In taking up the crusade to prove the 6th-century B. C. authorship of the book of Daniel, Michael Bradford has done no more than recycle the same speculative arguments that biblical fundamentalists have traditionally resorted to in the absence of any reliable evidence to sustain their position. They argue that Darius the Mede could have been a real person who just wasn't mentioned in any of the extrabiblical records that have survived that era. Absence of evidence, they love to riposte, doesn't constitute evidence of absence. They argue that Darius the Mede could have been one of Cyrus's generals, such as Gobryas, who was put in charge of Babylon after its capture. The fact that there are no records in which Gobryas was ever referred to as "Darius the Mede" or a "king" doesn't faze biblical inerrantists, because... the absence of evidence doesn't constitute evidence of absence. Inerrantists have speculated that Darius the Mede could have been Astyages, the last Median king, or Cyaxares II, who some think was Cyrus's uncle, but again there are no records to support these assumptions. They have even argued that Darius the Mede could have been just another name for Cyrus himself. In all of their speculations, inerrantists cannot cite any hard evidence to sustain any of these "solutions" to the problem of the mysterious Darius the Mede, but that doesn't bother them. To understand why, one must understand the mind of the biblical inerrantist. A typical inerrantist thinks that as long as he has proposed how something could have been, which would remove a discrepancy, he believes that he has explained away the problem, because... the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Never mind that this kind of "argumentation" could be used by believers in any holy book to make them inerrant too. Inerrantists are firmly committed to the premise that absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence, but they have no use at all for the axiom that says what proves too much proves nothing at all. Inerrantists, in a word, are not a bit bashful about engaging in flagrant special pleading.
In a letter on page 14 of this issue, Bradford acknowledged that much of his article was speculation, so I assume he will agree that there is no need for me to keep rehashing replies I have already made to the speculative arguments that inerrantists typically resort to in their quest to prove that the author of Daniel was a 6th-century B. C. Hebrew official in the Babylonian court. In the part of his article that Bradford said wasn't speculation, he claimed that he had illustrated "within the text [that] it is obvious that Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian empire in 539 B. C.," so in this reply, I will concentrate on showing that this too is speculation, because the text of Daniel "illustrates" no such thing.
A review of Bradford's "dispensational exegesis" of Daniel will show that he bases his claim to the existence of a "Medo-Persian" empire on Daniel's vision in 8:3-7, where he saw a ram with two horns (one higher than the other) that pushed "westward, northward, and southward, so that no animal could withstand him" until a "male goat came from the west, across the surface of the earth," broke the two horns of the ram, and trampled him to the ground. Bradford sees evidence of a "Medo-Persian" empire in Gabriel's interpretation of this vision in which he said, "The ram that you saw having the two horns--they are the kings of Media and Persia" (v: 20). Literally, the text reads, "The ram that you saw the kings of Media and Persia" (Hendrickson's). The verb to be [are] is not in the main clause, so this raises a question of interpretation. Did the writer mean to say, "The ram that you saw is the kings of Media and Persia," or did he mean to say that the "horns are the kings of Media and Persia"? Obviously, Bradford wants it to mean the former, but there are better reasons to think that he meant to say that the horns were the kings of Media and Persia.
First of all, we have to wonder why the writer didn't say that the ram was the kings of Medo-Persia if he meant for the ram itself to symbolize a combined Medo-Persian empire. Why did he clearly distinguish between the Medes and the Persians as he consistently did throughout the book? In his interpretation of the handwriting on the wall, Daniel told Belshazzar that his kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and the Per- sians (5:28), so he had previously spoken of Media and Persia as separate kingdoms. If the writer knew that there was at that time a combined "Medo-Persian" empire, this would have been an excellent opportunity for him to say that the kingdom was being given to the Medo- Persians, but he didn't say that. He said that the kingdom would be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. In other words, Daniel's interpretation of the writing was that part of Babylonia would be given to the Medes, and part of it would be given to the Persians, and so the interpretation indicated that the writer thought that Media and Persia were separate kingdoms that would divide the territory of Babylonia between them. Bradford has yet to show us in what sense Daniel meant that the Babylonian kingdom would be divided if he thought that the whole kingdom was going to be absorbed by a combined "Medo-Persian" empire.
