Turkel:
We should no more expect blood on the moon or falling stars than we
should expect, from
Daniel, four literal monsters literally dripping and slathering their
way out of the
Mediterranean like Godzilla: "We must never forget that first-century
Jews, reading a
passage like Daniel 7, would think of being oppressed, not by mythical
monsters, by real
Romans."
Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (Mark 13:26).Luke 21:27-8 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
"No way, Holding [Turkel], No Way!!! You can’t say that Jesus came in the sky on a cloud in 70 AD! [sic] Get outta here!!!"
Till:
At the end of Part Six, I
replied point by point to Turkel's comments above. The section below
begins his concluding
remarks in his article linked to in the title above. Basically, he did
nothing here but
recycle preterist assertions that I have already answered, so I will be
linking readers to
the places where my original replies can be found.
Turkel:
While the skeptics like our earlier-mentioned uninformed one are busy
mocking, we’ll
refer the reader to our corresponding study
on Daniel
Turkel:
We know that the Son of Man envisioned here is Christ. What should be especially noted for our purposes is the Son of Man’s mode of transportation, and the direction he is going in. The Son of Man is riding with "the clouds of heaven" (the LXX has the Son of Man actually "on" the clouds) and heading towards the Ancient of Days to be enthroned. Miller [207] believes that the Son of Man rides from heaven to earth in this picture, but this is quite unlikely in view of the setting of God's heavenly court (7:10). Goldingay [164] acknowledges that the scene of God on a throne of fire, surrounded by attendants, "locate the scene in heaven"; but counters that where "it is specifically a matter of God judging... the scene is normally on earth." The verses he uses in support of this, however, could be said to fall to circular reasoning; for example, Jer. 49:38: "And I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes, saith the LORD." Did God literally set his throne in Elam? (Other passages, like Ps. 96:10-13, say God will come to judge the earth, but how does this equate with God being physically present on earth?) Bottom line: The scene fits the placement of heaven better than it fits a placement on earth. Nor does it do to object that the scene must be on earth because of the earth and the sea seen by Daniel (7:3-4). Again, if we are thinking literal geography and envisioning here, then the Mormons must be right about God having a human body!
How then does this relate to the Olivet Discourse? The scene of Daniel 7, as Caird says [Wr.JVG, 341], involves not "a primitive form of space travel" but "a symbol for a mighty reversal of fortunes within history and at the national level...." The scene is one of a victorious enthronement and vindication over enemies.
Till:
As in the articles of any other biblicist,
Turkel always writes from an
underlying assumption of inerrancy in everything the Bible says, and so
it is here. He
seems to believe that the book of Daniel was written by someone named
"Daniel," who had
lived in 6th-century BC Babylon, but this is a view shared primarily by
"scholars" who
publish their books at Grand Rapids, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; or
fundamentalist small
presses. More reputable scholars like Samuel Driver, Norman Porteous,
H. H. Rowley, Robert
Pfeiffer, John J. Collins, and many others all recognized that, with
the exception of some
earlier strands, the book of Daniel was written in the 2nd century BC
by someone who forged it
as the work of a 6th-century BC Jewish official in the Babylonian and
Persian governments in
order to encourage his contemporaries involved in the Maccabean
conflicts to believe that a
prophet had predicted centuries earlier that they would prevail against
the oppressions of
the Selucid king Antiochus Epiphanes. That is the prevailing view among
reputable scholars,
and if Turkel doesn't know this, his research into the book of Daniel
has been shamefully
shallow.
I could fill a book with quotations from reputable scholars, like those mentioned above, who have recognized the 2nd-century BC authorship of Daniel, so I am going to limit the quotations to just one section from a chapter in Rowley's Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel. Emphasis will be added to parts that are particulaly pertinent to the discrediting of the inerrantist belief that Daniel was written in the 6th century BC by a Jewish official in Babylon.
The Book of Daniel is not a work of the sixth century B. C. The case against the traditional date to which the composition of the book has been assigned rests on a variety of considerations, but the single one we have examined in the first part of our study would alone be sufficient to establish it. For a sixth-century person, who not only lived through the events of the period, but took a leading part in them, could not have made so gross an error as our author made in introducing Darius the Mede between Belshazzar and Cyrus. Nor could he have supposed that a Median empire stood between the Babylonian and the Persian....
As certainly can we say that the book of Daniel is a work of the second century B. C. If the work is loosed from the sixth century by the inaccuracy of its knowledge of that age, it is anchored in the second century by the accuracy of the knowledge of that age which appears in its pages.... So long as the work was believed to be written in the sixth century B. C., the accuracy of its descriptions of the second century but served to establish the wonderful certainty of prophecy. But when the link with the sixth century is broken by the proved historical errors in the part of the book that relates to that age, the whole case is altered. It is impossible to believe that the mind of Daniel was illumined with accurate knowledge of future times, while, at the same time, thoroughly befogged as to the events in which he himself had played no mean part, and we can only find in the limited range of the accurate knowledge the indication of the author's period (pp. 175-176).
