So far, I have identified two discrepancies in the book of Daniel that would surely not have been made if the author of this book, as most traditionalists believe, had really been an important official in the 6th-century BC Babylonian and Persian governments. The first of these was the time discrepancy in chapters 1 and 2, and the second was the impossible claim that "Darius the Mede," wrongly assumed to have been the conquerer of Babylon, was the son of Ahashuerus. In this article, I will explicate a third error in Daniel: the mistaken impression that Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar.

In a lengthy debate in The Skeptical Review with the inerrantist Everette Hatcher III, I presented this problem to him in "Bad History in the Book of Daniel," published in the July/August 1998 issue and again in "What Daniel Didn't Know" (July/August 1999 issue), so to save time, I am going to adapt the materials from my previous articles to this third look at the same discrepancy, which will also contain replies to Robert Turkel's attempts to explain away this obvious problem in Daniel.

The father-son problem: We know from Babylonian records that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. The book of Daniel presented Belshazzar as the Babylonian king at the time of the empire's conquest. Even though Babylonian records never called him king, I won't quarrel over this, because records did indicate that Belshazzar may have served as co-regent during his father's absence from Babylon, while he was directing the building of temples to the moon goddess in other parts of the empire. There is, however, reason to quarrel with Daniel's references to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's "father" and to Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar's "son." To focus attention on the extent to which this was done, I will emphasize in bold print father and son in the text quoted below. The quotation is long but necessary to show that the writer thought that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were father and son.

Daniel 5:1 King Belshazzar made a great festival for a thousand of his lords, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousand. ² Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar commanded that they bring in the vessels of gold and silver that his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. ³ So they brought in the vessels of gold and silver that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. ⁴ They drank the wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. ⁵ Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the plaster of the wall of the royal palace, next to the lampstand. The king was watching the hand as it wrote. ⁶ Then the king's face turned pale, and his thoughts terrified him. His limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. ⁷ The king cried aloud to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the diviners; and the king said to the wise men of Babylon, "Whoever can read this writing and tell me its interpretation shall be clothed in purple, have a chain of gold around his neck, and rank third in the kingdom." ⁸ Then all the king's wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king the interpretation. ⁹ Then King Belshazzar became greatly terrified and his face turned pale, and his lords were perplexed. ¹⁰ The queen, when she heard the discussion of the king and his lords, came into the banqueting hall. The queen said, "O king, live forever! Do not let your thoughts terrify you or your face grow pale. ¹¹ There is a man in your 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, ¹² 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." ¹³ Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king said to Daniel, "So you are Daniel, one of the exiles of Judah, whom my father the king brought from Judah? ¹⁴ I have heard of you that a spirit of the gods is in you, and that enlightenment, understanding, and excellent wisdom are found in you. ¹⁵ Now the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought in before me to read this writing and tell me its interpretation, but they were not able to give the interpretation of the matter. ¹⁶ But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Now if you are able to read the writing and tell me its interpretation, you shall be clothed in purple, have a chain of gold around your neck, and rank third in the kingdom." ¹⁷ Then Daniel answered in the presence of the king, "Let your gifts be for yourself, or give your rewards to someone else! Nevertheless I will read the writing to the king and let him know the interpretation. ¹⁸ O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar kingship, greatness, glory, and majesty. ¹⁹ And because of the greatness that he gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. He killed those he wanted to kill, kept alive those he wanted to keep alive, honored those he wanted to honor, and degraded those he wanted to degrade. ²⁰ But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he acted proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and his glory was stripped from him. ²¹ He was driven from human society, and his mind was made like that of an animal. His dwelling was with the wild asses, he was fed grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until he learned that the Most High God has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals, and sets over it whomever he will. ²² And you, Belshazzar his son, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this! ²³ You have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven! The vessels of his temple have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines have been drinking wine from them. You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know; but the God in whose power is your very breath, and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored.

According to the first part of this book, Daniel rose to prominence in the Babylonian court during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. This happened as a result of Daniel's interpretation of a dream that Nebuchadnezzar's wise men were unable to interpret but which for Daniel, of course, was a snap to decipher because Yahweh was his god (2:12-45). As a result, Daniel was made "ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon" (2:48). If Daniel achieved such prominence in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, he would have surely been familiar with the king's family, but in chapter five, the writer of this story referred to Nebuchadnezzar five times as the "father" of Belshazzar. One of these references was made by the writer himself in the narration of the story, two of the references were attributed to the queen, one of them to Belshazzar himself, and the fifth to Daniel as he addressed the king. In this address to the king, Daniel also referred to Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar's "son," so in less than one chapter, six incorrect references were made to Belshazzar's relationship to Nebuchadnezzar. How likely is it that a writer whom Nebuchadnezzar had made ruler over the whole province of Babylon and the chief prefect of all the wise men in Babylon would have repeatedly made a mistake like this?

When confronted with this discrepancy, inerrantists will parrot a familiar line to try to "explain" it. They contend that the words father and son were not being used literally in this story but only figuratively in the sense of "ancestor" and "descendant," as when Abraham was referred to as the "father" of all Jews (Isaiah 51:2), and as Jesus was called the "son of David" (Matt. 1:1). The examples are hardly parallel, however, because Abraham was separated by centuries from the Jews of Isaiah's time, as Jesus was separated in time from David sufficiently for readers of such texts as these to know beyond reasonable doubt that father and son were being used figuratively. In the book of Daniel, however, the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar are related in consecutive chapters. The account of Nebuchadnezzar's seven years of madness in fulfillment of a second dream that Daniel had interpreted ends the 4th chapter, where Nebuchadnezzar praised Daniel's god after he had regained his sanity: "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride" (4:37). Then immediately the next chapter opens with an account of the feast that King Belshazzar held to honor a thousand of his lords, so the writer went directly from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar to the reign of Belshazzar without mentioning any of the four kings who reigned between them. This within itself would indicate an ignorance of 6th-century Babylonian history, because it at least implies that the writer thought that Belshazzar's reign followed Nebuchadnezzar's.

In my debates with biblical inerrantists who often resort to the "figurative" or "metaphorical" quibble to try to wiggle around problems like this one, I often have to tell them that context will determine whether words are being used literally or figuratively, and the context of the passage just quoted above gives no reason at all to think that the author of Daniel was using father and son figuratively in his references to the Nebuchadnezzar/Belshazzar relationship. To the contrary, the text gives good reasons to think that the words were being used in their literal senses. When, for example, Daniel was brought before Belshazzar, he recounted the tale of Nebuchadnezzar's bout with insanity, told first in the chapter immediately before the one quoted from above, which was presumably brought upon him by divine agency because of Nebuchadnezzar's arrogance. After relating this tale, Daniel then said to Belshazzar in verse 22, "And you, Belshazzar his son, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this!" As stated above, however, four other kings separated the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar (if we assume that the latter really was a king), and Nebuchadnezzar had died in 562 BC, twenty-three years before the events claimed in the passage quoted above. Even if we assume that Nebuchadnezzar's bout with insanity had actually happened, the separation in time between him and Belshazzar could easily have kept the latter from knowing anything about it. Daniel, however, said that Belshazzar "knew all of this." That statement implies that the author of Daniel thought that Belshazzar's "reign" had occurred close to Nebuchadnezzar's. The statement, then, would make perfectly good sense coming from someone who thought that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's literal son but would not have been so sensible if the author had really known that almost a quarter of a century had lapsed between Nebuchadnezzar's death and the time of Belshazzar's banquet given in honor of his "lords."

The mistake of thinking that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father would certainly not have been made by someone who had been the ruler of the entire province of Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar's reign (Dan. 2:48), but it would be an understandable one for someone living centuries later in a time when people had somehow mistakenly come to believe that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were father and son. In this section of "Darius the Son of Ahasuerus?" I cited scholarly opinions of the reasons why historical mistakes were commonplace in documents that were written in a time when there were no libraries or internet sources of information that writers could refer to; hence, there should be no surprise in the fact that the author of Daniel was confused about the relationship of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.

I have already referred to a passage in the apocryphal book of Baruch, another second-century BC work, where the author also said that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son. The statement purports to be a message that accompanied a contribution that the captives in Babylon sent to the priests who were still in Jerusalem.

Baruch 1:10 They [the Babylonian captives] sent this message: The money we are sending you is to be used to buy whole-offerings, sin-offerings, and frankincense, and to provide grain-offerings; you are to offer them on the altar of the Lord our God, ¹¹ with prayers for king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and for his son Belshazzar, that their life may last as long as the heavens are above the earth. ¹² So the Lord will strengthen us and bring light to our eyes, and we shall live under the protection of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and of Belshazzar his son; we shall give them service for many a day and find favour with them.

The writer of this book claimed that he wrote it in Babylon "on the seventh day of the month, in the fifth year after the capture and burning of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans" (1:12). The fifth year after the burning of Jerusalem would have been 582 B. C., at which time Nebuchadnezzar was still reigning as king of Babylon. Obviously, the passage above was written from the literary point of view of one who lived during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, so the fact that he twice referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his son Belshazzar and expressed the hope that they would have long lives is a clear indication that the author of Baruch thought that Belshazzar was literally the son of Nebuchadnezzar. This passage, of course, is in an apocryphal work, which inerrantists will argue that they are under no obligation to accept as an inspired work, but whether they consider it inspired or not, it is nevertheless a document that shows that during the 2nd century BC (the time that Baruch was also written), for reasons that we may never know, some believed that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were father and son. That a historical misimpression like this could have circulated in the 2nd century BC is quite believable; however, it is unreasonable to think that an important official in Nebuchadnezzar's royal court would have been so uninformed.

