An Actual Historical Character?
by Farrell Till
In "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" I had occasion several times to refer to the questionable historicity of "Darius the Mede," who the author of Daniel claimed captured Babylon and ruled as king prior to the reign of Cyrus the Great (Dan. 5:30-31; 6:1-9), but I made no in-depth attempt to discuss the problem of whether he was an actual historical person, because I was saving that aspect of problems in the book of Daniel for this article. I mentioned, for example, Stephen Miller's appropriation of D. J. Wiseman's hypothesis that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Great were the same person, a highly speculative theory that I will address in more detail in this article. This "solution" to the absence of nonbiblical references to "Darius the Mede" is based on the claim that Daniel 6:28, which says that "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian" has been mistranslated and should read that "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." By claiming that the Aramaic waw traditionally translated with the English conjunction and could have meant even or namely in this verse, Wiseman and proponents of this interpretation "solve" the problem of Darius's historicity by making this just another name for Cyrus, who was mentioned in several extrabiblical records contemporary to the time when Daniel presumably served as an important official in the sixth-century BC Babylonian and Persian governments. We will soon see that this interpretation of Daniel 6:28 is tenuous at best.
In the history section of his "defense of Daniel," which he entitled "Daniel Doings," Robert Turkel also appropriated Wiseman's attempt to retranslate Daniel 6:28 to make Cyrus and Darius the Mede the same person. He basically recycled Wiseman's and Miller's quibbles, which I have already answered in the section of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" linked to above, but he did include a couple of other points, which he supported with his usual way of putting bracketed references to writers who agreed, in this case, that Cyrus and Darius were the same person. As I reply to Turkel's recycled apologetic quibbles on the historicity of "Darius the Mede," I will code his comments in blue print.
Admittedly, this is by far the most difficult historical problem in the book - albeit not "insurmountable" as Lacocque [Lacq.Dan., 109] suggests. There are two major responses to this problem. One is a proposal by John Whitcomb that Darius the Mede is to be identified with Gubaru, the provincial governor of Babylon. (Whitcomb's work, we may note, is conspicuously absent from the bibliographies of, or is never cited by, Lacocque and others who regard the problem as "insurmountable"!) The other is a proposal by Donald Wiseman (supported by Shea, Shea.DMedePB, and Colless, Coll.CPDMede) that Daniel 6:28 should be translated, "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius even the reign of Cyrus the Persian," i.e., taking the former name as a throne name - so that Darius the Mede is, in fact, Cyrus the Persian. Both interpretations have attractive features.
I discussed this quibble in this section, of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" and showed that Wiseman's claim that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were the same person doesn't have any merit to it, so I don't need to rehash here my rebuttals of this claim. I will concentrate instead on Whitcomb's "theory" that Darius the Mede was the same person as Gubaru to show that it is just another straw that inerrantists have grabbed to try to protect their claim that the book of Daniel is inerrant.
Let us first consider the case for the Gubaru equation. Whitcomb suggests that "there is one person in history, and only one who fits all the Biblical data concerning Darius the Mede. He is never mentioned by the Greek historians, but appears in various sixth century B.C. cuneiform texts under the name of Gubaru." [Whit.DMede, 10-16] [sic]
It would have been appropriate for Turkel to quote here some of those "various sixth-century BC cuneiform texts" that show that Gubaru was probably "Darius the Mede." With modern technology available to writers, providing such information wouldn't be hard at all to do. In this section of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" for example, I quoted from The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle to show that the Babylonian Chronicle identified Cyaxerxes, and not Ashashuerus, as the Median king at the time of the Babylonian/Median conquest of Nineveth, and in internet matters, Turkel considers me to be an incompetent whose "mouth runs faster than his brain," yet despite my incompetence, I somehow manage to link the readers of my articles to what I am answering on Turkel's website and to link them to supporting evidences that I cite or quote, as I did here and two paragraphs below to link readers to translations of Akkadian inscriptions that I was referring to. Those who are familiar with his website, however, probably know that quoting evidence or linking his readers to it just isn't Turkel's style. He no doubt knows that if he quotes too much, discerning readers will be able to see that his "evidence" doesn't really support what he is claiming.
The central feature of this view is to distinguish Gubaru form [sic] Ugbaru, both of whom are called Gobryas in some translations of the Nabodinus [sic] Chronicle.
Where? Why didn't Turkel link his readers to the Nabonidus Chronicle? A translation of this chronicle can be read here, where the reference to Gobryas reads like this.
The sixteenth day, Gobryas [litt: Ugbaru], the governor of Gutium, and the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without battle. Afterwards, Nabonidus was arrested in Babylon when he returned there.
Clinking the link to Gobryas above will show that this source claims that Gobryas, which was literally Ugbaru, died on March 4, 538 BC, just a few months after the conquest of Babylon in October 539 BC. Hence, if this information is correct Gobryas or Ugbaru could not have been "Darius the Mede," because Daniel referred to the "first year of the reign of Darius" (9:1-2; 11:1), which implies that Darius had reigned longer than a year and certainly longer than just five months. Besides, we know from cuneiform records, which Turkel referred to later on, that Cyrus ruled for nine years after the fall of Babylon, so those who contend that "Darius the Mede" was just another name for Cyrus the Persian can't simultaneously claim that someone who died just nine months after the conquest of Babylon was Cyrus/"Darius the Mede."
The Nabonidus Chronicle can also be found here, where it reads the same way as the translation linked to above, so there is agreement between these two sources that Ugbaru was another name for Gobryas or rather that Gobryas literally read Ugbaru in this chronicle. Since Turkel seems to agree that Ugbaru died within a few weeks of the fall of Babylon, nothing else needs to be said about him. Let's look now at Whitcomb's attempt to make Gubaru and "Darius the Mede" the same person.
