According to 4 Ezra 12:11-12, the interpretation of the "fourth kingdom" (i.e. the iron legs of the image in ch. 2, the beast with iron teeth in ch. 7) as Rome was not Daniel's own view but was a later interpretation.
The image in Daniels dream...what does it mean now?
by uuus2b1 15 Replies latest jw friends
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Terry
If you stop and think about it a moment.........................................................................................................................................
it is mind-boggling that just about everybody has had a go at Daniel's so-called "prophecy" in the last thousand years or so!!
I mean everybody!
All the great minds (and not so great) have had the irresistable urge to EXPLAIN, explicate, divulge, hermenuticize and expound upon what Daniel is telling us about End Times!
Isn't it embarassing how they contradict each other? Isn't it humiliating that these explanations always fail?
Couldn't it be because these writings mean nothing at all??
That never seems to occur to anybody.
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Leolaia
No, it's not that it means nothing....it's because there've been so many attempts to reinterpret the text after the fact, and the original historical situation has long faded. If you look at current academic literature, there is very wide agreement on most of the particulars... The visions really aren't any more opaque than other apocalypses of the era, like the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch which was written at roughly the same time. The great vision in ch. 11, for instance, is a very valuable historical document giving a survey of Seleucid history from a Jewish point of view, containing some information found nowhere else. It gives a striking window into the Jewish reaction to the Antiochene persecution of 168-165 BC, written during the time of the persecution itself.... In no sense is it simply a tabula rasa on which a person may project his/her interpretations, tho it has been subjected to this ever since. In another thread in this forum, I showed exactly how the Society's interpretation of ch. 11 does violence to the text and how they literally skip over Antiochus IV in order to apply everything that originally pertained to him to the future and to our own day. The scholarly interpretation is hardly an arbitrary exercise like this but rather is guided by the internal features of the text...
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Terry
No, it's not that it means nothing....it's because there've been so many attempts to reinterpret the text after the fact, and the original historical situation has long faded. If you look at current academic literature, there is very wide agreement on most of the particulars...
The use to which the Bible is put in the world at large is disproportionately prophetic; i.e. End Times and Salvation (after Armageddon).
Next to that, the Bible is thumb-sucking. Which is to say it soothes people by positing a babysitter in the clouds who has their best interests at heart.
After that, the Bible is a bludgeon used by clever leaders to shape a community of followers, givers and lock-step rubber-stampers to whatever ends the leader aspires. (Everything from Crystal Cathedrals to vast mansions and sleek cars and jets.)
Last, and surely least, the Bible is a default "historical" document. I say "least" because it does this so badly. One could spend hours and hours pointing out the errors, contradictions, revisional inclusions/exclusions which do violence to actual history.
If the Bible text of Daniel (the first non-Prophet :) has any value beyond filling in a few missing blanks (as Leolaia mentions here) for the piddling academia, that value would accrue to the time it wastes by occupying really intelligent people with misplaced expectations cherry-picking their way to glory.
At best, texts such as Daniel gave latter day revisionists another go at explaining shame-facedly why the chosen-people are still Yahweh's beloved even though they were constantly on the brink of being swallowed up and made extinct as World History overtook them time and again.
The title of this thread, as to "what does it mean now?" bespeaks the besodden intoxication it imparts to everybody who gives it a solemn whiff of credence.
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proplog2
The way to understand Daniel is to work backwards instead of forward.
After all the suggestion is that it would be sealed until the time of the end.
Everyone thinks they live in the time of the end right?
There is something unique and significant about OUR time. Nuclear weapons!!! It is now possible for humans to destroy themselves.
Working your way backward Daniel says the Great Tribulation would be preceded by some King of the South pushing some King of the North.
Every day there are articles describing just such a situation. Of course if you are an American you are so concerned with Bush, Hillary, Obama, Trump, Rosie Odonnel, Oprah, Jerry Springer, Nascar, Mexican Immigrants that you pay little or no attention to what is happening.
the eXile
March 23, 2007
Russia Goes Ballistic
By Alexander Zaitchik ([email protected])
The growing flap over missile defense bases in
Eastern Europe has me thinking back to 1998, to
the raucous American debate over NATO expansion.
Remember that? Me neither. Just about everyone
who mattered wanted to expand the NATO umbrella
over the Poles, the Czechs, and the Huns. Most
everyone else was at least resigned to enlarging
NATO's "zone of peace and security."
