Question 28: Darius the Mede of Daniel: Has anyone read Thucydides – beside the author of Daniel?
In the 1934 JW Yearbook, as in a number of other annual editions, for each day of the year there is a scriptural passage with a several fold longer commentary extracted from the previous year’s Watchtower. As I read through these entries one day, I decided to do some analysis, to check which books were quoted most frequently and which passages.
Here is the table that I was able to construct.
-----------------------------------Books Quoted over 365 Entries ---------------------------------------------
Book Number Quotations Book Number Quotations
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Psalms 58 Daniel 51
Matthew 49 Luke 9
John 7 Mark 2
Acts 5 Revelations 12
Romans 12 (every month) Hebrews 6
Jude 6 Deuteronomy 23
Exodus 18 Job 5
Ezekiel 7 Isaiah 15
Jeremiah 8
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Whatever the results could have been, it would be easy to second guess or criticize. If one were to decide to cite a book x times, someone else could either argue in criticism that it was too often or not enough. This is entirely a matter of discretion… And yet it still warrants study. In my personal background, on each day of the year the Mass had a different reading of the Epistles and the Gospels with additional books such as Acts to commemorate the Pentecost. These would be roughly a chapter of each in its entirety, perhaps more for a high mass during a holiday such as Holy Week or Christmas.
But the readings in 1934 are consistent with a pattern that I detect today, an emphasis on certain chapters of Matthew, Daniel and Revelations either related to prophetic dreams or of apocalyptic battles. Since Jude is only two pages in most Bibles, it is remarkable that it is quoted 6 times; but it is also a book which quotes apocryphal texts such as the Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses. Each of these texts are fundamental to Jude’s position, but they raise theological questions all their own which would have to be examined separately. Safe to say that the Epistle of Jude with six citations is the most concentrated reference for word of text.
In the case of Daniel, the quoted passages concentrate in several chapters and frequently are overlapping verses repeatedly cited. I had expected to encounter Revelations more frequently since there is a connection between Daniel and Revelations perceived by many Christians – and the fact that they both rely on dreams or visions to convey their points of view. They are also two books whose authorship have been contested for centuries; since the first attempts to construct a canon.
But let us consider the 51 days devoted to contemplating Daniel. When you look at these references separately, one discovers that many of the quotations are examined several times, quotations a verse or two apart or in the same chapter. With citations three or four times, the total individual verses in Daniel reduces to 25. Some citations are cut up and Yearbook commentary goes off on its own tangents about Satan and Armageddon, generally. It would be very difficult to discern what the author of Daniel, Romans oeJob is talking about with the limited amount of text, but the chances would be increased if we were to read the texts for ourselves with perhaps some footnotes attached. Or we can just let suffice the coverage in the 1934 Yearbook.
Daniel Instance Daniel Instance
Citation citation
1 7:2,3 2 8:25
3 7:10 4 8:10,11
5 11:31 6 8:11 2
7 12:11 8 4:1
9 4:2 10 4:3
11 8:25 2 12 4:8
13 7:25 14 4:10,11
15 4:10,12 2 16 4:36
17 18 4:14,16
19 4:17 20 4:17 2
21 4:23 22 8:11 3
23 4:20 24 4:34
25 4:34 2 26 4:36
27 7:21 28 4:3 2
29 8:14 30 4:13
31 4:14 2 32 8:11 3
33 4:24,26 34 8:14 2
35 4:14 2 36 4:14,15 3
37 7:26 38 12:12
39 4:26 2 40 4:15
41 8:13 42 4:14,16 3
43 4:37 44 4;17 3
45 4:24,25 2 46 4:17 4
47 4:35 48 4:31
49 4:33 50 8:14 3
51 4:34
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Beside the above noted devotional verses, I would like to add a few other verses from Daniel for consideration.
Daniel 1:21 He became a member of the king’s court..Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus
Daniel 6:28 This Daniel flourished (Aramaic) in the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
Daniel 9: 1 It was the first year of Darius son of Artaxerxes, a Mede by race who assumed the throne of Chaldea.
Daniel 10:1 In the 3rd year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a revelation was made to Daniel known as Belteshazzar.
