Devils in The Pulpits

Kings and war became the norm, along with only one winner at a time, and all being winners at one time or another, save the poor people on all of the losing sides, which sides were always many no matter who the winning king of the moment was. By the way, in the findings of those nascent Jewish communities before they had a king, there were almost no findings of any gods or goddesses.

And the worst was yet to come.

Somewhere along the line, the Jews, or some of them, decided to proclaim only one god, Yahweh, or Jehovah, take your pick of what to call him, but call him Lord, etc.

Israel, or the Northern Kingdom as it has come to be known, did grow and prosper, and built a formidable war machine that the Assyrians envied, particularly, their charioteers. Along with allies, they either defeated Assyria, or held them to a standstill, but the Assyrians came back, and Israel, the Northern portion, was no more, but their vaunted charioteers were incorporated into the Assyrian war machine. Assyria held sway for over two hundred years, but eventually fell apart internally, and quite suddenly. The Babylonians came along and took over what had been Assyria.

It wasn't long before foolishness came along, and Judah, the Southern kingdom of what was left of what was believed to be Jews, decided to join a new confederation, and stop paying tribute. Then the worse I spoke of above began. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem just as the Assyrians had done, but worse—and twice.

The first time bringing them to near starvation, which they just couldn't get used to, and taking many captives and setting up a puppet king. Supposedly, Daniel was among those captives. Some years later, the remaining Jews irked Nebuchadnezzar again, and this time he not only laid siege, but took and eventually destroyed Jerusalem, and burned down their temple, but made sure that all educated people, aristocrats, and craftsmen were taken. Judah was desolate, left with only peasants to till the land and eke our their existence, but not as peacefully as they had when they first began—the days of yore were gone, as was the bucolic life they led for a couple of centuries early on.

Now they only knew more misery for several hundred years, and no temple, just a few priests, or so indicates the bible!

Fast forward now to the Persians, and their defeat of Babylon. The Persians were said to grow the largest empire yet known, and luckily, after hundreds of years of war and being a downtrodden people, they were given some freedom. Persia allowed the Babylonian Jews to return, and to rebuild their temple, though not many Jews left the good life they had scratched out in Babylon.

Nehemiah and Ezra did return.

And Ezra is said to have in his possession a decree from the Persian king that authorized him vast powers over the Jews, apparently one of which said he could force those Jews who had married foreign wives to put them aside or face expulsion and a loss of all goods and property. Or so says the bible.

Additionally, according to Nehemiah, all the people were read "...the law of Moses", which Karen Armstrong suggests; was as if they had never heard it before (The Bible, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007, chapter 2, Bible, Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 9). This was over a period of days, and it is uncertain as to which laws were read, but verse 9 says that the people wept.

This, along with the rebuilding of the temple, is thought to be the real beginning of Judaism that became ingrained in their psyche. Keep in mind that they had nothing else in a world that had been thrust on them in the worst possible ways. Scratching out an existence and their new (to them) religion, was all that they had. Many modern scientists say that one generation is all that it takes to create a culture. The Jews had several generations of the law and the temple—no phones, no Internet, no newspapers—only temple.

* * * *

But all that was to change with the coming of Alexander the Great and his total dominion of all that had been the Persian Empire, but he died very early in 323 BCE at just over thirty years of age. That revisited all of their previous horrors, the worse during the time of the war of the Maccabees.

Though they eventually won the freedom from the Seleucid king and regained their temple and "purified" it of foreign gods, they proved to be their own worst enemy. A high priest not of the line of Aaron caused great strife. This went on for a hundred or so years until 63 BCE when the Roman general, Pompey, conquered Palestine, which included Judea.

It was during this time, from the time of the Maccabees, that the Pharisees came into being, as well as the Sadducees, most likely. It was also in this time that the idea of the Resurrection became a powerful idea among many Jews, led by the Pharisees. It was also during the time of the strife of the Maccabees that the book of Daniel is thought to have been written—even the Catholic bible admits to this! (See the Catholic Family Connections Bible preface to the Book of Daniel.)

This, then, explains all the errors extent in The Book of Daniel. It is thought to have been written to give Jews hope of a time when they would never again have to worry about being ruled over by despotic nations. In 70 CE, though, the Romans destroyed the temple once more.

Chapter 3Connecting the Dots

Putting it all together:

That the Book of Daniel wasn't written by any Daniel is pretty obvious if a reader will take note of how it is written, and the many errors it contains. The book starts out in narrative form by a third person relating things between Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel as if he, the narrator, was in attendance and privy to what was said. At the end of the first chapter, the narrator states that "Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.", as if he wasn't the first king to defeat the Babylonians.

It is a huge mistake because Cyrus was the Persian king that defeated Nabonidus (not Belshazzar), the last king of Babylon. We know this from the bible which very much seems to say, very much in error, at the end of chapter 5 that a Darius was the Persian who defeated Babylon, and further, in chapter 6, goes on to appoint Daniel over his entire kingdom, and recites a dialog between Darius and some others who plotted against Daniel.