Bradford should consider the significance of the word divide in Daniel's interpretation of the handwriting. There is no way for Bradford to make sense of the word if he sticks to his claim that the book of Daniel was written by a 6th-century B. C. official who knew that the Babylonian empire had fallen in one swoop to a combined "Medo-Persian" kingdom, but usage of the word can easily be explained by the theory that Daniel was written well after the 6th century by an author who was familiar with the Jewish scriptures of the time but not so knowledgeable of Babylonian history.
Why would knowledge of Jewish scriptures account for a historical mistake like this? In my replies to Bradford and Hatcher, I have pointed out that both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that Babylon would be overthrown by the Medes, who at the time these prophetic books were written seemed to be the most likely adversary capable of conquering a nation as powerful as Babylonia. Isaiah's "burden" against Babylon began at chapter 13, where he launched into a typical prophetic tirade against the Babylonian threat to Israel. "The day of Yahweh is at hand," he proclaimed. "It will come as destruction from the Almighty" (v:6). Beginning at verse 17, he identified the Medes as the instrument that Yahweh would use to bring about Babylon's destruction.
Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them [the Babylonians], who will not regard silver; and as for gold, they will not delight in it. Also their bows will dash the young men to pieces, and they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb. Their eye will not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans' pride will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation, nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there. But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and their houses will be full of owls. Ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. The hyenas will howl in their citadels, and jackals in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged (vs: 17-22).
This was obviously a prophecy predicting a complete and permanent destruction of Babylon. The prediction was that the destruction was imminent (near to come, v:22) and that the destruction would be done by the Medes (I will stir up the Medes against them, v:17).
Jeremiah was just as specific in his prophecy against Babylon. A total and complete destruction of Babylon was predicted in 50:8-46, a passage too long to quote, and in chapter 51, he repeated the prophecy even more graphically and identified the Medes as the instrument of Yahweh's wrath against Babylon.
Verse 11: Yahweh has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes. For his plan is against Babylon to destroy it, because it is the vengeance of Yahweh, the vengeance for his temple....
Verses 28-29: Prepare against her [Babylon] the nations. With the kings of the Medes, its governors and all its rulers, all the land of his dominion. And the land will tremble and sorrow; for every purpose of Yahweh shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant.
Without a doubt, the prophets of the Old Testament predicted that Babylon would be utterly destroyed by the Medes. It didn't happen, but those with an in- spired-word-of-God mentality just can't admit that the prophecy failed. Even today, biblical inerrantists will twist themselves into all kinds of verbal knots to find amazing prophecy fulfillment in the conquest and eventual abandonment of Babylon. The fact that the conquest and destruction of Babylon weren't done by the Medes (who had been conquered themselves before the downfall of Babylon) is of little consequence to biblical inerrantists. They will quibble that the Medes were only symbolic of the nation that God would use to overthrow Babylon, and so the prophecy was still fulfilled by a nation that God had "stirred up" against this powerful enemy of Israel.
Now if biblicists today will rationalize to this extreme in order to cling to their belief that whatever a prophet of God had predicted was surely fulfilled, why should we think that a second-century B. C. believer in the divine inspiration of the Jewish scriptures would have reasoned any differently? A writer of that era who knew what the sacred scriptures of his people had prophesied but was not so well informed in Babylonian history would have naturally assumed that what Isaiah and Jeremiah had prophesied about Babylon had surely come to pass. Hence, in his mind Babylon had fallen to the Medes, and so he made the conqueror of Babylon "Darius the Mede."