Daniel Chapter 5
King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for his noblemen, a thousand of them and, in the presence of the thousand, he drank his wine. Having tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave orders for the gold and silver vessels to be brought which father Nebuchadnazzar had taken from the sanctuary in Jerusalem…
( to Belshazzar:) King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, made him head of the magicians….
That same night, the Chaldean king Belshazzar was murdered,
Daniel Chapter 6
And Darius the Mede received the kingdom at age of sixty-two.
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From what can be determined from archeology and other classical sources - and stone monuments of the time...
Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus the king. He was defeated in the field of battle by the Persians at Opis when the Persian army overran the Babylonian flank defending Babylon, described in detail in the Nabonidus Chronicle. Darius I was a Persian king who reigned after Cyrus from 522 to 486 BC. Nabonidus was UNRELATED to Nebuchadnezzar, but reigned from 555/556 to 539 BC. He succeeded the son of Neriglissar, Labashi-Marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.
Name Berossus Royal Canon BC
Nabopolassar 21 21 625-605
Nebuchadnezzar 43 43 605-562
Awel Marduk 2 2 561-560
Neriglissar 4 4 559-556
Labashi Marduk 9 months - 556
Nabonidus 17 17 555-539
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Somewhere above I might have got off the chronological track, according to one authority. But I suppose the readers know where to insert the extra 20 or so years required.
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The Persian monarchs are as follows:
Cyrus II 559-530
Cambyses II 530-522
Darius I 522-486
Xerxes I 485-465
Artexerxes I 464-424
Darius II 423-405
Artexerxes II 404-359
Artexerxes III 358-338
Darius III 335-331
Alexander the Great (336-323) 331-323 (enters & dies in Babylon)
2 nd century Greek theater
Note that there appear 3 Persian Darius - after Cyrus.
The Cyrus Cylinder records that Cyrus entered Babylon accompanied by Gubaru the governor of Syria who had gone over to his side. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses in 528. When Cambyses died in 522, he was succeeded by Darius, also a Persian. Darius immediately put down a Babylonian revolt headed by a Nebuchadnezzar who claimed he was a son of Nabonidus. He was succeeded by Xerxes.
Since Darius, Artaxerxes (in some translations) and Nebuchadnazzar are mentioned in Daniel, possibly the author is referring to events after the Jews are released by Cyrus to return to their homeland. The details of these violations also resemble events in Jerusalem during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes in the mid 2nd century BC more than anything else. These are recorded in the Maccabees without prophecy or metaphor.
But the story in Daniel centers on violation of temple vessels that the Babylonians had already taken home with them as well. And, since, as stated earlier, we also have the account of how these events are suppose to have transpired from the book of Isaiah, one would wonder (once again) if the author or authors of Daniel had read Isaiah chapters 40-55.
Has anyone read Thucydides – beside the author of Daniel?
Since I had personal reasons to be concerned about some of the apocalyptic issues surrounding the Bible and where in the text these beliefs originated, my attention was drawn to a number of issues relating to 8th through 5th century BCE history. The matter of "Darius the Mede" was among them. Just fortuitously over one weekend last month I encountered two clues to examine. I happened to read an article about the Behistun Rock inscription in Iran attributed to Darius I of Persia, an exercise in stone tablet writing of Mount Rushmore proportions; and then a few hours later I listened to a lecture about Thucydides and his "History of the Peloponnesian Wars" and how Thucydides frequently referred to the Persians as Medes.
I did some checking.
Thucydides Peloponnesian War history was written around 430 BC. My Penguin paperback edition of Thucydides translated by a certain Rex Warner seemed to dispense with such references to "Medes"; it spoke of the earlier invaders (circa 500-480) as either Persians or "barbarians". But as for other translations I located on line, these references were abundant enough to note (e.g., Crawley, Strassler), especially when they surrounded the battle of Marathon in the author's introduction to the current events of Spartan-Athenian hostilities.
Though my Greek is limited, looking at Thucydides original texts, it was clear enough that the Medes were mentioned often where many translators simply had substituted Persians or "the barbarians". I have attached a sample passage below about the battle of Marathon (490 BC) during the reign of Darius (521-486 BC). Throughout I counted ~50 references to Medes plus descriptions of the invasion as the Median war and the process of Greek states becoming "Medized".
