I feel compelled to begin my reply to Everette Hatcher's article with an apology for subjecting readers to the tedious boredom of a long string of quotations and book lists with little argumentation or comment of substance in between. Although Hatcher had agreed, as I mentioned in the November/December 1998 issue, to refrain from argumentation by constant appeals to authority, we saw in the foregoing article that nothing in his "apologetic" style has changed. He responded to my articles as if he thought that bombarding us with citation after citation and quotation after quotation from books and articles that agree with his view on the authorship of Daniel would somehow prove that he is right. At times, he seemed to list books purely for the sake of listing. In his second paragraph, for example, he mentioned in reference to the 70 weeks of Daniel 9:24 what he thinks are "peculiar errors of interpretation made by Dennis McKinsey" and then proceeded to list an entire column of nothing but books that disagree with McKinsey's view on this issue, as if what McKinsey thinks about a subject that hasn't even been a point of contention in my exchanges with Hatcher is relevant to this discussion about the dating of the book of Daniel. Furthermore, the fact that Hatcher knows of a long list of writers who disagree with McKinsey on this point proves only that there are writers who disagree with McKinsey; it doesn't prove that these writers are right and McKinsey is wrong.
The amount of space that Hatcher devoted to this tangent is rather mystifying. I suppose he thought that he wasn't faring too well in debating relevant issues and so he would try to get in a few licks at McKinsey in the space I am giving him to defend his position on Daniel. Because my article outlining the new editorial policy on articles submitted to TSR (November/December 1998, pp. 4, 9) was published after Hatcher had completed the article above, I have extended him the courtesy of publishing it. If I were to talk to Hatcher face to face, however, I would borrow an expression from George Bush and tell him to read my lips: I will publish no more articles from him or anyone else that rely primarily on the fallacy of appealing to authorities. I suggest that he review the editorial policy that I outlined in the November/December issue and decide if he wants to respect it. If he does, I'll be glad to give him a forum for his views. If he doesn't, he can look elsewhere for someone to publish his articles. The appeal to authority, especially authorities who are intent on defending their religious views, is a logical fallacy, and I will no longer accommodate those who have nothing more than this to offer in support of their beliefs. Certainly, I will not subject my subscribers to the boredom of an entire column containing nothing but book lists. They have paid their money to read exchanges of arguments on the inerrancy/errancy views of the Bible and not to wade through book lists and quotations from books, letters, and commentaries that contain only expressions of opinion without argumentation to support those opinions.
An example of this type of forensic fallacy in Hatcher's articles is found in his quoting of comments on Daniel that he has solicited from various conservative seminarians, who (surprise! surprise!) agree with Hatcher's traditionalist view, but offer no real evidence to support their assertions. One such quotation from William Shea, whom Hatcher described as a "conservative," appears on page five of this issue:
It is interesting to note that all of these arguments on the Daniel of the 2nd century B. C. go back to the Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry in the 5th century A. D. Porphyry, however, saw clearly that there was no separate Median kingdom, so his sequence was Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece I and Greece II. He had to shorten the sequence to get it to end up with Greece and not Rome. The adaptation of dividing Media from Persia is a modern phenomenon, worked out in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Before saying anything else about his statement, I have to point out how misinformed Shea is. If Hatcher has quoted him correctly, he called Porphyry a 5th-century [A. D.] philosopher, but actually Porphyry died in A. D. 305, so he barely survived the 3rd century. Hatcher apparently quoted Shea as some kind of authority on the book of Daniel, but a dating mistake of two centuries in a matter like when Porphyry lived and wrote doesn't give me much confidence in his opinion on the dating of Daniel. Anyway, let's look at what we have in Shea's statement. He seems to be arguing that Porphyry, a "5th-century" [sic] opponent of Christianity, thought that the second kingdom of Daniel's vision was a unified Medo-Persian kingdom, and so this must mean that the second kingdom actually was a unified Medo-Persian kingdom, but the flaw in this kind of reasoning should be obvious even to Hatcher. Shea noted, for example, that Porphyry also thought that the third kingdom was Greece I and the fourth Greece II, so why didn't Shea accept Porphyry's opinion on this too? After all, if Porphyry was right about what the second kingdom was, why should he not be considered right about what the third and fourth kingdoms were? Well, those who are familiar with various attempts by Christian apologists to make the visions of Daniel prophecies of the coming of Christ and the establishment of his kingdom know that most of these theories are based on a need to have the fourth kingdom of Daniel be the Roman Empire, so Shea has to disagree with Porphyry on what the fourth kingdom was. Thus, Shea derogatorily noted that Porphyry "had to shorten the sequence to get it to end up with Greece and not Rome." What we have in Shea's letter to Hatcher, then, is not just a flagrant appeal to authority but also an example of how biblicists will pick and choose from their "sources" whatever supports their views but summarily reject that which disagrees with them. To a degree, everyone who debates does this, but Christians are experts at it. Porphyry was a sharp critic of Christianity, whose writings have survived only in the works of Christian writers who quoted him, and Shea would probably disagree with 90% of what Porphyry said in those quoted fragments, but when Shea finds something Porphyry said that supports a belief of his, he instantly seizes it and cites it as if it should be accepted as "gospel truth." Then he immediately discredits his own witness in another matter.
