by Tiresias 26 Replies latest watchtower bible
Sheesh the peple that wrote Damiel were cowards... While the Maccabeeans were fighting they wre writing about how God would deliver them.. and did he? Not they way they thought at the very least. The called Simon and his crowd 'a little help'... Excuse me F*** you! for sittting their beihind your pens!
No on delivered htem bt the Maccabees.... and they never appreceatied it... idiots!
Sheesh the peple that wrote Damiel were cowards... While the Maccabeeans were fighting they wre writing about how God would deliver them.. and did he? Not they way they thought at the very least. The called Simon and his crowd 'a little help'... Excuse me F*** you! for sittting their beihind your pens!
No on delivered htem bt the Maccabees.... and they never appreceatied it... idiots!
Preterism is something that just doesn't pan out in my view. When it was probably written is based on the research of scholars who believe that prophecy is something that's written after the events take place and interpreted in that environment. Although Preterism is popular among a number of scholars, I find it untenable, personally, and believe it runs into a number of brick walls. In fact, one of my most frustrating email exchanges with a person of another belief system than myself was with a Preterist. Since they believe that all prophecies have been fulfilled, including the prophecies laid out in Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation, they must go through a number of gyrations to find fulfillment of things not yet fulfilled.
As an example, both Jewish and Christian eschatology speak of a time when Judah, under attack from a coalition of its neighbors (a situation that could only occur now), suffers almost total defeat. But, at the last minute, the Messiah, or Yahweh, appears, saves the remaining Jews and destroys their enemy. As the Psalmist puts it: “They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee.” (Psalm 85)
This is something that’s happening now. Not even Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of wiping Israel out as a nation. The present-day neighbors of Israel do, however, and hardly a month goes by without a major call for Israel’s destruction. “Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;Assur also is joined with them: they have [lent their strength to] the children of Lot.”
Some may seek to find fulfillment in the massive attack of the Romans, which scattered Judah to all nations of the earth; however, the Romans were not Judah’s neighbors. When Ezekiel writes of this great despot that will come down on Judah, he specifically lays out what will happen:
After many days thou shalt be visited:in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that isbrought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates to take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.
This is something that Preterism (and JW eschatology) is helpless to explain. Ezekiel calls him “Gog” and John calls him “the Beast.” This great force will move swiftly until it gets to Israel; then the power of God will be brought to bear. Ezekiel speaks directly to this man and tries to warn him, but he knows, like Pharaoh of old, that Gog will harden his heart. “And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the Lord.So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.”
Some people think this portends the great battle at the end of the Millennium, but there are a number of reasons to believe this is not the case. First, it refers to an event in the “latter years,” or the latter days. Also, the Lord said to him, “Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them?” The prophets have always spoken of the Antichrist that would come just before the Second Coming of Christ. The battle of Gog and Magog at the end of the Millennium will be seen as a mere continuation of rebellion against God. But the Gog of which Ezekiel writes is someone who comes to war against those who have been gathered from the nations and have returned to their promised ancestral homeland. The Gog at the end of the Millennium will try to again bring force against God’s people, but by then there will be no Jerusalem filled with Jews, and the battle’s duration will be very short. In the battle of which Ezekiel speaks, known to Christians as Armageddon, it will take place over a longer period of time. It will take seven years to burn the munitions and to bury Gog’s dead.
At the end of the Millennium, there will be no need to bury anyone, because they’ll be vaporized, judged and resurrected in the resurrection of the unjust.
More references relating to this time: Psalms 83, 85; Zechariah 12-14, Revelation 11, which also speaks of a new temple at Jerusalem and two prophets who will be raised up to battle the Beast and the False Prophet.
There are many prophecies that have not yet been fulfilled and many that are in the process of being fulfilled. Preterism sweeps all this under the rug and presses for exegeses that seek to find fulfillment in and before the coming of the Savior.
Zechariah explains exactly how the Second Coming of Christ will be, and it's completely different from how the Governing Body imagines it. It's also a completely unfulfilled (as yet) prophecy.
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Interesting interpretation Teresias, but going against the writer's own exposition. He would have said "king," but instead he mentions "kingdom" (see all versions and translations). I view the prophecy of Daniel as a unit, thus preferring the traditional explanation of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, especially in the light of the four beasts of Dan. 7:
38b Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
39 "After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.
40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron--for iron breaks and smashes everything--and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.
41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.
42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle.