That Belshazzar wasn't Nebuchadnezzar's son has been established by the discovery of Babylonian records. Information from these records, which can be found in almost any general Bible dictionary, commentary, or encyclopedia, show that Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BC and was succeeded by his son, but that son was Amel-Marduk, who was known as "Evil-merodach" in the Old Testament: "In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, king Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year he began to reign, showed favor to King Jehoiachin of Judah and brought him out of prison" (Jer. 52:31; 2 Kings 25:27). So even the Bible itself acknowledges the reign of Amel-Marduk, who was assassinated in 560 BC during a coup led by his brother-in-law Nergal-Sharezer. As I noted in my previous reply to Hatcher, this coup and the subsequent reign of Nergal-Sharezer ended the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar and his ancestral kings. So beginning with the reign of Nergal-Sharezer the "sons" (descendants) of Nebuchadnezzar were no longer kings in Babylon. Nergal-Sharezer reigned until 556 BC, at which time he was succeeded by his son Labsi-Marduk, who very shortly was deposed by Nabonidus. Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, who moved his capital to Temâ (on the Arabian peninsula) and apparently left Belshazzar in charge of Babylon. Thus, from 560 BC until its fall to Persia in 539 BC, Babylon was ruled by kings who were not "sons" or descendants of Nebuchadnezzar. The fact that the writer of Daniel leaped from Nebuchadnezzar to Belshazzar, passing over completely the reigns of four intervening kings, certainly indicates a fuzzy knowledge of the history of this period. That lack of knowledge provides the best explanation for why the writer would have called Nebuchadnezzar the "father" of Belshazzar and Belshazzar the "son" of Nebuchadnezzar when the two were not related. He called them father and son because he thought that they were.

The quibble that the words father and son in Daniel 5 were used respectively in the sense of ancestor and descendant seems to be the favorite of biblical inerrantists; hence, they will assert--without evidence, of course--that since Belshazzar was a descendant of Nebuchadnezzar, it was appropriate to refer to them as father and son. In doing so, the author was simply using the words in their secondary senses, but no Babylonian records have been recovered that indicate they were related. The absence of such records, however, has not kept biblical inerrantists from resorting to "maybes" and "could-have-beens" to make Belshazzar a descendant of Nebuchadnezzar. In a debate on this issue in the Errancy forum, Everette Hatcher III offered this "explanation," along with all sorts of other "maybes" and "could have beens," to try to explain this problem. I am going to quote and reply to the part of that debate relevant to the father/son issue so that readers can see the extremes that biblicists will go to in order to rationalize their inerrancy belief. I will quote Hatcher in green print so that readers can more easily keep track of who said what.

Farrell Till repeatedly contends that the word "son" must be interpreted in a strict sense unless the term "son" is used figuratively (TSR, Vol. 9.4, p. 7; Vol. 10.4, p. 3; Vol. 12.1, pp.5-6). Nevertheless, the critic Brian E. Colless of Massey University has noted that “the son equals grandson or great-grandson equation is one that I often meet in the texts I study for my course on ancient religions." The conservative scholar E. B. Pusey observed that Daniel could not say "grandfather" or "grandson" in Chaldee without coining a new word (E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 346). In Hebrew the same case exists. For instance, in Genesis 46 the Hebrew word "ben" is used for sons, grandsons and great-grandsons. In the apocryphal Book of Baruch the author mistakenly thought that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar’s immediate son (1:10-14). With the limitations of the Chaldee language I can see how some could have interpreted Daniel 5 this way, but I don’t think Till is right to conclude that everybody in the Greek period thought necessarily that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar’s immediate son. In fact, the book of II Kings was surely at the disposal of the author of Baruch and it tells the very year (37th yr of Jehoiachin’s reign which started in 597 BC) that Nebuchadnezzar’s son Evil-Merodach (also known as Amel-Marduk) took over as the King of Babylon (II Kings 25:27). This was in agreement with the records of history, and this sort of information led many other theologians to conclude that Belshazzar was probably Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson (Matthew Henry’s Commentary, [1712], Vol. 4, p. 1054).

I will interrupt here momentarily to make three comments: (1) I don't see how Hatcher could have disagreed that the word son should be interpreted in its strictest sense unless it was being used figuratively. Wouldn't it be true that if a word in a text were not being used figuratively, it should be understood in its literal sense? Hatcher probably worded his statement carelessly, so I will just say here that my position all along on the figurative/metaphorical "explanations" that inerrantists so often resort to in their efforts to resolve biblical discrepancies has simply been that the meanings of disputed texts should be decided by a broadly recognized principle of literary interpretation that says that words in written texts should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning. If, then, there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning to father and son in Daniel 5, those reasons should be evident in the context in which they were used, but I can find no compelling reasons in this passage to think that the writer was so using these words, and biblical inerrantists can't either except for their desire for the Bible to be inerrant. Instead of citing authors who think that the words father and son could have been used figuratively in Daniel 5, inerrantists like Hatcher should point out the compelling contextual reasons that would justify interpreting them literally, and as I have often said, the desire for a text to be inerrant is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meanings to its language. (2) I have never said that everyone in the second century BC thought that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son. I have simply argued--and supported that argument with quotations from second-century apocryphal works--that there was at that time a widespread misunderstanding of their relationship. (3) E. B. Pusey and Matthew Henry were both biblical traditionalists. Pusey, for example, said the following about the "divine" origin of the book of Daniel.

The book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battlefield between faith and unbelief. It admits of no half-measures. It is either Divine or an imposture. To write any book under the name of another, and to give it out to be his, is in any case forgery, dishonest in itself, and destructive of all trustworthiness. But the case as to the book of Daniel, if it were not his, would go far beyond even this. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied, on a most frightful scale, ascribing to God prophecies which were never uttered, and miracles which are assumed never to have been wrought. In a word, the whole book would be one lie in the Name of God (Daniel the Prophet, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886, p. 75).

Having such a belief as this about the Bible and the book of Daniel in particular, Pusey would only be expected to look for some way to explain the father/son problem in Daniel 5. Matthew Henry was likewise an avowed inerrantist who always looked for ways to explain "alleged discrepancies," just as Hatcher and his inerrantist cohorts today still try to do. If I quoted well known atheists or skeptics in support of an errant view of the Bible, Hatcher wouldn't be a bit impressed, but he seems to expect those who challenge biblical accuracy to accept the views of established inerrantists.

The fact that Pusey and Henry were biblical inerrantists certainly doesn't make their views automatically wrong. I would be glad to reply to whatever arguments that "apologists" like them may have presented in support of their inerrancy view if those, like Hatcher, who cite them as authorities would just present their arguments, but there is certainly nothing even remotely resembling apologetic proof in Hatcher's brief citation of Pusey's claim that the author of Daniel could not have said grandfather or grandson in Chaldean "without coining a new word." If Pusey said this, it was certainly a true statement, but the mere fact that Chaldean [Aramaic] had no words for grandfather and grandson in no way proves that the words father and son were used figuratively in Daniel 5. Besides begging the question that they were so used, Hatcher, through Pusey, ignores the distinct possibility, if not probability, that the author of Daniel was just as confused about Belshazzar's parentage as was the author of the apocryphal book of Baruch.

In the continuation of Hatcher's statement, I will emphasize in bold print the words that show that he was simply engaging in speculative "maybes" and "could have beens."

Some conservative scholars speculate that Nabonidus may have married one of Nebuchadnezzar’s daughters in an effort to provide himself with a cover of legitimacy after usurping the throne. There are many cases in the ancient world with power hungry individuals seeking to align themselves with women previously associated with a king in an effort to lay hold of the throne for themselves (I Kings 1:1-2; 1 Kings 2:25; II Samuel 3:6-8; II Samuel 16:21-22).

Although there is an element of truth in Hatcher's quibble, it doesn't help his case as much as he apparently believed. A look at the examples that he cited will show that "power-hunger" wasn't involved nearly as much as other factors. The first one was just a simple case of a desire for self-preservation.

1 Kings 1:1 King David was old and advanced in years; and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. ² So his servants said to him, "Let a young virgin be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king, and be his attendant; let her lie in your bosom, so that my lord the king may be warm." ³ So they searched for a beautiful girl throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. ⁴ The girl was very beautiful. She became the king's attendant and served him, but the king did not know her sexually.

1 Kings 2:13 Then Adonijah son of Haggith came to Bathsheba, Solomon's mother. She asked, "Do you come peaceably?" He said, "Peaceably." ¹⁴ Then he said, "May I have a word with you?" She said, "Go on." ¹⁵ He said, "You know that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel expected me to reign; however, the kingdom has turned about and become my brother's, for it was his from Yahweh. ¹⁶ And now I have one request to make of you; do not refuse me." She said to him, "Go on." ¹⁷ He said, "Please ask King Solomon--he will not refuse you--to give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife." ¹⁸ Bathsheba said, "Very well; I will speak to the king on your behalf." ¹⁹ So Bathsheba went to King Solomon, to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. The king rose to meet her, and bowed down to her; then he sat on his throne, and had a throne brought for the king's mother, and she sat on his right. ²⁰ Then she said, "I have one small request to make of you; do not refuse me." And the king said to her, "Make your request, my mother; for I will not refuse you." ²¹ She said, "Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adonijah as his wife." ²² King Solomon answered his mother, "And why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom as well! For he is my elder brother; ask not only for him but also for the priest Abiathar and for Joab son of Zeruiah!" ²³ Then King Solomon swore by Yahweh, "So may God do to me, and more also, for Adonijah has devised this scheme at the risk of his life! ²⁴ Now therefore as Yahweh lives, who has established me and placed me on the throne of my father David, and who has made me a house as he promised, today Adonijah shall be put to death." ²⁵ So King Solomon sent Benaiah son of Jehoiada; he struck him down, and he died.

