Posts by kepler

1

Genesis, Hebrews, the Trinity and three guys walk into a bar

by kepler in

question 41: genesis, the trinity and three guys walk into a bar.... .

amid the 2012 republican primary campaigns there is circulating the following story: .

a liberal, a conservative and a moderate walk into a bar.

kepler

An "epilogue".

Judging from "No comment", I suspect that I fumbled the ball.

Internal reaction might have been, "Just what are you implying!?", or simply, "What was THAT all about?"

Admittedly, for one topic I ended up touching on several things, resorting to a transcript of a 1954 trial in Scotland to build the case. I don't know how widely known this case is in the community of readers. Also, in quoting from the transcript, I thought it best if I did not lift quotes out too tightly. In so many instances people are accused of taking quotes out of context and twisting them beyond anything resembling intent.

So, here are some further remarks.

1. The 810-page transcript title is "Court of Sessions, Scotland, Lord Strachan, Proof L.C., Douglas Walsh, Tuesday 23rd November, 1954". I mistakenly carried Walsh above as "Edmund". In petitioning for a sweeping interpretation of the United Kingdom's exemption form service laws for members of the ministry, VP Frederick Franz plus JW officers Suiter, Covington and Hughes travelled to Scotland and testified in court in behalf of a local publisher and minister [Walsh] in a Scotland congregation in a class action case. When the four or five court witnesses were examined by their representing attorney, they were given softball questions that provided the basis for their petition under the circumstances of United Kingdom law (distinct from legal precedents established in the US or elsewhere). These provided, for example, definitions of practices and belief which I judged as more straightforward than what I was presented when an Elder and his assistants came to my house with "What the Bible Really Teaches" as a governing study text. But when these officers were cross-examined by an attorney representing the "crown", if that term would be appropriate, the questions had more of an edge.

Among the legal officers present were James Lathan Clyde, MP, representing the Ministry of Labor and National Service; Mr. Leslie and Kissen as counsels for the defense [Walsh] and John Cameron with two assistants for Strachan.

As a document made of re-scanned court transcripts, this PDF located somewhere in etherspace is a 99 megabyte file. It is well worth reviewing. In fact, what it probably needs is re-scanning or re-typing into a more convenient, smaller file form. For while many of the critiques of Jehovah Witness believes or Biblical interpretation are caught in the Catch-22 created in their origin in dissent literature, quoting from or examining the public utterances of these four or five witnesses cannot be dismissed in the same way.

2. Obviously, I started this thread with somewhat oblique references to the doctrine of the Trinity. From my own point of view of not having ever been a JW, I cannot imagine what goes on in one's mind when the subject is even discussed. To tell the truth, for me, living 17th centuries after the formulation of the Nicene creed, it is an idea that does not come naturally to me either. Yet I would not burn metaphorically burn at the stake anyone who argued this proposition either way. From the standpoint of Scriptures there is at least recorded evidence for something beyond unity in the very first chapter of Genesis ( "let us") and the whole of that non-synoptic Gospel of John. It was only of late that peculiarities of chapter 18 in Genesis came to my attention: While chunking TV channels, I caught a couple of scenes from a several decade old Dino De Laurentis film, titled "the Bible", which was really only focusing on incidents in Genesis. Cryptic in portrayal, but there it was.

3. Frederick Franz made a number of interesting assertions as a witness in court; just in the segments excerpted above, and many more elsewhere.

A. I would have felt better about his Trinity assertion if, based on his claim of decades of work as a biblical and comparative religion researcher, he would have mentioned the curious instances of scriptural evidence of a Trinity or something more than One - but he didn't. He said there was NO evidence. Not a trace. I know this incident in Genesis chapter 18 is not abundantly clear, but then ten chapters prior we have an incident with a serpent in a tree and everyone just knows that was Satan because....?

B. Secondly, he said that Christ had returned to Earth in an invisible form because he was now the mirror image of Jehovah and therefore his visual presence on Earth could not be viewed by mortals. I don't recall in Dispensationalist literature prior to 1914 how this matter was addressed or resolved, but look again at the evidence in Genesis 18. Abraham spots the Lord headed for his tent. He was a frequent visitor, so we are told.

C. I suppose it was Mr. Cameron who inquired of Franz whether there was any place that between the time of Abel and the 1870s whether there was anywhere where an interested individual could sign up to be a Jehovah's Witness. Franz did get a little testy about this and then said something I thought was pretty remarkable, considering all these sequences of dates, desecrations and desolations:

God does not deal in Temples made with hands...

Q. I appreciate your point of view on church buildings, but prior to 1870 was there an earthly organization in the sense that has existed since 1870?

A. No. All the Scripture show there would not be. The Scriptures show that God’s people would be temporarily in a state of captivity to the great mystic Babylon, and they would be deprived of their privileges.

Yes, for a tidy period of 2520 years, we are given to understand, of a historical plan that was not to exceed 6000. If Franz was the guy who was 2nd seat on the flight deck, I was glad that I was not on board his craft.

D. So in examining Hebrews and the notion of witnessing, testifying and acting in faith: it was my conclusion that the NWT text was deliberately revised in translation at 11:16 so as NOT to reflect a final heavenly destination for the faithful. The witnesses enumerated would be RULED by heaven, but they would be on the ground, on Earth.

And the man who was testifying in Scotland probably made sure of that final editorial correction himself. Assuming that Hebrews was written before Revelations, and Revelations had a city along with 144,000 of the anointed, there had to be no confusion about who was going to heaven and who was going to remain ...

on a paradise earth.

Paradise is a word of Persian origin by the way.

paradise

late 12c., "Garden of Eden," from O.Fr. paradis, from L.L. paradisus, from Gk. paradeisos "park, paradise, Garden of Eden," from an Iranian source, cf. Avestan pairidaeza "enclosure, park" (Mod.Pers. and Arabic firdaus "garden, paradise"), compound of pairi- "around" + diz "to make, form (a wall)." The first element is cognate with Gk. peri- "around, about" (see peri-), the second is from PIE base *dheigh- "to form, build" (see dough). The Gk. word, originally used for an orchard or hunting park in Persia, was used in Septuagint to mean "Garden of Eden," and in New Testament translations of Luke xxiii.43 to mean "heaven" (a sense attested in Eng. from c.1200). Meaning "place like or compared to Paradise" is from c.1300.