In "Bad History in the Book of Daniel," I identified just some of the historical inaccuracies in this book that have led scholars like Driver to recognize that it couldn't have been written by someone who was an important Babylonian official when the events recorded in the book were unfolding, so I won't rehash those inaccuracies here. This article was part of a long debate on Daniel that I began with the inerrantist Everette Hatcher III in the March/April 1998 issue of The Skeptical Review. Hatcher, like Turkel, apparently believed that any assertion he made could be proven if he would cite a book or article that agreed with it; hence, he too filled his articles with bracketed references but rarely bothered to try to support any of the assertions he was recycling. This debate continued up until the end of the hardcopy publication of The Skeptical Review in December 2002 and resumed in the Errancy forum that I host on the internet. Eventually, Hatcher suffered too much embarrassment to continue, so he dropped out. If one begins with the articles linked to above, reads my point-by-point replies to Hatcher, and then continues to read the subsequent exchanges, he/she will find that practically every assertion that Turkel rehashed below was discredited in my replies to Hatcher. As I continue dismantling the "Daniel" article that Turkel seems so proud of, I will be linking readers to some of my replies to Hatcher's versions of the same assertions.
Till [beginning the dismantling]:
I will go through the uninterrupted section that I quoted
above but instead of using
Turkel headers, I will italicize my quotations of his assertions.
We know that the Son of Man envisioned here [Dan. 7:13] is Christ.
We do? And just how do we know that? Because Turkel and like-minded inerrantists want it to be "Christ." Anyone who reads my debates with Everette Hatcher linked to above should easily see the 2nd-century BC authorship of Daniel. If it was indeed written to encourage those involved in the Maccabean conflicts, then "Daniel" certainly had no interest in a person who wouldn't be born for another century and a half.
Turkel and his like-minded cohorts who see "Christ" in this text make the assumption that since Jesus was often referred to as "the son of man" in the forged gospels, the same term in Daniel 7:13 must also have been referring prophetically to Jesus, but Turkel apparently hasn't taken the time to see how often this term was used to refer to other people. Here are just a few examples where Yahweh speaking [snicker, snicker] to Ezekiel addressed him as "son of man":
There is no need to continue this, because there are at least 73 other places where Ezekiel was called "son of man." That is more times than the term was applied to Jesus in the gospels, even when parallel accounts in the gospels are counted as different usages of the term in refernce to Jesus, so by the mere strength of numbers, there would be more reason to say that the "son of man" in Daniel 7:13 was the prophet Ezekiel, who, incidentally, lived at the time that the character Daniel was in Babylon.
This term was used in the Old Testament as a poetic equivalent of "man" or "human."
Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Job 25:5 If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, 6 how much less man, who is but a maggot--a son of man, who is only a worm!"
Psalm 8:3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
In such texts as these, especially the last one, anyone can easily see that "son of man" was simply a Hebraic term that meant "human being." Even a Bible dictionary as conservative as Eerdmans recognizes this.
SON OF MAN (Gk. ho huiós toú anthropou). Jesus' favorite self-designation in the Synoptic Gospels. The appellative arises from Hebrew ben-’adam Aram bar ’enas "son of man," a Semitic idiom for an individual human being or mankind in general, particularly as distinguised from God... (1987, p. 962).
Anyone who has read much at all at Turkel's website knows that he constantly prattles about the need to interpret the Old Testament in terms of "ancient Near Eastern customs" and "Hebrew idioms," and now he comes along to find a passage where Daniel referred to "the son of man" and then says, "Aha, the New Testament referred to Jesus as the son of man, so Daniel was prophesying about Jesus here." If there is a god, I hope he will deliver us from such simplistic thinking as this, but I have no expectations that this will happen, because the airwaves, the internet, and the mail are polluted daily by religious babble that is just as nonsensical as Turkel's.
Another flaw in Turkel's assertion that the "son of man" in Daniel 7:13 is "Christ" is that the text in Aramaic did not speak of the son of man, because no definite article was affixed to son. The absence of the definite article gave the phrase the same sense as the English indefinite article would give to "a son of man." Indeed, some translations reflect this meaning.
If I said nothing more than this, I would be following Turkel's example of asserting without proving, so readers will have to bear with me now as I present supporting information for the most controversial points stated above. First, biblicists will dispute that the second kingdom [beast] was just the Median empire, because they want the fourth kingdom to be the Roman empire (when in reality the fourth beast [kingdom] was the Grecian empire of Alexander the Great), so that they can claim that fulfillment of Daniel's prophecies occurred in the days of the Roman empire. Hence, they fabricate a "Medo-Persian" empire, which never really existed, and make this "combined kingdom" the second empire. (That then conveniently made the Grecian empire the third kingdom and the Roman empire the fourth.) The author of Daniel, writing four centuries after the fact, ignorantly thought that Babylon was captured by "Darius the Mede" (Dan. 5:30-31), so the fact that "Daniel" incorrectly thought that a Median kingdom existed independently between the Babylonian and Persian kingdoms would make Media his second empire. That Median kingdom didn't exist within the time frame where "Daniel" put it, but keep in mind that a proper understanding of Daniel requires us to interpret it according to what the author meant rather than what was actual historical fact, and "Daniel" indicated a belief that there had been a Median empire followed by a Persian one but did not indicate that he thought that there had been a "Medo-Persian" empire. This empire has been a fabrication of biblicists who want to force "Daniel's" visions into a mold that would fit their belief that "Daniel" had prophesied the coming of Jesus and Christianity. Since Everette Hatcher tried to recycle some of the same discredited claims that Turkel is trying to peddle, I can save time by linking readers to my point-by-point replies to him. In "Deliberate Misrepresentation After All," I dismantled Hatcher's attempt to make "Daniel's" second kingdom a Medo-Persian empire rather than an independent Median one that "Daniel" had obviously intended. The following quotations show that the notable scholar Samuel Driver agreed that there was never a combined Medo-Persian empire.