How could the writer of the Book of Daniel know to quote conversations between the king and the plotters? It couldn't have been Daniel, nor anyone reporting the conversation. It's bad enough that he thinks it was Darius that defeated Babylon. More, how could Daniel, if he was the actual author of this book, not know that it was Cyrrus the Great who defeated Babylon?

In chapter 10, it all comes out in full force. The real author begins in narrative in verse 1, saying:

"...a thing was revealed unto Daniel...", then continues in verse 2 as if Daniel himself is speaking in first person, saying:

"In those days, I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.", and remains in first person for most, if not all, the rest of Daniel through the rest of the book (through chapter 12).

This, then, is proof positive, presented within the Book of Daniel itself, that this was in no way written by Daniel.

* * * *

These are but a few of the errors in the Book of Daniel, and I submit that the Catholic church, admitting to the ability of researchers and scholars, admitted to the fact that the Book of Daniel couldn't have been written by any Daniel, and further, it wasn't written at the time when the person called Daniel was supposed to have lived, namely in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great, and Darius. The Catholic bible preface that is offered to the Book of Daniel contains this admission by writing:

"Daniel represents the ideal teacher with the spiritual and prophetic insight to lead people through troubled times. Scholars question whether he was an actual person. If he was, he lived in the sixth century BC—but the Book of Daniel was written four hundred years later during the reign of an evil Greek-Syrian king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes."

As stated earlier, it was Antiochus IV Epiphanes who placed statues of his god{s} in the Jewish temple in the 160s BCE. That Catholic preface on the Book of Daniel goes on to say:

"The author of the Book of Daniel writes about the great hero Daniel to give the people hope during this persecution."

Along with all the errors in the Book of Daniel, it is no wonder that the Catholic church finally has admitted that the Book of Daniel was not written by him.

In checking the online Catholic Encyclopedia, we find the admission of a separate author for the Book of Daniel, and a bunch of gobbledygook of obfuscating words, culminating in another admission of "scholars" now thinking that it was written in the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

That's interesting, but so what, one may ask?

So it is in chapter 12, verse 2 that we have the first direct prediction of a resurrection, as was being espoused, supposedly by Daniel, and by the Pharisees (during the time of the Maccabees and Antiochus), or in the 160s BCE.

In sum, we can say that both the Catholic church and Fundamentalists can't have it both ways as the gospel writer's made some huge errors in trying to connect Daniel and Jesus together in prophesy( neither coming to pass as stated). Here's why:

Chapter 4Connecting Daniel to the gospels

First let's look at the proof of the validity, or rather, the lack of fact, in the gospels.

In the gospel according to Matthew, after a genealogical record of Jesus' pedigree, and a visit to Joseph by an angel of the Lord, we are told the following in chapter 2, the last verse:

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

I'm sure that I'd heard this verse, most likely at Christmas, and probably even read it as most of you church goers have also. I even read all of the gospels within the last year or two, and must have read over the above verse without a thought. Most readers of the bible would not have given it a second thought because it's been drilled into us that the bible is God's word. That, erroneously, happens to this day as I've pointed out previously.

That's one of the problems with trying to make sense of the bible—many of us have it as if inbred in us that it is God's word. As a result there's a lot we gloss over and don't question—and that's where Liv's words to us that we live in a golden age of books can help us, and those helpful books are presently available to all of us in the free world, specifically in the form of recent books of textual criticism and research.

Recently, I read another of those books, this one by Peter Cresswell: The Invention of Jesus (Watkins Publishing Limited, 2013) in which he says the above mentioned verse with regard to Jesus being prophesied as coming out of Nazareth, is in error.

In error?

Yes, in error. According to him, the prophets' words to be 'fulfilled' are nowhere to be found. Huh?

Well, they had to be in the Old Testament since they were supposed to be speaking of Jesus' birth, so I pulled out my Strong's Concordance of the bible to check it out.

Not there!

The day of this writing, I searched for a concordance of the Catholic bible, and found it online. Nazareth is not found in the Old Testament there either. Unbelievable! Why hadn't anyone told me of this in church. It's either a lie or the writer of this gospel just heard that it was prophesied, or felt that it must have been, so...

Okay, right off, the gospel is wrong, but that's not the first thing wrong with it. In another essay or story, or both, I brought up the fact that the genealogy in Matthew says that one of Jesus' ancestors was Solomon (chapter 1, verse 6), but Luke disputes that and says that Nathan, another son of David, is in Jesus' lineage (chapter 3, verse 31) instead of Solomon. More , Luke has many more ancestors named by far than Matthew has. Who's right, who's wrong—take your pick; maybe both are wrong, but for sure, not both are right.

Anyway, in spite of what is preached, neither Matthew nor Luke wrote either gospel. That's why they say "According to...", bu preach don't ever say explicitly that they really are "according to", and not really by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, they mostly say "Now let us turn to the gospel of (fill in the blank). This was probably by tradition (and that drilled into everyone by the Catholic Church once it came into full being sometime after 300 CE). Even the Catholic Family Connections Bible admits this as a fact, attributing the gospels to those "inspired" authors.