Adonijah had already made an attempt to secure the throne for himself when his father David lay dying, but his plot to seize power was thwarted when David picked Solomon to succeed him. When Adonijah asked Bathsheba to request that Solomon let him marry Abishag, he wasn't trying to "lay hold of the throne for [himself]," because the line of succession had already been decided. Apparently believing that Solomon wouldn't kill someone who was both a son of David and the husband of the woman who had been associated with David in his final days as described above, Adonijah was scheming to save his life. As the story was told, the plan had the opposite effect of what he had wanted. This story, then, could be seen as an example of the exact opposite of what Hatcher was claiming. Rather than increasing his power by trying to associate himself with a woman who had been close to the king, Adonijah's move to marry Abigshag cost him his life.

Hatcher's next example didn't really help him either.

2 Samuel 3:6 While there was war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner was making himself strong in the house of Saul. ⁷ Now Saul had a concubine whose name was Rizpah daughter of Aiah. And Ishbaal said to Abner, "Why have you gone in to my father's concubine?" ⁸ The words of Ishbaal made Abner very angry; he said, "Am I a dog's head for Judah? Today I keep showing loyalty to the house of your father Saul, to his brothers, and to his friends, and have not given you into the hand of David; and yet you charge me now with a crime concerning this woman. ⁹ So may God do to Abner and so may he add to it! For just what Yahweh has sworn to David, that will I accomplish for him, ¹⁰ to transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul, and set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan to Beer-sheba." ¹¹ And Ishbaal could not answer Abner another word, because he feared him.

The wives and concubines of a deceased monarch were considered the property of his successor. Saul's successor was his son Ishbaal [Ishbosheth], who had served for just two years (2 Sam. 2:10), so Abner may have tried to increase his power and influence in the "house of Saul" by establishing claim to Saul's former concubine, but that may not have been his intention. In that society, there was a cultural belief that a concubine's sexual relations with someone other than the man she was committed to left her defiled. The reaction to Reuben's escapade with his father's concubine Bilhah exemplies the attitude that people in biblical times had about this.

Genesis25:21 Israel [Jacob] journeyed on, and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. ²² While Israel [Jacob] lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Israel heard of it.

No further details of this relationship were given here, but the story figured prominently in Israelite tradition. In "Reuben's Testament" in the pseudepigraphic Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, "Reuben" claimed that his father Jacob never touched Bilhah again after learning of Reuben's defilement of her.

3:10 Pay no heed to the face of a woman, Nor associate with another man's wife, Nor meddle with affairs of womankind. ¹¹ For had I not seen Bilhah bathing in a covered place, I had not fallen into this great iniquity. ¹² For my mind taking in the thought of the woman's nakedness, suffered me not to sleep until I had ¹³ wrought the abominable thing. For while Jacob our father had gone to Isaac his father, when we were in Eder, near to Ephrath in Bethlehem, Bilhah became drunk and was asleep uncovered in her ¹⁴ chamber. Having therefore gone in and beheld nakedness, I wrought the impiety without her ¹⁵ perceiving it, and leaving her sleeping I departed. And forthwith an angel of God revealed to my father concerning my impiety, and he came and mourned over me, and touched her no more.

When Jacob lay dying, he pronounced blessings on his sons. Although Reuben was his firstborn and therefore entitled to special birthrights, Jacob pronounced on him a condemnation rather than a blessing.

Genesis 49:3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first fruits of my vigor, excelling in rank and excelling in power. ⁴ Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel because you went up onto your father's bed; then you defiled it--you went up onto my couch!

The author of the Chronicles claimed that because of this offense, Jacob removed from Reuben his birthright and gave it to Joseph.

1 Chronicles 5:1 The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel. (He was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father's bed his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel, so that he is not enrolled in the genealogy according to the birthright; ² though Judah became prominent among his brothers and a ruler came from him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph.)

These passages show that a woman's sexual unfaithfulness in this ancient society was considered a permanent humiliation to the man she had betrayed. This attitude would explain the reason for a punishment with which Yahweh once threatened David because of his offense in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

2 Samuel 12:11 Thus says Yahweh: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. ¹² For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun."

In this society, which put a premium on female virginity (Num. 31:12-18) and even decreed death for women who were found not to be virgins when they married (Deut. 22:13-21), a woman's sexual relations outside of her bethrothal or marriage were considered a serious humilation of her husband/fiancé; this attitude would explain the punishment, mentioned above, with which Yahweh threatened David during his rebuke for having killed Bathsheba's husband Uriah the Hittite. The threat amounted to what would have been a grievous humilation for David, and it explains the reason for the third example that Hatcher cited above.

2 Samuel 16:20-23 Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, "Give us your counsel; what shall we do?" ²¹ Ahithophel said to Absalom, "Go in to your father's concubines, the ones he has left to look after the house; and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself odious to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened." ²² So they pitched a tent for Absalom upon the roof; and Absalom went in to his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. ²³ Now in those days the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the oracle of God; so all the counsel of Ahithophel was esteemed, both by David and by Absalom.

At this time, Absalom was not trying to seize power, because he had already led a rebellion that had succeeded in driving David out of Jerusalem, which was then under Absalom's control. In leaving Jerusalem, David had left ten of his concubines behind to take care of the palace (2 Sam. 15:16), so Absalom's public consorting with them was not intended to "grab power" but to humiliate publicly his father/adversary. The text just quoted specifically says that Ahithophel advised Absalom to "go into" David's concubines in order to make himself odious to his father; hence, the purpose of Absalom's action in this case was not to seize power but to humiliate his father. When Absalom's rebellion was quelled and David had returned to Jerusalem, his attitude toward his concubines was the same as Jacob's reaction to Bilhah's escapade with Reuben.

2 Samuel 20:3 David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten concubines whom he had left to look after the house, and put them in a house under guard, and provided for them, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as if in widowhood.

The examples cited by Hatcher just don't support what he was trying to prove, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that in each one of the cases he cited, attempts to seize power or influence had been made through marriage or association with women who had figured prominently in the life of David. How would that prove the inerrantist assertion that Nabonidus, who had usurped the Babylonian throne by force, had later married one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughters in order to legitimize his claim to it, so in this sense Belshazzar could have been Nebuchadnezzar's "son" through marriage? This appears to be Hatcher's argument.

1. Some power hungry individuals in the ancient world aligned themselves with women previously associated with a king in an effort to lay hold of the throne for themselves.

2. Therefore, Nabonidus aligned himself with one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughters in an effort to lay hold of the Babylonian throne.

I wonder if Hatcher and his inerrantist cohorts who use this line of reasoning know how to say, "Non sequitur."

In presenting this as a "solution" to the problem now under consideration, Hatcher neither cited nor quoted any records of such a marriage. He simply said that "(s)ome conservative scholars speculate that Nabonidus may have married one of Nebuchadnezzar’s daughters in an effort to provide himself with a cover of legitimacy after usurping the throne," and speculate is the key word here. Those who offer this explanation can only "speculate" that it happened, because they have no evidence that it had actually happened.

This "solution" to the problem will often be found in "apologetic" articles, but it is always found as an assertion that is not supported by any clear evidence. Easton's Bible Dictionary, for example, said that "Belshazzar, who comes into notice in connection with the taking of Babylon, was by some supposed to have been the same as Nabonadius, who was called Nebuchadnezzar's son (Dan 5:11, Dan 5:18, Dan 5:22), because he had married his daughter," so this solution "supposed" that Belshazzar and Nabonidus were the same person, a view that doesn't conform to ancient Babylonian records referred to above. This source merely asserted that Nabonidus had married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter but presented no evidence to support this claim. The internet is filled with articles that assert without giving corroborating evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's daughter was Belshazzar's mother or stepmother. Here are just a few of many such examples that can be found with just a few minutes spent searching the web. I will emphasize in italic print the words showing that this theory is only speculation.

Throughout the chapter, Nebuchadnezzar is called the father of Belshazzar (Dan. 5:2, 11, 13, 18, 22), referring to the fact that his mother, Nitocris, was probably Nebuchadnezzar's daughter ("Suprise Party").

He [Nabonidus] does not seem to have been related to the royal house by blood but apparently married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar in order to legitimize his seizure of the throne ("Belshazzar's Feast and Daniel in the Lion's Den").

Nabonidus had pulled off a coup in 556 BC. In order to legitimize his rule, he later married Nitocris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. His son, Belshazzar, was therefore the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar (John M. Oakes, Daniel: Prophet to the Nations, p.74).

The article by Oakes correctly stated that extrabiblical records found in Babylonia confirm that Nabonidus usurped the throne and that he had a son named Belshazzar, but from there he shifted to mere assertion by claiming without supporting evidence that Nabonidus had "later married Nitocris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar." Hatcher's "solution," which he continued immediately below, is simply the recycling of a speculative claim that is unverifiable.

In other words, Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter would have been Belshazzar’s stepmother.

She would have been if Nabonidus had indeed married her, but where is the proof that they were ever married? The claim that Nabonidus had married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter Nitocris is based on a highly speculative interpretation of a passage in Book I of The History of Herodotus, where Herodotus had described ambitious programs of public works done by Queen Nitocris to change the course of the Euphrates to make an artificial lake and use the dirt from the excavations to build levees and fortifications to protect Babylon. After recounting her alleged public programs, Herodotus then made a statement that inerrantists have used to theorize that Nitocris was the mother of Belshazzar.