1

Genesis, Hebrews, the Trinity and three guys walk into a bar

by kepler in

question 41: genesis, the trinity and three guys walk into a bar.... .

amid the 2012 republican primary campaigns there is circulating the following story: .

a liberal, a conservative and a moderate walk into a bar.

kepler

Question 41: Genesis, the Trinity and three guys walk into a bar…

Amid the 2012 Republican primary campaigns there is circulating the following story:

A liberal, a conservative and a moderate walk into a bar. The bar tender says "Hi, Mitt!"

Suddenly, I realized I had heard this story before.

In the 1954 case in Scotland of L. Strachan v. E. Walsh, on page 42 of the proceedings, Fred Franz testified as follows on initial examination by an attorney representing Edmond Walsh. L. Strachan represented the British government interest in the petition.

Q. (in examination) It is, of course, common to most, if not all forms of Christian belief that Christ promised a return to earth?

A. That is right.

Q. But I think you have gone farther, have you not, in one direction and have held that return took place in 1914?

A. Yes, it was an invisible return, because Jesus Christ is not the invisible God, and being His image, he is invisible to human eyes, the same as Jehovah God Himself, and no man can look upon Him and live. So his second coming must be invisible and when He comes into the kingdom, that is the invisible entry into this governmental function.

Q. I think this is set out, I think, isn’t it, in No. 15 of Process at page 201?

A. Yes, there is reference to it on that page.

Q. Now is that, so far as your studies indicated, a unique belief among Christian communities?

A. It certainly is.

Q. Do you regard the Trinity doctrine as one for which there is no scriptural authority?

A. No, there is not a bit of scriptural authority for the Trinity doctrine.

Q. As you interpret the Scripture?

A. That is right.

Q. And therefore, do you reject the doctrine of the Trinity?

Q. And therefore, do you reject the doctrine of the Trinity?.

A. Yes.

Q. I think you said in the course of your evidence that your regarded – I mean the association regarded the Holy Spirit as the invisible active force of God. Is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. The force which moves His servants to do His will?

A. That is right.

Q. Now would you look please at page 11 of No 15 of Process. Do you find your rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity there?

A. Yes. I find it on page 111.

Q. That is the conclusion of a chapter which itself is headed “Is there a Trinity?”

A. Yes.

Q. Is that also set out in No. 25 of Process at page 3, top of the page.

A. That is true.

Before proceeding myself, I note that testimony was confusing sometimes in the sense whether Mr. Franz was testifying on his own beliefs or those of the Society. But let us continue with:

In Gen 18:1-5, concerning Abraham

Yahweh appeared to him [Abraham] at the Oak of Mamre while he was sitting by the entrance of the tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up, and there he saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and bowed to the ground. “My lord,” he said, “if I find favor with you, please do not pass your servant by, “Let me have a little water brought and you can wash your feet and have a rest under the tree. Let me fetch a little bread and you can refresh yourselves before going any further, now that you have come in your servant’s direction.” They replied, “Do as you say.”

… and they ate while he remained standing near them under the tree.

“Where is your wife Sarah? They asked him.

---------------------------------------------------------------

While there is plenty else to think about in this chapter of Genesis, just like perhaps all the others, I have to wonder if Fred Franz had considered these passages when he gave his testimony.

There is much to consider in Franz’s testimony as well. A few lines above this entry, the Vice President of the Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society discussed the origin of the name Jehovah's Witness, attributing it to the Hebrews epistle, though unsigned, often attributed to the Apostle Paul. Chapters 11 and 12 enumerate figures from Genesis through the Old Testament who acted in faith, culminating with Jesus Christ himself. But it also was stated in the Strachan vs. Walsh testimony that the line of Witnesses was unbroken from the time of Abel.

In subsequent cross examination by the crown’s attorney [page 94], Mr. Franz was asked:

Q. Do you distinguish between the body known as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the New York and Pennsylvania Incorporations?

A. Jehovah’s Witnesses are the world-wide body. They are international in their composition, whereas the New York Corporation is something which has been incorporated under the membership laws of that stat, and the Pennsylvania Corporation has been incorporated under [p95] the laws of that state.

Q. Then the whole tenets and principles and beliefs of those who subscribe to the views of the Jehovah’s Witnesses do in fact come from the incorporations?

A. Not from the incorporations. They come through the directorate of the Pennsylvania Corporation.

Q. So that without the directorate the body of Jehovah’s Witnesses would be left without spiritual guidance?

A. The primitive Christian Church had a governing body composed of the apostles.

Q. I know about the primitive church..

A. And so Jehovah’s Witnesses today have a governing body which is the Board of Directors of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

Q. Now what is the answer to my question? Without that directorate the body of Jehovah’s Witnesses would be left without spiritual guidance?

A. No, they would not.

Q. Where would the guidance come from?

A. The guidance would come from the governing body. The governing body does not exist because of the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Incorporation, any more than the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost was by the Pennsylvania law.

Q. When did the movement, if I may call it, start? It was about 1870, was it?

A. Yes, that when Charles Russell began his bible studies with a group of fellow students of the Holy Scriptures. [96]

Q. Your fairly said that the purpose and principles of the Witnesses may change from time to time according to the change in light?

A. That is, those teachings which are based on fundamentals do not change, but the superstructure of faith must be over in harmony with the lines of those fundamental doctrines of the Bible.

