Quote:
Originally Posted by Dedicated Mind
pel, can I ask you what you think about scholarly dating of the books of the bible? I've heard professors give daniel a late date because he is so accurate about the history of the kings after alexander's empire breaks up. I found that scholars don't believe in prophecy so they give a later date to the writing. Also in the nt, the fall of jerusalem is not mentioned except for luke saying the roman armies will surrond the city, so scholars give luke a later date. here again they don't believe in prophecy. what do you think of these later dates? is there any significance to scholarly dating? thanks for sharing any info.
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In the case of Luke, Luke doesn't say that it will be the Roman army that surrounds Jerusalem and Jerusalem has been surrounded by quite a number of different armies leading all the way up to the modern state of Israel since the time of Jesus Christ. So, even an atheist would have to concede that Luke's warning was "prophetic" in some sense. Attempting to date the Gospel of Luke to a post-70 A.D. time frame based solely upon this is kind of shaky, imho.
Daniel is a notoriously complicated and complex book. I suppose that's one reason why it's also so popular. There is a popular ancient literary genre whereby an author gives an
historical account of events that have already happened and places those events in the context of a "god" or other supernatural being either having predicted them or otherwise assuring the reader that "everything's in control."
I don't know that parts of Daniel fit this category, however, if they did, it would
not be an argument against their being inspired. It would just be a placement of the material within a specific literary genre.
That is one of the problems I had with Fundamentalism. It required that everything be taken so very literally that when other facts showed the interpretation to be wrong, people would lose faith in the Bible instead of losing faith in Fundamentalism. It's always quite possible that we may be wrong about something the Bible says or even simply,
the way the Bible says something, but that will only mean that
we are wrong and not the Bible itself.
Fundamentalism just ended up being a short cut to actually having to think about things and all too often, a faith destroying methodology. When I started asking myself, "What if the Bible is true but these guys (Fundamentalists) are wrong?" I found my faith joyously renewed. I also found myself shut out of quite a few pulpits where I had at one time been welcomed, but that's just the way things go.
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