My daily Bible readings have brought me around once more to the Book of Daniel. There is language in there that I find hard to understand. Like, for instance, the “seventy weeks” in Daniel 9.
I should’ve just gone to my Strong’s Concordance, where I would have learned that the Hebrew word here means “a seven” or “sevens,” and can be used to denote a set of seven, or even as a figure of speech. But no, I was lazy, I was already on the computer and didn’t feel like going to my bookcase, so I looked it up in Wikipedia instead.
Silly me. I had momentarily forgotten that Wikipedia habitually cites the supposed authority of “Bible scholars” who don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. So the Wikipedia article was focused on proving that the Book of Daniel is a hoax.
Follow the logic. Accurate prophecy is impossible. Therefor, the prophecy found in Daniel can only have been written long after the events it pretends to foretell actually took place. I guess that would apply to all prophesies in the Bible, invalidating the whole book.
In his Jewish Antiquities, written in the First Century, in Book 11, Chapter 8, Paragraph 5, the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus relates that when Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem (where the city authorities, although good and loyal subjects of the Persian king, decided it would be futile to resist the conqueror), the priests “showed him” the Book of Daniel, in which his successful conquest of the Persian Empire was predicted.
Alexander visited Jerusalem around 332 B.C., about 200 years earlier than the date assigned to Daniel by Big Shot Bible Scholars Inc. So they say Josephus is hoaxing us, too. He wrote primarily for a Roman audience, with the expectation that important Jews would read it, too. It’s difficult to imagine what purpose such a lie would serve if told to either audience.
I think I prefer to stay with St. Paul, and “let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).