This queen then is reported to have been such as I have described: and it was the son of this woman, bearing the same name as his father, Labynetos, and being ruler over the Assyrians, against whom Cyrus was marching (Section 188).

Inerrantists interpret Labynetos in this passage to be a "garbled form" of the name Nabonidus, the known father of Belshazzar; hence, this speculative interpretation of the passage in Herodotus's History becomes their proof that Belshazzar was the "son" of Nebuchadnezzar, like the following scenario quoted from Studies in the Book of Daniel in which the "maybes," "perhapses," "could-have-beens," and other speculations ran rampant after the author had quoted Sections 185-188 from The History of Herodotus and tried to put together a picture that would vindicate Daniel 5. The amateurish writing gives good reason to suspect that the author's qualifications to speak on this issue are, to say the least, questionable. In reading the passage, please notice that the writer simply assumed that the Queen mother in Daniel 5 was Nebuchadnezzar's daughter Nitocris.

According to Herodotus, Nitocris completed many of the works started by Nebuchadnezzar . She was credited with great wisdom and she was chief of public affairs, occupying the throne. She fortified the city as the Medes and Persians were advancing, and her son was on the throne when Cyrus ordered the taking of Babylon!

From the story found in Daniel 5, we know she was well acquainted with Nebuchadnezzar, and that she obviously could walk in to the king without being invited and tell the king what to do.

The Bible simply calls her “the queen” [sic] Daniel five also speaks of Belshazzar’s wives being at the party, but this woman exhibited authority that distinctly set her apart as "the queen". [sic]

SO WHO IS BELSHAZZAR?

So let‘s see if these pieces can come together-- we know Neriglissor was married to Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter.

Then in an entry in Easton’s bible [sic] dictionary [sic] on Belshazzar we find Belshazzar is the son of Nabonadius by Nitocris widow of Nergal-Sharezer (Neriglissor).

I will interrupt momentarily to ask readers to notice how the writer strung together a series of assumptions for which he offered no supporting evidence.

So--
Nebuchadnezzar dies, his son Evil-Merodach comes to the throne. Nitocris’s [sic] (Nebuchadnezzar [sic] daughter) marries Neriglissor. Her husband, Neriglissor usurps the throne using his wife to establish legitimacy. Since Nitocris was such a high profile princess, the people would have known her, and accepted her. But then her husband, Neriglissor, dies and is replaced by their son. There is an uprising and apparently this son is killed.

Nitocris swings into action and marries the aspiring Nabonidius [sic], securing her position and giving him a legitimate claim to the throne.

But now is it possible that Belshazzar was an adopted son of Nabonidus? a son of queen Nitocris from her previous marriage? After all Nabonidius [sic] only reigned 17 years, which is not a long enough time to produce a son old enough to take over the reign of Babylon after the third year and oversee Babylon for at least 10 of those years.

Why was the king away from Babylon so much? Could there have been an arrangement made between him and Nitocris which included giving her the reign of Babylon through her son Belshazzar? It is almost as if Nabonidius [sic] took the rest of the empire but left the reign of the capital of Babylon itself for the queen and her son.

It is also most interesting that Herodutus credits Nitocis with building fortifications which the historian Berosus credits to Nabonidius [sic].

The above probability fit’s [sic] the story of Daniel. The queen would have been an extremely important figure, well acquainted with her father, King Nebuchadnezzar, and the main consistent center of power in the years following him. It would explain why she could walk in and tell the king what to do. It would also explain how Daniel was in one sense still considered an advisor in the kingdom (the queen wanted it so) but almost forgotten by the king.

Biblical inerrantists can cite such archaeological discoveries as the Nabonidus Stele and the Nabonidus Cylinder as evidence that Nabonidus had a son named Belshazzar, and they can cite the Nabonidus Chronicle as evidence that while Nabonidus was in Temâ, he had left the "crown prince" in Akkad [Babylon], but as evidence that Nitocris, Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, was either the mother or stepmother of Belshazzar, they can offer only speculative interpretations of the passage in Herodotus's History like the one just quoted. That is how weak their evidence is.

However, if Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter was Belshazzar’s biological mother then Belshazzar would have been the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.

I guess it is time to quote again a proverb that I learned while I was living in France almost 50 years ago: If my aunt had balls, she wouldn't be my aunt. If inerrantists want to prove that Belshazzar was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, they will have to offer more than "ifs." I have shown above that there is no real evidence that Nitocris was even the stepmother of Belshazzar much less his biological mother. I am sure readers understand that if Hatcher or any other inerrantist had any substantial evidence of this relationship between the two, they would shout it from the rooftops.

The critic Samuel Driver rightly notes: "Father" may, however, by Hebrew usage, be understood to mean grandfather (Gen. 28:13, 32:10; I Kings 15:13 for great grandfather); and there remains the possibility that Nabonidus may have sought to strengthen his position by marrying a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, in which case, of course, Nebuchadnezzar would be Belshazzar’s grandfather on his mother’s side (p. 62)." It is quite striking that the critic Samuel Driver would make this admission after earlier arguing that Daniel had erred on this point.

Samuel Driver "rightly" noted this, did he? Would it be that this "note" was "right" just because Hatcher wants to believe that it was right? Did Driver by chance say that father may be understood to mean grandfather? If so, then may is the key word in Driver's claim. I have already pointed out that Samuel Driver, although open-minded enough to recognize serious problems in the Bible, had a habit of trying to appease traditionalists by speculating what a discrepancy "could have" meant, so there is nothing at all striking about Driver's having made this "admission," which wasn't really an admission but only an acknowledgement of a possibility. As I just said, although Driver was intellectually honest enough to recognize the overwhelming evidence of errancy in the book of Daniel, he nevertheless would at times offer how-it-could-have-been explanations of some rather obvious discrepancies. In the interest of fairness, however, let's look at the proof texts that Driver cited.

Genesis 28:13 And, behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed....

The context of this statement shows that Yahweh was speaking to Jacob here, and we know from previous passages in Genesis that the writer clearly understood that Abraham was not the immediate father of Jacob but was the immediate father of Isaac, who was Jacob's actual father. Hence, we are able to determine from biblical context that the word father in this passage conveyed the meaning of grandfather.

Hatcher cited Genesis 32:10 as another of Driver's proof texts, but this was undoubtedly a mistake. Genesis 32:9 is actually where the secondary usage of father occurred.

Genesis 32:9 And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee....

What I said above applies to this passage too. Other texts in Genesis, such as 21:1-2, clearly state that Isaac was the literal son of Abraham and that Jacob was one of the twin sons that were born to Isaac's wife Rebekah (25:24-26). We have textual evidence, then, that tells us that the word father in Genesis 32:9 was being used in a secondary sense when Jacob referred to Abraham as his "father" and in its primary sense when he called Isaac his "father."

Now if inerrantists like Hatcher could cite a text (either biblical or Babylonian) to confirm that father in Daniel 5 had to mean "grandfather," that would settle the matter in their favor, but, of course, they can't do that or they would have done so long ago.

Hatcher seems to have made another mistake in citing 1 Kings 15:13 as a proof text. This verse didn't use the word father, so the correct reference was probably 1 Kings 15:11.

1 Kings 15:11 And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, as did David his father.

The same reply rebuts this proof text too. If we follow the lines of descent in the book of 1 Kings, we will see that David's son Solomon succeeded him (1 Kings 1:30), that Solomon's son Rehoboam, who would have been David's grandson, succeeded him (1 Kings 11:43), that Rehoboam's son Abijam, who would have been David's great-grandson, succeeded him (1 Kings 15:1-2), and that Abijam's son Asa, who would have been David's great-great-grandson, succeeded him (1 Kings 15:8). There is an abudance of textual evidence, then, to show that the word father was being used in a secondary sense in 1 Kings 15:11 when David was referred to as Asa's father. What comparable textual evidence, then, either biblical or extrabiblical, can inerrantists cite that would show that Nebuchadnezzar was an ancestor of Belshazzar, either by birth or adoption, that would corroborate the claim that father and son were being used in secondary senses in Daniel 5, where Nebuchadnezzar was called Belshazzar's "father" and Belshazzar was called Nebuchadnezzar's "son"? If there were any such evidence, inerrantists would have cited it long ago, but since they have no such evidence, all they can do is postulate speculative scenarios by which Belshazzar "could have been" Nebuchadnezzar's son.

If inerrantists like Hatcher--and Robert Turkel, whose "defense" of this same position is coming up below--want to talk about "possibilities," there will be no end to the how-it-could-have-beens that could be proposed as solutions to problems like this one. Why not claim that Nitocris could have adopted Belshazzar and in that sense made him the "son" of Nebuchadnezzar? Why not claim that Belshazzar was the illegitimate son of one of Nebuchadnezzar's concubines, who later married Nabondius, who was seeking to legitimize his claim to the throne by marrying a woman who had been closely associated with the former king. Why not... well, the point is obvious. If speculative, how-it-could-have-beens are acceptable ways to explain discrepancies, there is no such thing as a discrepancy, either biblical or nonbiblical, that cannot be explained.

Farrell Till also needs to admit that there is a possible flaw in this criticism of Daniel.

I need to admit this? I wonder if Hatcher thinks that he needs to admit that the several times that Nebuchadnezzar was referred to in Daniel 5 as Belshazzar's father is a possible discrepancy. If it isn't a possible discrepancy, why isn't it?