The second and third kingdoms are, in all probability, the Median and the Persian. The home of the Medes was in the mountainous country N. and N. E. of Babylon, and S. W. of the Caspian Sea; they are often mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions from the 8th century B. C.; but they were first consolidated into an important power by Cyaxares, B. C. 624-584, during whose reign, in 607, they were the chief instruments in bringing about the destruction of Nineveh. Cyaxares was succeeded by Astyages, whose soldiers deserted en masse to Cyrus (B. C. 549); and the empire of the Medes thus passed into the hands of the Persians. Their name was however long remembered; for the Greeks regularly spoke of the Persians as Medes (S. R. Driver, D. D., The Book of Daniel, Cambridge University Press, 1900, p. 28, emphasis added).
In the book of Daniel the "Medes and Persians" are, it is true, sometimes represented as united (v.28, vi.8, 12, 15, cf. viii. 20), but elsewhere they are represented as distinct; after the fall of Babylon, Darius the Mede "receives the kingdom" (v.31), and acts in it as king (vi.1, 2, 15, 25, 26); he reigns for a time--it is not said how long--and is succeeded by Cyrus, who is called pointedly "the Persian" (vi.28, cf. x.1, and contrast ix.1, xi.1); the two horns of the ram in viii.3 are distinguished from each other, one (representing the Persian empire) being higher (i.e., more powerful) than the other (the Median empire), and coming up after it. Thus, in the view of the author of the book, the more powerful rule of Persia is preceded by a "kingdom" of the Medes, beginning immediately after the death of Belshazzar (Ibid, p. 29).
In my point-by-point replies to Hatcher, I quoted other reputable scholars to show that Driver's opinion is the prevailing one among those who have no inerrancy axes to grind, so I won't requote them here. Those who are interested in more details about this aspect of the book of Daniel can follow my links to read more on this subject.
That the Roman Empire was never a part of Daniel's "visions" can be determined by just looking at the interpretation of the visions recorded in chapter 8, where Daniel saw the ram with two horns (vs:3-4), followed by a vision of the male goat, which trampled the ram with two horns and then grew exceedingly great (vs:8). After seeing these visions and wondering about their meaning, Daniel heard a voice that said, "Gabriel, help this man understand the vision" (v:16). So Gabriel approached and gave Daniel the interpretation of the vision.
Daniel 8:19 He [Gabriel] said, "Listen, and I will tell you [Daniel] what will take place later in the period of wrath; for it refers to the appointed time of the end. 20 As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. 21 The male goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn between its eyes is the first king. 22 As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. 23 At the end of their rule, when the transgressions have reached their full measure, a king of bold countenance shall arise, skilled in intrigue. 24 He shall grow strong in power, shall cause fearful destruction, and shall succeed in what he does. He shall destroy the powerful and the people of the holy ones. 25 By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall be great. Without warning he shall destroy many and shall even rise up against the Prince of princes. But he shall be broken, and not by human hands. 26 The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true. As for you, seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now."
Gabriel clearly said in verse 20 that the two horns on the ram were "the kings of Media and Persia," and it is largely on the basis of the depiction of just one ram with two horns that biblical fundamentalist claim that there was a "Medo-Persian" empire, but for reasons that Driver stated in the quotation above, this interpretation is unlikely. When the vision of the ram first appeared in chapter 8, the horns were described like this.
3 I looked up and saw a ram standing beside the river. It had two horns. Both horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up second.
Notice the emphasized section at the end. One horn was longer than the other, and the longer one came up second. In other words, the short horn had grown out first, and then the longer second horn. If these horns were the "kings of Media and Persia," as noted above, then the short horn [the kings of Media] had preceded the long one [the kings of Persia]. Even as uninformed in 6th-century BC history as the author of Daniel was, he still recognized that the kings of Media had preceded the kings of Persia, because, as noted above, he depicted "Darius the Mede" as the conquerer of Babylon (Dan. 5:31). That the horns on the ram and not the ram itself represented the kingdoms of Media and Persia was clearly noted by Driver in the quotation above taken from his commentary on Daniel.