Whitcomb shows that Ugbaru died within weeks of his capture of Babylon,
Yes, that's what the Nabonidus Chronicle, quoted above, said. Can Whitcomb now show us that this chronicle identified Gubaru as "Darius the Mede"?
while the latter continued as governor of Babylon for at least fourteen years. About the significance of the confusion between Ugbaru and Gubaru, Whitcomb writes, "...many were led to assume that Ugbaru and Gubaru were the same person and were to be identified also with the "Gobryas" of Xenophone's Cyropaedia. This effort to identify Darius the Mede with a composite 'Gobryas' was clearly unsatisfactory, and opened the door for critics to deny any possibility of an historical identification for Darius the Mede." [ibid., 24] [sic]
No, there is no supporting evidence here, just assertions. If Whitcomb has any evidence that Gubaru was "Darius the Mede," why didn't he cite it? If Turkel knows of any such evidence, why didn't he cite it?
But now to the Cyrus equation. Wiseman translates Daniel 6:28, "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even (namely, or i.e.) the reign of Cyrus the Persian."
I showed in this section of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" just how unlikely this translation is, so I don't need to rehash my rebuttal of it here. As I continue through Turkel's recycling of this discredited quibble, I will show other reasons why this is not a credible solution to the Darius-the-Mede problem.
And he continues to support his case: "Such a use of the oppositional [sic] or explicative Hebrew waw construction has long been recognized in 1 Chronicles 5:26 ("So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria even the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria") and elsewhere." [The incorrect double quotation marks within double quotation marks were Turkel's error, FT.]
I don't know if Turkel was quoting Wiseman correctly here, but if so, Wiseman seemed not to know that appositional rather than oppositional construction is what he was claiming for Daniel 6:28 and 1 Chronicles 5:26. Wiseman was claiming that "Darius the Mede" was the same person as Cyrus the Persian in Daniel 6:28. Hence, he was claiming that "Cyrus the Persian" was grammatically in apposition to "Darius," which would have made them the same person. To say that this was an "oppositional construction" would be to say that "Cyrus the Persian" was the opposite of Darius, and that would be... well, the opposite of what Wiseman was claiming and what Turkel was uncritically parroting. I find it rather ironic that those "apologists" who always seem to know all about shades of meaning in biblical languages often have trouble using their native English language correctly.
Notice that Turkel didn't cite any of Wiseman's "elsewheres" that would support his claim that the waw [inseparable and] in Daniel 6:28 was used in an explicative or appositional sense. He cited only the Pul/Tiglath-pileser example in 1 Chronicles 5:26, where the names Pul and Tiglath-pileser were joined with the waw in an apparent explicative sense, although "(s)ome scholars consider it [Pul] to be either his original or a throne name" (Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987, pp. 862-863). The Pul/Tiglath-pileser example is the one that inerrantists will invariably cite, and their repeated use of this one example is a tacit admission that use of the explicative waw in Hebrew was too infrequent to make a strong case for Wiseman's "translation" of Daniel 6:28, but an even bigger problem with this "supporting argument" is that Daniel 6:28 is in the part of Daniel that was written in Aramaic, whereas the Pul/Tiglath-pileser example is in a book that was written in Hebrew. Brian Colless, a fundamentalist professor in New Zealand, whom Turkel appealed to below, is also a supporter of the "Darius-the-Mede"=Cyrus-the-Persian view. In my exchanges with Everette Hatcher in The Skeptical Review, he also appealed to Colless in defense of the explicative waw theory, so in the summer of 2001, I established an e-mail correspondence with Colless in which I asked him to cite Aramaic examples of the explicative waw rather than to base his argument on a single example in the Hebrew part of the Old Testament.
I have been reading some of your material in which you seek to establish that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Great were the same person. Do you have any evidence in support of this theory other than the possibility that waw could be used in an explicative sense in Semitic languages? Your materials that I have been reading cite examples from Ugaritic texts, but I am eager to know whether you know of any examples in Aramaic where this idiom was used. Isn't Daniel 6:28 in the part of Daniel that was written in Aramaic? If so, I'd like to find some support for this view in Aramaic texts.
I received just a brief, two-sentence reply from Colless.
Right, it is in Aramaic, but the example of Pul/Tiglath-pileser (in Hebrew) is in the Bible, and if the Bible is inspired and inerrant, why look further?! It is a common Semitic phenomenon; that is my argument.
Besides begging the question of biblical inerrancy, Colless's reply showed two serious flaws in his thinking: (1) He reasoned that because the waw [and] was used in a relatively rare sense in 1 Chronicles 5:26, it must have been used in the same way in Daniel 6:28, a claim that completely ignores the linguistic principle that recognizes that the meanings of words are to be determined by the contexts in which they appear. (2) He indicated an incredible linguistic ignorance for someone who purports to be a biblical scholar. One cannot assume that an idiomatic usage in one language will be the same in other languages in the same family, so just because an explicative waw was used once in the Hebrew part of the Old Testament would not prove that it was used in an Aramaic part of Daniel. To so argue would be somewhat like claiming that an idiomatic usage in, say, French would mean that the same usage will occur in Spanish or Italian, because all of these belong to the same language family.
Other defenders of the explicative-waw quibble have struggled to find more examples to use in support of the claim that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Persian were the same person. In my debate with Everette Hatcher referred to above, which continued on the Errancy list after I discontinued the hardcopy version of The Skeptical Review, he stretched imagination to find examples of the explicative waw in the Aramaic section of Daniel. Hatcher's comments will be coded in green print.
Farrell Till said that comparing Aramaic and Hebrew was like comparing apples and oranges. He wanted me to find more examples in Aramaic and Hebrew that show that waw was translated as an explicative device (TSR, Vol. 11.6, p. 9). Daniel 4:13 is a good example: "watcher, (Aramaic conjunction waw), holy one." The critic Arthur Jeffery notes that these are "not two figures but one, a watcher who was a holy one" (Jeffery, p. 410).
Before I reply to this example, let's look at what Daniel 4:13 says. I will emphasize in bold print where the waw conjunction appeared in the Aramaic text of Daniel.
I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven.
