Near the end of his article in the March/April issue, Everette Hatcher justified his excessive appeals to authority on the grounds that he is "not an archaeologist or a linguist" (p.6), and so he "must use authorities in his articles." There is nothing at all wrong with "us[ing] authorities" in an article if it is done in the right way. A skilled debater will present his case through the development of his own arguments after which he may want to refer to a few experts to show that his position is in agreement with what recognized authorities have said, but if the debater does little more than just quote expert after expert and cite reference book after reference book without attempting to show that the opinions of the experts are based on sound evidence, the appeal to authorities becomes both abusive and fallacious. If Hatcher doesn't consider himself qualified enough in archaeology or linguistics to articulate his own arguments, then he should leave the apologetics to those who can.
That Hatcher made excessive appeals to authority without trying to support the opinions of his "scholars" with logical argumentation can be seen by just glancing through his article. It is filled from end to end with long columns of italicized book titles and the indented small-print paragraphs where long quotations were cited. I did a computer analysis of Hatcher's article and found that it contained 6,671 words. An article this long would be tedious reading even if it contained no other distractions, but when I blocked off all of the places where Hatcher had listed columns of books and articles or quoted from some authority he was appealing to, my computer showed that 4,332 words were used in these sections. In other words, almost two thirds of the article consisted of nothing but quoting authors or listing columns of books and articles. The result was a very tedious and boring article to read, whose unconvincing approach to persuasion was easily recognized by those who know that simply appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. As some of the letters in this issue (pp. 12-13) will show, if Hatcher had hoped to sway the opinion of TSR readers with an impressive array of quotations and book titles, he failed.
I want Hatcher and other potential contributors of articles to understand that I am not exercising editorial authority to forbid the use of quotations and the citation of reference books and articles. I'm just asking those who submit articles to understand that there is more to persuasive writing than the mere quoting of authorities in agreement with the position being defended. If an authority is cited, the writer should, at the very least, attempt to show why the quoted opinion should be considered correct. In going through Hatcher's article, I found constant expressions like "the critic Jeffrey states," "the critic John Goldingay admits," "the critic W. H. Brownlee asserted," "the critic Brian E. Colless concluded," "even the critic John Day admits," "other critics agree," "no wonder the critic Philip R. Davies concluded," etc., etc., etc. In most of these instances, Hatcher merely quoted what these critics had "stated" or "admitted" or "concluded" or "agreed" without any attempt at all to justify through argumentation what they had said, and in all but a few of these references, not enough was said for readers to understand why critic so-and-so had said or concluded whatever was quoted. That is not a proper use of references; it is a flagrant appeal to authorities intended to sway readers into thinking that they should fall in line with Hatcher because so many "scholars" seem to be on his side. But it didn't work. Most TSR readers understand that even though Hatcher can cite authorities who think that the writer of Daniel understood that Babylon fell to the Persians, there are nevertheless many reputable scholars who think that the writer believed that Babylon fell to the Medes. The same is true of just about any other authority he can cite. Can Hatcher cite authorities who think that the Aramaic style in Daniel indicates a 6th-century B. C. authorship? Well, I can cite authorities who think that the Aramaic style indicates a later authorship. Can Hatcher cite authorities who think that the writer of Daniel showed an accurate knowledge of Babylonian and Persian history? I can cite authorities who think that he didn't. In other words, a war of "my scholars" against "your scholars" is not going to settle anything. The readers of this debate are interested in seeing a defense of Hatcher's reasons for accepting the 6th-century B. C. authorship of Daniel, not in seeing how many "scholars" he can cite who agree with his position.
How long was required for manuscripts to be recognized as "scripture"? Here and there in Hatcher's comments and occasionally even in his quotations, there were at least some weak attempts to defend the traditional dating of Daniel with argumentation, and these deserve replies, which I will now attend to. Taking a cue from his "critics," Hatcher argued that the discovery of fragments of Daniel among the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered at Qumran must be regarded as evidence that Daniel was written well before the 2nd century B. C. His argument seemed to be that (1) the oldest of these fragments of Daniel has been dated by Frank Cross at "the late 2nd century B. C.," (2) this would be "no more than about a half century younger than the original autograph" [if it were indeed written around 164 B. C. as liberal critics claim], but (3) the Qumran community would not have accepted Daniel "as Scripture only fifty years after its composition" ( March/April 1999, p. 3).