Only a few people bothered speaking out against
expansion, and the list wasn't that impressive.
It included right-wing hag Phyllis Schlafly, who
thought NATO constituted "European welfare", and
mega-hack Thomas Friedman, who argued it was
stupid to needlessly piss off or frighten Russia,
a weakened but major nuclear power with a
dilapidated early warning system. Surprisingly,
the Times editorial board agreed with their
columnist. It was a lonely position.
The debate, such as it was, ended in a steamroll,
with Friedman et. al. entombed face up in wet
concrete. Schlafley and the Times were no match
for Lockheed Martin, Bill Clinton and Vaclav
Havel. Expansion sailed through, as it did again
in 2002, and Russian concerns were waved off by
champagne drinking western officials. "Re-lax,"
Moscow was told. "Sure the Poles and Latvians
hate your guts, but we're your bankers! Stop
worrying. Take in a ballet. Go eat some borscht."
Nine years later, the same basic dialogue is
still on loop. Just like in '98, Russian generals
are warning Washington against overstepping along
their western border. Back when Russia was down
and everybody knew it, these warnings contained
an undertone of pleading. Not anymore. The U.S.
plan for missile defenses in Eastern Europe is
the dangerous tipping point in relations with a
resurgent Russia. Everyone keeps saying they
don't want a definitive split or another arms
race, but that's exactly what's happening.
It's been happening for years, in excruciating
slow-motion. Missile defense isn't just an
isolated project that can be forced down Moscow's
throat with a few "briefings" and an emergency
meeting of the (practically defunct) NATO-Russian
Council. It's the latest move in all-too coherent
strategy of encircling Russia with U.S. allies and NATO outposts.
There are two reasons the missile defense
provocation will likely push U.S./NATO-Russian
relations to the breaking point. First is the
continuum issue; it's just one broken promise too
many. In 1991 the west promised Gorbachev that
NATO would not encroach east if the Warsaw Pact
disappeared. After promising to remain a
"defensive" alliance dedicated to stabilization
in Europe, it bombed Serbia. In another 1998
promise, NATO said it would not allow advanced
new weapons systems in new member countries. Now
comes the missile defense plans. And people say we can't trust North Korea?
Second, the missile-defense system proposed for
Poland and the Czech Rep (and perhaps, says the
Pentagon, Ukraine and Georgia) is a work in
progress. U.S. officials can downplay the size of
the first seedling installations, but it's the
future that matters. While the system we're
hearing about calls for just 10 conventional
missiles, the technology is fetal, with early
sonar scans suggest the baby has Down Syndrome.
Analysts on both sides have admitted the system
as currently imagined may later be abandoned or
modified to include nuclear anti-missile
missiles. The Czech and Polish bases are also to
be integrated into America's nascent global
missile defense architecture, including
futuristic space-based elements. A comprehensive
Death Star missile defense network is the key to
Washington's stated goal of "full-spectrum dominance."
The western pooh-pooh chorus is well practiced at
portraying Russian statements of concern as the
lashing out of a dim-witted, paranoid, and
possibly expansionist power. But this chorus
sings primarily for western domestic consumption;
Russians stopped believing their assurances years
ago. Lead baritone is NATO Secretary General Jaap
de Hoop Scheffer, who recently said, "You don't
need to be a technological wizard or an Einstein
to understand that this cannot be possibly
directed against the Russians and cannot diminish
their first-strike capability."
That's odd, because an article last year in
Foreign Affairs by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G.
Press explained clearly and unabashedly why the
missile defense system is not only obviously
geared toward Russia (and China), but furthermore
that the system will finally allow the U.S. to
launch a "successful" first nuclear strike
against Russia without worrying about
retaliation, giving the U.S. total world nuclear
supremacy. (Let's ignore for the moment the fact
that such an attack would trigger global nuclear
winter.) Aside from tempting the U.S. to commit
the unthinkable, nuclear primacy has other
obvious benefits: it is the ultimate political
power-tool, dramatically increasing NATO/U.S. leverage in crisis-bargaining.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander
Losyukov recently tried to explain the reality of
the situation to a Bloomberg reporter. "Whether
[military programs] are done with good intentions
or bad, it doesn't matter, it increases the
hypothetical threat," he said. "We are reacting
to that in terms of taking necessary military measures.''