This is a much more reasonable explanation for the writer's use of the word divided in his interpretation of the handwriting on the wall in chapter five than the fundamentalist view that Daniel meant that a "Medo- Persian" empire existed at this time, which would annex all of the Babylonian empire. The division of territo- ry conquered by allied kingdoms was not uncommon in those days, just as it isn't uncommon today. The Medes had, in fact, formed an alliance with Babylonia against the Assyrians in 614 B. C., and the capture of Nineveh in 612 B. C. for all intents and purposes ended the Assyrian Empire, which held on to Haran for two more years under the leadership of Ashur-uballit, but it too fell to the Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians in 609 (New Bible Dictionary, Inter-Varsity Press, 1994, p. 101). The fall of the Assyrian Empire, however, did not result in the formation of a Medo-Babylonian king- dom. The conquered territories were simply divided by the allied forces. An awareness of this custom of dividing conquered territories would logically explain why the writer of Daniel had interpreted the handwrit- ing on the wall to mean that Belshazzar's kingdom would be divided between the Medes and the Persians rather than given to the "Medo-Persians." The interpretation allowed the writer to see the downfall of Babylon as a fulfillment of what he considered divine prophecies that the Medes would destroy Babylon.
Bradford can argue that this too is speculation, but it is at least an educated speculation based on what is known from extrabiblical records: (1) Conquered territories were divided between the allied forces that had defeated the previous holders. (2) The Medes were defeated and annexed by Cyrus in 550 B. C., eleven years before the fall of Babylon. (3) The Persians, not the Medes, conquered Babylon. (4) Cyrus ruled in Babylon in 539/538 B. C. and then moved his royal residence to the old Median city of Ecbatana at the end of his accession year (Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987, p. 251). These are points that are corroborated by contemporary extrabiblical records and do not depend on assumptions buttressed only by rationalizing that the absence of evidence [that these things happened] does not constitute evidence of absence [that they didn't happen]. The sensibleness of this interpretation is supported by additional reasons why one should interpret the "kings of Media and Persia" as the horns on the ram rather than the ram itself.
The consistency of the symbol: Throughout Daniel's visions that concerned "beasts," horns were used to symbolize kings. In chapter seven, for example, Daniel had seen a fourth beast that had ten horns among which a little horn sprang up and plucked up three of the other horns by the roots (vs:7-8). The little horn had a mouth that spoke great things and made war against the saints (vs:20-21), and beginning in verse 23, Daniel was given the interpretation of the vision: "The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, trample it and break it in pieces. The ten horns are ten kings who shall arise from this kingdom. And another shall rise after them. He shall be different from the first ones, and shall subdue three kings. He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law." In this case, the symbolic intention of the horns in the vision were explained by the writer himself. They represented kings that would arise from a fourth world empire.
A part of Daniel's vision in chapter 8 was a male goat that came from the west and had "a notable horn between his eyes" (v:5). The goat attacked the ram, broke his two horns, trampled him into the ground, and then grew "very great," but after he had become strong, the goat's large horn was broken and four "notable ones came up toward the four winds of heaven. Then out of one of these horns came a "little horn which grew exceedingly great" (vs:6-9). In verse 21, the writer began an interpretation of this part of the vision: "And the male goat is the kingdom of Greece. The large horn that is between its eyes is the first king. As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power." He then continued to explain that in the "latter time" of the divided kingdom, a king would arise who had "fierce features," and this king was undoubtedly the one who had been symbolized by the "little horn" that came up from one of the four that sprouted after the notable horn was broken off. If Bradford has done any research at all in the visions of Daniel, he surely knows that there is a general scholarly consensus that the male goat represented the Grecian empire and that its "notable horn" was Alexander the Great. Of this there can be little doubt, because the writer clearly said that the male goat was the kingdom of Greece (v:21) and that the horn between its eyes was "the first king" (v:21). There is no need to rehash what I have already said in my re- plies to Everette Hatcher when I discussed the reasons why scholars think that the four horns that came up after the breaking of the notable one were Alexander's generals who became kings upon the division of the Grecian empire and that the little horn that grew out of one of them was Antiochus Epiphanes ("Good History in the Book of Daniel," TSR, September/October 1998, pp. 9-11,16). The important point to notice here is that the writer consistently used horns to symbolize kings, so this is a convincing reason why we should understand that the horns on the ram and not the ram itself represented the kings of Media and Persia: "The ram that you saw having the two horns--they are the kings of Media and Persia" (8: 20).
