Daniel in the Critics' Den: A Defense of the Historicity of the Book of Daniel

by Robert Anderson

Book by Anderson, Robert

Genres: Christian

186 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Sir Robert Anderson KCB was the second Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the London Metropolitan Police, from 1888 to 1901. He was also an intelligence officer, theologian and writer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
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Reviews

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, originally published in 1909, Sir Robert Anderson answers two British critics (Professor Samuel Rolles Driver’s commentary The Book of Daniel and Frederic William Farrar’s commentary The Book of Daniel) who had followed the lead of German scholars in denying the historicity of the Old Testament book of Daniel. Specifically, the challenge to the historicity of the book is that the level of accuracy of the description of the conflicts of the king of the north (Seleucid dynasty) and the king of the south (Ptolemaic dynasty) in chapter 11 is too great for someone to have written it as prophecy. So, the book had to have been written as history after most of the events had actually happened, and the time arbitrarily chosen by these critics is the Maccabean revolt against Seleucid king Antiochus IV, a time of great tribulation in which the Jewish people would need the encouragement of something like the book of Daniel. In contrast, Anderson challenges this thesis and argues for the book of Daniel having been written by Daniel, a Jewish official in the Babylonian and Persian court, as the book claims.

One of the critic’s arguments justifying their thesis was that the book of Daniel had two or three Greek loan words and, therefore, had to have been written during the period of Greek control of Israel between the time of Alexander the Great and the Maccabean revolt. Anderson, in response, points out that normal commerce in the ancient world provided plenty of opportunity for Greek language influence. Furthermore, he points out that these loan words were merely the names of musical instruments. Is it not reasonable to expect that an instrument acquired from another culture would come along with its native name? A point made by others since Anderson’s time is that more than only two or three Greek loan words should be expected had Daniel been written in the time of the Maccabees, as the critic’s claim, after more than a century of Greek rule.

Another argument by the critics is that there was no deportation of Jews in the third year of Jehoiakim as claimed in the first chapter of Daniel because it is not specifically described in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Anderson notes that 2 Kings 24:1 states, “In his (Jehoiakim) days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years; then he turned and rebelled against him.” So, Nebuchadnezzar’s coming up occurred in the third year of Jehoiakim, with Daniel providing the timing of the event. The strongest argument of the critics comes from 2 Chronicles 36:6-7, “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against him (Jehoiakim) and bound him with bronze chains to take him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzr also brought some of the articles of the house of the LORD to Babylon and put them in his temple at Babylon.” Jehoiakim reigned for eleven years; if these events occurred in his third year, he continued to reign for eight years after being bound with bronze chains. Anderson’s response to the objection is that Nebuchadnezzr took him prisoner but then relented and left him in place as a vassal. This is reasonable, given that the text clearly states that the articles of the temple were taken to Babylon but never says the same thing of Jehoiakim. Another piece of evidence offered by the critics is that, according to the Babylonian historian Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar, crown prince of Babylon, did not have time to go down to Jerusalem after the battle of Carchemish, but had to rush across the desert back to Babylon to secure the crown when his father Nabopolassar died. Anderson responds by quoting Berosus regarding how Nebuchadnezzar “commited the captives he had taken from the Jews” to the charge of others, “while he went in haste over the desert to Babylon.” The presence of Jewish captives is consistent with an invasion of Judah. Furthermore, Nebuchadnezzar did not have to cross the desert in a trip from Carchemish to Babylon, but would have had to do so to make a straight shot from Jerusalem to Babylon. It appears that the critics failed to account for differences in how regnal years were counted in Judah and in Babylon, but Anderson set them straight regarding the available evidence.

Another argument by the critics challenging the historicity of Daniel is its characterization of Belshazzar as king and a son of Nebuchadnezzar and its description of his death. Because King Nabonidus spent much of his reign away from Babylon, his son Belshazzar functioned as his regent in Babylon. Anderson notes that when Belshazzar offered to make Daniel the third ruler in the kingdom, the natural explanation is that he himself was only the second ruler. Apparently, the critics he opposed relied heavily on the Annalistic tablet of Cyrus, which describes the Persian conquest of Babylon, to challenge the brief statement in Daniel that Belshazzar was slain because the Annalistic tablet does not mention the death of the king of Babylon. In response, Anderson refers back to the regency, not kingship, of Belshazzar. How he was addressed in the Court of Babylon and how he was viewed by a foreign conqueror could be quite different. He also notes that the Annalistic tablet includes a lacuna in the middle and that the “translation” of the tablet is merely part translation and part reconstruction. He devotes an entire Appendix to his book challenging the reconstruction.

There are other arguments made that I have not discussed in the interest of time. Having not read Driver and Farrar, I didn’t always follow Anderson’s arguments, but I suspect that much of my difficulty results from his writing style, which is quite different from how scholars write today in their efforts to debunk another’s assertions. Later in the twentieth century, Josh McDowell published his own “Daniel in the Critics’ Den”, and I hope to read that soon and compare the two works.

[Esteban · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although somewhat dated this is still very relevant

See Bill Cooper's book on The Authenticity of Daniel for updated explanations. Sir Robert Anderson takes a lawyer's approach to dealing with "expert witnesses" from the school of so-called higher criticism who wish to set themselves up as both judge and jury. He successfully dismantles and demolishes their arguments in an admirable fashion.