Hatcher's argument was that a single entity came down rather than two--a watcher and a holy one. He is right, of course; there was only one supernatural entity in this scene, but the situation here is as if a single person should be referred to as a "scholar and a gentleman." Upon hearing this, no one who is a native English speaker would think that two people--one a scholar and the other a gentleman--were being referred to. The one person would have qualities that would merit calling him a scholar but would also have other qualities that would merit calling him a gentleman. Hence, the one person was both a scholar and a gentleman. In the same way the one entity that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream was both a "watcher" [an angel] and a "holy one." The verse was not saying that watcher meant holy one, and holy one meant watcher.
Proponents of the explicative-waw "interpretation" of Daniel 6:28 will sometimes claim other examples of its Aramaic usage in Daniel, as Hatcher did in our exchanges in the Errancy forum.
Daniel 7:18 and 7:20 are two other good examples where waw was used as an explicative device. These examples in such a small corpus of Aramaic literature are sufficient to demonstrate that the use of the waw explicative is common in Biblical Aramaic, just as it is in Hebrew.
The explicative waw isn't "common" in Hebrew, as Hatcher just claimed. It is relatively rare, but, anyway, Hatcher didn't bother to quote the two passages he cited above, and a look at them will show readers why he probably didn't.
Daniel 7:18 But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even [Aramaic waw] for ever and ever.
This shows just how desperate inerrantists can become in their search for textual corroboration of their far-fetched explanations of biblical discrepancies. Even if this translation had said that the saints would possess the kingdom forever and forever and ever, it would have captured the obvious meaning of the passage. Even in English, we will sometimes use this idiom, as when a boy in love assures his girlfriend that he will love her "forever and ever and ever." The repetition of ever simply gives emphasis to the duration that he is claiming for the love that he will have for the girl. As a matter of fact, some Bible versions, such as the NRSV, translated waw in the verse above with and, which still communicated the same sense as the KJV's usage of even.
But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever--forever and ever."
Obviously, then, the Aramaic waw was used in this verse in an emphatic sense. Its usage here is entirely different from what Wiseman, Turkel, and Hatcher were claiming for Daniel 6:28. In the former, forever and forever were the same word, so they would obviously mean the same thing, but in the latter, the waw linked Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian, which were not identical terms. Hence, it is pure conjecture to claim that they were the same person.
Daniel 7:19 Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; 20 And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even [waw] of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.
The Aramaic waw was apparently used in an appositional sense here, but its context made that usage obvious. In this chapter, Daniel was relating a vision that he had had of four "great beasts" that he had seen coming out of the sea. The fourth beast had had horns that figured prominently in the meaning that this beast symbolized.
Daniel 7:7 After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. 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.
Later, where the appositional waw appeared, Daniel expressed the desire to know the truth about this fourth beast and the meaning of the ten horns and especially "the other horn," which had come up for which three horns had fallen out to make room for it.
Daniel 7:19 Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet; 20 and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn, which came up and to make room for which three of them fell out--the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others.
Since so many horns were involved in this part of the vision, Daniel needed to clarify which horn he meant when he said that he wanted to know the meaning of "the other horn"; hence, an appositional waw was used to signify that he was referring even to "the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly" and not to any of the other horns. As is almost invariably true in written language, the context of this passage made the appositional usage obvious. Can Wiseman or Turkel or Hatcher analyze Daniel 6:28 to identify contextual markers that will show that the Aramaic waw was used here with the obvious intention of having readers understand that Darius [the Mede] and Cyrus the Persian were one and the same person? If so, I would like to see them do it.
I showed in this section of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" that a far more sensible interpretation of Daniel 6:28 is that the writer, rather than vaguely identifying Darius and Cyrus as the same person, was emphasizing their ethnicity. Darius was a Mede, whereas Cyrus was a Persian. Only those with an emotionally important attachment to the untenable biblical inerrancy doctrine would try to distort it into meaning that they were one and the same person.
Now Turkel's "defense" of the historicity of "Darius the Mede" continues.
This [Wiseman's claim that Darius and Cyrus were the same person] seems to be supported by the Septuagint and Theodotion which translates [sic] Daniel 11:1 the "first year of Cyrus" rather than the "first year of Darius". [sic]
Turkel was merely parroting here what Miller had said on page 176 of his commentary; in fact, most of this section of Turkel's article was a recycling of Miller's far-fetched claims that Darius and Cyrus were the same person, but just as Miller was long on assertions and short on evidence, Turkel didn't bother to support the claims with evidence either. A question is therefore in order at this point: Why would the reading of Daniel 11:1 in the Septuagint and Theodotion translations support Wiseman's claim that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Persian were the same person? Biblical manuscripts contain thousands of variations, so how does Turkel know that this wasn't just another of thousands of textual variations that mean nothing more than that scribes sometimes made mistakes when they were copying manuscripts? Since original "autographs" of biblical books are no longer extant, we would have no way of knowing whether a Masoretic scribe or the Septuagint/ Theodotion ones made the mistake in Daniel 11:1. Consider, for example, the variation below in the Masoretic and Septuagint readings of Exodus 24:9-12.
Masorectic [NRSV]: 9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank. 12 Yahweh said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction."
Septuagint [Brenton] 9 And Moses went up, and Aaron, and Nadab and Abiud, and seventy of the elders of Israel. 10 And they saw the place where the God of Israel stood; and under his feet was as it were a work of sapphire slabs, and as it were the appearance of the firmament of heaven in its purity. 11 And of the chosen ones of Israel there was not even one missing, and they appeared in the place of God, and did eat and drink. 12 And the Lord said to Moses, Come up to me into the mountain, and be there; and I will give thee the tables of stone, the law and the commandments, which I have written to give them laws.
This is just one of many variations that I could have used to make my point. If Turkel is going to claim that the variant reading in the Septuagint in Daniel 11:1 proves that the author of Daniel had originally used the first year of Cyrus rather than the first year of Darius to date the "vision" in this chapter, consistency would demand that he consider the Septuagint reading of Exodus 24:11 to be the correct one and the Masoretic an incorrect corruption. Hence, rather than "God's" not having laid his hands on the chief men of the people of Israel, who beheld "God" at this time, what really happened was that not a one of the chosen ones of Israel was missing at this time, when they appeared in the place of God. Really, the only thing that variations like the one here and in Daniel 11:1 show is the unreliability of the biblical text. The manuscripts were copied and recopied and recopied and edited and reedited so many times through the centuries that we have no way of really knowing what the original versions of the many books actually said. Certainly, a variation like the Septuagint reading of Daniel 11:1 hardly proves that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Persian were the same person.