When Hatcher quoted authorities, he usually just stated their opinions without making any effort to defend their conclusions, and he has done the same here. He simply recycled an argument that he found in the writings of DiLella and Collins, but he made no effort at all to show that their conclusion necessarily follows from their premises. Why would writings have to be older than 50 years before people would accept them as "scripture"? Hatcher didn't say; he just made the assertion and then moved on. How long had the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah existed before they were accepted as scripture? We don't know, but if the book of Jeremiah is to be trusted, he was a respected and feared prophet in his own lifetime, whose opinion was sought by the rulers of Judah (38:24-28). Prior to this, Jeremiah claimed that a scroll he had written so impressed a temple leader that he had it read in the presence of the scribes and princes of Judah, who then sent it to the king and had it read in his presence (chapter 36), so if the Bible is to be trusted, Hatcher should recognize that the writings of some prophets were highly respected within the lifetimes of their authors.
On page 13 of this issue, there is a letter from Richard Packham, which responded to Hatcher's 50-year argument by showing the rapidity with which the Book of Mormon was accepted by thousands as scripture within a matter of just a few years. Now, only 170 years later, there are millions all over the world who believe that the Book of Mormon is inspired scripture, and this has all happened in a time when people were far more educated than they were in the 2nd century B. C. I could cite other examples of people like Ellen G. White, Mary Baker Eddy, and Ron Hubbard, whose writings were venerated almost immediately by their followers, so if Hatcher expects us to see any merit in his argument, he is going to have to do much more than just arbitrarily declare that Jews would not have accepted Daniel as "scripture" in just 50 years.
Furthermore, he needs to explain why the presence of fragments from Daniel in the discoveries at Qumran would necessarily prove that the community of Jews there had accepted this book as inspired scriptures. The Dead Sea Scrolls did not consist of just copies of Old Testament books. Other works were in the Qumran library, so there is no reason to believe that they considered everything they copied to be "scripture."
What did Maccabean Jews know about 6th-century Babylon? In an attempt to deny that the writer of Daniel thought that Babylon had fallen to the Medes, Hatcher recycled Stephen Miller's claim that it is "unreasonable" even 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" ( March/April 1999, p. 3), but to see the flaw in this argument, we have only to consider the political ignorance of many of our more educated contemporaries. Does Hatcher think that just any "semi-educated" American living today would know who was president of the United States during World War II? The Spanish American War? The war with Mexico? The Great Depression? When I was teaching college writing, I would sometimes give current-event tests and use the results to impress on students that they could probably write more intelligently if they would try to stay informed by just reading daily newspapers and watching TV news. Those tests would repeatedly show that many students didn't even know simple things like who the current governor of the state or vice president of the United States was, and these were people living in a time when mass-media communication systems make information easily accessible. In the letters column of this issue (pp. 12-13), David Mooney discussed this same issue and mentioned a survey he recalled that showed many people didn't know basic facts about the American Revolution, which happened only 223 years ago. Maccabean Jews would have been almost four centuries removed from the fall of the Babylonian empire, so it is pure speculation to say that in a time when there were no publishing companies or news media like what we have today, even "semi-educated" Jews would have known that Cyrus had captured Babylon. The truth is that there is no way that either Miller or Hatcher can know what "semi-educated" Maccabean Jews would or would not have known about an empire that had ceased to exist 400 years earlier. This is just another apologetic assertion for which they offer no supporting evidence.
The availability of the book of Ezra. Miller also argued that if Daniel had indeed been written in the 2nd century B. C., the author would have had the book of Ezra at his "disposal" to know that Cyrus was the Persian emperor who "had released the Jews from captivity in Babylon" (p. 3). There are three problems with this "argument." First, the issue of historical inaccuracy in the book of Daniel doesn't concern whether the author knew that Cyrus was the emperor who had released the Jews from captivity, because the book of Daniel closed with no mentioning of Cyrus's decree to allow the Jews to return to their homeland. The issue centers on the writer's apparent belief that Babylon had fallen to the Medes rather than the Persians. Second, the book of Ezra opens with a statement about a decree that Cyrus issued in the first year of his reign to allow the Jews to return home, but I know of nothing in Ezra that refers to the actual fall of Babylon. How, then could familiarity with this book have enabled the writer of Daniel to know that the Persians (Cyrus) and not the Medes (Darius) were the actual conquerors of Babylon? Third, it is merely an assumption that a 2nd-century B. C. author would have had access to the book of Ezra. Hatcher seems not to be familiar with critical works that consider the two Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah the work of a single author, who compiled them as a continuous narrative at some time between the 4th and 2nd centuries B. C. Some think that this work was done even as late as the 1st century. I am making no claims about the dating of Ezra and the other three books; I am simply pointing out that there are critical opinions about Ezra, which if right, dispute Miller's claim that a 2nd-century B. C. author of Daniel would have had access to the book of Ezra. Hatcher has recycled this argument, so it is his responsibility to prove that Ezra had been completed by 164 B. C. and had been copied and circulated extensively enough that whoever wrote Daniel at this time would have had the book available to him.