The reality is that Porphyry was just another person who, if Shea has cited him correctly, had an opinion about the book of Daniel, and so he was no different from any other writer who has expressed a view on this subject. In other words, Porphyry's opinion could be wrong, just as any other person could well be wrong in an opinion. If Hatcher and Shea think that Porphyry's view that the second kingdom of Daniel was a combined Medo-Persian empire, then they should present whatever arguments Porphyry used in support of that opinion and defend them. They can't just cite Porphyry's opinion and claim that this settles the issue. I doubt, however, if they will be able to quote any reasons that Porphyry may have given in support of his opinion, because, as I noted above, Porphyry's writings did not survive (possibly because of Christian efforts to destroy them), and so it is unlikely that any supporting arguments that he may have made still exist. If they did, I suspect that Shea would have quoted them, especially if they had had any real substance to them.
Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Shea is right and that prior to the 18th and 19th centuries no one had questioned the view that Daniel was written in the 6th century B. C. The same could be said of many other traditional views of the Bible. Until people felt free to express their opinions of the Bible without fear of reprisals from the religious establishments that controlled most governments where Christianity thrived, biblical criticism was practically nonexistent. With a church empowered to persecute "heretics" and governments ready and willing to imprison or execute them, who was going to express publicly the belief that Moses may not have written the Pentateuch or that the exodus probably never happened or that the resurrection of Jesus was unlikely? It wasn't until such prosecutorial powers were removed from Christian-dominated governments that people felt free to question traditional views of the Bible, so it shouldn't be surprising that disagreement with Christian traditions is far more common today than it was in the heyday of Christianity.
To show the absurdity of Shea's argument, let's suppose that the nations that now forbid public expression of views that conflict with traditional Islamic doctrines should remove these restrictions and permit freedom of speech even in religious matters. Does Shea doubt for one moment that opinions in conflict with Islamic traditions would begin to surface in Muslim nations that allowed a free market of ideas? If there should then arise a body of Islamic critics who expressed doubts that the Qur'an had originated as traditionally claimed, how logical would Shea think an Islamic fundamentalist was if he should say, "Well, this opinion is just a modern phenomenon that has been worked out in the 20th and 21st centuries"? Would Shea not realize that this view had probably never been publicly proclaimed before because people living in Islamic nations knew that they could suffer serious consequences for expressing such opinions?
An additional problem in Shea's claim that the 6th-century B. C. authorship of Daniel was never questioned until the 18th and 19th centuries is that there is really no way he can know this, so it is an assertion that he is obligated to prove. I have already noted that Porphyry's writings didn't survive, and this is also true of the works of Celsus and other opponents of Christianity. How, then, could Shea possibly know that in a time when writings critical of the Bible had a way of vanishing, no one ever expressed the view that the kingdoms of Media and Persia were separate? That's an argument from silence if I ever heard one. Furthermore, royal archives and other 6th-century B. C. records that have survived through archaeological rediscovery recognized that the kingdoms of Media and Persia (as I have already noted in earlier articles) were separate empires, so it just isn't true that the division of Media and Persia into different kingdoms is a "modern phenomenon" that was "worked out in the 18th and 19th centuries." It is a premise that has enough support from ancient records to give it the status of historical fact. If Shea would consult just about any general biblical reference book, he would see that Media was a separate empire in the 7th century B. C., which allied itself with Babylon to capture the Assyrian strongholds of Nineveh in 612 and Haran in 610, but in 550 B. C., Cyrus conquered Media and absorbed it into his empire. This was over a decade before Babylon fell to Cyrus, so why would Daniel, an official in the Babylonia court at the time, have thought that Babylon fell to "Darius the Mede"? It is precisely because biblical critics like Driver, Rowley, and Porteous are aware of these historical realities and recognize that the writer of Daniel seemed unaware of them that they find it impossible to think that the author of this book could have been a Babylonia official when the empire fell to Cyrus. The historical ignorance of this author is not a problem that Shea can explain away by just dismissing it as "a modern phenomenon, worked out in the 18th and 19th centuries." Sixth-century B. C. records show that Media and Persia existed as separate empires until Persia absorbed Media, but the annexation took place a decade too late to make credible Daniel's claim that Babylon fell to "Darius the Mede."
