In the mind of author James Carroll, on the other hand, the book of Daniel was “anonymously composed during the thick of the Maccabean war,” although it “pretends” to have been written much earlier.
It’s not like it’s uncommon for scholars to reject the Bible as God’s authoritative Word. But why won’t they just dismiss the book as a fraudulent work and walk away? Why is it so critical for them to put books like Daniel in another time period, as if composed by a phony?
They theorize about new time frames because of how accurate the books are prophetically!
Poor guy… trying… to make sense… but failing horribly so. Further, the purposed mischaracterizations are a little annoying.
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Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Preach it brother.
Can you provide more detail more on the “purposed mischaracterizations”?
And what informs your take?
Not trying to be snarky, just genuinely curious…
Understood –
For one, just in the part I quote -
That implies malicious intent.
Or this:
Biblical studies have actually informed my view, so that I look at authors, trends, and evidences.
Unfortunately this guy espouses a very common view. If the Bible is not 100% as we see it, then it is a lie.
The idea that there are more than two options — totally true or evil — doesn’t occur to a lot of people. That a book was written with good intentions (to inspire the Jews in the face of oppression) while at the same time being not a literal story about a historical figure, does not sit well with a lot of people.
The world of scholarship, if there is such a thing, needs to get the point across.