It could be that Darius the Mede had dual names; this sort of argument is advanced by Colless [Coll.CPDMede, 113], who (though he accepts a late date for Daniel) believes that the double-naming of Cyrus was a reflection of the propensity of the Daniel author to use "double names" for characters (i.e., Daniel/Belteshazzar) - and asserts that Daniel 6:28 was expected to be understood by the reader as making the Darius/Cyrus connection.
I italicized could be to call attention again to the speculative nature of the "solutions" that Turkel is recycling in his "defense" of inerrancy in the book of Daniel. Before I discuss Colless's "double-name" attempt to make Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian the same person, I will call attention to Turkel's rejection of Colless's acceptance of the late dating of the book of Daniel. Turkel rejects Colless's opinion in this matter, an opinion that is shared by almost all biblical commentators but those who are wedded to the inerrancy belief, but he apparently expects his readers to accept the far-more tenuous claim of Colless that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were the same person, a claim that has been based almost entirely on a very remote possibility that the Aramaic waw in Daniel 6:28 was used in an explicative or appositional sense. In other words, Turkel's "defense" of inerrancy in the book of Daniel has been based almost entirely on could have beens: The words father and son in Daniel 5 could have been used in the figurative senses of ancestor and descentant; Belshazzar's mother could have been Nebuchadnezzar's daughter; the Aramaic waw in Daniel 6:28 could have been used in an appositional sense. Now to these could have beens, Turkel is adding another: Darius the Mede "could have had" dual names. What would inerrantists do without could have been "explanations" of biblical discrepancies?
This "double-identity" quibble is nothing new. Inerrantists have used it many times in the past, but it has proven to be as ineffective as their other could-have-been attempts to defend the inerrancy of the book of Daniel. It is certainly true that some characters in Daniel had two different names, but, unfortunately for this quibble, the writer was always crystal clear in communicating these cases of double identity. Daniel's three friends were first mentioned in the book by their Jewish names: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They were each given a Babylonian name, and the text made very clear who was who when the names were changed.
Daniel 1:6 Among them [those chosen from the royal seed of Israel to be specially educated] were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, from the tribe of Judah. 7 The palace master gave them other names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.
This simple direct statement at the beginning of the book enables readers to know that when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were afterwards mentioned, the writer was referring to Daniel's three friends, and likewise subsequent references to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah would be understood to mean Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Notice too that the passage quoted above clearly stated that Daniel's Jewish name was also changed to Belteshazzar. Thereafter, when Belteshazzar was used in reference to Daniel, the writer went out of his way to specify that Belteshazzar was the same person as Daniel.
These are all of the passages in Daniel where his name Belteshazzar was used, and the contexts of all of them are clear in identifying Daniel and Belteshazzar as the same person. Needless to say, as we will later notice once again, this was not the case with Darius the Mede and Cyrus. Not once did the writer ever refer to Darius the Mede as he who was also called Cyrus or to Cyrus as he who was also called Darius the Mede. That always seems to be the plight that inerrantists like Turkel and Hatcher finds themselves in, i. e., long on possibilities and could-have-beens but short on hard evidence to support them.Daniel 2:26 The king [Nebuchadnezzar] said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to tell me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?”
Daniel 4:8-9 At last Daniel came in before me-he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and who is endowed with a spirit of the holy gods-and I told him the dream: “O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, I [Nebuchadnezzar] know that you are endowed with a spirit of the holy gods and that no mystery is too difficult for you. Hear the dream that I saw; tell me its interpretation.”
Daniel 4:18 This is the dream that I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw. Now you, Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation, since all the wise men of my kingdom are unable to tell me the interpretation. You are able, however, for you are endowed with a spirit of the holy gods." 19 Then Daniel, who was called Belteshazzar, was severely distressed for a while. His thoughts terrified him. The king said, “Belteshazzar, do not let the dream or the interpretation terrify you.” Belteshazzar answered, “My lord, may the dream be for those who hate you, and its interpretation for your enemies!”
Daniel 5:11-12 “There is a man in your [Belshazzar's] kingdom who is endowed with a spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father he was found to have enlightenment, understanding, and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods. Your father, King Nebuchadnezzar, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and diviners, because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will give the interpretation.”
Daniel 10:1 In the third year of King Cyrus of Persia a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar. The word was true, and it concerned a great conflict. He understood the word, having received understanding in the vision.
Rather than having a credible "double-identity" argument to support their conjecture that "Darius the Mede" had two names, Darius and Cyrus, this quibble has actually backfired in their faces, because the way that the author of Daniel habitually emphasized that Belteshazzar was another name for Daniel and that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were second names for his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah is a very strong implication that if Darius or any other characters in the book of Daniel had had dual names, the author would have been just as specific in making those identities clear to his readers. There just isn't any credible textual support for this double-identity quibble.
In my exchanges with Everette Hatcher, he cited as examples of “double identity” the different symbols that were used in Daniel's visions in reference to Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Alexander the Great, but this is hardly parallel to straight narrative passages where the writer consistently took the time to identify Daniel and his three friends by both their Jewish and their Babylonian names. Biblical apocalyptic prophecies were highly symbolic, undoubtedly for the purpose of sometimes concealing identities, but there was nothing at all symbolic about the narrative passages that I quoted above where the name Belteshazzar was consistently identified as a reference to Daniel. The fact that the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel sometimes referred to Antiochus and Alexander with different symbols can hardly be equated with the use of both Jewish and Babylonian names in reference to Daniel and his friends, and certainly it doesn't show that the writer meant for his readers to understand that Darius the Mede and Cyrus were the same person. I have every right to ask Hatcher to explain to us why the writer of Daniel was so vague about this if they were indeed the same person. Why didn't he just state plainly that Darius the Mede was Cyrus, as he did in the case of the double names for Daniel and friends? Hatcher and those who recycle this quibble need to find a passage in Daniel that says something like, “Darius the Mede, who was also called Cyrus the Persian, received the kingdom,” but he can't find any such statement, because it simply doesn't exist.