Q. Tell me if I am right or wrong in this; that in the days of Pastor Russell, I think he was called.

A. Yes.

Q. The Fall of Satan or Christ’s Second Coming was dated for 1876, I think.

A. No. the Fall of Satan was not assigned that date.

Q. Was not something assigned to 1876?

A. No.

Q. You say no?

A. No.

Q. Pastor Russell was followed by Judge Rutherford?

A. As President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.

Q. Was there any other President between Judge Rutherford and the present Mr. Knorr.

A. No.

Q. So that is a comparatively new body, Jehovah’s Witnesses?

A. No. It is an old body. It begins with the first Witness of Jehovah on Biblical record, Abel, and continues to the present time.

Q. But there was no person or building to which a person could go prior to 1870 and say,”I wish to join a company or congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses”?

A. It is Jehovah God who makes one his Witness and that depends on the individual’s dedication of himself to Jehovah God through Jesus Christ. Then he becomes God’s [97] by dedication. Then he must serve as his witness.

Q. Is my question susceptible [?] to a simple yes or no? Prior to 1870 was there any person or building to which an individual could go and say, “I wish to join a company of Jehovah’s Witnesses”?

A. No; because the Temple of God is not an earthly building. It is a spiritual Temple, andGod does not deal in Temples made with hands. So it is foolish to speak about a physical building here upon this Earth to which an individual must go to become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Abel did not go to any.

Q. I appreciate your point of view on church buildings, but prior to 1870 was there an earthly organization in the sense that has existed since 1870?

A. No. All the Scripture show there would not be. The Scriptures show that God’s people would be temporarily in a state of captivity to the great mystic Babylon, and they would be deprived of their privileges.

--------------------

When I reviewed Hebrews 11 and 12, I went to examine the notion of Abel as a witness and the term's subsequent use with other principal figures of the Old Testament. As is quite often the case when I perform these exercises, however, I usually find something different than what I was looking for.

In the Word-Study Greek-English NT by MacReynolds and all, Heb 11:13-16 is translated as follows:

All of these died ub faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth [14] for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. [15] If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. [16] But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed he has prepared a city for them.

The corresponding beginning of [16] in the NWT: “But now they are reaching out for a better [place], that is one belonging to heaven.

‘epouraniou in the English subtext to the Greek was “on heavenly”. Strong number 2032 gives all six uses in Hebrews as “heavenly”. A couple of “in heaven”, “of heaven” in other books or epistles. No “belong to heaven” there or elsewhere.

The NWT at 3:1 uses “of heavenly”; at 6:4 “the heavenly”, at 8:5 “the heavenly” things; 9:23 “heavenly”; 12:22, “heavenly” Jerusalem.

The anonymous translators of the NWT NT must have stumbled on something that they didn’t like.

10

A Pamphlet and Cosmology: A Circle or a Sphere?

by kepler in

this is a long rant.

hope this is of interest to someone... .

question 22: cosmology: a circle or sphere?

kepler

Bats, Phizzy,...

I checked out that earlier thread on "hhug - circle". Thanks for the information. That second or third post is quite an examination. Feel a little less remorse about going on and on about it this time too.

Would be curious as well if there is a good way to search for previous topics in instances like this.

Reviewing the Isaiah quote that started this discussion, it is odd to note, starting at Isaiah 40:22.

21) Did you not know, had you not heard? Was it not told you from the beginning? Have you not understood how the earth was set on its foundations?

22) He who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, the inhabitants of which...

Now is verse 21 conveying the same notion as Job 26:7

7)He it was who spread the North above the void and poised the Earth on nothingness...

The Psalms as well speak of the Earth's foundations. Now when is a foundation a nothingness? When it reconciles a "circular" argument?

51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

AnnOMaly

--------------

RE:

Don't be a goon. The WTS is not going to claim that either Esther or Daniel are works of fiction since they agree with the rest of Protestantism that the present Bible canon is God's Word. Your 'objections' (many of which have been flimsy IMO) are outside the scope of the WTS, a Protestant-rooted religion, but rather relate to whether the books of the Bible have any historical validity per se. If this is what you're wanting to center on in your letter, you're targeting the wrong audience.

-----------

Speak for yourself and not for the rest of Protestantism. Many of my sources are Protestant. As well as annotated Jewish and Catholic Bibles.

The discrepancies are all over the place. I don't think the audience would be here if they aren't trying to examine it for themselves.

51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

RE:

The LXX and the Qumran texts place Daniel in Scripture. Josephus said explicitly that Daniel's work was still being read in his day, that he was a prophet and that he was divinely-inspired (see a previous post for the reference). Thus, based on this data before us, the fact remains that the book of Daniel was canonical by late BC and continued as such throughout the 1st c. AD. Can we put this specific issue to bed?

------------------------------------------------------

Daniel in the canon? Yes. Is he in the canon as a prophet? No. This is because the OT is divided into three parts.

Daniel is in LXX along with other books that are in the canon and that are not. In Daniel’s case, it is in the Hebrew Testament under the 3 rd category of “Other Writings”. Even Josephus acknowledged that this exists. Daniel’s presence in Qumran is simply as one of many texts. Being at Qumran does not make a text part of the canon either. In fact, a couple of the Qumran texts throw some light on where some of Daniel’s stories originated (e.g., the story of Nabonidus and his ulcer). As to whether Daniel was placed in the canon late in BC or early AD, I have no way to verify.

Josephus is a historian. If a rabbinical council in Janina did not resolve the question of Daniel, then I don’t think Josephus on his own account will settle the matter either. But there is still the problem of Daniel’s contents. Another ancient historian, Herodotus, closer to the original subject matter by several centuries, attests that “Astyages had reigned 35 years before he was deposed in the manner I described . … Cyrus treated him with great consideration and kept him at his court until he died.”

He was the last king of the Medes. Akkadian: Istemegu.

Darius in Old Persian is Darayavarhush or “Guardian of good”. What does it mean in Mede? Anything?

----------

Quoting T. Henshaw’s “The Writings, the Third Division of the Old Testament Canon, 1963, Humanities Press, NY.