(A)fter the fall of Babylon, Darius the Mede "receives the kingdom" (v.31), and acts in it as king (vi.1, 2, 15, 25, 26); he reigns for a time--it is not said how long--and is succeeded by Cyrus, who is called pointedly "the Persian" (vi.28, cf. x.1, and contrast ix.1, xi.1); the two horns of the ram in viii.3 are distinguished from each other, one (representing the Persian empire) being higher (i.e., more powerful) than the other (the Median empire), and coming up after it. Thus, in the view of the author of the book, the more powerful rule of Persia is preceded by a "kingdom" of the Medes, beginning immediately after the death of Belshazzar.
The horns of the ram and not the ram itself represented the kings of Media and Persia, so two separate kingdoms were envisioned here. The kingdom of Media preceded the kingdom of Persia, which had been more powerful and had actually absorbed the territory of the former; hence, in the visions of Daniel's kingdoms, Media was the second, and Persia was the third. That left the male goat, which had trampled the ram and broken its horns (v:7), to be the fourth kingdom, which Gabriel clearly said to "Daniel" was the Grecian empire (v:21). That takes care of Daniel's four kingdoms, so there is no room for the Roman Empire in any sensible interpretation of these visions.
Wait a minute, some may say, if the horns on the ram represented two separate kingdoms, and if the short horn was Media, then why wouldn't Media have been the first kingdom, Persia the second, and Alexander's kingdom just the third? Anyone who would ask this question doesn't have much familiarity with the book of Daniel, because Daniel's visions of the four kingdoms actually began in chapter 2, where Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a great image made of four different metals: a head of gold, a chest and arms of silver, a midsection and thighs of bronze, and legs of iron with feet of iron mingled with clay. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that these four metals represented four kingdoms with Nebuchadnezzar's being the head of gold.
Daniel 2:36 "This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37 You, O king, the king of kings--to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the might, and the glory, 38 into whose hand he has given human beings, wherever they live, the wild animals of the field, and the birds of the air, and whom he has established as ruler over them all--you are the head of gold. 39 After you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over the whole earth. 40 And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; just as iron crushes and smashes everything, it shall crush and shatter all these.
Incidentally, the expression in verse 38 that was translated "human beings" was literally "sons of men" in the original language, and this is just more evidence that "son of man" was merely a Semitic idiom that meant "human being," but the primary point I want to make here is that Daniel plainly identified Nebuchadnezzar or Babylonia as the first kingdom in his visions of four kingdoms. In the last two verses just quoted, Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom would be followed by three other kingdoms, and these were identified in Gabriel's interpretations in chapter 8. If Babylonia was the first kingdom, as Daniel said in the text just quoted, and if the horns of the ram in chapter eight were Media and Persia, and if the great goat was the Grecian kingdom, that takes care of Daniel's four kingdoms. The Grecian kingdom was the last of the four, and he said nothing about a fifth kingdom that could have been the Roman Empire. "Daniel's" visions of the kingdoms ended with the breakup of Alexander's kingdom, because "Daniel" was a second-century BC writer, who was interested in passing himself off to his contemporaries as a 6th-century prophet who had foreseen an end to the oppression of the Jews during the time of the Selucid king Antiochus Epiphanes. He wanted his 2nd-century readers to believe that God through "Daniel" had promised that they would triumph over their oppressors.
This brings us back to the vision of the "son of man," who, as noted above, represented the nation of Israel in human form, in sharp contrast with the four hideous "beasts" whom Daniel had seen coming out of the sea. These beasts represented kingdoms that would all succeed for a time, but none would succeed in doing what the "son of man" [Israel], symbolized in human form, would do. After all of the oppression, Israel, represented as a human rather than a hideous beast, would receive an everlasting kingdom.
Daniel 7:17 The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth. 18 But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever--yes, for ever and ever.
This passage simply repeated the promise that was made earlier in the "son of man" vision.
Daniel 7:13 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He [the one like the son of man] was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
The Old Testament is filled with prophetic promises of the eventual triumph of Israel over the nations that had oppressed them, at which time an everlasting kingdom would be established for them. Christians won't deny these prophecies, but they always want to make that kingdom one that Jesus would establish, but that view just won't fit into the Old Testament kingdom prophecies. In the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, for example, which we just looked at, Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar or Babylonia would be the first kingdom, and the interpretations of the kingdom visions in chapters 7 and 8 clearly show that Media was the second of the four kingdoms, Persia the third, and Greece the fourth. With that in mind, let's look now at what Daniel said about this fourth kingdom [of iron] in the continuation of his interpretation of the dream about the great image.
Daniel 2:40 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. 44 In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
Verses 42 and 43 described a breakup of the fourth kingdom [of iron], which happened when Alexander the Great died prematurely at the age of 33. His world kingdom was then divided among his generals, as I explained in "Good History in the Book of Daniel," one of my many replies to Everette Hatcher's attempts to find inerrancy in this book.
Admittedly, the language in this vision [of the male goat] is typically figurative, but scholars agree that it is an accurate description of Alexander the Great's conquest of the territory that once belonged to the kings of Media and Persia and of the breakup of Alexander's Grecian empire when he died at the height of his power. Upon Alexander's death, his empire was divided into four smaller kingdoms by his generals, who came to be known as the "Diadochi" (successors), so these would have been the four prominent horns that came up when the great horn was broken. Macedonia and Greece were allotted to Cassander, Pergamum and Asia Minor to Lysimachus, Syria and Babylon to Antigonus, and Egypt and Palestine to Ptolemy.