Now Turkel's how-it-could-have-been speculations resume.
Another explanation of this sort....
"This sort" refers back to where Turkel said, "It could be that Darius the Mede had dual names," so he is still resorting to speculative how-it-could-have-beens to try to verify the historicity of the mysterious "Darius the Mede."
[Another explanation of this sort] suggests that Daniel was emphasizing Cyrus' Median bloodline - his father was a Persian, but his mother was a Mede [Shea.DMedePB, 251; Gold.Dan, 51] - in order to demonstrate the exact fulfillment of earlier OT prophecies of victory by a Mede.
As I showed here in "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" a far more sensible interpretation of Daniel 6:28 is that the writer was simply emphasizing that "Darius," whom he thought had conquered Babylon before Cyrus did, was a Mede and that Cyrus, his successor, was a Persian. The emphasis of their respective ethnicities in no way indicates that he was saying that they were one and the same person. In typical fashion, Turkel simply inserted bracketed references to works by William H. Shea and John E. Goldingay without quoting or summarizing any of their reasons for believing that the mother of Cyrus the Great was a Mede. Hence, he gave me nothing to reply to here. I did, however, address this same quibble here in "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" where I pointed out the uncertainty of the claim that Cyrus's mother was a Median princess. I also went on to show that even if his mother was a Median princess, that would not have made him a Mede any more than the Moabite ethnicity of David's great-grandmother Ruth (Ruth 1:3-4; 4:13-21) would have made his grandfather Obed a Moabite. I cited also, among others, the cases of Joseph's sons Manasseh and Ephraim, whose mother was Egyptian, and Simeon's son Shaul, whose mother was a Canaanite, as examples of biblical characters whose ethnicity apparently wasn't determined by the nationalites of their mothers. If, then, biblical writers based nationality of Jewish characters on the ethnicity of their fathers, why should we think that the author of Daniel would have wanted to emphasize a dubious Median "bloodline" of Cyrus's mother? There is no good reason to think so. Turkel, in typical fashion, is just grabbing any straw in sight to try to make the book of Daniel inerrant.
As for Turkel's recycling of Shea's and Goldingay's claim that "Daniel" had emphasized that Darius was a Mede "in order to demonstrate the exact fulfillment of earlier OT prophecies of victory by a Mede," I basically agree. As I showed in this section Of "Darius the Son of Ahashuerus?" the author of Daniel claimed (9:1-2) a familiarity with the book of Jeremiah; hence, no doubt knowing of Jeremiah's prophecies that the Medes would destroy Babylon, he, writing in a time when 6th-century BC history had become blurred, would have thought, like Turkel and his modern-day inerrantist cohorts, that whatever the Bible said had to be true, so he attributed the capture of Babylon to a Mede. However, even if Turkel and his cohorts could find a historical "Darius the Mede," they still could not claim the "exact fulfillment of earlier OT prophecies of victory by a Mede," for as I showed in the section linked to immediately above, Jeremiah and Isaiah, too, had prophesied a complete, utter, everlasting destruction of Babylon and its population by the Medes, but that didn't happen. Babylon was taken by a relatively bloodless assault by Persian forces, and Cyrus the Great proved to be a benevolent ruler who respected the rights and religions of the people living there. Exact fulfillment, indeed! What planet is Turkel living on?
Other indications of this equation may be called upon. The apocryphal story of the Three Guardsmen seems to indicate that Darius the Mede was Cyrus, as does the story of Bel and the Dragon [Bald.Dan, 27; MillS.Dan, 176].
The apocryphal story of the three guardsmen seems to indicate that Darius the Mede was Cyrus? How does it so indicate? Turkel didn't explain how, of course, because it just isn't his style to explain claims that inerrantist sources like Baldwin and Miller make. He sees claims like these in books and articles, where usually they aren't even explained by the authors who make them, and then he passes them along to his readers. His gullible readers, who want to believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant "word of God," may be impressed with such ambiguous references as these, but critical readers will demand much more than just a brief unsupported statement that "(t)he apocryphal story of the Three Guardsmen seems to indicate that Darius the Mede was Cyrus." In this part of "A Father/Son Discrepancy in Daniel," I referred readers to a section of this very story to show that Baldwin's claim that "an interesting example [in 1 Esdras] of a king bestowing as a prize the honour of being called his kinsman" somehow supported the view that father and son were used figuratively in Daniel 5. I quoted enough of 1 Esdras 3, where this tale begins, to show to those who will bother to read it again that there is no basis for Turkel's claim that this story "seems to indicate that Darius the Mede was Cyrus." As noted in the section linked to above, the story simply spins a yarn about three bodyguards of King Darius, who sought his favor by telling stories to illustrate what each thought was the "strongest thing."
Chapter 2 of 1 Esdras begins with an account of the decree that King Cyrus of Persia issued that allowed the Jews in Babylonian captivity to return to Jerusalem. It reports some of the same information contained in the "canonical" book of Ezra, including an exchange of letters between King Artaxerxes of Persia and the inhabitants of Samaria and nearby regions who opposed the rebuilding of the temple by the Judean repatriates (1 Esdras 2:16-29). Similar versions of these letters are in Ezra 4:11-22. The letter from Artaxerxes ordered that the construction work on the temple cease, and the verses that follow immediately show that Darius and not Cyrus was the king of Persia when the work on the temple resumed.
1 Esdras 2:30 Then, when the letter from King Artaxerxes was read, Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their associates went in haste to Jerusalem, with horsemen and a multitude in battle array, and began to hinder the builders. And the building of the temple in Jerusalem ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of the Persians.