“The first clear conception of the Canon meets us in the pages of the Jewish historian Josephus. In his Contra Apionem (I. 38-43), written to establish the antiquity of the Jews and the trustworthiness of their history, he writes,

‘We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another; but only 22 books, which contain the records of all past times and which are rightly believed in. And of these, five belong to Moses, which contain the laws and the tradition of the origin of mankind till his death for a period of 3,000 years. From the death of Moses until the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes ( or Ahasuerus), the prophets who came after Moses wrote down the things that were done in their times in 13 books. The remaining books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.’ …

Since Daniel in Chapter 9, verses 1 to 2 seems to claim that he was active after Ahasuerus, by the words of Josephus Daniel has already disqualified himself as a prophet.

In as much as Daniel and Esther both fall into the bin of Other Writings, they are worth examining for some of their features.

In the January 1, 2012 Watchtower appeared an article titled, “Imitate their Faith: She Acted Wisely, Bravely and Selflessly”. In a sidebar, there are several defenses of the veracity and historicity of the story, including the strange absence of God’s name in this Bible book.

As to the existence of Esther's mentor Mordecai: “What is more, secular records do show that a man named Marduka, a Persian equivalent of Mordecai, served as a court official in Shushan at the time described in the book.” ... Hmmm. Marduka. Like Marduk the Babylonian god?

It was the Cyrus Cylinder that decreed that the Jews and other captive peoples in Babylon could return to their homelands, but the WT presumes that there was some sort of religious persecution that prevented the author of Esther ( was it Esther? I mean, if Daniel wrote Daniel…) from using the name of God even once. Something that the author of Daniel did not have to deal with evidently. But they fooled the censors! The name was put it in there as an acrostic. With 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and no vowels, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is there several times, diagonal, vertical and across. The WatchTower article fails to mention that another criticism of the book is that Mordecai’s background is quite similar to Daniel’s since Esther 2:5-7 (NWT) relates:

“A certain man, a Jew, happened to be in Shushan the castle and his name was Mordecai the son Ja’ir, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish a Benjaminite, who had been taken into exile from Jerusalem with Jeconiah, the king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon took into exile. And he came to be the caretaker of Hadassah, that is, Esther, the daughter of his father’s brother.” If Mordecai had been deported from Jerusalem to Babylon in the reign of Jeconiah or Jehoiachin in 598 BC, that would made him over 125 years old when in the 12 th year of Xerxes I (474 BC) he became grand vizier. But that’s nothing compared to the claim of Daniel, who attests to have served under the son of Ahasuerus, Darius.

If Judith, for example, were excluded from the canon and placed in what has been called variously the deutero-canon or apocyrpha depending on circumstances, there is the implication that some of the books we have inherited from the ancient Jews might simply be stories or novellas, not composed exactly like Aesop’s fables, but at the very least in common with them since they might have a moral in the telling. The story of Daniel is less vindictive than Esther’s, but they are both nationalistic. They are also about poor people who made good at the centers of power.

That the WatchTower would attest to the veracity of both the Esther and Daniel books is not surprising. and not much of a reference. Had the WatchTower claimed that there was a work of fiction somewhere in the Protestant Canon, that would have been of much more significance.

As to the first Darius, who reigned after Cyrus and Cambyses, in his succession he had to confront several revolts. These included the Medes. The full translation of the Darius Behustin inscription is on Wikipedia. Sections 31-33 deal with the revolts of the Medes led by Phraortes whom Darius deals with ruthlessly during campaigns in 522 and 521.

As to putting this to bed, I would say that had Matthew not decided to make passing reference to Daniel and English language readers were more aware of how Thucydides referred to the invaders from Asia, in the US there would be a lot less belligerence broadcast on UHF TV channels every night.

10

A Pamphlet and Cosmology: A Circle or a Sphere?

by kepler in

this is a long rant.

hope this is of interest to someone... .

question 22: cosmology: a circle or sphere?

kepler

This is a long rant. Hope this is of interest to someone...

Question 22: Cosmology: A Circle or Sphere?

In a separate topic, I had started talking about issues related to reading the pamphlet "What the Bible Really Teaches", I had started off the discussion based on some observatins about its discussion of the destruction of Babylon. Even prior to the discussion of Babylon’s fate in “What the Bible Really Teaches”, there was already something in the narrative tone and rhetorical questions that had set my teeth on edge. On pages 20-21 it was posited:

“The Bible is scientifically accurate. It even contains information that was far ahead of its time …At at time when there were wrong ideas about the shape of the earth the Bible referred to it as a circle or sphere (Isaiah 40:22). The Bible said that the earth ‘hangs on nothing’ ( Job 26:7). Of course, the Bible is not a scientific textbook, but when it touches on scientific matters, it is accurate. [And in anticipation of any doubts:] Is this not what we would expect of a book from God?”

This exposition is by no means scientific, but quite the contrary. The supposed picture of the earth is based neither on reasoning or observation and inconsistent with the body of scientific writing employing such from the time of Ptolemy and his contemporaries to the present day, no matter whether they were right or wrong in their results. Isaiah 40:22 was probably not written by Isaiah at all, but an anonymous observer of pre-Cyrus Babylon a century and a half later. Since the NWT translates this as “there is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth the dwellers in which are like grasshoppers”, its translators obviously made a decision between “circle” and “sphere” and opted for the former. B ut when this is compared to the JPS TaNaKh, “It is He who is enthroned above the vault of the earth”, one can just as well argue that Isaiah is not speaking specifically about the earth, but the sky, “spread out like gauze , stretched like a tent.” And t his is hardly what science discovered two millennia later.

In the book of Joshua, beside battles associated with entities determined by archeologists to have been vacant for previous centuries (e.g., Jericho and Ai), in order to defeat the Amorites thoroughly (Joshua 9:12-14)” Joshua said,

‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and moon, you too, over the Vale of Aijalon.’ And the sun stood still, and the moon halted, until the people had taken vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of the Just? The sun stood still in the middle of the sky and delayed its setting for almost a whole day.”

Since we now are aware that the Earth rotates and the sun remains largely fixed in celestial space, was this event described correctly?