Those four "prominent horns" were referred to in verse 8 of the vision of the male goat.
The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.
As I just explained in the quotation from my reply to Everette Hatcher, this accurately describes the breakup of Alexander's kingdom. At the height of his power, he died in Babylon [the large horn was broken], after having conquered all the lands that had belonged to Babylonia, Media, and Persia, and his empire was divided among four of his generals [in place of the large horn, four prominent horns grew up]. In another "prophecy" of Alexander's rise, "Daniel" said in 11:2 that a "mighty king" would stand up when the Persian kings had "stir[red] up all against the realm of Greece" and that this king would "rule with great dominion and do according to his will" (v:3). The "prophecy" said, however, that when this mighty king stood up, his kingdom would be broken and then "divided toward the four winds of heaven," the same expression used in 8:8 to describe the breakup of the male goat's "large horn," but that this mighty king's kingdom would not be divided among "his posterity" (v:4). The four generals who divided Alexander's kingdom were not related to Alexander, so as I pointed out in my reply to Hatcher linked to above, "Upon the death of Alexander, three of his relatives wanted to take control of his kingdom (his sons Alexander and Herakles, and his half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus), but none of them had the influence and power to do so; hence, when Alexander died, his kingdom was "uprooted" and did not go to his "posterity" ("Good History in the Book of Daniel," The Skeptical Review, September/October 1998, p. 10). The link to "Good History..." above will give immediate access to this article.
In this article, I explicated the prophecies of Daniel's four kingdoms [beasts] in much more detail than I can do here without imposing on the patience of readers, but those who want to see Turkel's spin on Daniel's prophecies ripped to shreds may want to read the article linked to above, as well as companion articles in other issues of The Skeptical Review. Those who take the time to read them will find entire sections of Daniel's prophecies explicated verse by verse to show beyond all reasonable doubt that the fourth and last kingdom in his visions was the empire of Alexander Great. The "son of man" in 7:13 was not "Christ," as Turkel claimed with typical fundamentalist certitude; he was the nation of Israel, symbolized in human form in stark contrast to the grotesque "beasts," which symbolized the four kingdoms in Daniel's "prophecies."
This view of the "son of man" symbol is not just a spin that some atheist is putting on this vision in order to oppose the commonly held Christian belief that Daniel prophesied the coming of "Christ" and his kingdom. It is a view held by most reputable scholars who don't have any inerrancy axes to grind. I quoted above what Eerdman's Bible Dictionary said about the Semitic expression "son of man," so now let's go on to read what this conservative source said about the usage of this expression in Daniel 7:13.
At Dan. 7:13 "son of man" is a title for the people of Israel considered corporately or for their angelic representative in the heavenly court (cf. "the saints of the Most High," v. 18).
In Psalm 80, the writer prayed fervently for Yahweh to "come to save us" and to "cause [his] face to shine" (vs:2-3). That the Psalmist was praying to Yahweh to save the people of Israel is evident from the preceding verses that entreated him to shine forth "before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh," tribal names that were often used to represent the entire nation of Israel. The writer went on to ask how long Yahweh would "be angry against the prayer of [his] people (v:4), so obviously the author was praying for Yahweh to restore Israel to his favor again. Later, he referred to God's people, i. e., the Israelites, as "the son of man."
17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.
It wasn't at all unusual for Old Testament writers to use a single human figure to symbolize the nation of Israel. Isaiah did it in the famous suffering servant passage, which New Testament writers tried to distort into a prophecy of Jesus, but that is another article for another time. If Turkel would care to argue that the suffering servant was Jesus, I would be glad to take him down another notch or two.
The everlasting kingdom that Hebrew prophets predicted was to be the kingdom of Israel with a descendant of David serving as its king, and they never intended their prophecies to be distorted as Christians have done to try to make them predictions of the coming of a kingdom over which "Christ" would rule. That their intention was to predict a literal everlasting kingdom of Israel on earth, with its Levitical system in place, is evident from one of Jeremiah's prophecies of the coming of that kingdom.
Jeremiah 33:14 "'The days are coming,' declares Yahweh, 'when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: Yahweh Our Righteousness.' 17 For this is what Yahweh says: 'David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, 18 nor will the priests, who are Levites, ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to present sacrifices.'"
The last verse clearly shows that the prophecy was that the kingdom of Israel with its Levitical system would continue forever, but no one in his right mind would argue that there are still Levitical priests sacrificing burnt offerings and grain offerings. Judaism ceased the practice of sacrificial offerings centuries ago, so Jeremiah's prophecy of a Davidic kingdom that would always have Levitical priests offering sacrifices obviously failed. The failure of a prophecy, however, has never deterred a fundamentalist from arguing that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant "word of God."
Turkel said above that "we know that the son of man [in Daniel 7:13] was Christ," but I have taken us through reams of information that clearly show that we do not and cannot know any such thing. The evidence against Turkel's assertion is so overwhelming that I feel as if I have swatted a mosquito with a sledge hammer, so let's look at what else Turkel had to say in the Daniel article he is so proud of. With the background of Daniel's visions of the four kingdoms that I gave above, I can more quickly dismantle what Turkel described as "the most relevant paragraph" in his article.