Before looking at other reasons why the horns and not the ram should be seen as the kings, I need to address a complaint that Bradford or Hatcher or Hutchinson or someone will surely make: if the male goat symbolized the kingdom of Greece, as the writer said in 8:21, then why should the ram not symbolize a single empire that was ruled by Median and Persian kings? The best answer I know to give to this is that the writer said that the male goat was the kingdom of Greece and that the different horns were its kings. He also said that the fourth beast in his vision in chapter seven was a fourth kingdom that would arise (v:23) and that its ten horns were ten kings that would arise (v:24). In other words, the writer himself said that the fourth beast and the male goat represented kingdoms, but he nowhere indicated or even hinted that the ram itself symbolized a single kingdom. He indicated only that the horns were the kings of Media and Persia. Furthermore, even though the writer said that the male goat was the Grecian kingdom, he clearly indicated that the four horns that came up in place of the notable one were kings who would arise in the "four kingdoms" that would come "out of that nation" (v:22). In reality, then, the male goat didn't represent just one kingdom but five, the Grecian kingdom and the four that would follow the break up of Alexander's kingdom. Therefore, if Bradford wants to insist that the ram represented a single kingdom, he must recognize that the symbol of the male goat would provide a visionary precedent for a single kingdom's breaking into different kingdoms, whose kings were represented by horns. There is no reason, then, to think that the ram represented a single "Medo-Persian" empire. The ram's horns represented the kings of Media and Persia, so one horn was Media, and the other one was Persia.
Even the descriptive language of the vision supports this interpretation of the horns: "Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and there, standing beside the river, was a ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last" (8:3). The fact that both horns were high would symbolically express power, and the one that was higher than the other would suggest that the power of this king was greater than the king represented by the other horn. The higher horn also "came up last," so the imagery here is consistent with known historical facts about the kingdoms of Media and Persia. Media was a powerful kingdom that had allied itself with Babylon to conquer Assyrian and then divide its territory, but Persia had later conquered Media under the leadership of Cyrus and absorbed its territory. Quite naturally, then, the power of Persia was greater than the power of Media, so in that sense, the horn that had come up last was higher than the first horn, but obviously the two horns were separate from each other, just as Media and Persia had been separate kingdoms.
This symbolic interpretation of the horns on the ram is also consistent with Daniel's interpretation of the great image that Nebuchadnezzar had seen in his dream (2:31-45). The image had had a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, and legs of iron with feet that were part iron and part clay (vs:32-35). In his interpretation of the dream, Daniel said that the different metals in the image represented four kingdoms and that Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold (v:38). Daniel said that after Nebuchadnezzar an "inferior" kingdom would arise, which would have been symbolized by the silver, and then a third "kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth" would follow the second kingdom (v:39). Finally, a kingdom as strong as iron would arise, which like iron would break in pieces and crush all the other kingdoms (v:40). When Daniel's interpretation of this dream and the visions he himself saw in chapters 7-9 are considered together, the most sensible interpretation of these four kingdoms is that the gold symbolized the Babylonian empire, the silver the Median empire, the brass the Persian empire, and the iron the Grecian empire. Biblical fundamentalists like Bradford, however, desperately want the fourth kingdom (iron) to be the Roman Empire, so I need to cite textual support for the view that the fourth kingdom was the kingdom of Greece.
The feet of iron mixed with clay: In his interpretation of the great image, Daniel explained the meaning of the feet that were made of both iron and clay.
Whereas you [Nebuchadnezzar] saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile (2:41-42).
The fourth kingdom, then, would be an unstable one that would become "divided," and this imagery aptly describes what happened to the Grecian Empire after the death of Alexander. It was divided among four of his generals.