I see no way that Hatcher could possibly prove this, but there is textual evidence in Ezra and Daniel that does serious damage to this speculative argument that Hatcher has borrowed from Miller. As I noted above, the book of Ezra opens with a reference to the decree that Cyrus issued in the first year of his reign to permit the Judean captives to return to their homeland to rebuild the temple.
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order that the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom, and also in a written edict declared: "Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people--may their God be with them--are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel" (Ezra 1:1-3).
Ezra claimed that this decree was issued in the first year of Cyrus's reign, yet the writer of Daniel made no reference to it. That's strange indeed, because if, as Hatcher alleges, this writer knew that Babylon had fallen to Cyrus, why did the book of Daniel never refer to this decree? The book claims that after Babylon fell, Daniel was made an important official in the new government (Dan. 6:1-3), so if Darius the Mede was really Cyrus, as Hatcher absurdly claimed (a point I will address later), then Daniel would have been an official in Cyrus's government during the first year of his reign, the very time that Ezra said Cyrus issued the decree noted above, but Daniel never referred to it. Why? Hatcher can't argue that the book of Daniel closed before the issuance of this decree, because in 10:1, the writer of Daniel referred to a vision that he received in the third year of "Cyrus king of Persia."
From Daniel's silence about Cyrus's decree, we can reasonably reach two conclusions: (1) It is unlikely that this book was written by a 6th-century B. C. Jew who was an important official in Cyrus's government, because such an official would have surely known about the royal decree to let the Jewish captives return to Jerusalem, and would have mentioned it. (2) If the author lived later than the 6th century, he probably was unfamiliar with Ezra, or he would surely have made some reference to Cyrus's decree, which is not only mentioned but quoted in the opening paragraph of this book. To say the least, Hatcher's argument based on availability of the book of Ezra has some holes in it that he needs to plug.
Darius the Mede again: Daniel's reference to "Darius the Mede's" reign in Babylon prior to the reign of Cyrus continues to be a fly in Hatcher's 6th-century B. C. ointment. In the July/August 1998 issue of TSR, I pointed out that Daniel 9:1 referred to "Darius the Mede" as the "son of Ahasuerus" and then noted the serious historical blunder that the writer made in so describing Darius's ancestry, because Ahasuerus was the king of Persia from 485 to 465 B. C., which was over half a century after Daniel claimed that Darius the Mede had reigned in Babylon. So how likely is it that the "son" of a king would have reigned over 50 years before his father? Even if Hatcher tries to make son mean only "descendant" in this passage, he still has to explain how that a "descendant" could have reigned so many years before his "ancestor."
Ahasuerus was the son of Darius the Great, who was the son of Cambyses II, who was the son of Cyrus. In other words, Ahasuerus was the great-grandson of Cyrus, so if "Darius the Mede" was the son of Ahasuerus, this would have made him the great-great-grandson of Cyrus, and that would mean that the writer of Daniel somehow thought that the great-great-grandson of Cyrus had reigned in Babylon before Cyrus did. That's how confused the writer was about 6th-century B. C. Babylonian and Persian history.
How did Hatcher respond to this? I hope readers who still have their March/April issue of TSR will look on page 3 (middle column) and notice that he quoted the paragraph in which I originally presented the information about Ahasuerus and then waved it aside with, "The critic John Goldingay admits that `Ahasuerus' probably is a title and not a personal name." And that was all he said! He didn't try to explain why Goldingay "admits" this; he simply declared that he did and went on, as if he expected us to accept this just because a "critic" had said it. Well, I have consulted several Bible dictionaries and reference books and found none that said "Ahasuerus" was a title and not a personal name. They all identified Ahasuerus as the Persian king, who was known as Xerxes in Greek and who reigned from 485 to 465 B. C.