My pastor, Rev Bill Wellons, has speculated that the queen mentioned in Daniel 5:10 could have been this very daughter of Nebuchadnezzar (Fellowship Bible Church Service tape, June 10, 1990, Little Rock, AR).

Oh, my, if I had known this, I never would have claimed that this is a discrepancy, because if the pastor of a fundamentalist church in Little Rock, Arkansas, "speculated" that the queen in Daniel 5:10 "could have been" Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, that pretty well settles it, doesn't it? Heavens, the pastor of a fundamentalist church couldn't be wrong, could he?

If she was such a notable personality, that may explain why her advice was so respected, and it may also explain why she knew of Daniel’s direct dealings with Nebuchadnezzar.

But where is the proof, beyond crass speculation, that this queen was the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar? Does Hatcher exclude even the possibility that a Babylonian woman, who wasn't Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, could have known of "Daniel's direct dealings with Nebuchadnezzar"? Hatcher and his like-minded cohorts are asking us to accept speculative "may have beens" as definitive evidence; however, if I should say that so-and-so "could have been" or "may have been" a biblical discrepancy, would they accept this as convincing proof or would they demand something more substantial than speculative "could have beens"? To ask the question is to answer it.

Dr. Stephen Miller points out that "Raymond Dougherty presents a convincing case for the identification of Nitocris as the wife of Nabonidus and the mother of Belshazzar (Raymond Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar, pp. 39-44, 53-63, 69-70)" (Miller, p. 160). Nitocris was a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar.

Here is exactly what Miller said on the page that Hatcher cited above.

This queen was not Belshazzar's wife, for as Young observes: "The text explicitly states that the wives of the king were already present."⁶⁷

I will interrupt momentarily to point out that it is unfortunate for the inerrantist position in this matter that the text does not explicitly state that this queen was Nebuchadnezzar's daughter Nitocris.

Miller's footnote here referred to E. J. Young's Daniel, p. 122. Miller's attempt to prove that this queen was Nitocris continues.

Yet she must have been a highly prestigious individual to enter the banquet hall uninvited, and when she arrived, she seemed to take charge.

I wonder how she knew that her presence was needed. The text says that she had come into the banquet house "by reason of the words of the king and his lords" (Dan. 5:10), but how did she know what the king and his lords had said. Was she listening at the keyhole? Well, of course, the story was written this way so that the fortuitous entry of someone informed of Daniel's wisdom and expertise on dream interpretation [snicker, snicker] could arrive on the scene to give Daniel an opportunity to show his stuff again.

For these reasons most commentators since the time of Josephus⁶⁸ (first century AD) have identified her as the queen-mother either the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or the wife of Nabonidus.⁶⁹

Footnote 68 here was Antiquities of the Jews 10:11.2, which Miller flagrantly misrepresented. As the following quotation, from this passage, shows, Josephus did not say that the "queen-mother" was either the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or the wife of Nabonidus. He simply called her Belshazzar's grandmother. As you read the passage cited by Miller, notice that Josephus thought that Baltasar [Belshazzar] and Naboandelus [Nabonidus] were the same person when in reality they were son and father. If he was wrong about this, how do we know he was right about the queen's being Belshazzar's grandmother? Even if she were his grandmother, as I note below, that wouldn't have necessarily made her Nebuchadnezzar's daughter Nitocris.

When Evil-Mcrodach was dead, after a reign of eighteen years, Niglissar his son took the government, and retained it forty years, and then ended his life; and after him the succession in the kingdom came to his son Labosordacus, who continued in it in all but nine months; and when he was dead, it came to Baltasar [Belshazzar], who by the Babylonians was called Naboandelus [Nabonidus]; against him did Cyrus, the king of Persia, and Darius, the king of Media, make war; and when he was besieged in Babylon, there happened a wonderful and prodigious vision. He was sat down at supper in a large room, and there were a great many vessels of silver, such as were made for royal entertainments, and he had with him his concubines and his friends; whereupon he came to a resolution, and commanded that those vessels of God which Nebuchadnezzar had plundered out of Jerusalem, and had not made use of, but had put them into his own temple, should be brought out of that temple. He also grew so haughty as to proceed to use them in the midst of his cups, drinking out of them, and blaspheming against God. In the mean time, he saw a hand proceed out of the wall, and writing upon the wall certain syllables; at which sight, being disturbed, he called the magicians and Chaldeans together, and all that sort of men that are among these barbarians, and were able to interpret signs and dreams, that they might explain the writing to him. But when the magicians said they could discover nothing, nor did understand it, the king was in great disorder of mind, and under great trouble at this surprising accident; so he caused it to be proclaimed through all the country, and promised, that to him who could explain the writing, and give the signification couched therein, he would give him a golden chain for his neck, and leave to wear a purple garment, as did the kings of Chaldea, and would bestow on him the third part of his own dominions. When this proclamation was made, the magicians ran together more earnestly, and were very ambitious to find out the importance of the writing, but still hesitated about it as much as before. Now when the king's grandmother saw him cast down at this accident, she began to encourage him, and to say, that there was a certain captive who came from Judea, a Jew by birth, but brought away thence by Nebuchadnezzar when he had destroyed Jerusalem, whose name was Daniel, a wise man, and one of great sagacity in finding out what was impossible for others to discover, and what was known to God alone, who brought to light and answered such questions to Nebuchadnezzar as no one else was able to answer when they were consulted. She therefore desired that he would send for him, and inquire of him concerning the writing, and to condemn the unskilfulness of those that could not find their meaning, and this, although what God signified thereby should be of a melancholy nature.

We have here a good example of the duplicity that inerrantists will resort to in trying to defend their untenable belief that there are no errors in the Bible. Miller was trying to defend the view that the "queen-mother" in this tale was either the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or the wife of Nabonidus, but the Bible referred to her only as "the queen," not the queen-mother, and Josephus called her the grandmother of Beltasar [Belshazzar], not the mother as Hatcher had speculated that she was. Miller said that "most commentators" since the time of Josephus have identified her as either the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or the wife of Nabonidus, but even if we assume that she was either of these, that alone wouldn't have made Belshazzar the "son" of Nebuchadnezzar. I will have additional comments after we have gone through Miller's claim that Hatcher referred to above.

If the wife of Nebuchadnezzar,⁷⁰ she probably was the grandmother of Belshazzar, ⁷¹ unless Leupold is correct in suggesting that Nabonidus married a widow of Nebuchadnezzar with a child (Belshazzar) by the former king whom Nabonidus adopted as his own. ⁷²

Footnote 70 referred to Young's Daniel, cited above, and 71 referred to the passage from Antiquities of the Jews, quoted above. Leupold "suggested" that Nabonidus had married a widow of Nebuchadnezzar with a child named Belshazzar, who was later adopted as his own son, but notice that neither Miller nor Leupold cited any evidence to support the historical accuracy of this "suggestion." There is, however, extrabiblical evidence that this "suggestion" is historically inaccurate. The concluding sentence on the Nabonidus Cylinder indicates that Belshazzar was Nabonidus's son by birth.

As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, save me from sin against your great divinity, and give me life until distant days. And as for Belshazzar my firstborn son, my own child, let the fear of your great divinity be in his heart, and may he commit no sin; may he enjoy happiness in life.

If Belshazzar had really been a "son" whom Nabonidus had adopted, would he have referred to him as his "firstborn son" and his "own child"? The evidence just doesn't support the strained attempts that inerrantists have resorted to in order to make Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar. To readers who may be surprised by such distortion and duplicity, welcome to the world of biblical inerrancy, where believers of this doctrine will resort to anything to try to salvage their belief.

In the conclusion of the passage from Miller's commentary on Daniel, notice how the speculations ran even wilder. I will emphasize in italic print the words that underscore Miller's speculations.

In this case, Nebuchadnezzar's widow (and Nabonidus's wife) would have been Belshazzar's mother. Most likely, she was the wife of Nabonidus, and a daughter, not a widow, of Nebuchadnezzar. If so, she may have been the famous Nitocris. ⁷³

Footnote 73 is the one that Hatcher referred to above when he said that "Dougherty presents a convincing case for the identification of Nitocris as the wife of Nabonidus and the mother of Belshazzar." Hatcher quoted Miller's footnote verbatim except for the title of the book Nabonidus in which Dougherty presented this "convincing case," so I don't need to requote the footnote. If the case is so convincing, I wonder why Miller and Hatcher didn't bother to present any of the evidence that made Dougherty's case so convincing. As it is, both of them did nothing but argue by assertion, leaving me nothing here to reply to, so we can return to Hatcher's effort to solve the father/son problem in Daniel 5.

Earlier Till made the statement that the term "Son of David" and the term "Son of Abraham" are only used when many generations are involved.

I said no such thing. Here is what I said in an Errancy post dated April 6, 2002.

Hatcher no doubt will parrot the inerrantist line and contend that the words father and son were not being used literally in this story but only figuratively in the sense of "ancestor" and "descendant," as when Abraham was referred to as the "father" of all Jews (Isaiah 51:2), and as Jesus was called the "son of David" (Matt. 1:1). The examples are hardly parallel, however, because Abraham was separated by centuries from the Jews of Isaiah's time, as Jesus was separated in time from David sufficiently for readers of such texts as these to know beyond reasonable doubt that father and son were being used figuratively.

In the same post, I went on to add the following comments, which, in effect, merely underscored my often-made claim that context must be used to determine whether words in a written text were used in their literal or figurative senses. I explained why the contexts of Daniel 4 and 5 clearly indicate that the writer used the words father and son in their literal senses in the disputed passage in chapter 5.