Col-Gen Boris Cheltsov, chief of staff of the air
force, has likewise described U.S. missile
defense plans as "a serious threat to the
military and, consequently, national security of
Russia, and this can disrupt the whole system of
strategic stability in the world." Cheltsov also
points to U.S. programs developing space weapons
and new high-tech high-altitude aircraft as
related causes for concern. These Pentagon
programs form part of the backdrop to Russia and
China's new crotch-bulging defense budgets
(combined still a fraction the size of America's.)
NATO expansion may have started the recent
downtrend in relations being accelerated by
missile defense, but there's a long history of
mistrust between the U.S. and Russia. It goes all
the way back to the first major beef between the
two countries. In 1917, shortly after the
Bolsheviks took power, Woodrow Wilson insisted
that America had "no intention to interfere in
the internal affairs of Russia" and would
"guarantee" that her troops would "not impair the
political or territorial sovereignty of Russia."
Meanwhile more than 200,000 foreign troops,
including 15,000 Americans, invaded Russia between 1918-1920.
Compare Wilson's words to those of U.S. National
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who last month
repeated the administration mantra that, "[T]he
[missile defense] system is not directed at
Russia, it is a system of limited capability, and
it poses no threat to the Russian strategic
deterrent." Just repeat after us: You have
nothing to fear. We come in peace. Go eat some borscht.
To be fair, Hadley's right. At the moment the
system is completely dysfunctional and poses no
threat to anyone. But in 10, 20, 30 years? And
what if some future administration as deranged as
the current one bases its foreign policy on the
assumption that it does work? These are the
questions that matter. Answer them honestly and
you see the world's (not just Russia's) point:
missile defense is a bad idea, and missile
defense in Eastern Europe is pouring stupid on
stupid. To their credit, even most Poles and Czechs agree.
Russia's response to this latest provocation has
been predictable. If the other guy with a gun is
putting on a bullet proof vest, you're going to
take your own gun off safety and point it at his
face -- or his nuts. As it did after NATO
expanded and started raining bombs on Serbia,
Russia's general staff is once again set to
revise its military doctrine, with more emphasis
on one guess nuclear weapons. But not just any
nukes. New nukes. Bigger nukes. Faster nukes. Closer nukes.
And retro nukes. Russia is already talking about
reintroducing short and medium range tactical
nuclear missiles into Europe if the U.S. proceeds
with its missile defense plans. Along with being
a brilliant wedge thrust between the U.S. and its
main NATO allies, it's the most fashion-backward
move in major power warfare since the U.S.A.F.
used napalm on Saddam's troops in '03.
Tactical nukes. You may remember these European
Continent-frying weapons from the early-80s, when
the U.S. put medium-range Pershings in West
Germany, triggering a mass peace movement in
Europe. Moscow already had its own short and
medium range missiles in place, the SS-20. Both
were scrapped with the 1987 signing of the Treaty
on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (RSMD).
Then the cold war became black-and-white footage
and we forgot all about nuclear weapons, unless
they had North Korean, Iraqi, or Iranian flags painted on them.
Someone cue the Devo, because it's looking like
New Wave night at cafe Europa. Chief of the
General Staff Yuriy Baluyevskiy has said Russia
will withdraw from RSMD if the U.S. proceeds with
its missile defense plans in Russia's backyard.
Doing his Bush impersonation, top presidential
candidate and first vice premier Sergei Ivanov
has already called RSMD "a relic of the Cold
War." If Russia does abandon the treaty, it will
likely revive the Oka, a very fast and easily
targeted short-range weapon known as the
"Kalashnikov of missiles." You really wouldn't
want a nuclear-tipped Oka to get commandeered by
the wrong sort of people. Even a drooling
Qaeda-tard like Richard Reid could probably
launch one. Among the serious downsides of any
new arms race will be a world awash in more
assembled nuclear weapons and material in an age of nuclear terror.
All of which is not to say that Russia is some
poor little cuddle-bear that just wants to buy
the world a Kvas. Far from it. Yet it is not the
one leading this dangerous nuclear waltz. Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer and Steve Hadley can downplay
missile defense until they actually believe their
own words, but the difference between "defensive"
or "offensive" weapons is in the eye of the
beholder. And the only beholder that matters is
Russia, which can wipe America off the map a lot
faster and easier than Iran or North Korea. -
Terry
......or not!