I have spent a lot of time on this point, but the time was necessary to drive home the flaws in Hatcher's apologetic approach, which depends primarily on quoting writers who are in agreement with his position. When he wrote letters to evangelical seminarians like William Shea, did he expect even a remote possibility that any of them would write back and say, "Well, I'm afraid that Till is right in this matter. The book of Daniel was definitely written well after the 6th century B. C."? Certainly not! He wrote to them precisely because he knew in advance that he would get answers in agreement with his position, which he could then scatter through an article as if to say, "See what these men who teach in seminaries think. They say I am right and you are wrong." What do you suppose Hatcher's reaction would be if I had responded to him with constant allusions to what Dan Barker or William Sierichs, Jr., or Dave Matson thinks about the dating of the book of Daniel. It would have taken Hatcher about 10 seconds to scream, justifiably, that I am quoting sources who are already predisposed to reject the 6th-century B. C. view.
If Barker or Sierichs or Matson should publish what I considered a particularly forceful argument in agreement with my position, I wouldn't hesitate to quote it, but I would at the same time include the material that they cited in support of the argument. I wouldn't just quote an arbitrary assertion that they made and expect readers to accept it, and this is where Hatcher needs to improve his apologetic method. For example, he quoted Shea again, who said that "the discovery of more and more Aramaic texts from Qumran... have pushed the date of Daniel backward earlier, because Daniel writes a kind of Aramaic that is earlier than Qumran's earliest Aramaic text" (p. 6). What are these Aramaic texts that have been discovered at Qumran? Shea didn't say; he simply asserted it as a fact that we presumably should accept without question. He didn't even cite documentation so that we could check his assertion for reliability. Exactly what are the linguistic characteristics of "the kind of Aramaic" Daniel used that would establish that this book was written prior to the Maccabean era? Again, Shea didn't say; he just declared that it was so. He didn't even tell us what linguistic qualifications he has to reach a conclusion like this, and neither did Hatcher.
The most absurd part of this quotation from Shea's letter was his claim that "Till is behind the times in his view of the Aramaic in Daniel as Maccabean" (p. 6), but he gave no justification for making this statement, possibly because I have no views of the Aramaic in Daniel. I have never studied Aramaic, so how could I have a view that the Aramaic in Daniel dated from the Maccabean period? I have absolutely no qualifications at all to make such a statement, and so I have never made any such claim. Apparently, Shea had assumed from a statement I had quoted from Porteous's commentary on Daniel that I was making an argument that the Aramaic in Daniel was stylistically the kind that was used in the 2nd century B. C., but that wasn't the case at all. In the context of this quotation, I was criticizing Hatcher for having left the impression that Porteous thought that Daniel dated from the 6th century, and it was never my purpose to try to make an argument based on a language that I have never studied. An examination of the quotation in context will show that this was clearly my intention.
If Hatcher had bothered to check his source, he would have seen that Porteous is clearly a proponent of a 2nd-century authorship of Daniel. In the very first paragraph of the introduction to his commentary, Porteous said, "The linguistic evidence and the fact that the visions reveal a vague knowledge of the Babylonian and Persian periods and an increasingly accurate knowledge of the Greek period up to and including the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, with the exception of the closing events of that reign, suggest a date for the book shortly before 164 B. C. (March/April 1998, pp. 7,16, emphasis added).
To verify Hatcher's misrepresentation of my statement, readers can check page 6 of this issue (1st column, top) to see that by leaving off the first sentence of the quotation above, he left the impression that I had quoted Porteous in order to argue that the style of the Aramaic in Daniel shows that it was written during the 2nd century B. C., but that was not my intention. I quoted the statement only to show that the part I italicized for emphasis clearly indicates that Porteous believes the book dates from the Maccabean era, and this part just happened to appear in a larger context where Porteous was commenting on what the Aramaic implies about the date of authorship. So it was Porteous who expressed this view, not me.
After quoting me out of context, Hatcher then went on to say, "I wish Till would specifically indicate which linguistic evidence he would put forth as significant," but since the statement he had just quoted in no way indicates that I was basing an argument on the Aramaic of Daniel, his intention to misrepresent me seems rather deliberate. If I personally have made no claims based on the Aramaic text, why would Hatcher "wish" that I "would specifically indicate which linguistic evidence [I] would put forth as significant"? At any rate, I found Hatcher's "wish" absolutely ludicrous. Does he expect us to believe that he is knowledgeable enough in Aramaic to speak with any authority on what the Aramaic text of Daniel indicates about the probable date of authorship? If I should cite some specific Aramaic examples that indicate a 2nd-century dating--and to do so, I would have to rely entirely on what Aramaic experts say--I doubt that Hatcher would be linguistically qualified to dispute them. His response would likely be a long list of books and articles whose authors think the opposite, and the discussion would then take on a courtroom atmosphere where jurors sit and listen to one group of experts give testimony that supports the prosecution's case and then another give testimony that supports the defense. Hatcher may see some value to this kind of debating, but I see it as a waste of time. If he can't present arguments for his case that he himself is qualified to explain and defend, then he will have to find another medium for his articles. I have more to do than wade through long, tedious articles that do nothing but string together quotations from books and articles that agree with his position. Anyone with the patience to pore over books in search of comments favorable to his position that he can string together in an article can engage in Hatcher's style of "apologetics."
