Prophecies of Daniel.

[Aractus]

I've been told something a long the lines that Daniel makes predictions that are very specific. Those predictions happened in history. And that the intellectual theory before was that those were added to Daniel AFTER the events unfolded. Only thing is they found the dead sea scrolls in which the book of Daniel is found (ie. with these predictions).

I'm not sure of the details of the arguments for and against this are, the exact prophecies that suppose to have come true, etc...

Good question, although you worded it in a confusing way!

Daniel is one of the last of the OT books to be written. It has traditionally been dated using textual criticism - ie loanwords and expressions that date to a specific century or time bracket. The issue here is two-fold as to how it has been criticised.

1. Claims were made that Daniel was not originally written in Hebrew, but in Aramaic and sections were translated in order to make it appear more authentic.

Daniel is unique in being that a large section of the text - indeed the majority - is in Aramaic and not Hebrew. It begins in Hebrew, switches to Aramaic partway through verse 2:4 and then back to Hebrew at chapter 8 for the remainder of the book.

Hebrew and Aramaic share the same alphabet, so in written form they're very similar anyway.

2. Claims were made that Daniel was not accepted as Scripture until as late as 2nd century BC or possibly later still.

The Dead Sea Scrolls provide very valuable information. The first thing you have to realize is that the DSS are sectarian in nature, thus they contain a very large amount of non-biblical works and they contain paleo-Hebrew script. They also contain up to around 40% or so of the Old Testament biblical texts, again, in paleo-Hebrew script.

In total, eight manuscripts for the book of Daniel have been identified amongst the DSS manuscripts. Together they contain most of the book.

1Q71 and 4Q112 contain the relevant section in chapter two where the language switches from Hebrew to Aramaic.

4Q112 also contains the relevant section from the end of chapter 7 and beginning of chapter 8 where the language switches from Aramaic to Hebrew.

4Q113 confirms the change in language (although among the pieces of it, it doesn't have the very end of chapter 7).

4Q114 contains parts of Daniel 10 and 11 and dates to the 2nd century BC. The rest of the mss date from first century BC to first century AD.

The existence of 4Q114 confirms that Daniel must have been well established scripture well before the 2nd century BC, and thus refutes the theory that Daniel was written in the mid-2nd century BC. A total of Eight copies of Daniel were found, at least Seven of which originally contained the whole book of Daniel, the Eighth may have originally only contained the prayer that was found on it. To find seven copies means that the content must have been valuable to have invested in creating seven copies of the work. Parchment (animal hides) was not a cheaply available commodity, and scribes were not cheaply employed labour either, so creating copies was expensive. Finding evidence that they had 7 or more complete copies of the book means it was quite valuable to them.

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