Hatcher introduced the book of Ezra into this controversy, so let's notice a passage in this book that shoots down his quibble that Ahasuerus was just a Persian title and not a name. The writer of this book discussed the opposition from surrounding areas that the Jewish repatriates experienced when they tried to rebuild the temple.
Then the people of the land tried to discourage the people of Judah. They troubled them in building, and hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius King of Persia.
In the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. In the days of Artaxerxes also, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabel, and the rest of their companions wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia (Ezra 4:4-6).
The writer of Ezra referred to four separate Persian kings in this passage: Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus, and Artaxerxes. The last three were direct descendant kings of the first. There is no dispute about whether Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes were names and not titles, so Hatcher's claim that Ahasuerus was a title of Persian kings and not a name will require him to give a plausible explanation for why the writer of Ezra in the passage above used names in referring to three Persian kings but for some reason used a "title" in referring to the fourth. Such a quibble as this only demonstrates the extremes that biblicists will go to in order to defend their inerrancy belief.
Dual titles? Hatcher resorted to a similar quibble to explain the "Darius the Mede" problem. "Many evangelicals," he said, "have put forth the theory that Darius is a title for Cyrus" ( March/ April, p. 4). He, of course, listed three writers who have "put forth" this theory, but the only support that he gave for the argument was the citation of a couple of scriptures that show that some biblical characters had two names. In both cases, however, the biblical text is rather clear in stating that these characters had dual names. Daniel and his three friends were one set of examples, but the Bible is very explicit in stating that Daniel was also given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar and that Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah were given the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan. 1:7). On the other hand, Hatcher can find no text that unequivocally says that Cyrus was also named Darius.
The best that Hatcher could do to support this quibble was to cite Daniel 6:28, which says that "Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." The quibble is that the Aramaic conjunction waw translated and in English versions really meant "even," and so the verse was actually saying that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." This, however, is far from an explicit passage where Cyrus was known by both the names Darius and Cyrus. I checked 25 different translations in my personal library, including one French version and two literal translations, and I found none that translated the waw conjunction with even. They all say that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. The version of the Jewish Publication Society rendered the verse like this: "Thus Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and during the reign of Cyrus the Persian." If there is any merit at all to Hatcher's quibble, it is certainly strange that so many translators failed to see the real meaning of this verse.
This "solution" to the Darius the Mede problem is weakened by three stubborn facts that Hatcher must confront: (1) As I have already noted, Daniel described "Darius the Mede" as the "son of Ahasuerus," and since his quibble that "Ahasuerus" was just a "title" failed to carry the day, Hatcher must explain how that Cyrus, if he was indeed the same person as "Darius the Mede," could have been the son of his great-grandson son. (2) Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 B. C., and Ahasuerus (as previously noted) reigned as king of Persia from 485 to 465 B. C., so if Cyrus and Darius were one and the same and if Darius (Cyrus) was the son of Ahasuerus, how was it possible that the son reigned as king of Persia over 50 years before his father did? (3) The writer of Daniel dated his visions with reference to the reigns of Darius and Cyrus. In 9:1 and 11:1, visions that Daniel had were both dated in the "first year of Darius"; in 10:1, a vision came to Daniel in the "third year of Cyrus." How does Hatcher explain this? If Darius and Cyrus were really the same person, why was there no explicit statement to that effect, as there was in 4:19, where the dual names of Daniel were clearly identified: "Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was stricken dumb...." Surely, if Darius and Cyrus were dual names for the same person, the writer would have given some such indication, but it was never done. The writer always dated his visions with references to the "first year of Darius" and the "third year of Cyrus," just as he had dated dreams prior to Babylon's fall in the "first" and "third" years of Belshazzar (7:1; 8:1). There is no reasonable explanation for why the writer of Daniel repeatedly referred to Darius and Cyrus by different names except that he thought that they were separate individuals. To quibble that Darius and Cyrus were dual names and "Ahasuerus" a title is not reasonable explanation; it is a grasping for just any straw in sight to defend a cherished inerrancy belief.
The question of when the book of Daniel was written is really rather minor to the issue of biblical inerrancy. What matters is whether the book is historically accurate, and in my final reply to Hatcher, I will review some discrepancies in Daniel that he has yet to resolve satisfactorily.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION: For a free subscription to The Skeptical Review, e-mail jftill@midwest.net or write to P. O. Box 717, Canton, IL 61520-0717.
Last updated: