AnnOMaly,
RE: Satraps are a Persian convention. ... Nebuchadnezzar should not have had any. &
Perhaps it's a problem of translation rather than concept. Are you arguing that governors or 'princes' over provinces or towns could not exist before the Persian hegemony?
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In searching on satrap in concordances and hebrew on line OT texts, I found 3 other instances beside the one in chapter 3. Interestingly enough, several of the sources tended to ignore the existence of the Dan 3 usages. Anyway, the convention appears to be used in the NWT as well as the Hebrew (language) text. To expedite things, here are the other three instances copied from an on-line Biblical source.
"At that time those who had come from captivity , the returned exiles, offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, twelve bulls for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven lambs, and as a sin offering twelve he-goats; all this was a burnt offering to The Lord. They also delivered the king's commissions to the king's satraps and to the governors of the province Beyond the River; and they aided the people and the house of God." (Ezra 8:35-36 RSV)
"Then the king's secretaries were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king's satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the princes of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language; it was written in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king's ring." (Esther 3:12 RSV)
"It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three presidents, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other presidents and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom; but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. (Daniel 6:1-4 RSV)
In all these instances the Hebrew text used the same word: achshdrphni - depending on number or case - Hebrew is not a language I have studied. But you can go to an on-line Hebrew OT with the phonetic transliteration and identify the word that is used repeatedly and translated as "satrap". Satrap is a Persian convention, not Babylonian. Lest we lose track of what this is all about, I should reiterate that Nebuchadnezzar can have all manner of governors, but he is not going to name them satraps - unless he is a satrap of the Persian government himself. If Darius the Mede supposedly appointed all these satraps before Cyrus showed up, then the Mede bureaucracy must have worked as fast as lightning. Funny how it is Persian Darius that gets the credit for all that elsewhere.
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Regarding 90 AD
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To determine what my 25 year old encyclopedia was talking about, I was able to locate reference to a rabbinical meeting around that date in Jamnia or Javne. While on line sources were not in agreement whether anything regarding setting a canon was determined there, the wikipedia source that was most adamant about the absence of canon issues decided also weighed in for late date of Daniel (wikipedia jamnia). A University of Sheffield historian disagreed, but had more interesting things to say about other matters (below).
However, the issue of 90 AD obscures a couple of things. This was a hypothesized date for admission into the canon, not the writing of the book itself. A majority of adherents for late date would be no later than 165 BC. Secondly, it is also an issue of WHERE in the canonical structure the book resides.
In the first case, there are other books beside Daniel that were written relatively late for which decisions had to made whether they should be part of the OT canon. Despite much of merit in Maccabees or Sirach or Wisdom of Solomon, though they appeared in the 2nd century BC, they were not included, save as tack ons to the Septuagint or "deutero-canonical" recommendations of Jerome or others, distinct from the NT scriptures, but providing further detail about things prior. Esther does not mention God a single time, but makes it into the Canon. The book of Enoch is the non-canonical book on which the brief arguments of the Epistle of Jude are based. Maccobees have martyrdoms described in terrifying detail and a campaign to prevail in the name of faith without the assist that Joshua supposedly had - and they won.
It is in Sirach or the Ecclesiasticus that the structure of the Hebrew Scritpure is spelled out in chapter one:
1 [The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.] Whereas many and great things have been delivered unto us by the law and the prophets, and by others that have followed their steps, for the which things Israel ought to be commended for learning and wisdom; and whereof not only the readers must needs become skilful themselves, but also they that desire to learn be able to profit them which are without, both by speaking and writing: my grandfather Jesus, when he had much given himself to the reading of the law, and the prophets, and other books of our fathers, and had gotten therein good judgment, was drawn on also himself to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom; to the intent that those which are desirous to learn, and are addicted to these things, might profit much more in living according to the law. Wherefore let me intreat you to read it with favour and attention, and to pardon us, wherein we may seem to come short of some words, which we have laboured to interpret.
For the same things uttered in Hebrew, and translated into another tongue, have not the same force in them: and not only these things, but the law itself, and the prophets, and the rest of the books, have no small difference, when they are spoken in their own language. For in the eight and thirtieth year coming into Egypt, when Euergetes was king, and continuing there some time, I found a book of no small learning: therefore I thought it most necessary for me to bestow some diligence and travail to interpret it; using great watchfulness and skill in that space to bring the book to an end, and set it forth for...
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Quoting the Sheffield source:
In the Hebrew Bible these books are divided into three divisions: the Law, the Prophets and
the Writings. The Law comprises the five books of Moses. In the ‘Prophets’ are included the
books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (the ‘Former Prophets’) as well as the books of
Isaiah, Jeremiah. Ezekiel and the ‘Minor’ Prophets (the ‘Latter Prophets’). The ‘Writings’
contain firstly Psalms, Proverbs and Job; secondly a group of five books called the ‘Five
Scrolls’, Canticles, Ruth. Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther; thirdly the books of Daniel,
Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
[continuing]
I still don't think that many people following this issue take much notice of the concept that OT and NT have secondary structure. If they did, they would not be as susceptible to the argument that dreams and numerology in one book about a questionably historical figure by an anonymous author could trump the words uttered by Christ on the cross in another book so that they would have to be re-written to conform (NWT Luke 23:43). When I happened to notice this discrepancy and reported that's "what I learned in school a few days later" in December of 2009, I got my own equivalent of disfellowshipping without ever having had gone through the formality of having joined.
The reason for this arrangement is uncertain. It does not represent the order in which the
various books were written, nor is it an arrangement in accordance with subject-matter.
..it appears from Lk. 24: 44 that our Lord knew the threefold division of the
Hebrew Bible, for when He speaks there of ‘the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the
psalms’, the last word may refer not merely to the Book of Psalms hut to the whole division
of the ‘Writings’ in which the Book of Psalms took first place. There is evidence, indeed, that
this threefold division was known in the second century B.C., for the translator of the
apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) from Hebrew into Greek was plainly acquainted with it,
and makes more than one reference to it in the preface to his translation, written about 132 B.C.
F.F. Bruce, “The Canon of Scripture,” Inter-Varsity (Autumn 1954): 19-22.
President of I.V.F. (1954-55) and Head of the Department of Biblical
History and Literature in the University of Sheffield
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For myself, it is interesting to note the exceptional nature of Daniel's exclusion from among the prophets. Jonah abides there along with the minor prophets - and Ezekiel who was supposedly a contemporary of Daniel residing in Babylon is included as well. Many would regard Jonah as fiction today; and then others have argued that Daniel was excluded because he did not do his work in Judea. Maybe some of the same questions arose in those days that we are reviewing now.