But on the other hand, as the Psalm 104:5 records in the JPS Hebrew-English TaNaKh:”He established the Earth on its foundation so that it will not totter”. Or more prosaically in the Hebrew Testament of the NWT: “He has founded the earth upon its established places; it will not be made to totter to time indefinite , or forever.” – many more words than the Hebrew - whether time indefinite and forever are the same, I will not venture there. In the New Jerusalem Bible Psalm 94:1-2 reads

Yahweh is king, robed in majesty, robed is Yahweh and girded with power.

The world is indeed set firm, it can never be shaken, your throne is set firm of old, from all eternity you exist.

Should we not understand that the Earth does not rotate, precess or nutate? Never did and never will? Or should we simply take our cue on astronomical definitions from theocrats five hundred years ago or today?

On February 19, 1616, the Inquisition asked a commission of theologians, known as qualifiers, about the propositions of the heliocentric view of the universe. On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture..."; while the Earth's movement "receives the same judgment in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith." At a meeting of the cardinals of the Inquisition on the following day, Pope Paul V instructed Bellarmine to deliver this result to Galileo, and to order him to abandon the Copernican opinions; should Galileo resist the decree, stronger action would be taken.

Reconciliation (1928) p. 14

…man sees that the earth occupies a place of great importance in God’s plan and purposes and that in his due time every creature in heaven and in earth will be brought into one grand harmonious whole or unity. To this effect the inspired witness of Jehovah wrote:

-----------------------

“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.”—Eph. 1: 9, 10.

The constellation of the seven stars forming the Pleiades, appears to be the crowning center around which the known systems of the planets revolve even as our sun’s planets obey the sun and travel in their respective orbits. It has been suggested, and with much weight, that one of the stars of that group is the dwelling-place of Jehovah and the place of the highest heavens; that it is the place to which the inspired writer referred when he said: “Hear thou from thy dwelling place, even from heaven” (2 Chron. 6:21); and that it is the place to which Job referred when under inspiration he wrote: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?”—Job 38: 31.

The constellation of the Pleiades is a small one compared with others which scientific instruments disclose to the wondering eyes of man. But the greatness in size of other stars or planets is small when compared with the Pleiades in importance, because the Pleiades is the place of the eternal throne of God. For a like reason the various groups of stars, greater in size than the planet earth, must in the eyes of …

- Joseph Rutherford, President of the WatchTower and Bible Tract Society, Reconciliation

In 1953 the doctrine about Alcyone and the Pleiades was discarded:

Some[???] attribute striking qualities to these constellations or star groups and on the basis of such they then offer private interpretations of Job 38:31, 32 that amaze their hearers… when viewed scripturally they are completely without foundation. (The Watchtower 1953 November 15 p. 703)

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From my home library: Burnham’s Celestial Handbook, Volume III, Taurus (constellation) descriptive notes, p. 1880.

Studies of the proper motion [shift in position in celestial sphere over time] of the Pleiades led in 1846 to one of the most curious misinterpretations in the history of astronomy. J. H. von Maedler at the Observatory of Dorpat, finding that the members of the Pleiades showed no motion relative to one another, rashly concluded that the cluster and Alcyone in particular, represented the fixed center of the entire stellar system. The notion that Alcyone was the “central sun” of the universe gained some popularity, but became entirely obsolete within a few decades as actual knowledge concerning the structure of the galaxy became available.

A brief history of observation

The Pleiades are among those objects which are known since the earliest times. At least 6 member stars are visible to the naked eye, while under moderate conditions this number increases to 9, and under clear dark skies jumps up to more than a dozen. The cluster was first examined telescopically by Galileo, who recorded more than 40 member stars. It was an early subject for astronomical photography, being first photographed by Paul and Prosper Henry in 1885.

The cluster was the final entry, as M45, in an early modern astronomical catalogue by Charles Messier, 1771, Paris (Table of nebulae and star clusters, which have been discovered between the fixed stars over the horizon of Paris; observed at the Marine Observatory).

In 1846 Johann von Maedler of the Estonian Dorpat Observatory, an eminent lunar cartographer, had been measuring the motions of the various Pleiades stars. Finding that they showed no relative motion within the cluster, he concluded that they were at the centre of the Galaxy, and Alcyone was the star at the center of the known universe. For a brief period, until this erroneous argument was exposed, the Pleiades were the subject of intense public debate and much baseless speculation.

The Bible seems to show that God's throne in heaven is in what we call the north, very likely near the stars called the Pleiades (Job. 38:31).

-The Golden Age (later Awake), May 16, 1928 p. 540.

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I had thought this doctrine had been trashed with the passing away of Russell, but evidently Rutherford was still enticed by it. Rutherford’s words were composed in the midst of the 20 th century with the nature of stars better understood. Alcyone was a bright young star in a young cluster surrounded by dust, but non-descript at modest distance within our non-descript galaxy – in a universe that could be measured and observed by light’s radiating out from objects billions of light years away; from a creation moment now seen as 13.7 billion years ago. Nor is this cosmos static, for we can observe stars dying and in the midst of formation; even to the level of detail of forming planets. No introductory astronomy student – if he understood anything of Hubble, Einstein, Red Shift, Max Planck or Hawkings - would accept that the creator God resided in a court described by Job near a star several hundred light years away. The whole vision is cult whacko by now, yet it resided uncontested as Jehovah Witness doctrine until the 1950s.

There are errors in reasoning in both science and philosophy – or if you will - religion. But the notion that Russell and Rutherford latched onto was as suspect as the pyramid speculations that originated as well in the mid 19 th century. That Rutherford could believe and write to the effect that God lived by the star Alcyone shows that he was hopelessly out of touch with the astronomy and physics of his day. The notion was questionable eighty years before even when there were no notions of how to perform stellar Doppler measurements (Kirkhoff’s laws and Seicchi’s observations of line spectra were as yet unknown); no parallax measurements for stars of that distance were available; nor were other “candlesticks” of distance available such as variable star measurements. There were no notions of stellar heat sources, heat transfer and ages; no concept of where the center of the galaxy was or the fact that there were galaxies; only a rudimentary idea of what the speed of light implied about stellar and universal distances. No notion of quantum mechanics… But all of these concepts were bursting around Rutherford in the 1920s, making the physical model of the universe from which he drew his inference utterly absurd.