The continuation of the four-kingdom scenario in Daniel's own visions that came later gives strong support for the view that the fourth kingdom of iron and clay was the Grecian empire. In chapter seven, Daniel saw "four great beasts [that] came up from the sea, each different from the other (v:3). The first three beasts were described quickly in only three verses (a single verse for each beast), but the writer then devoted the rest of the chapter (21 verses) to describing and discussing the fourth beast. This is a clear indication that the fourth beast was the focal point of the writer's interest. This beast was described as "dreadful and terrible" and was "exceedingly strong" with "huge iron teeth (v:7). It had ten horns, and while Daniel was "considering the horns," another horn, "a little one" came up among the others and plucked up three of the bigger horns (vs: 7-8). Daniel was told that the four beasts were four kings that would arise out of the earth (v:17), and he expressed a desire to "know the truth about the fourth beast" and the ten horns that were on its head and the other horn that came up before which three horns fell (vs:19-20). Obviously, then, the writer's primary interest was in this fourth beast or kingdom. That interest can be explained by something that Daniel said in his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream when he identified the iron legs, with feet of iron and clay, on the "great image" that Nebuchadnezzar had seen in his dream. This "iron" kingdom was also the fourth kingdom in the dream, and Daniel said that "in the days of these kings [of the fourth or iron kingdom] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed" (2:44). This was why the focus of chapter 7 was on the fourth beast. It symbolized the kingdom in whose days the God of heaven would establish an everlasting kingdom, so naturally Daniel's focus would be on it.
Much to the dismay of biblical fundamentalists who want this fourth kingdom to be the Roman Empire, there is no textual evidence to support that wish, because it is apparent to all who want to see the writer's intention that the iron kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the fourth beast in chapter seven were the same kingdom as the male goat in chapter 8. I really don't need to waste time on this point, because Bradford agreed in his article (January/February 2000) that the fourth kingdom in Daniel's vision of the four beasts was the same as the fourth or iron kingdom in Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
A reasonable postulate is that the fourth beast, with "huge iron teeth," is identical to the fourth kingdom, which is "as strong as iron." Granted this parallel, the kingdom of Babylon is the head of gold, as well as the lion with eagle's wings; the second kingdom is the chest and arms of silver, as well as the bear raised up on one side; and the third kingdom is the midsection of bronze, as well as the leopard (p. 2).
I concur with Bradford in his association of the four kingdoms in Daniel's vision with the four kingdoms in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, so all we need to do now is to determine the names of these kingdoms. In his interpretation of the dream, Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold (2:38), so the first kingdom in the dream and the first kingdom in Daniel's vision were the Babylonian empire. All we need to do now is make a reasonable interpretation of what the second, third, and fourth kingdoms were.
The key to determining this lies in the visions of the ram and the male goat in chapter 8. The voice of "the holy one" who interpreted this dream said, as already noted, that the horns on the ram were the kings of Media and Persia (v:20) and that the male goat was the kingdom of Greece, whose notable horn was its first king (v:21). Since no other visions concerning great "kingdoms" were seen after the vision of the male goat, this gives a good reason to interpret the goat as the fourth kingdom in both Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's chapter-seven vision. The fourth kingdom, then, was the kingdom of Greece. If the first kingdom was the Babylonian Empire and the fourth the Grecian Empire, the second and third kingdoms were surely the Midian Empire and the Persian Empire, seen by Daniel as separate kingdoms rather than one "Medo-Persian" empire. If this is not the case and the second empire was, as Bradford and Hatcher have claimed, a combined "Medo-Persian empire, then we have a missing kingdom. The Babylonian was the first, the Grecian the fourth, and the Medo-Persian the second, so what happened to the missing empire?
I submit that this is the likely meaning of Daniel's four
kingdoms. Space won't allow me to show how that scholarly consensus
agrees with this interpretation, but if Bradford wants to disagree with
my identification of the kingdoms, we can continue the discussion
later. I predict he will have trouble finding the missing kingdom if he
continues to claim that the second one was "Medo-Persia."