What should be especially noted for our purposes is the Son of Man’s mode of transportation, and the direction he is going in. The Son of Man is riding with "the clouds of heaven" (the LXX has the Son of Man actually "on" the clouds) and heading towards the Ancient of Days to be enthroned.
And let's keep in mind that textual evidence from the Old Testament supports the view that this "son of man" or "human being" represented the nation of Israel, which was to receive the kingdom at some time in the days of the fourth kingdom [of iron] or in other words in the days when Alexander the Great's kingdom had broken up. That would have been well before the time of Jesus, and, therefore, much too soon to fit into the mold that Turkel is trying to force it into.
What needs to be noted even more than the direction the "son of man was going is what I just showed above: this "son of man" in Daniel 7:13 was not "Christ" as Turkel has asserted but was merely a human image used to symbolize the nation of Israel, in stark contrast to the grotesque beasts, which symbolized nations that had in the past (from the perspective of the 2nd-century BC author of "Daniel") persecuted Jews. Israel was the "son of man" riding with the clouds to receive dominion, glory, and a kingdom (v:13). The four great beasts that arose out of the earth would merely be temporary kings, but "the saints of the most high," i. e., the people of Israel, would be the permanent recipients of an everlasting kingdom (vs:17-18, 27). As I noted above, the fourth beast was the Grecian empire of Alexander the great, which was divided among his generals when Alexander died prematurely. It was in the days of the kings that would arise from the breakup of this fourth kingdom that the God of Heaven would set up a kingdom that would never be destroyed.
Daniel 2:44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall this kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever....
In concluding the summation of his vision of the four beasts in chapter 7, "Daniel" repeated the promise that when diverse kings emerged from the breakup of the fourth kingdom, an everlasting kingdom would be given to the saints of the most high.
Daniel 7:23 This is what he said: "As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth that shall be different from all the other kingdoms; it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. 24 As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them. This one shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. 25 He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law; and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half a time. 26 Then the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and totally destroyed. 27 The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them."
In "Good History in the Book of Daniel," I explicated most of Daniel’s "visions" verse by verse to show that historical events of the time clearly indicated that "Daniel," in order to encourage his 2nd-century readers to believe that the Jews would prevail over their oppressors and at long last receive the never-ending kingdom they had been promised, was prophesying after the fact of events that had already happened so I won’t rehash here information that readers can access by clicking the link above.
The fulfillment of the everlasting-kingdom promises in their time was what 2nd-century BC "Daniel" wanted to communicate to his readers rather than the preterist/ dispensationalist spins on those visions that have tried to push the fulfillments into futures so distant from the 2nd century BC that nothing that "Daniel" said would have conveyed any meaning to them. Turkel quoted above T. N. Wright’s complaint that present-day theologians are engaged in "the folly of trying to fit the hurricane of first-century Jewish theology into the bottle of late-modern western categories," but he and his preterist cohorts apparently can’t see that they are engaged in trying to fit 2nd-century BC Jewish theology into their bottle of 20th/21st-century rationalizations of second-coming prophecy failures. In Turkel’s favorite paragraph from his Daniel article, then, he is arguing from the false premise that the "son of man" in Daniel 7:13 was "Christ." Nothing in the paragraph has any relevance to the second-coming prophecies in Matthew 24, but to further expose the folly of his preterist views, I will follow where he leads us and reply to every camel he swallows in his attempts to find preterism in the Bible.
[The Son of Man is riding with "the clouds of heaven" (the LXX has the Son of Man actually "on" the clouds) and heading towards the Ancient of Days to be enthroned.] Miller [207] believes that the Son of Man rides from heaven to earth in this picture, but this is quite unlikely in view of the setting of God's heavenly court (7:10).
The language in this part of the vision does seem to indicate an earth-to-heaven ride. That view would be consistent with a belief of the time that the dwelling place of God was "up there" somewhere. Various Old Testament texts associated the home of God with the clouds and stipulated clouds as his "mode of transportation."
1 Kings 8:10 When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of Yahweh. 11 And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of Yahweh filled his temple. 12 Then Solomon said, "Yahweh has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud...."
Psalm 18:9 He [Yahweh] parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. 10 He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him–the dark rain clouds of the sky. 12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. 13 Yahweh thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded.
Psalm 68:4 Sing to God, sing praise to his name, extol him who rides on the clouds--his name is Yahweh--and rejoice before him.
Psalm 104:2 He [Yahweh] wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.
Isaiah 19:1 An oracle concerning Egypt: See, Yahweh rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt.
Psalm 18:9 He [Yahweh] parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. 10 He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind.
Despite "Daniel's" reference to the coming with the clouds, which at that time were thought to be the dwelling place of God, we will see later that this does seem to be an earthly scene. The reasons why I say this will soon become clear.