Among the successes of Johann Maedler’s astronomical career were detailed maps of the moon and Mars plus a body of celestial observations and models which were used by his successors. I see no evidence, however, that he claimed God lived at Alcyone. Responsibility for propagation of that BELIEF rests with Russell and Rutherford. Ignorant as they were of astronomy and physics they had no way to evaluate Maedler’s fundamental claim, other than to quote and INTERPRET Bible verses and then to claim their “results” authentic based on their Biblical extraction. The result is more like using the Bible as a drug to fan one’s passions or imaginative speculations.

It is strange to think that in the cavalcade of astronomical science between the time of Lagrange, Laplace and Fourier to the era of quantum mechanics and relativity in which worked and wrote Einstein, Schroedinger, Planck, Heisenberg, Hubble, Eddington and Chandrasekhar, after the discovery of the discrete and continuous spectra of stars and Doppler effects.... that of all the babies in the astronomical and astrophysical adoption crèche, Charles Taze Russell chose to adopt pyramidologist Charles Piazzi Smythe and with Joseph Rutherford chose joint adoptive custody of lunar cartographer and Johann Maedler. Certainly they would not adopt the Italian priest Seiichi who had done work on solar and stellar spectra, or Belgian cleric Lemaitre who while examining Einstein’s relativity work provided first physical arguments for the Big Bang - that would be too much of a concession to ecumenical thought. But at least this illustrates a more sophisticated debate within other areas of the Christian community. Judging by the contributions and visibility of people like Gassendi, the course had quickly altered after Galileo’s trial ;and in the mid 20 th century Pope Piux XII was sending Lemaitre messages of encouragement ( Lemaitre in reply recommended that he back off from any endorsement and let the process of science proceed as objectively as possible).

An initial issue with the 16 th century Copernican proposition was not the shape of the earth ( sphere or circle), nor had it been since the time of Ptolemaic Greek astronomers in Egypt observing solar elevation variations with latitude. It was a question of whether the Earth or the celestial sphere moved or not and whether the “vault of heaven” was like a tent pin-pricked with holes through which light radiated from perhaps an ethereal region beyond. Early review of Copernicus admitted to the simplicity of solar system motions with his new heliocentric perspective, but no one could identify any shift in parallax ( viewing angle) in any of the stars overall. It was a scandalous shortcoming that could only be reconciled if the stars were very, very distant and very, very bright. By the 1840s when Maedler made his observations of the Pleiades 400 light years distant, this had been well established. The closest stars in the course of six months shifted their line of sight, at most, an arc second – hence the measure of distance parsec: 206,264 times the distance from the earth to the sun or about 3.26 light years (180/ π x 3600). Maedler’s observations do not address parallax – and he certainly could not have attained a measure of about 100 th of an arc second. Finding the stars with near arc second parallax was over a century’s search for needles in a haystack. And since Maedler did his observing prior to the development of astronomical spectroscopy, it is doubtful whether he could have determined any Doppler or radial shift in his Pleiades studies.

Closer to home, had Rutherford or Russell had their fingers or noses to the wind, they might have heard of the work of Henry Norris Russell (with Ejnar Hertzsprung) and Henrietta Swann Leavitt who in those same years leading up to 1914 published respectively a system for scattergraph diagrams of stellar color and brightness and the identification of a class of variable stars (Cepheids) that helped map out the local depth of the universe. When Cepheids could be found at great brightness at the edge of parallax measurement and then with brightness (and same period) at the edge of distinct “detectability” in nebulous objects such as the Magellanic Cloud or the Andromeda Galaxy, the local cosmos now stretched out to hundreds of thousands and then millions of light year extent. In other words, light from objects in creation had set out on their journeys to earth in ages orders of magnitude earlier than what Taze Russell and Rutherford were raving about. Armed with comparisons of HR charts representing various clusters of stars in the sky, evidence would later come in about how these objects would sustain themselves for even longer periods. How they were born, how some died and some were still being formed.

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51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

AnnOMaly,

Regarding:

Matthew does not establish Daniel the nature of Daniel in the canon any more than Jude establishes Enoch as part of it. He is quoted or referred to.

If Matthew's testimony was taken on its own, you'd have a fair point. My argument was that, as well as Daniel being viewed as a prophet and the book attributed to him included in the sacred Jewish texts in BC times, we also have confirmation of Daniel's status by the words of Jesus and Josephus.

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While examining what you stated abov, when I checked on line concordances against the Greek Study new testament I had at home, I noticed a discrepancy. On line there was a supposed reference to Daniel in Mark 13:14 beside that of Matt 24:15. In the 3 NTs I checked including the NWT there was no reference to Daniel in Mark ( the TaNaKh, obviously was no help on this). Yet oddly enough, chapter 13 of Mark is very much like chapter 24 of Matthew otherwise - yet probably older. Both seem to say that "all of this will come to pass within this generation".

When people argue from the standpoint of Biblical inerrancy,and therefore whatever they are arguing at the moment is revelation, it seems like they are reluctant to really subject the argument to much test.

When I mentioned above something about what was said In Mark 2:26

“have you never read what David did in his time of need when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest…”

Aside from the primary point of the discussion, I Samuel 21:2-7 shows that Ahimelech was high priest at that time.

Whether Jesus mentioned Daniel or not that day, the discussion in Matthew begins with Jesus observing after leaving the Temple that the whole of the Temple would come down. He gives similar talks in Mark and Luke without mention of Daniel.

As to Josephus, his history of Jewish Antiquity reiterates much that is in the Bible and includes an account of the Maccabees rebellion as well. Does that make Maccabees part of the Sacred Scripture?

51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

AnnOMaly,

What I said above was:

"In all these instances the Hebrew text used the same word: achshdrphni"

You say:

the Aramaic word 'achashdarpan.

