti-militaristic faith ever?  

Christianity had good reason–without any outside influence–to try and represent itself as peaceful, which after all, it was in its early days, waiting for the Kingdom to come, believing Rome and all other earthly empires would be utterly destroyed by the Son of Man.  What happened was that Rome became Christian and Christians became more Roman.  An exchange of values and ideas, and thus was modern western civilization born.  You want it to be all one way.  It never is.  

Judaism and Christianity are not the result of outside propaganda.  Because pagan rulers wouldn’t have tried to make their subjects monotheists.  Quite the contrary.  

A third person narrator doesn’t prove the work isn’t forgery, no.  

But confirmed works of forgery–like the Pseudo-Pauline epistles, and Pseudo-Galen medical treatises–don’t employ one.  They state authorship explicitly, try to present themselves as the famous writer in question directly addressing his audience.  And thus, scholars can catch them in the act–be in no doubt as to their intentions.  

However, a narrator immediately casts doubt upon the validity of the allegedly forged work.  Puts a different cast upon it.  You know somebody is presenting this to you as real, which automatically creates the possibility it’s not.  Did educated Jews reading Genesis really believe anyone had a transcript of what Adam and Eve said?  Or Noah?  Is Exodus forged, because later generations of Jews decided it was by Moses?  Did they literally believe that to be true?  It’s very hard to know, isn’t it?  Because of the way devotional beliefs and real life knowledge intermix.  Can there be forgery when writing what is in effect mythology?  (Which a purported Pauline epistle isn’t, any more than a purported medical treatise).  

Now of course people reading the Daniel we have when it first became available (to what audience we don’t know) would have known the real Daniel was long gone.  So the narrator could be used as a way of presenting a false work as newly discovered–except does that make any sense?  We have no other works purporting to be Daniel’s.  This is it.  And yet the narrator gives us no information as to where this new discovery came from?  Is it not possible he merely added to an existing work, that might or might not have had something to do with the historical Daniel?  As the gospel authors and their predecessors added to the genuine words and deeds of Jesus? 

How far do you want to stretch the term ‘forgery’?  Until the word no longer has any meaning? 

Until we have more information–which may never happen–I don’t see any basis for reaching a final conclusion on this.  And again, this is why the genuine scholar who hosts this forum was reluctant to commit to Daniel being forged.  Suspect provenance, certainly–as is the case with so much ancient literature (and quite a bit of modern literature).  

And speaking of suspect provenance–that term certainly applies to the scholarly creds of every single person who posts here.

But not forged, surely.

😉

Robert said
The comparison of the book of Daniel with the letters of Paul or the works of Galen is not very helpful. The genre is much different. The issue of pseudepigraphy/forgery (the terminology is the same for me in this case) really concerns the prophecies claimed to be delivered and written by Daniel in chapters 7-12, which pertain to past events as supposedly prophesied long ago and some of these prophecies concern very, very recent events. The narrative introduction of chapters 1-6 are practically irrelevant to this question.

You keep making this claim, but “The genuine scholar who hosts this forum was [r: not at all] reluctant to commit to Daniel being forged”:

“The visions of Daniel 7–12 claim to be written by the sage and prophet of the sixth century BCE but were almost certainly produced, in reality, four hundred years later by someone assuming the false name for reasons of his own.” …

“Whoever wrote the book of Daniel in the second century BCE meant his readers to take seriously his claim to be the wise man and prophet of four hundred years earlier; otherwise his “predictions” would have carried no probative force. These books were not written under innocent pseudonyms, but were forged.”

Ehrman, Bart D.. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition (Locations 1657, 8180).  

I think we were already clear that the visions predicting contemporary events were not genuine.  

Neither were Jesus’ prophecies of the temple’s destruction, right?  Doesn’t that imply ‘forgery’ at some point in time?  Or is it not forgery if it came from oral tradition, or from a work we don’t have anymore?  And do we know that’s not the case with Daniel?  Not really.  

It is generally accepted that Daniel originated as a collection of Aramaic court tales later expanded by the Hebrew revelations.^{** you do not have permission to see this link **} The visions of chapters 7–12 were added and chapter 1 translated into Hebrew at the third stage when the final book was being drawn together.

I’d say this is a solid argument for those specific verses being forged (or falsified) by the final editor.  But I figured that already.  The question is whether the entire book is forged, not individual components of it.  And it seems pretty clear that most of the book’s contents already existed.  Bart is specifically referring to the prophecies that seem to prefigure contemporary events.  But in most of the book (which would have been available to others besides the editor) Daniel isn’t directly addressing the reader.  

Since this is out of context, I’ll try to read exactly what Bart says, but since that’s a book about Christian writings, and he’s not primarily an Old Testament scholar, this doesn’t strike me as conclusive.  

And you know, scholars can change their minds–Bart just recently posted he was having some doubts about past positions after reading a fellow scholar’s work.

So let’s just say that at the time he wrote this book, he believed at least part of Daniel was forged.  Good enough?  It’ll have to be.  😉

Robert said

godspell said 

I think we were already clear that the visions predicting contemporary events were not genuine.  

Neither were Jesus’ prophecies of the temple’s destruction, right?  Doesn’t that imply ‘forgery’ at some point in time?  Or is it not forgery if it came from oral tradition, or from a work we don’t have anymore?  And do we know that’s not the case with Daniel?  Not really.  

It is generally accepted that Daniel originated as a collection of Aramaic court tales later expanded by the Hebrew revelations.^{** you do not have permission to see this link **} The visions of chapters 7–12 were added and chapter 1 translated into Hebrew at the third stage when the final book was being drawn together.

I’d say this is a solid argument for those specific verses being forged (or falsified) by the final editor.  But I figured that already.  The question is whether the entire book is forged, not individual components of it.  And it seems pretty clear that most of the book’s contents already existed.  Bart is specifically referring to the prophecies that seem to prefigure contemporary events.  But in most of the book (which would have been available to others besides the editor) Daniel isn’t directly addressing the reader.  

Since this is out of context, I’ll try to read exactly what Bart says, but since that’s a book about Christian writings, and he’s not primarily an Old Testament scholar, this doesn’t strike me as conclusive.  

And you know, scholars can change their minds–Bart just recently posted he was having some doubts about past positions after reading a fellow scholar’s work.

So let’s just say that at the time he wrote this book, he believed at least part of Daniel was forged.  Good enough?  It’ll have to be.  😉  

It is possible but not known that Chapter 1 was originally composed in Aramaic. As for the forged parts, we’re not talking about a few “specific verses,” but the whole second half of the book, which pretends ro be directly from Daniel. Chapters 1 through 6, in their current form, are little more than a set-up for the 2nd half of the book, which concerns the overall interpretation of history, especially the climactic present and future, and this second half is all, except for a couple of verses, spoken by Daniel in the first person and refer specifically to the book.

You can hope that Bart changes his mind or that there are other, better scholars who specialize in the Hebrew scriptures in general or Daniel specifically who will confirm your desire to give the author(s) the benefit of the doubt, and it will be easy to find some if those are your criteria.   

‘Possible but not known’ would be a good summation for the whole thread.  Bart can think what he likes, as can the many other qualified scholars, none of whom post on this thread.  Catching a plane this morning.  Have fun, kids.  🙂