Recovery.....The word parousia does not necessarily denote both "an arrival and a consequent presence"; it commonly denoted just the arrival, such as a terminus or an end-point of a time period (such as a state of affairs continuing UNTIL someone arrives). It is trivially easy to find clear examples of this in Greek literature. The parousia itself would then be a sudden change of the situation as opposed to being itself a duration. That is how it is used in the synoptic apocalypse. It is used interchangeably with erkhomai, and is an event that occurs suddenly or unexpectedly. The comparison of the parousia to the Flood of Noah emphasizes the suddenness of the event that will END an ongoing state of affairs. What was arriving to those on the earth was the Flood itself; it wasn't "invisibly present" beforehand. And even if it was, what happened during those years long before the Flood that made the Flood go from "not present" to "present"? Don't you see the problem? " Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. T wo women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left" (v. 40-41). That pertains to the parousia, in analogy with the Flood, and it highlights the suddenness of the event; people would be in the midst of their daily activities when it happens, just as those before the Flood were in the midst of eating, drinking, and so forth. The arrival denoted by the parousia isn't invisible either; " all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory" (v. 30). Sure there would be a presence after this, but it isn't one unremarked upon by the world at large. It was going to be bloody obvious, with a spectacle in the sky and with a loud trumpet call from the heavens.
Leolaia: First of all, Daniel makes no explicit reference to Nabonidus, though the story in ch. 4 likely pertained to Nabonidus originally as the Prayer of Nabonidus in the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests. But Daniel refers to Belshazzar, his son, explicitly though. If Belshazzar can be considered Neb's son why can't Nabonidus be considered Neb's son as well?
Just because the author of Daniel commits a blunder doesn't meant that we could apply that blunder to other Neo-Babylonian kings.
So it did not have to be a literal son or grandson of Neb for the prophecy to be fulfilled. They could be serving a descendant of Neb (Nabonidus and Belshazzar), and the prophecy would still be fulfilled.
Just because you can list a bunch of different meanings for a word doesn't mean that any particular one is necessarily the right meaning. You need to look at usage and the context. Nebuchadnezzar is followed by his "son" ( b e no ) and then his "grandson" ( ben - b e no ); the latter limits the meaning exactly to "son" for b e no . "Terah took his son ( b e no ) Abram and his grandson ( ben - b e no ) Lot to Haran" (Genesis 11:31), "Jacob brought with him to Egypt his sons (banaw) and grandsons (b e nê-banaw) and his daughters and granddaughters — all his offspring" (Genesis 46:7), " The Israelites said to Gideon, 'Rule over us — you, your son (binka) and your grandson (ben-b e neka) — because you have saved us from the hand of Midian' " (Judges 8:22) . To insist that the usual sense does not apply here is to prefer a very strained way of reading the text.
It is clearly the case when we read that Nebuchadnezzar is the father of Belshazzar in Daniel. We know that Belshazzar is not the actual, literal, flesh and blood son of Neb.
We know that, but the author did not. The author did not know the Neo-Babylonian period that well at all, as there are MANY problems all over the place, whereas the author's knowledge of the Hellenistic era in comparison was very detailed and accurate. Sure one could try to explain each problem away individually by devising very particular stipulative ways of reading the text in each case to faciliate harmonization with historical facts, but the cumulative weight of the author's whole portrayal of the period makes such apologetic measures highly suspect. It just doesn't read as something a person who was actually living in the period would write, and the contrast between this and the high degree of accuracy and detail for the Hellenistic period also reinforces this impression. Just read the Great Vision in ch. 11 and note how vague the late Persian era is described, and then how the level of detail increases progressively until one reaches Maccabean times.
It is not uncommon for a ruler to be called the son of a predecessor, the Assyrians used the expression “son of Omri” to denote a successor of Omri. So are you insinutating that the Hebrew word literally meant father and that Belshazzar was the literal son of Neb?
I am saying that is how the author of Daniel presents things.
And no, mere "successor" doesn't cut it for the story in Daniel. The emphasis is on a father-son relationship; "Nebuchanezzar, your father" (v. 18; cf. v. 2, 11) is paired with "you, Belshazzar, his son" (v. 22), it is the queen mother herself who reminds Belshazzar about things that had happened in the days of "your father" (v. 11, 16), with the queen mother reinforcing the family connection between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar (with a father-son relationship she would have been Nebuchadnezzar's wife and Belshazzar's mother), and Daniel chides Belshazzar for repeating the mistakes of his father. The most natural way to read the text is to accept it at face value as stating that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son; it is special pleading to appeal to a more unusual reading of the text to save the story from historical inaccuracy. And btw the interaction with the queen mother could not have happened. Adda-Guppi, who was Nabonidus' mother and Belshazzar's grandmother, who had been alive during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and who also held the office of queen mother, died in 547 BC. And when Belshazzar was officially called "son of the king" in contemporary texts, the reference was to the father-son relationship between Belshazzar and Nabonidus, NOT Nebuchadnezzar. The frequent emphasis in the story on Belshazzar as the son of Nebuchadnezzar is contrary to how he was actually referred to by contemporaries. It is however consistent with the late Hellenistic-era confusion of Nebuchadnezzar with Nabonidus (e.g. Herodotus calling Nebuchadnezzar Labenytus I, ch. 4 of Daniel assigning to Nebuchadnezzar traditions that originally pertained to Nabonidus), as well as other Hellenistic Jewish references to Belshazzar as the son of Nebuchadnezzar. In 1 Baruch 1:11-12, we read that when Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin into captivity, the people prayed: "Pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and for the life of Belshazzar his son, that their days may be upon earth as the days of heaven. And the Lord will give us strength, and lighten our eyes, and we shall live under the shadow of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and under the shadow of Belshazzar his son, and we shall serve them many days, and find favour in their sight". Here plainly Belshazzar is construed as the literal son of Nebuchadnezzar who was already crown prince during his father's reign.
I agree with what most scholars say about the problem: "Belshazzar is described as the son of Nebuchadnezzar, whereas, since Nabonidus was a novus homo, and there is no proof or even likelihood that he married into the royal line, it is no more than a desperate resource to argue that Belshazzar may have been somehow or other the grandson or descendent of Nebuchadnezzar. The probabilities are all the other way. It seems reasonable to suppose that the author of Daniel was in much the same position as Herodotus and Xenophon of having to depend on vague traditions and has built up his story out of elements of those traditions, without feeling under any obligation to test their historicity as a modern historian would or, indeed, without having the means to do so that are now available. Like Xenophon he is writing what we may call a romance" (Porteous, p. 77), "The proposal that Belshazzar's mother might have been Nebuchadnezzar's daughter has no evidence to support it. The story evidently was formulated at a time when it could be assumed Belshazzar was king, since it was remembered he was managing affairs in Babylon shortly before it passed into the hands of the Persians, and when the transfer of rule from Nebuchadnezzar's family to Nabonidus had been forgotten" (Gowan, p. 86), "There are two kinds of approach to the description of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar's son. One is to look for some sense in which Belshazzar could appropriately be described as Nebuchadnezzar's son: as his successor, or as his descendent — supposing that Nabonidus had married into Nebuchadnezzar's line (NIVmg). There is, admittedly, no other evidence of this, which would be surprising, and such an indirect relationship perhaps hardly justifies the story's emphasis on the father-son relationship and on the obligations it placed on Belshazzar" (Goldingay, p. 108), "That he may have been the grandson through the marriage of his father Nabuna'id with a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar is possible, but there is no evidence of this marriage, and the fact that the usurper Nabuna'id never made such a claim in any existing record, where such a claim would have been natural as justifying his position as the successor of Nebuchadnezzar, relegates this hypothesis into the limbo of unwarrantable conjectures" (Charles, p. 109), "Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus and not the son of Nebuchadnezzar. The only son of Nebuchadnezzar was Evil-merodach who was put to death. There were four kings who followed Nebuchadnezzar, none of whom was named Belshazzar. The story however continues and is consistent with the characters in Dan 4. The story is written as if Belshazzar were the son of Nebuchadnezzar who had captured Palestine in 586 and taken the Jewish leaders captive to Babylon" (Buchanan, p. 134), "The present queen speaks to the king more like a mother than a wife, and her recollection of what Daniel had done in the reign of Belshazzar's 'father' Nebuchadnezzar clearly implies that she is regarded as Belshazzar's mother rather than as his wife" (Hartman and DiLella, p. 188), "There are indeed all sorts of possibilities and combinations, but in lack of evidence it is simplest to accept the family relationship at its face value, and this would agree with Herodotus' foreshortened view of the Chaldean dynasty .... And this is equally the understanding of Bar. 1, which presents Neb. and his son Belsh. in the fifth year after the destruction of the city" (Montgomery, p. 71).
The scenario however would still not be historically accurate since Belshazzar was not a successor to Nabonidus but rather ruled at the same time. The scripture doesn't require that Belshazzar be a successor to Nabonidus. It only requires that the nations "serve his son and his grandson".
I was talking about Daniel, not Jeremiah. There is no Nabonidus in the story. If Nebuchadnezzar takes the place of Nabonidus in the story (as suggested above), then obviously Belshazzar is the successor to Nabonidus. As for Jeremiah, the most natural reading is that of a sucession of king, son of the king, and grandson of the king. This is particularly because this corresponds to the period of seventy years of Babylonian rule, which fits well with a succession of three generations of kings.
A reference work states: “In the light of the Babylonian sources and of the new texts on this statue, it may have been considered quite in order for such unofficial records as the Book of Daniel to call Belshazzar ‘king.’ He acted as king, his father’s agent, although he may not have been legally king. The precise distinction would have been irrelevant and confusing in the story as related in Daniel.”—Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1985, p. 77.
There is an interesting historical question of how appropriate it is for ch. 5 to call Belshazzar "king". One source does say that Nabonidus "entrusted his kingship" to his son, yet nowhere is Belshazzar actually called "king" (the reference is always to mar sharri "son of the king"), and he since he let the sacred Akitu festival lapse, this suggests strongly that he did not have the authority to conduct it. But what is clearly contrary to any contemporary usage is the dated references in ch. 7 and 8 (e.g. "in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar"). Dates were always reckoned according to Nabonidus' reign in contemporary sources. This is one of many details in Daniel about the sixth century BC that don't ring true, and it suggests that "the author thought Belshazzar was absolute monarch, not simply vice-regent for his father as he appears in cuneiform texts" (Collins, p. 294).