In the book of Daniel, however, the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar are related in consecutive chapters. The account of Nebuchadnezzar's seven years of madness in fulfillment of a second dream that Daniel had interpreted ends the 4th chapter, where Nebuchadnezzar praised Daniel's god after he had regained his sanity: "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride" (4:37). Then immediately the next chapter opens with an account of the feast that King Belshazzar held to honor a thousand of his lords, so the writer went directly from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar to the reign of Belshazzar without mentioning any of the four kings who reigned between them. This within itself would indicate an ignorance of 6th-century Babylonian history, because it at least implies that the writer thought that Belshazzar's reign followed Nebuchadnezzar's. That would be an understandable mistake for someone living centuries later, who thought that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son, but it would be very unlikely that the ruler of the entire province of Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar's reign would have been so badly informed.

Clearly, all I was saying in the post that Hatcher misquoted was that in the case of these two favorite examples of those who try to quibble their way around the problem in Daniel 5, we can know that father and son were used figuratively because the overall biblical contexts show that Abraham and David were too many generations removed from those to whom the terms father and son were applied for readers to mistakenly think that they were being used in their strictest senses. I did not say that father or son were used secondarily in the Bible only when there was a separation of "many generations." As I showed by analyzing Driver's examples above, the word father was indeed used to convey a relationship as distant as "grandfather," but the contexts of the passages cited show that this was the intended meaning. Context, context, context--it is always the context that determines the meanings of words, and inerrantists like Hatcher and Miller seem to have trouble recognizing this very basic literary principle. Well, of course, they know and understand the principle; it is their blind allegiance to the untenable claim of biblical inerrancy that causes them to ignore it. That is why they cling to an interpretation of father and son in Daniel 5 for which they can cite no corroborating textual evidence, either biblical or extrabiblical.

However, that is clearly not the case.

The that here is Hatcher's distorted claim that I had said that "the term 'Son of David' and the term 'Son of Abraham' are only used when many generations are involved," but I just showed that I never said any such thing but had in reality simply said that in the examples cited, so many generations had passed between Abraham and David that readers could contextually determine that son had been used in a secondary sense. Hence, this is simply a straw man that Hatcher was kicking around to distract attention from his inability to present evidence that son had been used in the same secondary sense in Daniel 5.

Till must admit that Belshazzar could be the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.

Why must I admit this? Unless Hatcher or some of his inerrantist cohorts can show compelling reasons why father and son should be understood secondarily in Daniel 5, the rules of literary interpretation are on my side, because a fundamental principle of literary interpretation is that the language of a written text should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meanings. What are the compelling reasons why we should understand that father and son were used in secondary senses in Daniel 5? Keep in mind that a desire for a text to be inerrant is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meanings.

The word father could refer to a grandfather as in the case of Abraham and Jacob (Gen. 28:13; 32:9) or even to a great, great grandfather as in the case of David and Asa (1 Kings 15:10-13).

I replied to this above and showed that the biblical contexts--contexts, contexts--clearly indicated that the word father was being used in secondary senses in these passages. What comparable evidence, either biblical or extrabiblical, can inerrantists cite to show that father was being used in a secondary sense in Daniel 5?

If this admission is made by Till then he can no longer cite this as a slam dunk case against the accuracy of the Bible.

I'm not going to make an admission that is contrary to fundamental rules of literary interpretation, so I will continue to cite this as a "slam dunk case against the accuracy of the Bible." Why doesn't Hatcher or some other inerrantist embarrass me and write a contextual analysis of Daniel 5 that would show that father and son in this text were to be understood in their secondary senses? If one of them will send me such an analysis, I will post it on this website--along with my reply to it, of course.

Again I come back to the point made by the conservative scholar E. B. Pusey who observed that Daniel could not say grandfather or grandson in Chaldee without coining a new word (E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 346).

I have already replied to this above, so I don't need to rehash my rebuttal here. The linguistic limitations of the time may have kept "Daniel" from using the words grandfather and grandson, but these limitations would not have kept him from making it contextually clear to readers that the words father and son were being used in secondary senses. There is no such contextual indication in Daniel 5; therefore, fundamental principles of literary interpretation compel reasonable readers to understand that they were being used in their primary senses.

In the first articles in this series, I replied to the sections of Robert Turkel's "Daniel Doings" that were relevant to the discrepancies I was explicating. Needless to say, Turkel also jumped into the controversy created by the father/son references in Daniel 5 . In the history section of his "defense of Daniel," Turkel "resolved" the problem by recycling most of the often discredited explanations of this problem. He certainly offered nothing new, but a point-by-point rebuttal of his "solutions" to this discrepancy may be helpful to readers who may encounter some of these same "explanations" if they should ever discuss this problem with Bible believers. I will use blue print in quoting what Turkel said on the father/son issue in Daniel 5.

As for the father/son relationship, there are many possible answers to this:

Archer notes above the reference to "Jehu son of Omri." This reflects a general Oriental usage of father/son terminology. Textual (non-Biblical) evidence reveals that "son" was used at least 12 different ways in the ancient Orient, and "father" was used at least 7 different ways [Ford.Dan, 123; MillS.Dan, 149].

If I quoted Dan Barker or Robert Price or Richard Carrier in support of a claim of errancy in the Bible, how much credence would Turkel give to their opinions? None at all, I would say, yet he doesn't hesitate to quote Gleason Archer, the darling of biblical inerrantists, to support an inerrancy view of the book of Daniel. In his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Archer resorted to some ridiculous how-it-could-have-beens to "explain" widely recognized biblical discrepancies, as he did in the case of the Mary Magdalene problem by saying that after Mary had heard the angel announce that Jesus had risen from the dead and had even met and worshiped him after running from the tomb, she told Peter that the body had been stolen because "(s)he apparently had not yet taken in the full import of what the angel meant when he told her that the Lord had risen again and that He was alive" (Zondervan Publishing House, 1982, p. 348). Archer then went on to say that "(i)n her confusion and amazement, all she could think of was that the body was not here; and she did not know what had become of him." Those who read this book will see that no "possible" explanations were too far-fetched for Archer to propose as "solutions" to the discrepancies that he addressed in it. Not one time will the reader of this book or any of Archer's others or of Stephen Miller's commentary on Daniel (also cited above) ever see them saying, "Yes, this is an error," so it isn't at all surprising that Archer and Miller would have resorted to the son-didn't-mean-son and father-didn't-mean-father "explanation" of the problem in Daniel 5, and the fact that Turkel has to resort to such obviously biased sources to "support" his "defense of Daniel" is within itself an indication of just how weak his evidence of inerrancy in Daniel is.

Turkel's claim of "many possible answers" to the father/son problem is tantamount to an admission that he has no real solution to it. I pointed out to him in this section of part three of my series on discrepancies in the stories of the Egyptian plagues that when one is contending that an alleged discrepancy is not really an error or mistake, there could have been only one way that it "could have been," not two or three or more. Therefore, whenever an inerrantist says that "there are many possible answers to this," he is, in effect, saying that he doesn't know what really happened--if indeed any of it happened at all--because what happened happened. If X was what happened, then Y didn't happen, and if Y happened, then X didn't happen; therefore, when a biblical inerrantist says that X could have happened or Y could have happened, he is, in effect, saying that he doesn't really know what happened. If, then, Turkel is going to argue in the case of the father/son problem in Daniel 5 that this "could have been" what the writer meant or that "could have been" what he meant, consistency would require him to admit that since he doesn't really know what the writer meant, he could have simply made a mistake, which just happened to be a mistake that, in the case of the Nebuchadnezzar/Belshazzar relationship, was widely believed at that time.

Hints of an actual familial relationship, however, provide a more convincing solution to the problem. Indications of such are given by Herodotus, who reports that the queen mother Nitorcris, Nebbie's wife, was the "mother" of Nabodinus [sic] [Town.Dan, 70] - perhaps meaning by this, the mother-in-law.

Nitorcris? This was the name of a black Egyptian queen, of questionable historicity, but Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, as was noted several times above, was Nitocris. Turkel is known to be rather careless in his writing, but if he quoted his source correctly, we have to wonder just how much Towner knows about the subject on which Turkel cited him as an authority. At any rate, Hatcher presented this same conjecture above, so I don't need to rehash my rebuttals here. Suffice it to say that if Turkel or Hatcher or any other inerrantist who tries to recycle this "explanation" of the father/son problem knows of any conclusive evidence, either biblical or extrabiblical, that would prove that Nitocris was the "mother" of Nabonidus--not Nabodinus--he should cite it. Before I leave this point, I will ask readers to notice that Turkel--and presumably Towner--claim that Nitocris was Nebuchadnezzar's wife and the "mother" of Nabonidus, whereas the other sources referred to above claimed that she was the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and the "mother" of Nabonidus's son Belshazzar. Someone seems to be confused on this point, but I suppose that one conjecture is just as good as another.

Towner's claim that "Nitorcris" was the mother of "Nabodinus" conflicts with the stele of Princess Adda-guppi’, which says that she, a daughter of King Assurbanipal of Assyria, had given birth to Nabonidus in the 16th year of Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon and father of Nebuchadnezzar.

I (am) the lady Adda-Gruppi’, mother of Nabium-na’id king of Babylon votaress of the gods Sin, Ningal, Nusku, and Sadarnunna, my deities; who, from my childhood have sought after their godheads. Whereas in the 16th year of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, Sin, king of the gods, with his city and his temple was angry and went up to heaven-the city and the people that (were) in it went to ruin.