On the other hand, Darius I identifies himself at Behistun Rock very clearly as a Persian of Achaemenid descent. He also states very emphatically he is an adherent of Ahuramazda, a Zoroastrian: "Eight of my dynasty were kings before me. I am the ninth....By the grace of Ahuramazda am I king; Ahuramazda has granted me the kingdom....23 lands in all." article.
"The following is what was done by me after I became king. A son of Cyrus named Cambyses, one of our dynasty, was king here before me." A pretender who named himself Smerdis was in revolt while Cambyses was on campaign in Egypt where he died. Full text is available in a Wikipedia article. To succeed Cambyses, Darius had to contend with this and many other rivals, including a revolt in Babylon by a supposed son of Nabonidus named Nebuchadnezzar. .. All sorts of events similar to what is related in Daniel, but yet unlikely - since this Darius did not reign before Cyrus (550-529 BC). And he was not a Mede. Right?
As opposed to the Rex Warner translation used by Penguin paperbacks, Richard Crawley's, archived by Google, had at least 50 references to "Medes", plus the "Median" war and becoming "Medized". The case is similar for a text by Robert Strassler. I have attached a sample passage below which is a discussion of an event in 490 BC during the reign of the first Persian Darius. Unfortunately Borders Bookstore went out of business; so there was no ready access to Loeb bilingual classics. But I found Greek originals on line. What little Greek I know was enough to confirm that this was an accurate, literal translation. The chairmen of the editorial committee must know how that is.
While true enough, Thucydides was chronicling the war among Greeks, the Peloponnesian War, he was telling us also something about what Greeks thought about their war with an Asian power.
So, where does this take us? How about if I start with Daniel chapter 9, verses 1 to 2 in which he gives testimony?
It was the first year of Darius son of Ataseurus (in some Artaxerxes), a Mede by race who assumed the throne of Chaldea. In the first year of his reign, I Daniel was studying the scriptures counting over the number of years - as revealed by Yahweh to the prophet Jeremiah - that were to pass before the desolation of Jerusalem would come to an end, namely seventy years.
Let's just suppose that Daniel worked for Darius and had the goods on him, that he really was a Mede... The Jews in captivity in Babylon have already left, freed by Cyrus.
But does it really matter whether Darius in his own testimony is not a Mede if all the Greeks since Thucydides think he is one? Including the Hellanized Jews sick of the tyranny of Antiochus IV in the mid 2nd century BC.?
I find this the most compelling piece of evidence on the question of when the book of Daniel was written. While the author was quite exact about events during the 3rd and 2nd century, the "coincidental" characterization of Persian monarchs as Medes by the conquerors and subject people seems to suggest a view through the same distorted prism. Daniel is also out on a limb about Belshazzar being a son of Nebuchadnezzar and a king; he never mentions Nabonidus and attributes satrapies to the same Darius he places before Cyrus. By the mid 2nd century BC, the Persian reign in Judea was as temporally distant as colonial America is to the United States of today. While I have heard it argued that Daniel was written during the 160s BC, I have never heard anyone cite Thucydides as an argument. I submit it for consideration.
Chapter 18 -Book 1 Thucydides -The Landmark Thucydides – R. B. Strassler
[1] But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the Athenians.
Introduction Section – Penguin- Rex Warner
18) Finally, however, the Spartans put down the tyranny in the rest of Greece, most of which had been governed by tyrants for much longer than Athens. From the time when the Dorians first settled in Sparta there had been a particularly long period of political disunity; yet the Spartan constitution goes back to a very early date, and the country has never been ruled by tyrants. For rather more than 400 years, dating from the end of the late war, they have had the same system of government, and this has beennot only a source of internal strength, but has enabled them tot intervene in the affairs of other states.
Not many years afer the end of tyrannies in Hellas, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Persians and the Athenians.
My count: Strassler and similar translations:
Mede/Medes: 49
Median: 17
Medism: 5
Medize: 3
If the figure is visible,
In the fourth and third line from the bottom, note the reference to Marathon, Medes and Athenians.