These concluding verses in the second chapter of 1 Esdras read very much like the final verses in Ezra 4, so in these parts of both books (Ezra and 1 Esdras), the writers took us from the first year of Cyrus to the reign of "Darius king of the Persians." In his account of the conflict between the Judean repatriates in Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Samaria and nearby lands, the author of Ezra even said that "the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and made them afraid to build, and they bribed officials to frustrate their plan throughout the reign of King Cyrus of Persia and until the reign of King Darius of Persia" (Ez. 4:4-5). Obviously, then neither writer was in any way implying in their versions of this story that Cyrus of Persia and Darius of Persia were one and the same person, so where is the implication that "Darius the Mede" was Cyrus of Persia? Don't these apologetic geniuses know that after Cyrus, Darius the Great, Darius II Ochus, and Darius III Condommanus were kings in Persia, none of whom would have been contemporary with the mysterious "Darius the Mede"? The passages cited above in both 1 Esdras 2:30 and Ezra 4:11-22 claim that a letter of complaint sent to Artaxerxes, who reigned after Cyrus the Great, caused work on the temple to be stopped "until the second year of the reign of Darius king of the Persians," so if we assume the historical accuracy of these books, this Darius would have been Darius II Ochus, an illegitimate son of Artaxerxes, who reigned after the latter.
Where, then, is the implication in the story of the three bodyguards that Cyrus of Persia and "Darius the Mede" were the same person?
First Esdras 2 ended as noted in the quotation above, taking readers from the first year of Cyrus to the reign of Darius, and then the story of the three guardsmen began in the very next chapter, which was dated in the reign of King Darius. To show the transition from one story to the next, I will begin the quotation below with the final verse of chapter 2.
1 Esdras 2:30 And the building of the temple in Jerusalem ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of the Persians. 3:1 Now King Darius gave a great banquet for all that were under him and all that were born in his house and all the nobles of Media and Persia 2 and all the satraps and generals and governors that were under him in the hundred and twenty-seven satrapies from India to Ethiopia. 3 They ate and drank, and when they were satisfied they departed; and Darius the king went to his bedroom, and went to sleep, and then awoke. 4 Then the three young men of the bodyguard, who kept guard over the person of the king, said to one another, 5 "Let each of us state what one thing is strongest; and to him whose statement seems wisest, Darius the king will give rich gifts and great honors of victory.
The author of 1 Esdras took his readers from the first year of Cyrus in chapter two to the reign of Darius of Persia at the end of the chapter. He clearly dated the story of the three guardmen, in the next chapter, as an event that happened in the reign of a king named Darius, so just where is there any implication at all in this story that Cyrus the Persian and "Darius the Mede" were the same person? It just isn't there. The claim that 1 Esdras identified them as the same person is nothing more than another straw that inerrantists like Baldwin, Miller, and Turkel have shamelessly grabbed to try to hoodwink their gullible readers into thinking that there is actual historical evidence that Cyrus and Darius were the same person. I haven't seen Baldwin's book, but neither Miller nor Turkel quoted any part of the apocryphal story of the three bodyguards, probably because they had enough sense to know that if they did, their readers would have seen that there is nothing in the story that supports their same-person claim about Cyrus and Darius.
Turkel said above that Baldwin and Miller also see indications in the apocryphal story of "Bel and the Dragon" that Cyrus and Darius were the same person. Turkel quoted neither of his "sources" on this, but on the page from Miller's commentary that Turkel cited in his bracketed reference, this is all that Miller said.
The Jewish author of Bel and the Dragon preserved the name Cyrus as the king who cast Daniel into the den of lions (p. 176).
"Bel and the Dragon," which is now excluded from Protestant Bibles as an apocryphal book, was once considered a part of Daniel. It began with a chapter 14, after "Susanna and the Elders," which was once chapter 13 in Daniel. Both of these stories are in the Septuagint and were also in the first edition of the King James Bible. Catholic Bibles like the NAB and the Jerusalem Bible still retain them, so some Christians even today still consider them a part of their inspired "word of God."
"Bel and the Dragon" has three main divisions: (1) a story of how Daniel exposed the phoniness of the Babylonian god Bel, (2) a story of Daniel's killing of a dragon that was worshiped by the Babylonians, and (3) another tale of Daniel's being cast into a den of lions, this time for having killed the dragon. The first verse in "Bel and the Dragon" claims that these three stories happened during the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
1 When King Astyages was laid to rest with his ancestors, Cyrus the Persian succeeded to his kingdom. 2 Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of all his Friends.
The last two sections of "Bel and the Dragon" are short enough to quote them in their entireties.
23 Now in that place [Babylon] there was a great dragon, which the Babylonians revered. 24 The king said to Daniel, "You cannot deny that this is a living god; so worship him." 25 Daniel said, "I worship the Lord my God, for he is the living God. 26 But give me permission, O king, and I will kill the dragon without sword or club." The king said, "I give you permission." 27 Then Daniel took pitch, fat, and hair, and boiled them together and made cakes, which he fed to the dragon. The dragon ate them, and burst open. Then Daniel said, "See what you have been worshiping!" 28 When the Babylonians heard about it, they were very indignant and conspired against the king, saying, "The king has become a Jew; he has destroyed Bel, and killed the dragon, and slaughtered the priests." 29 Going to the king, they said, "Hand Daniel over to us, or else we will kill you and your household." 30 The king saw that they were pressing him hard, and under compulsion he handed Daniel over to them. 31 They threw Daniel into the lions' den, and he was there for six days. 32 There were seven lions in the den, and every day they had been given two human bodies and two sheep; but now they were given nothing, so that they would devour Daniel. 33 Now the prophet Habakkuk was in Judea; he had made a stew and had broken bread into a bowl, and was going into the field to take it to the reapers. 34 But the angel of the Lord said to Habakkuk, "Take the food that you have to Babylon, to Daniel, in the lions' den." 35 Habakkuk said, "Sir, I have never seen Babylon, and I know nothing about the den." 36 Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown of his head and carried him by his hair; with the speed of the wind he set him down in Babylon, right over the den. 37 Then Habakkuk shouted, "Daniel, Daniel! Take the food that God has sent you." 38 Daniel said, "You have remembered me, O God, and have not forsaken those who love you." 39 So Daniel got up and ate. And the angel of God immediately returned Habakkuk to his own place. 40 On the seventh day the king came to mourn for Daniel. When he came to the den he looked in, and there sat Daniel! 41 The king shouted with a loud voice, "You are great, O Lord, the God of Daniel, and there is no other besides you!" 42 Then he pulled Daniel out, and threw into the den those who had attempted his destruction, and they were instantly eaten before his eyes.