The circumstances under which this stele and its lengthy inscriptions were discovered are explained in the introduction to the translation of the texts.

However in August-September of 1956 Dr. D. S Rice did make an important discovery in the pavement (steps) of the mosque. While examining the ruins of the medieval mosque he discovered some Babylonian Stele with inscriptions which were dated the sixth century BC. These stele were turned face down and used as steps at the North, East and West entrances to the Mosque. The inscriptions were by the Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus and his mother during the time of Daniel’s captivity.

Elsewhere on the inscription, Adda-Gruppi' said that Nabium-na'id [Nabonidus] was the issue of her womb.

Nabu-na’id (my) only son, the issue of my womb, to the kingship he called, and the kingship of Sumer and Akkad from the border of Egypt (on) the upper sea even to the lower sea all the lands he entrusted hither to his hands. My two hands I lifted up and to Sin, king of the gods, reverently with imploration [(I prayed) thus, Nabu-na’id (my) son, offspring of my womb, beloved of his mother,] thou hast called him to the kingship, thou hast pronounced his name, at the command of thy great godhead may the great gods go at his two sides, may they make his enemies to fall....

Later in the inscription Adda-Gruppi referred to Nabonidus again as her son and the "offspring of her womb."

In the 2I years of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, in the 43 years of Nebuchadrezzar, son of Nabopolassar, and 4 years of Neriglissar, king of Babylon, (when) they exercised the kingship, for 68 years with all my heart I reverenced them, I kept watch over them, Nabu-na’id (my) son, offspring of my womb, before Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabopolassar and (before) Neriglissar, king of Babylon, I caused him to stand, daytime and night he kept watch over them what was pleasing to them he performed continually, my name he made (to be) favourite in their sight, (and) like [a daughter of] their [own] they uplifted my head....

Just before this, she had praised the moon god Sin and said that she had devoted her son to this god and prayed that "so long as he is alive" he would "not offend against [Sin]." This part of the inscription would give insight into the known devotion of Nabonidus to the moon god, which had caused his absence from Babylon in order to build temples of Sin in the kingdom to restore the worship of this god.

The realization of this kind of relationship, or something similar, is being slowly adapted even by liberal critics.

Who, for example?

Oriental monarchs who were usurpers commonly tried to legitimate their claim to the throne by marrying their predecessor's wife or daughter [Bout.IABD, 116]. This may be indicated in the case at hand by the fact that Nabodinus [sic] named one of his sons after Nebbie. Furthermore, one of Nabodinus' [sic] predecessors, Neriglissar, himself married one of Nebbie's daughters, so there would be a precedent for Nabodinus [sic] to follow.

I replied in detail to this same speculation that Hatcher presented above, so I will respond here only to a couple of additional speculative quibbles that Turkel injected into this often-recycled "solution" to the father/son problem in Daniel 5. Turkel said--or rather asserted above--that Nabonidus, whose name he spelled Nabodinus, had named one of his sons after Nebuchadnezzar, but he gave no supporting evidence for this claim. There have been attempts to claim that Nebuchadnezzar III was the son of Nabonidus, but this name was appropriated by Nidintu-Bêl, who in 522 BC proclaimed himself Nebuchadnezzar III after he had declared himself king of a Babylonia that would be independent of the Persian Empire, which had previously conquered it. This Nidintu-Bêl claimed to be the son of Nabonidus, but Babylonian records indicate that he was really the son of a Babylonian official named Kîn-Zêr. The Bihistun inscription, named after the town in Iran where it was discovered, recorded Darius the Great's quelling of this revolt by "Nebuchadnezzar III." The records, however, don't support the claim that this rebel was the son of Nabondius or that he had been named Nebuchadnezzar. When an inerrantist is looking for "evidence" to support a "solution" to a biblical discrepancy, nothing can be too flimsy for him to appropriate as "proof."

As for Turkel's reference to Neriglissa's marriage to one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughters, his "argument" here appears to be parallel to Hatcher's, which I replied to above.

1. Neriglissa married one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughter to solidify his right to the throne.

2. Therefore, Nabonidus must have married one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughters in an effort to secure his claim to the Babylonian throne.

Nothing needs to be said here, because Turkel's conclusion does not follow from the premise that he based it on. It is an obvious non sequitur.

As we continue through Turkel's "proof" that Belzhazzar was at least legally Nebuchadnezzar's son, notice how he strings together a series of unsupported assumptions. I will italicize the words that show that he was merely speculating.

In light of the above, it may be suggested that Daniel shows a polemical awareness of such an attempt to legitimate the rule of Nabodinus.

The key words here are may be suggested. One can suggest anything, and mere suggestions of what may have been don't constitute real evidence. I doubt that Turkel would accept it if I suggested that the author of Daniel just "may have" shown an ignorance of sixth-century BC Babylonian history by going directly from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4 to the "reign" of Belshazzar in chapter 5, where he repeatedly referred to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's "father" and once called Belshazzar Nebuchadnezzar's "son."

The repeated emphasis upon the father/son relationship of Nebbie and Belzy serves to highlight the fact that Belzy is decidedly UNlike his "father" Nebbie - he is, by comparison, grossly incompetent, sensual, worthless, and ignorant of the power of the true God.

Or more likely, this repeated emphasis was simply a misunderstanding of 6th-century BC history. If not, why not? Was Belshazzar's character as just described by Turkel any more odious than the arrogance of Nebuchadnezzar that was described in 4:28-33, which, according to the way this tale was spun, caused Yahweh to "drive" Nebuchadnezzar from men to eat grass like an animal for seven years?

By the way, a text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, known as the Prayer of Nabonidus, indicates a tradition that Nabonidus and not Nebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian king who experience a bout with insanity that caused him to be driven from among men for a period of seven years. If Turkel wants to talk about "suggestions" or "maybes," he should consider the distinct possibility that "The Prayer of Nabonidus" is another indication that the author of Daniel was confused about events that had happened in 6th-century BC Babylon and in his confusion had attributed to Nebuchadnezzar a period of insanity that had actually been experienced by Nabonidus. Certainly, that "suggestion" or "maybe" has more textual support than the frequent inerrantist claim that father and son in Daniel 5 may have been used in secondary senses.

A very thin blood relationship may have been exaggerated, or even created out of whole cloth by the usurpers [see Meadw.ADGD, 64] to perpetrate the fiction that Nabodinus [sic] and Belzy were legitimate heirs of the throne -

We see here that Turkel followed his customary practice of making an assertion and then trying to prove it by inserting a bracketed reference to some author who shared the same belief. Notice, however, that Turkel didn't quote a word from T. J. Meadowcroft's book; he simply inserted "see Meadw.ADGD, 64" and then went on his merry way. This is a popular "apologetic" method used by the likes of Robert Turkel, Everette Hatcher, and David Conklin, which may impress the gullible, who are already emotionally inclined to believe that the Bible is "the inspired, inerrant word of God," but it proves absolutely nothing to those who want to see actual evidence before accepting a claim. I don't think that Turkel is ever going to realize that there is no such thing as a religious opinion that hasn't been shared by others who have written books or articles on the subject, so "supporting" unexplicated claims by just inserting after them bracketed references to books and periodicals that share the same religious opinions is as easy as browsing in a library or surfing the internet.

As for Medowcroft's opinion that Turkel cited, critical readers will wonder why "Daniel" would have cooperated with the usurpers to perpetrate the fiction that Nabonidus and Belshazzar were "legitimate heirs of the throne" when he, allegedly being a high official in the Babylonian court, would have known that they weren't? Instead of cooperating with the usurpers, why wouldn't he have set the record straight? A more likely scenario is that this "blood relationship" was created by the ignorance of a writer who, through his confusion about sixth-century BC history, passed along a mistaken impression of the time that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father. At any rate, this creation of a "blood relationship" can't be blamed on "the usurpers," because Daniel was presumably writing by the inspiration of an omniscient, omnipotent deity, which should have enabled him to know historical fact from mere guesswork. If the writer of Daniel were working under the influence of such divine guidance, why didn't he know to avoid such problems as the one he caused by repeatedly referring to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's father? In this section of "Chronological Problems in the Book of Daniel," I replied to Turkel's attempt in "Daniel Doings" to pin the reason for skeptical opposition to the book of Daniel on the presence of so many accurately fulfilled prophecies in this book. Turkel asked, "How was the writer of Daniel able to write down the future of some of the strongest empires the western world has known before they happened in such a precise manner?" I replied to this by showing that Daniel was actually writing after the fact, and so there was really nothing prophetic about these parts of his book, but I went on from there to show, in the section, linked to above, that if Turkel is going to claim that "Daniel" was able to see into the distant future with such precision, then he is going to have to abandon his frequently recycled claims that biblical writers simply relied on oral traditions and did the best that they could under difficult situations to produce works that were inspired only in the same sense as when we speak of an inspired "work of art," because such views as these are completely incompatible with his claim of precise prophetic predictions in the book of Daniel. If such prophetic precision as this is really in the book of Daniel, then Turkel will have to admit that it came through the guidance of a divine entity who knew what the future held. If, however, "Daniel" received such divine guidance as this, why wasn't he able to avoid such problems as the ones I have identified in this series of articles on the book of Daniel? More specific, why didn't "Daniel" know that Nebuchadnezzar was not Belshazzar's father?

[A very thin blood relationship may have been exaggerated, or even created out of whole cloth by the usurpers [see Meadw.ADGD, 64 to perpetrate the fiction that Nabodinus and Belzy were legitimate heirs of the throne] - and Daniel may well be reflecting this exaggeration/court fiction in his own polemical manner.