Owing to early versions of Daniel being in Aramaic for chapters 1-6, the Aramaic word is not without some validity to this argument.

Nonetheless, the Hebrew text for the examples I gave used a Hebrew word for satrap, whether the context was Hebrew or Aramaic.

With the exception of the uses in Daniel, it made sense - unless Daniel were really talking about Persian monarchs consistently - and there was some evidence presented that might have been the case - or else the transcribers thought so.

Matthew does not establish Daniel the nature of Daniel in the canon any more than Jude establishes Enoch as part of it. He is quoted or referred to. Then beign part of the canon of a certain nature - the problems won't end there. For example, compare Mark 2:26 with I Samuel 21:1-7.

30

Impact on the receiving end of "What the Bible Really Teaches"

by kepler in

several years ago my fiance had a traumatic experience and decided to return to being a jw.. .

as a result she insisted that we read "what the bible really teaches".

then later i agreed to take instruction with house visits by an elder and his associates on weekends with the same purpose.. .

kepler

Searching for Questions from Readers - Instead I find Walker Percy!

As I indicated at the start of this topic, I took the matter of contacting an authority with my concerns back to a local Kingdom Hall. After sitting through two hours of services one Thursday Februrary 23 rd , I was given an interview with an elder and two of his colleagues for about an hour on Saturday March 3 rd . After listening to some of the issues I had raised and being unable or unwilling to comment, they did direct me to contact the Patterson, NY headquarters via the official websites.

In the course of searching for a means to submit my concerns to the parties to which you had said they should be directed, I ended up locating and visiting several Jehovah’s Witnesses official websites. On one of the primary links, Walker Percy is quoted in an interview with the American Medical News – 21 November 1977.

"The whole world really blew up about World War I and we still don't know why. Before then, men thought that utopia was in sight. There was peace and prosperity. Then everything blew up. We've been in a state of suspended animation ever since . . . More people have been killed in this century than in all of history."—Dr. Walker Percy, American Medical News, November 21, 1977.

Walker Percy was a Louisianan with roots of many generations, an essayist and novelist with medical training, a Roman Catholic convert, whose books and novels I have read almost in entirety. Back in the early 1980s I once tried calling him up when I lived in New Orleans, but couldn’t reach him; often shopped at the Maple Street Bookstore in the Uptown area, but never ran into him. That he was quoted in American Medical News is more from his training as a doctor rather than his practice; he suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life and switched careers.

I can say with assurance that his outlook would not have placed him on the official website voluntarily. But since he is now deceased (1990), he can hardly protest his citation, postcards as rare as they are from where he has gone. I doubt the average website visitor has any idea who he was. Safe to say, his passing just makes him an excellent target for exploitation. But it is another illustration of the manner of behavior which inspired me to seek the Questions from Readers or “write to us” webpage in the first place.

Certainly, Walker Percy made those remarks about WWI – just as he would observe much about American and world history in their entirety. Like Lincoln he observed the Civil War as a test bestowed on America by God for its legacy of slavery – and he also called it aptly the “American Iliad”. Civil War historian Justin Foote was one of his closest and life long friends. He shared Percy's last correspondence directed to him during funeral observances.

While the website seems to indicate Percy was enlisted in the cause, Walker Percy does speak of Jehovah’s Witnesses on his own, however. In my autographed 1987 edition of his book “The Message in the Bottle” in an essay of the same name, Percy writes:

If the newsbearer is a stranger to me, he is not necessarily disqualified as a newsbearer. In some case indeed his disinterest may itself be a warrant, since he does not stand to profit from the usual considerations of friendship, family feelings, and so on. His sobriety or foolishness, good faith or knavery may be known through mien. Even though he may bring news of high relevance to my predicament, yet a certain drunkenness of spirit – enthusiasm in the old sense of the word – is enough to disqualify him and lead me to suspect that he is concerned not with my predicament but only with his own drunkenness. If a Jehovah’s Witness should ring my doorbell and announce the advent of God’s kingdom, I recognize the possibly momentous character of his news but must withhold acceptance because of a certain lack of sobriety in the newsbearer ….

… A third canon of acceptance is the possibility of the news. If the news is strictly relevant to my predicament and if the bearer of the news is a person of the best character, I still cannot heed the news if (1) I know for a fact that that it cannot possibly be true or (2) the report refers to an event of an unheralded, absurd or otherwise inappropriate character. If I am dying of thirst and the newsbearer announces to me that over the next dune I will discover molten sulfur and that it will quench my thirst, I must despair of the news….

But the message in the bottle is not enough – if the message conveys news and not knowledge sub specie aeternitas. There must be, as Kierkegaard himself saw later, someone who delivers the news and speaks with authority.

Is this someone then anyone who rings the doorbell and says “Come!” No indeed, for in these times everyone is an apostle of sorts, ringing doorbells and bidding his neighbor to believe this and do that. In such times, when everyone is saying “Come!” when radio and television say nothing else but “Come!” it may be that the best way to say “Come!” is to remain silent. Sometimes silence itself is “Come!”

Since everyone is saying “Come!” now in the fashion of apostles – communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as advertisers – the uniqueness of the original “Come!” from across the seas is apt to be overlooked. The apostolic character of Christianity is unique among religions. No one else has ever left or will ever leave his island to say”Come!” to other islanders for reasons which have nothing to do with the dissemination of knowledge sub specie aeternitas and nothing to do with his own needs. The communist is disseminating what he believes to be knowledge sub specie aeternitas – and so is the Rockefeller (Institute) scientist. The Jehovah’s Witness and the Holy Roller are bearing island news to make themselves and the other islanders happy. But what if a man receives the commission to bring news across the seas to the castaway and does so in perfect sobriety and with good faith and perseverance to the point of martyrdom? And what if the news the newsbearer bears is the very news the castaway had been waiting for, news of where he came from and who he is and what he must do, and what if the newsbearer brought with him the means by which the castaway may do what he must do? Well, then, the castaway will, by the grace of God, believe him.