In "canonical" Daniel (6:16-23), Daniel was thrown into a den of lions when "Darius the Mede" was allegedly king, but because the above account of Daniel's having been thrown into a lion's den was said to have happened when Cyrus the Persian was king, inerrantists like Baldwin, Miller, and their stooge Robert Turkel, twist this into pseudoevidence that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus were the same person.
The two accounts of Daniel in the lions' den differ in several details, but the chart below shows the major differences. Notice that the only exact parallel in both accounts is that Daniel was cast into a lions' den.
The apparent argument of Baldwin, Miller, and Turkel seems to be that "Bel and the Dragon" contains a corrupted account of the story of Daniel in the lions' den but that this corrupted account used the "other" name of the king instead of Darius, which the writer of Daniel had used. Such a quibble illustrates the inconsistency of these would-be apologists, for if anyone should use "Bel and the Dragon" to try to prove that there are discrepancies in the canonical account of Daniel in the lions' den, they would summarily reject this argument. If, for example, a skeptic should suggest that the canonical account of the story erred by saying that Daniel was in the den for just one day, whereas the apocryphal version said that he was there for six days, inerrantists would simply say that the "inspired" version was right on this point and the apocryphal account wrong. In other words, they would cherry pick the one detail from the apocryphal account that they need to help their Darius-and-Cyrus-were-the-same-person claim but reject the accuracy of all other differences in the apocryphal version.
A popular apologetic "explanation" used to explain discrepancies in what seem to be parallel accounts of the same events is that they were similar but different stories. In this section of my debate with Turkel on the issue of Jehu's massacre of the royal family of Israel (2 Kings 10), he actually tried to argue that Hosea 1:4 wasn't referring to the slaughter in Jezreel recorded in 2 Kings 10, even though Hosea specifically referred to "the house of Jehu" and the "blood of Jezreel." Mark 10:46-52 and Luke 18:35-43 tell the story of Jesus's healing of a beggar at the gate to Jericho. As the chart below shows, both accounts are parallel from beginning to end except for one detail that I will mention later.
What is the detail that I omitted from the chart above? Mark said that Jesus performed this miracle as he "went out from Jericho" (Mark 10:46), but Luke said that he performed it as "he drew nigh to Jericho" (Luke 18:35). This chronological disparity has led some biblical "apologists" to quibble that these were two different incidents, so Jesus, according to them, once healed a blind beggar as he was going into Jericho and on a different occasion healed another one as he was going out of Jericho. I don't know that Turkel would claim that these were separate incidents. He would probably pull out his ma besay-il quibble and argue that it really doesn't matter whether Jesus healed the blind man going in or coming out of Jericho, because the important thing is that he healed him. Nevertheless, some inerrantists do contend that the accounts in Mark and Luke were not the same incident, and regardless of what Turkel's or Miller's or Baldwin's position on the healing of the blind man may be, I am sure that they would argue that the twice-told stories in the Bible, which critics call doublets were all different incidents. In Genesis 12:10-20, for example, during a trip into Egypt, Abraham passed his wife Sarah off as his sister, because he was afraid that she was such a raving beauty, even at the age of 65, that the Egyptians would kill him in order to get her. This same story was told again in Genesis 20 but set this time in "the land of the south, between Kadesh and Shur" (v:1), when Sarah was presumably a beauty to kill for even at the age of 90 (Gen. 17:17; 21:1-5). Sensible readers will see doublets like these as just different accounts of an unlikely tradition that both found their way into the biblical text, but inerrantists will argue that both of them happened exactly as recorded: Abraham passed Sarah off as his sister when she was 65 and then did it again when she was ninety.
There is even a third version of this story in Genesis 26:1-16 except that it was set this time in the land of the Philistines (who didn't exist yet) with Isaac and Rebekah, Abraham's son and daughter-in-law, as the principals in the drama, so this third version of the same tale affords us the opportunity to make a comparison to the claim of Baldwin, Miller, and Turkel that the apocryphal story of "Bel and the Dragon" by identifying Cyrus the Persian as the king at the time "preserved the name Cyrus as the king who cast Daniel in [sic] the den of lions." If I should argue that the story of Isaac's and Rebekah's deception in telling King Abimelech of Philistia that they were brother and sister proves that Abraham and Isaac were the same person, inerrantists like Baldwin, Miller, and Turkel would soundly ridicule this suggestion, yet they will seize the second-telling of a tale about Daniel in the lions' den as proof that "Darius the Mede" and Cyrus the Persian were different names of the same person.
Critical readers, of course, will recognize that stories like the casting of Daniel into a lions' den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a fiery furnance were just fanciful tales that originated in a time when people superstitiously believed that gods routinely intervened in their lives. If, however, we grant that such things actually happened, we would have as much reason to think that Daniel was thrown to lions on two different occasions, once by "Darius the Mede" for refusing to worship the king and again by Cyrus the Persian for killing a sacred dragon, as we would have for believing that Abraham twice passed Sarah off as his sister in order to escape death from those who might covet the sexual favors of his aging wife. Certainly, those who would claim that the healing of a blind man at Jericho were accounts of two different incidents would hardly have legs to stand on if they should try to support the historicity of "Darius the Mede" by claiming that "Bel and the Dragon" was another account of the casting of Daniel into the lions' den, and Robert Turkel put himself into the same boat with them by claiming in the Jehu/Jezreel debate that Hosea 1:4 was not referring to Jehu's massacre of the royal family at Jezreel in 2 Kings 10. Hence, the finding of "Darius the Mede" in the apocryphal story of "Bel and the Dragon" is tenuous at best.
The personal data recorded in Daniel seems to lend support to either identification - Gubaru or Cyrus.