Before I leave the clouds behind, I want to add an aside: the fact that many educated people today can’t see that passages like those just quoted merely reflected the superstitions of ancient, prescientific times speaks volumes about their naivity, but that is their problem. What I want to do here is show that the vision of the "son of man" (Dan. 7:13) should be interpreted in accordance with the superstitions of the day, and the people of that time believed that their god dwelt "up there" in the clouds, so when "Daniel" said that he saw in his "night visions" one like unto a son of man "coming with the clouds" and "approaching" [NIV] the Ancient of Days, where he was presented to him, we would reasonably conclude that he was depicting an earth-to-heaven journey, but the continuation of the vision, as we will see below, doesn’t support that interpretation. Turkel is wrong, and, and as much as I hate to admit it, Miller is right, which is a bit unusual for Miller, whose fundamentalist theological views are published primarily by Broadman & Holman, a religious press in Nashville, Tennessee. Miller also teaches at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, which is a fundamentalist institution that requires its staff to sign a pledge of loyalty to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Miller was one of Everette Hatcher's favorite "scholars," and through his associate with Hatcher, I received a free, autographed copy of Miller's commentary on Daniel that Turkel cited above. I have done considerable reading in it, and needless to say, I was not impressed. Miller will lean over backwards to find some way to "explain" away obvious discrepancies in Daniel, so I certainly don't see Miller as any kind of objective authority on Daniel, although, as I noted above, he seems to be right about the destination of the "son of man's" ride on the clouds, but nobody can be wrong all of the time.
Instead of citing what this writer or that writer said about the son-of-man vision, Turkel needs to prove that this "son of man" in Daniel’s vision was "Christ," and that he cannot do. I doubt that he will even try to reply to all of my arguments that have shown solid reasons why the "son of man" in this vision must be seen as a symbol for the nation of Israel. He may brush them aside with some sweeping generalization, peppered with typical sarcasms and insults, but he will not reply to them, because he can’t.
Goldingay [164] acknowledges that the scene of God on a throne of fire, surrounded by attendants, "locate the scene in heaven"; but counters that where "it is specifically a matter of God judging... the scene is normally on earth."
John Goldingay is a professor at Fuller School of Theology in Pasadena, California, which is an evangelical institution, so he too could be expected to look for inerrancy in the Bible. What he thought about where the scene was located is unimportant until he or Turkel or someone can establish that the "son of man" in this vision was "Christ." Has he done that? If so, let Turkel trot out his proof texts. Goldingay was another one of Everette Hatcher’s favorite "scholars," and in all of the times that Hatcher quoted--er--cited him, I never saw any substance in his attempts to apply the "prophecies" of Daniel to the second coming of Jesus.
The verses he uses in support of this, however, could be said to fall to circular reasoning;
Then Goldingay’s proof texts should appeal to Turkel, because he is an expert in circular reasoning. In his article that I am replying to, for example, he has assumed--without proving--that Daniel’s prophecies had reference to AD 70 and then argued in a circle that events in AD 70 fulfilled the Olivet prophecies of Jesus because Daniel said this and that, so Goldingay’s argument below is no more circular than Turkel’s."
for example, Jer. 49:38: "And I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes, saith the LORD." Did God literally set his throne in Elam? (Other passages, like Ps. 96:10-13, say God will come to judge the earth, but how does this equate with God being physically present on earth?)
Well, since "God" is a spirit (John 4:24), I suppose he wouldn’t be "physically" anywhere, but if Turkel doesn’t think that God is present on earth, he must not think that God is omnipresent. Since Daniel‘s "son of man" vision had nothing to do with "Christ," the point is moot anyway, because "Daniel" was not concerned with what was going to happen centuries later but in what was going to happen in the time of his contemporary readers. As for whether God will come to judge the earth, as Psalm 96:13 says, Turkel is again arguing in a circle. He assumes that whatever the Bible says is truth, so if the Bible says that God will judge the earth, then God will judge the earth, because the Bible says that he will. I would really like to see Turkel prove, without resorting to circular reasoning, question begging, or argumentation by assertion, that there will be a judgment by God on earth or any other place, but I have no expectation at all that he will ever do it or even try to do it.
Bottom line: The scene fits the placement of heaven better than it fits a placement on earth.
Daniel 7:8 I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly. 9 As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. 10 A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. 11 I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire.
The "horn" that had been speaking "arrogant words" was the horn that had sprung up in the midst of the ten horns (v:8), and this horn was Antiochus Epiphenes, the oppressive Selucid king, who was the focal point of Daniel’s visions. In "Good History in the Book of Daniel," I analyzed Daniel's visions in the light of 2nd-century BC events to show that the only reasonable interpretation of them is that the fourth beast was the Grecian kingdom of Alexander the Great, the ten horns were the kings who rose to power after the breakup of this kingdom, and the little horn was Antiochus Ephiphenes, who was the subject of extreme hatred in midsecond century BC because of his anti-Jewish edicts and persecutions. As my debate with Hatcher continued, Michael Bradford, a dispensationalist, tried to find a "Medo-Persian" empire in "Daniel's" visions. In my reply to him, I gave additional information about who the little horn was in the visions. Since readers can access these explications by clicking the links above, I won’t rehash them here, but I will ask readers to think sensibly about one point: after the thrones were set up, Daniel watched the scene "because of the arrogant words the little horn was speaking (v:11). Does it make any sense to interpret this to mean that the thrones were set up in heaven and the "little horn" [Antiochus Epiphanes] was taken there, where he continued to speak arrogant words? Such a view would be completely inconsistent with passages that present the final judgment scene in heaven as a dreadful event (Rom. 14:10-12). If such an event ever happens, we could hardly imagine anyone's speaking arrogant words while standing in judgment to give an accounting of his misdeeds.