When this particular essay was written could have been any time between 1954 and 1975. In one of the later essays, “Notes for a Novel about the End of the World”, (probably among the later essays), he begins: A serious novel about the destruction of the United States and the end of the world should perform the function of prophecy in reverse. The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end. Not being called by God to be a prophet, he nevertheless pretend sto a certain prescience. If he did not think he saw something other people didn’t see or or at least didn’t pay attention to, he would be wasting his time writing and they reading. …I am not speaking of a Wellsian fantasy or a science fiction film on the Late Show… Of more concern… Perhaps “Love Among the Ruins” represented the transformation from essay to novel of this idea.

When Walker Percy died north of New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain in 1990, he was part of the Saint Benedict monastic community still short of full ordination.

51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

AnnOMaly,

---------------------------

1.) Regarding the Aramaic word 'achashdarpan. Again, you seem to be arguing that this word cannot be applied to any of the Babylonian administrative offices - as if Babylonians didn't have such a thing as governors over their provinces. If the writer of Daniel finished the book in Persian times or even Greek times, why couldn't he have used a term that he thought closely described the types of position delegated by Nebuchadnezzar and Darius the Mede, and that readers of the time would readily understand?

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Is it Aramaic? I took that out of the Hebrew text and there were uses. Let's go over those again.

Dan 3:2 King Nebuchadnezzar then summoned the satraps, magistrates, governors, councillors, treasurers,

Dan 6:1 It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps over his kingdom for the various parts.

Dan 6:5 the presidents and satraps hunted for some affair 7-8, realm, magistrates, satraps....

Ezra 8:36 They also delivered the king's decree to the the king's satraps and the governors

Esther 3:12 ...according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king's satraps and to the governors..

While some of Ezra was supposedly written in Aramaic, the above quote is not included in that section. Hebrew. Esther was written in Hebrew.

If Daniel finished the book in Persian times or Greek times he would be over 100 or 200 years old respectively. Darius the Persian is the one who is on record for establishing satraps. It is nice to think that the author of Daniel used satraps to simplify the story. Other things he leaves us largely clueless about.

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2.)Regarding 90 AD. Yes, it looks like your encyclopedia is referring to the now largely abandoned hypothesis that a Council of Jamnia finalized the Hebrew canon.

For myself, it is interesting to note the exceptional nature of Daniel's exclusion from among the prophets.

Yet Daniel was counted among the prophets in the LXX and also (I've just learned) in the Qumran texts. OTOH, the Masoretic texts put Daniel in with the Writings. Whichever way his book was categorized, Daniel was included in the canon long before 90 AD.

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Even as I write you this reply, I am going to my copy of the JPS Hebrew-English TaNaKh - and to look up lines in Daniel I have to go to the section called Kethuviim or The Writings. Kethuviim begins on page 1413 with Psalms, followed by Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Job, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther and DANIEL on page 1803. He is followed by Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, none of which mention him or"Darius the Mede". I gave two instances to support this arrangement not of recent origin: Ecclesiasticus and Luke.

The Neviim begin with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos... Jonah, other minor prophets but no Daniel.

Regarding Daniel's acceptance or not at Jamnia, I am inclined not to drag my feet on this one. For if I maintained that the book just had to have been admitted into the canon at that point, I would be grasping at the same sort of straws that characterize arguments for Darius the Mede or Belshazzar son of Nebuchadnazzar. But Daniel's presence in the LXX or at Qumran does not necessarily settle the matter of canonicity either. What does so is an actual council or decree that explicitly says so. We have early councils that set Christian canons, and then revisions during the Reformation and counter reformation. To identify a similar event for Daniel, we would have to study rabbinical judaism history further.

Discussions of the Septuagint or LXX is like taking aim at a moving target. It started out as the Torah the Law, but it expanded to 47 entries. According to Jaroslav Pelikan in "Whose Bible Is It?", Daniel was number 47 following Ezekiel. Maccabees I & II were 20 and 21. Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus ( mentioned above) were 30 and 31. Judith was book 18.

Let's talk a little about Judith. The first verse starts like this: "It was the 12th year of Nebuchadnezzar who reigned over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh...." Is there something wrong with this? Nabopolassar wiped Nineveh off the map. Not very historical. And that is probably one among many reasons it is not in the canon today. Someone must have raised objections similar to those we are engaged with discussing about Daniel now.

But all the same it was in LXX.

One of the editors of the JPS TaNaKh edition I mentioned above, also wrote a study aid called "How to Read the Jewish Bible". When the book addresses Daniel, it begins on page 212: "Daniel is a short book that boasts some unusual features.... Some of the book's claims are at odds with historical fact: (about which you have already heard)..."Someone living in the Babylonian exile would not have made these kind of mistakes."

In chapter 8 of Daniel, "the continuation of the passage deals, in not so veiled language with Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek king who in167 BCE took the unprecedented step of converting the Jerusalem Temple into a temple of Zeus, while prohibiting central Jewish practices. ..Other sources tell us that he suspended the regular Temple offerings; this is reflected when Daniel hears mention of the current crisis, "the regular offering, ... forsaken because of transgression (v. 13). Thus,someone wrote down the vision after 167 ( when Antiochus took control of the Temple) but before 164 (when the Hasmoneans restored the Temple following the Maccobean victory).

In verse 19 of that chapter, an angelic figure tells Daniel : "I am going to inform you of what will happen when wrath is at an end," ... this verse is picking up on the vocabulary of of Habakkuk 2:3: ... Thus, even though the Book of Daniel presents this passage as a new prophecy, it relates to an older prophecy."

Later, Marc Zvi Breitler writes: "As a scholoar I am curious whether the ancient Jews took these stories as 'real history' or recognized them as legends."

Well, there is more discussion, but I am weary of typing - and I lost most of this post on the first try. But to me, it would seem irrational not to examine what Jews make of their own scriptures before we make decisions based on what 19th century Anglo Protestant "visionaries" thought they meant based on their tangential reasoning.