Uh, just why would Daniel have "reflect[ed]" a "court fiction" instead of reporting the actual historical truth? Just how would "reflecting" a "court fiction" have helped Daniel's "polemical manner"? Turkel didn't say. He just said it and went on, and, of course, he said it because he read it in some book or article.

(Note especially the implication that the queen mother was not invited to the banquet, and that Daniel was no longer a recognized wise man - which would fit in with the idea of a usurper "cleaning house" for his own protection, and a polemical response by Daniel!) [see esp. Fewe.CSov, 82, 91-2]

Notice how Turkel wants it both ways. He wants readers to believe that Nabonidus had married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter in order to legitimize his claim to the throne, but he wants readers to think that Nabonidus and possibly Belshazzar had "cleaned house" for their protection. If they had "cleaned house," would they have retained Nebuchadnezzar's daughter as queen? Turkel includes Daniel in this "house cleaning," but that view is in direct conflict with what the book of Daniel claims.

Daniel 1:19 At the end of the time [the three-year training period] that the king had set for them to be brought in, the palace master brought them into the presence of Nebuchadnezzar, ¹⁹ and the king spoke with them. And among them all, no one was found to compare with Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore they were stationed in the king's court. ²⁰ In every matter of wisdom and understanding concerning which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. ²¹ And Daniel continued there until the first year of King Cyrus.

The incidents in chapter five, where Nebuchadnezzar was repeatedly referred to as the father of Belshazzar, the reign of Cyrus had not yet begun, so if the stationing of Daniel in the royal court had continued until the first year of King Cyrus, Daniel could not have been swept out by any "house cleaning" that Turkel has imagined. As for Daniel's "polemical response" that Turkel keeps referring to, he never bothered to explain what this was, so there is nothing to answer here. It is just more inerrantist high-sounding jargon that he is recycling from some book he has read in hope that it will impress his readers.

Moreover, the very mention of Belshazzar is proof of an early date for Daniel. Recall, again, that it was once argued that Belshazzar never existed! Here is why, according to Archer [ibid.]:

The fact that by the time of Herodotus (ca 450 B.C.) the very name of Belshazzar had been forgotten, at least so far as the informants of the Greek historian were concerned, indicates far closer acquaintance with the events of the late sixth century on the part of Daniel than would have been the case by the second century B.C.

Archer goes on to explain that the writer of Daniel 5:16 can only promise Daniel to be 3rd ruler in the kingdom is proof of the book's veracity. Why could he not promise #2? Because Belshazzar was #2 as long as his father was still alive!

Here is another popular conjecture that inerrantists continue to circulate. The fact that the name Belshazzar, to use Turkel's own expression, had been "forgotten" in some places does not mean that it had been forgotten everywhere; hence, Turkel is arguing from silence when he claims, as he apparently intended, that second-century BC Jews would not have known about the existence of Belshazzar. I have already quoted above a passage from the second-century BC apocryphal book of Baruch that shows a mistaken belief of the time that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father, so rather than the name of Belshazzar having been forgotten by second-century BC Jews, it was obviously known to them. What had apparently been forgotten was the real parentage of Belshazzar, so the fact that Daniel 5 reflects the same mistaken view of his parentage that was indicated in other second-century BC works really indicates the opposite of what Turkel wants his gullible readers to think: This book was in all probability written much later than the 6th century BC when "Daniel" was allegedly an important official in the Babylonian court.

Turkel also recycled a second popular inerrantist quibble by claiming that Belshazzar could offer Daniel only the position of third ruler in the kingdom rather than second, because Belshazzar was himself just the second ruler to his father Nabonidus. This conclusion, however, is mere assumption, because the text reads as if the queen exercised a great deal of power in the kingdom. How, then, do Turkel and his like-minded cohorts who recycle this quibble not know that the author of this book meant here that if Daniel could decipher the handwriting on the wall, he would be elevated to a position that would make him third behind the king and the queen? The fact that chapter five indicates to any reasonable reader who doesn't have an emotionally important belief in inerrancy to protect that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father would lend support to the probability that Belshazzar was offering Daniel only a position of authority after the queen's.

Baldwin [Bald.Dan, 22-3] adds these words, in line with what has been said above, and serves as a summary:

Five times in chapter 5 Nebuchadrezzar is referred to as his father, and Belshazzar is called his son (5:22). The assumption has often been made that the author's knowledge was so defective that he thought Belshazzar was literally [the] son of Nebuchadnezzar, whereas we know that his father was Nabodinus, son of a Babylonian nobleman, Nabu-alatsu-iqbi. It needs to be borne in mind that the terms 'father' and 'son' are used figuratively in the Old Testament. Elisha called Elijah 'my father' (2 Kings 2:12); 'sons of the prophets' were their disciples, and there is some evidence that outstanding kings gave their name to successors who were not of their dynasty. There is in Esdras 3:7, 4:42 an interesting example of a king bestowing as a prize the honour of being called his kinsman, or cousin. Nevertheless the constant repetition of the father-son theme in Daniel appears to imply more, as though the legitimacy of the king might have been under attack.

Even Turkel's own source recognized at the end of the paragraph just quoted that the constant repetition of "the father-son theme" in Daniel obviously had some significance. He, of course, attributed this repetition to an attempt to legitimize a relationship that had been under attack, but I see a huge problem in this rationalization. Why would Daniel, writing by the inspiration of an omniscient, omnipotent deity, have had any interest in trying to convince his readers that Belshazzar had a legitimate right to be king? That rationalization just doesn't make any sense. It is far more reasonable to think that the constant references to the father-son relationship simply resulted from a mistaken impression of the time when this book was written. I have referred readers back to the passage in Baruch where the writer of this book clearly expressed an opinion that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father, but perhaps it is time for me to quote it again so that readers can evaluate Baldwin's rationalization in the light of what was obviously believed by second-century BC Jews.

Baruch 1:10 They [the Babylonian captives] sent this message: The money we are sending you is to be used to buy whole-offerings, sin-offerings, and frankincense, and to provide grain-offerings; you are to offer them on the altar of the Lord our God, ¹¹ with prayers for king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and for his son Belshazzar, that their life may last as long as the heavens are above the earth. ¹² So the Lord will strengthen us and bring light to our eyes, and we shall live under the protection of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and of Belshazzar his son; we shall give them service for many a day and find favour with them.

The father/son relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar wasn't mentioned nearly as often in this text as it was in Daniel 5, but surely any reasonable person reading it will agree that the author of Baruch thought that Nebuchadnezzar and Baruch were father and son. Would Baldwin read this text and then argue that the author was simply trying to legitimize Belshazzar's claim to the throne? I doubt it, but who really knows what position a biblicist might take to try to defend his emotionally important belief in biblical inerrancy?

Baldwin recycled the same old claim about the figurative usage of the words father and son in the Old Testament, and this is a fact that I have already recognized. In stating that recognition, however, I took the time to show here that the figurative or secondary meanings of these words are easily determined by the contexts in which they were so used, so there is no need for me to rehash that material here. Instead, I will ask Turkel to analyze Daniel 5 to show us the contextual indications that the writer intended for his readers to understand that father and son were being used figuratively. To borrow another phrase from him, don't hold your breath until he does this, but in case he does try it, he should remember that a desire to make a written text inerrant is not a sufficient reason to assign figurative meanings to the language in it. Only the context can be used to determine whether words in a text have been used figuratively.

Baldwin also cited 1 Esdras 3:7, 4:42 as examples of where the king bestowed on a subject the right to be called his "kinsman," but just a look at these examples is sufficient to show that the contexts clearly indicate that the kinship was not literal.

1 Esdras 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. ⁶ He shall be clothed in purple, and drink from gold cups, and sleep on a gold bed, and have a chariot with gold bridles, and a turban of fine linen, and a necklace about his neck; ⁷ and because of his wisdom he shall sit next to Darius and shall be called kinsman of Darius."

1 Esdras 4:42 Then the king said to him [Zerubbabel, the third bodyguard, who had just finished a speech that praised women as the "one thing that is strongest"], "Ask what you wish, even beyond what is written, and we will give it to you, for you have been found to be the wisest. And you shall sit next to me, and be called my kinsman."

Just reading these passages is sufficient to see that they stated nothing but the bestowal of an honorary title on one of the king's bodyguards, a title that would have been somewhat like making a citzen of a town mayor for a day. There is certainly nothing here that would justify assigning figurative meanings to the words father and son in Daniel 5.

Baldwin goes on to explain, too, that Belshazzar could be the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar (a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar could have carried Belshazzar's father, thus making it very literal).

Here is another assertion rife with "could haves." Anyway, I replied to this quibble above in the section where Everette Hatcher grabbed the same straw, so there is no need to rehash that rebuttal here. There is no real evidence at all that Nebuchadnezzar's daughter ever married Belshazzar's father. Furthermore, Turkel cited earlier a claim made by Herodotus that Nebuchadnezzar's daughter was the mother of Nabonidus, not his wife, but I quoted inscriptions found on the stele of Princess Adda-guppi’, which claim that she, a daughter of King Assurbanipal of Assyria, had given birth to Nabonidus in the 16th year of Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon and father of Nebuchadnezzar, so extrabiblical records don't support the straw-grabbing attempts by biblical inerrantists to make Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar. The author of Daniel simply made a mistake because of the blurry history of his time. Inerrantists should just recognize this and get over it.

Go to Part Four.  

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