The point I am emphasizing here is that a judgment in heaven of the fourth beast and the kings that it had spawned would have made no sense to "Daniel‘s" second-century BC audience and certainly would have given them no consolation, so a more reasonable view is that "Daniel" was telling his contemporaries that the "Ancient of Days" would come to earth and, in the presence of those who had suffered the persecutions of the little horn, sit in judgment of the beast, destroy it, and bring an end to the little horn that spoke arrogant words. This would have been a comforting message to the people of that time, but the unlikely spins that preterists and dispensationalists put on these texts to push the fulfillments into a distant future would have offered no consolation at all to the oppressed Jews of the second century BC. Thus, the vision of the "son of man" had nothing to do with "Christ," as I have repeatedly shown above. It was a vision intended to bring comfort to "Daniel’s" persecuted contemporaries.
Nor does it do to object that the scene must be on earth because of the earth and the sea seen by Daniel (7:3-4).
Agreed, but unless Turkel can show how a judgment in heaven of the fourth beast and destruction of it and the little horn that spoke arrogant words would have conveyed any meaningful message to the oppressed Jews of "Daniel’s" time, his case will remain as weak as water. Only a judgment on earth that could have been witnessed by the oppressed Jews of that time would have meant anything to "Daniel’s" contemporaries. Who would have cared anything about some vague promise of relief from oppression that wasn’t going to happen until centuries later when the people of "Daniel‘s" time would all be dead?
Again, if we are thinking literal geography and envisioning here, then the Mormons must be right about God having a human body!
I have no desire to defend the Mormons, but in view of the many anthropomorphic references to "God" in the Bible, they can well be excused for thinking that God has a human body. That position is just as sensible as Turkel’s belief that "God" is a "spirit." If Turkel has the time on his hands, he may want to accept my standing challenge to prove that it is even possible for immaterial entities like gods, spirits, demons, ghosts, and such like to exist independently of matter. If he attempts it, I will ask him to spare us the old worn-out arguments about gravity and magnetic fields, because these are immaterial entities that exist because of matter. There is no reason to think that gravity or magnetism could exist if matter didn’t exist. My point here is that Turkel should put his own doctrinal house in order before he presumes to criticize Mormons or any other religious groups.
I have now gone through the paragraph in Turkel’s Daniel article to show that it does nothing to help his claim that the second coming of Jesus occurred in AD 70, so I will now continue my point-by-point replies to the rest of his article.
Turkel:
How then does this relate to the Olivet Discourse?
Till:
Yes, how does it? It has no relationship at all except in the deluded
minds of preterists
and dispensationalists, who want to distort "Daniel’s" visions into
prophecies of their
particular doctrinal views, which are all attempts to rationalize the
failure of New
Testament promises that Jesus would return "shortly" before the people
of his generation had
all died .
Turkel:
The scene of Daniel 7, as Caird says [Wr.JVG, 341], involves not "a
primitive form of space
travel" but "a symbol for a mighty reversal of fortunes within history
and at the national
level...."
Till:
I don’t find too much to disagree with here, but I doubt that Caird had
in mind the same
"reversal of fortunes within history" that "Daniel" did. As I have
shown over and over
again in my exchanges with Turkel and Everette Hatcher, "Daniel"
prophesied after the fact
in order to make his contemporaries think that a 6th-century BC Jewish
official in the
Babylonian government had foreseen a reversal of the fortunes that had
brought to power four
kingdoms that had oppressed the Jews and that that reversal of fortunes
was going to result
in their finally receiving the everlasting kingdom that their prophets
had spoken about.
Caird would no doubt disagree with that and argue that "Daniel’s"
visions foresaw a kingdom
of Christ that would be established centuries later. If Turkel wants to
defend that view,
let him reply to my points above and my articles in The Skeptical
Review that I have
linked readers to above.
Turkel
The scene is one of a victorious enthronement and vindication over
enemies.
Till:
Yes, it was but not the kind of "enthronement and vindication over
enemies" that Turkel
thinks that it was. It was a scene of the triumph of the "son of man"
or Israel over their
enemies and the long awaited reception of their promised kingdom that
would last forever.
If Turkel disputes this, let him reply to all of my supporting points
above and in their
links to other articles.
Turkel:
To emphasize this, we will also need to pull in a verse from another
part of the Gospels.
Till:
Turkel didn’t just pull in a single verse; he threw together a
conclusion that simply
recycled several discredited arguments that I have already answered in
previous exchanges
with him. I will stop here and resume my reply in Part Eight, which should take
us all the way through his article on the "Olivet Discourse."