Before I leave the Aramaic issue, at least one more observation is in order. Hatcher and Shea--both of whom probably lack the linguistic credentials to speak with authority--claim that the Aramaic in Daniel was stylistically a type that was used prior to the 2nd century B. C. Whether this is true or not, I'm not qualified to say. I know only that some Aramaic scholars dispute this claim, and I would think that scholars of the stature of Rowley and Porteous would have good reasons for doing so. For the sake of argument, however, let's assume that the traditionalists are right and that the Aramaic in Daniel was indeed a type that was used earlier than the 2nd century B. C. Even if that were the case, it wouldn't prove that Daniel had to have been written prior to the Maccabean period. To understand why, all one has to do is realize that if Daniel were indeed written in the 2nd century, then it was a forgery intended to make readers believe that a 6th-century prophet had foreseen the events of that period. In order to give credibility to the forgery, the writer would have been intelligent enough to realize that he would have to imitate the language of the period in which the book claimed that it was written. If, for example, I should undertake to forge a document that purported to be from the early 17th century, I would know that I would have to us thou, thee, thy, and thine instead of the current you, your, and yours. I would also know that I needed to use obsolete words like divers in the sense of various or many, meet in the sense of fitting or appropriate, espy in the sense of glimpse or catch sight of, etc. I would know that the spelling of words still in use today and the styling of the letters would have to imitate 17th century orthography and calligraphy. Without attention to these and other details, the forgery would fool no one.
Are we to assume that those who forged documents in ancient times didn't have the same common sense? To ask this is not to beg the question of whether Daniel is indeed a forgery but to point out that if it is, the forger would surely have known that he had to imitate the linguistic features and quirks that 6th-century Aramaic was known to have. It certainly isn't hard to imagine that a 2nd-century scribe undertaking to forge a document would have been familiar with the language of the earlier period in which he wanted his readers to think he had lived. It seems rather simplistic, then, to argue that because the language of Daniel resembles pre-Maccabean Aramaic--if indeed it does--it had to have been written prior to the 2nd-century B. C. This argument fails to take into consideration the possibility of deliberate linguistic deception. At any rate, the Aramaic issue is one that Hatcher and I should leave to those who are expert enough to speak with authority on the subject.
Available space in this issue will not allow me to reply to all of Hatcher's repeated appeals to authority, so I am going to address just one more of his quotations that argued by mere assertion and then reply in a later issue to the few that did attempt to support the assertions. Hatcher quoted Stephen Miller's commentary on Daniel, which said, "To suggest that any semi-educated Jew of the Maccabean period could be ignorant of the fact that it was Cyrus the Persian who conquered the great Babylonian Empire and allowed the Jewish captives to return to their homeland is not reasonable" (quoted p. 3, this issue). In support of this assertion, all Miller said (at least in the part that Hatcher quoted) was that the book of Ezra would have been "at the writer's disposal" and that it "specifically declares that Cyrus released the Jews from captivity in Babylon." Yes, the book of Ezra does state that Cyrus released the captives, but it does not specifically state that Cyrus had captured Babylon. Miller's proof, then, amounts to no proof at all, because the issue is not whether a 2nd-century B. C. forger knew that Cyrus had released the captives but whether this forger knew that Cyrus had captured the Babylonian empire. Since Miller, Hatcher, *et al* have yet to produce any convincing evidence that the writer of Daniel knew that Cyrus captured Babylon, they have yet to give anything remotely resembling a satisfactory explanation to the problem of why a member of the royal Babylonian court would have said that "Darius the Mede" had received the kingdom [of Babylon]. So Miller winds up arguing that whereas it is "not reasonable" to think that any semi-educated Jew of the Maccabean period could have been ignorant of the fact that Cyrus the Persian had conquered Babylon, it is apparently quite reasonable to think that a high official in the Babylonian court would not have known this or at least was so linguistically inept that he could not clearly communicate who the conqueror was.
I'll continue my reply to Hatcher in the next issue, after
which he may respond if he agrees to reply with argumentation and not
appeals to inerrantist writers who agree with him. We didn't need him
to tell us that there are evangelical writers who agree with him; we
already knew that. What we want from him are arguments that give
reasonable support for what these writers claim.