Seems is the key word here. Support for this in "the personal data recorded in Daniel" is found only by those who have a blind allegiance to biblical inerrancy, but I have shown above, in detail, that there are no good reasons to identify the mysterious "Darius the Mede" with Cyrus, and as for Gubaru, Turkel has given us very little beyond mere assertion that "Darius the Mede" and Gubaru were the same person. To say that "Darius the Mede" could have been either Cyrus or Gubaru brings us right back to the problem that I explained in this section of part three of my series on discrepancies in the stories of the Egyptian plagues: when one is contending that an alleged discrepancy is not really an error or mistake, if he is right, then there could have been only one way that it "could have been," not two or three or more. All through the historical section of his "Daniel Doings," Turkel speculated that "Darius the Mede" could have been either Cyrus the Great or Gubaru, but it wasn't possible for him to have been both of these persons. Hence, by postulating these "could have beens," Turkel was tacitly admitting that he really didn't know who "Darius the Mede" was or even if such a person ever existed.
Darius the Mede was said to have been 62 when he assumed power; this would fit either Gubaru or Cyrus from what we know.
Likewise, it would have "fit" many other persons of that era, or does Turkel think that only Cyrus and Gubaru were the only two men who were "about sixty-two" at the time of Babylon's fall?
(Cicero tells us that Cyrus died at age 70; cuneiform texts say that Cyrus ruled 9 years after Babylon was captured - so, just do the math...! MillS.Dan, ibid.)
Since, as I just pointed out above, there would have been many men who were about 62 at the time of Babylon's fall, who later died at the age of 70, how would "do[ing] the math" prove anything?
Miller's claim, which Turkel was simply recyling here, begged the question of biblical inerrancy. He argued, in effect, that if the Bible says that "Darius the Mede" conquered Babylon, then Darius the Mede conquered Babylon. Turkel, of course, didn't quote Miller's question begging, so as I quote it below, I will ask readers to notice the many speculations in the quotation, which I will emphasize with italic print.
Bulman cites a number of other parallels between Cyrus and Daniel's Darius. Both ruled over a dual realm, Medo-Persia. The reign of both kings is dated from the conquest of Babylon. Daniel dates Darius's reign by this method, and the cuneiform souces use the same system for Cyrus. Both kings were designated as ruler over Babylon (or the Chaldeans). Finally, both appointed satraps after conquering Babyon.
Two of the above views seem possible. Darius the Mede may have been Gubaru, the governor of Babylon, or he may have been the great King Cyrus himself. Wiseman or Bulman have presented convincing evidence for the latter view. Such an identification accords well with the facts, and there is no evidence against it except arguments from silence. Hopefully, further historical data will be forthcoming that will clarify the matter. 34
Seem, may have been, hopefully--these are all just expressions of wishful thinking that underscore the lack of conclusive evidence in the "arguments" of those who try to defend the inerrancy of Daniel. Miller's reference to a dual "Medo-Persian" realm is a frequent inerrantist claim that has little in the book of Daniel to commend it. In my debate with Everette Hatcher in The Skeptical Review, I replied in detail in "What Medo-Persian Empire?" to the inerrantist claim of a Medo-Persian kingdom in the time of Daniel. They want to find a 6th-century BC Medo-Persian empire so that they can make Daniel's fourth kingdom the Roman Empire, even though Daniel clearly identified the fourth empire in his visions as a Grecian one (Dan. 8:21). Those who are interested in this aspect of the never-ending inerrantist quest to prove historical accuracy in the book of Daniel should read this article in order to acquaint themselves with weaknesses in their claim. My articles "Good History in the Book of Daniel" and "The Linguistic 'Evidence'" also contain more detailed discussions of Daniel's fourth kingdom, which cannot be made the Roman Empire without stretching imagination like a rubber band.
I have already replied to Miller's claim, recycled by Turkel, that "Darius the Mede" could have been Gubaru, so I can conclude my reviews of Miller's apologetic failures by quoting his footnote 34, which further underscores the rampant speculation that has surrounded the various efforts to prove that "Darius the Mede" was an actual historical person.
Other identifications of Darius the Mede have been suggested, but none are serious possibilities. Many scholars of past generations (e. g., Keil, Zoeckler, Hegstenberg, Klieforth) equated Darius with Cyaxerxes II , whom Xenophon reported was the son of Astyages and father-in-law of Cyrus. Xenophon's conflict with other more reliable accounts concerning the historicity of Cyaxeres, however, have led scholars to abandon this supposition. For a discussion of this and other views not presented above, see Rowley, Darius the Mede, 30-43, and Shea, "Darius the Mede: An Update," 230ff.
The first and final sentences of this footnote recognized that in addition to Miller's and Baldwin's own speculations about who "Darius the Mede" could have been, there have been many other postulations, so inerrantists, depending on who they are, have argued that "Darius the Mede" could have been Cyrus the Persian or that he could have been Gubaru or that he could have been Ugbaru or that he could have been Cyaxerxes or that he could have been.... In other words, inerrantists have no real proof of any kind to verify the historicity of "Darius the Mede." They talk incessantly about all kinds of "could have beens" except one: They just don't want to admit that he could have been only a fictional character who never existed.
So far in this series, four discrepancies in the book of Daniel have been explicated in detail, and popular inerrantist "explanations" of them have been anticipated and answered also in detail. We have seen that inerrantists will lean over backwards to propose what "may have" happened or what "could have been" meant in the passages where the discrepancies have been identified. More articles in this series will be posted as time permits, and the more discrepancies that are identified and explicated, the greater the difficulty of proving biblical inerrancy will become for those who espouse this doctrine. If, for example, there were only one discrepancy, or even two or three, in the entire book of Daniel, discriminate readers would probably be more willing to accept the how-it-could-have-been or what-may-have-happened "explanations" that biblicists have proposed to resolve them, but when we see problem after problem accumulate, it becomes more difficult to believe that all of the "possible" explanations are correct. Then when we consider that in addition to the discrepancies identified in the book of Daniel, there are dozens more in other books of the Bible, acceptance of the claim that the Bible in its entirety is free of errors of any kind becomes impossible for critical readers. Sensible readers, seeing all of these problems, just can't help wondering why an omniscient, omnipotent deity couldn't have inspired a Bible that didn't have so many inconsistencies in it.
Go to the first article in the Daniel series.
