Prophecies of Daniel.

[Angrboda]

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...

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 [aka 4QDan(c) - apo] 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.

The figure I'm seeing repeated most places seems to indicate that 4QDan(c) was radiocarbon dated to 125 BCE.

Do you have any citations for a different date of the fragment based on physical evidence?


(Minor changes to original post made for clarity)