Overview

Does an honest critical analysis of the book of Daniel in the Bible reveal hard (scientific) evidence of the Christian God? This book claims it does, and mounts a surprisingly persuasive defence of this claim, uncovering astonishing features of Daniel that appear to be getting ignored because they support it. Critical scholars currently insist that none of the prophecies in the book of Daniel were intended to predict events beyond the 160s BC (the decade in which they believe the book was completed and made public). However, this theory has great difficulty explaining the content of three of those prophecies, Daniel 2, Daniel 7 and Daniel 9:24-27, crucial features of which are revealingly labelled 'obscure', or attributed to inexplicable ignorance and carelessness on the part of an otherwise well-informed writer. The explosive claim that this book makes is that there's a far simpler and much more plausible explanation for the content of these visions that critical scholars are ignoring: It is the possibility that they were included precisely because the intended readers in the 160s BC would interpret them as predictions of the distant future far beyond their day, making them less likely to believe skeptical claims that the book of Daniel was really a recent forgery (which would be largely based on the extent to which it predicted recent events). As this book shows, there are many grounds to think that those intended readers would and did interpret these passages as predictions of the future. And there is even robust evidence (largely ignored by scholars) that this was indeed the writer's intention. It's true that some of the events these passages predict resemble events in the 160s BC, but such resemblances are only what one would expect if the writer wanted to engage his readers' interest in these passages so that they would discover them to be predictions of the future - a discovery that would clearly discredit the skeptics. Since this hypothesis would perfectly explain why so many intelligent people (past and present) think these passages predicted the future well beyond their proposed time of writing, and isn't in any way inconsistent with evidence or rational principles, one rightly wonders why it never features in critical commentaries. This book blames the polarised nature of academic views on scripture. Conservative (religious) scholars don't want to appear critical of established doctrine, and critical scholars don't want to risk being labelled 'conservative'. But why does this matter? It matters because it obscures a profoundly astonishing fact. As this book makes clear, these real predictions are both specific and time-limited. Yet amazingly, history after the time of writing appears to have perfectly fulfilled their most likely meanings - the most justifiable way their intended readers could interpret them. This is especially strange because the predicted events are not of a sort that could be deliberately brought about by humans. And it is even more mysterious because the events that fulfilled each prediction include pivotal moments in the rise of Christianity. As well as asking the obvious question - Is this scientific evidence of the Christian God? - this book also deals with the issue of whether that God would really allow such evidence to be preserved in a forged document that was essentially propaganda if these arguments are correct. Many Christians will no doubt be firmly against this notion. However, if their God is real he clearly uses other imperfect vessels to carry his word. So why not the book of Daniel? This book points out that the datable nature and historical content of the parts of Daniel that it regards as forgeries make them vital to the function the book would be likely to have if it were the work of that God. They prove beyond reasonable doubt that Daniel 2, 7 and 9 were written as predictions of the distant future long before their astonishing and inexplicable fulfillment took plac

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Colin S. Morrison is a science graduate and freelance philosopher with a lifelong interest in the book of Daniel. He gained his honours degree in theoretical physics at the University of St Andrews in 1995, and currently lives in the UK, where he teaches mathematics. Puzzled by the incompleteness of the mainstream account of Daniel 7 and Daniel 9, and concerned that pressure from religious or anti-religious institutions has led scholars to misinterpret these passages, he has spent the last ten years examining the evidence to identify the view that a scientist under no such pressure would regard as most justified. His conclusions about the book of Daniel differ radically from those of both critical and conservative scholars. Whilst accepting the mainstream (critical) viewpoint that Daniel was completed in the mid-160s BC, he argues that by far the most reasonable interpretation of Daniel 2, Daniel 7 and Daniel 9 is that these passages were included by the book's compiler to predict the distant future of his own time (their purpose being to counter scepticism about the book's authenticity). If so, they may well have come from a source that the compiler believed was a genuine seer. He points out that this possibility appears to be never considered by critical scholars despite the fact that Jewish readers in the 160s BC were bound to interpret these passages as predictions that were yet to be fulfilled. He also points out that the proposed compiler would have had good reason to include such predictions in a book of this nature. In view of this, he suspects that critical scholars are ignoring this possibility for fear that they might otherwise be labelled 'religious' or 'conservative'. In support of this conjecture he draws our attention to certain obvious pieces of evidence that he believes have been neglected in critical discussions simply because they favour this 'prediction hypothesis'. And to demonstrate motive, he reveals just how stunningly accurate a portrayal of the rise of Christianity, and the end of Temple-based Jewish worship, emerges when these three prophecies are interpreted in their most justifiable way. He argues that, if this is no accident, critical scholars are doing the public a disservice by neglecting this very plausible explanation for their content.

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