43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
(Dan 2:38-43 TNIV)
Coming back to the date of authorship, it seems to be moving back in time, according to the latest research. Three examples come to mind:
1) It is certainly possible that Daniel is the author of the book (Ant. 10:267), which would put the date of the book somewhere in the latter half of the sixth century B.C. [Footnote 1: On purely linguistic grounds, the similarity of the book’s Aramaic with that of Egyptian Aramaic texts from the fifth century B.C. makes a date in the latter part of the sixth century B.C. at least remotely possible.][1]
2) John J. Collins, a staunch defender of a late date Daniel, makes an unusual concession. While acknowledging that a “precise dating on linguistic grounds is not possible,” he concludes that the Aramaic of Daniel is later than that of the Samaria papyri (Wadi Daliyeh, fourth century BCE) but earlier than that of the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20).[2]
3) The form of the prophecies of Dan. 8:23-25 and 11 is best explained if they originated in the Babylonian Dispersion and the author was well acquainted with the Babylonian omen literature, someone skilled in the language and letters of the Chaldeans, as the account in Dan. 1 indicates.[3]
[1] Michael B. Shepherd, Daniel in the Context of the Hebrew Bible (Studies in Biblical Literature, vol. 123), Peter Lang Publishing, New York 2009, pp. 65, 66.
[2] John J. Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia-series, pp. 16 [footnote 156], 17, and R. J. Korner, “The “Exilic” Prophecy of Daniel 7: Does It Reflect Late Pre-Maccabean or Early Hellenistic Historiography?” in Prophets, Prophecy, and Ancient Israelite Historiography [ed. M. J. Boda and L. M. Wray Beal; Leiden: Brill, 2013], p. 348.
[3] E. C. Lucas, “Daniel: Resolving the Enigma,” Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 50, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 72-76.
Tiresias,
You can find an article I wrote about it here:
Eden
Some people reallly need to read Bart D. Ehrman 's books.
Once you've read them, you'd abandon the idea that the NT testement is inspired. You may as well be examining the Lord Of The Rings books for insight into the future.
Hello Vanderhoven7,
My web site is http://www.freewebs.com/gwencarm/. I call the site "The Secret Synagogue." It's aim is to provide people in high control movements with critical optics to see the Bible--not as a tool of control--but as an anthology of ancient Israelite literature. The light out of the psychic prison is understanding how we created it in the first place.
Thank you!
T
Hello Abe,
You ask why God allowed the Romans to ruin that same re-built temple and the city, and then destroy the people of that kingdom if it was a kingdom that would never be brought to ruin?
At the risk of sounding 'evangelical' I will suggest that, with the arrival of Jesus the Messiah, the Judahite Kingdom was replaced by the "Kingdom of the Heavens." Perhaps that is why the writer of Hebrews explains: " But you [Israelites] have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly" (Hebrews 12:22) (NIV) (Parentheses mine].
The act of destroying the temple effectively ended God's relationship with Israel (I believe it is called a 'decree absolute' in marital law: the official end of a marriage). If I take the Scriptures of Israel (Genesis to Revelation) at face value, then both Judaism and Christianity ended with that destructive act. When I say, "Christianity ended" I mean the Messianic movement within Israel served its purpose by redeeming Israelites from the throes of Judaism and lifting them to a higher plane of existence (termed the 'snatching away or 'rapture') in 1 Thessalonians. Therefore, that kingdom stood forever, so to speak.
I should clarify that I can find no evidence of an outreach to "Gentiles" in the Bible. But that's another topic
Thank you, Abe.
T
Hello Doug Mason,
You suggest that the Book of Daniel "was produced in the 2nd century BCE as a means for strengthening the Jews whose existence was again under threat."
You and I agree on one point, Doug, that the Book of Daniel had an application to the Israelites then living. A contemporaneous application has far more explanatory utility than believing that Daniel spoke over the heads of his contemporaries to generations far removed from his own.
Thank you!
T
Hello Vidqun,
As I state on my web site, Daniel was a leader speaking to a leader--Nebuchadnezzar II--a dictator, an egomaniac.
“Kingdom” translates the Aramaic word Malkuw meaning everything our English word signifies, “royalty, authority, realm or territory, reign (duration)." I believe Nebuchadnezzar would have understood Daniel to mean "a monarchy": a form of government with a monarch at the head. Knowing that a line of hereditary rulers ( a dynasty) would succeed him would probably have given him some satisfaction.
Daniel's message? 'Within four generations God will wipe your dynasty off the face of the earth!'
Bye for now!
T