Just how "inspired" those authors were is brought into question too, and not just the gospels. The following shows what I mean.

The basis of Christianity from Jewish history; the time after Alexander the Great; Daniel; Paul; and some of the gospels.

To tell the truth, I was surprised to find a simple connection in all of these writings that readily answered the question of whether the bible and Christianity were true. Yes, there are other facts within the bible that speak to its falsity, but for the most part they are just many individual ones that in and of themselves don't connect easily to give one easy to see picture that screams out pretty much like aSmoking gun!

Like so many others, I tried reading the bible, and frankly, it was difficult to comprehend unless you took the word of what is commonly preached. Most of us do just that. We may try to wade through it, but to understand it all, well, we just take the word of someone who's supposed to have been properly trained in understanding it.

After all of these years of "taking their word for it", I finally found a connection between these items that made it all simple for me, and had me realizing why it was so hard to figure the bible and Christianity out.

First, let me say that no where in the Old Testament is "salvation" explicitly mentioned save as it applies to Israel [Psalms excluded], or an individual Jew perhaps praising God as being their salvation, not even in the Book of Daniel.

It is Paul who created "salvation" as Christianity knows it today. All other New Testament references are after Paul's time by at least a decade. So where else did this idea of salvation come from?

One can only speculate, but most likely it came about from the Book of Daniel. Even the Catholic bible that I use admits to Daniel most likely being written about 164 BCE. At that time, Alexander the Great's kingdom had been divided into four parts that had lasted for almost three hundred years. The Middle East and Egypt were the two principal kingdoms concerned here, and each was passed down within the family of the Ptolemies (Egypt), and the family of Seleucus (Middle East).

The two sides sought dominion over the territory that lay between them: Palestine and peasant laden Judah (remember, the intelligentsia and craftsmen were taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar).

Those wars that took a toll on the Jews was something they had to put up with, but what they wouldn't put up with was the affront to their religion. Let's back up here a bit and look at what happened after Babylon when the Persians ruled.

* * * *

There are two books in the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah, which were once, it is said, just one book. Nehemiah became the person to try to rebuild the temple that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed, and found a lapsed Jewish remnant, or so the bible says.

Ezra had a different task. He was given, we're told, the power over the Jews by the Persian king, it is said, and that power was pretty dictatorial. On the arrival of Ezra, those Jews who had taken foreign women to wife were ordered to put them away or face not only expulsion, but also confiscation of all their properties in apparent accordance with the Law:

"Neither shalt thou make marriages with them [the Canaanites, etc.];thy daughter shou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou not take unto thy son." (Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verse 3)

That there is a contradictory verse, also in Deuteronomy, didn't bother the writers, or editors. It is as follows (see Deuteronomy, chapter 21, verses 11 through 13).

However, to continue: next, Ezra is said to have commanded all to gather for a reading of the Law, very possibly the first time they had heard it, and this was said to be out in the open, rain or shine.

Keep in mind that the Babylonians had taken all of the aristocracy of the Jews captive, as well as all the craftsmen. When given the freedom to go back to Jerusalem, it is said that most wished to stay where they were. With no temple, a lapsed priesthood, and mostly peasants left, those peasants who had remained eked out their subsistence, and had little else for about two generations.

Thus the Law, and the rebuilding of the temple was again their whole life, and that started a new spirit of Judaism which only grew. Apparently, during Alexander's time, and then the time of his partitioned empire, they were allowed to keep their temple and renewed worship, or so we're led to believe by the bible.

Until...

* * * *

Now let's return to the time of the partitioned empire, specifically to somewhere in the 160s BCE when Jerusalem was once more in Seleucid hands, or more to the point, the time of king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 to 164 BCE).

Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided that in his kingdom, only his gods were to be worshiped. He ordered a statue of one of his gods to be placed in the temple of the Jews, and ordered them to sacrifice to that god. That was what the Book of Daniel is said to call the abomination that maketh desolate in chapter 11, verse 31 and chapter 12, verse 11.

At that time, one called Mattathias killed a Jew who was going to comply with the order to sacrifice as ordered, plus one of the king's representatives. That set things off. It seems that it's a mixed bag, but primarily, for our purposes, Judas Maccabeus/Judah Maccabee, with his father, Mattathias and the other sons, led a guerilla type revolt from 167 BCE that lasted several years. It was successful in that some of the territory of Judah was won, including Jerusalem.

The problems that the Jews had during these years were most likely the ones that gave rise to the Book of Daniel, intended to give hope to the beleaguered Jews in their time of great spiritual need. For centuries, they had been buffeted by warring factions, and knew no peace. The only solace they had was in their religion and their temple that had been rebuilt.

The author of Daniel most likely intended to perk up the hope of the Jews by writing it, and thus beginning to establish the idea of a resurrection that Christianity coopted, specifically by Paul (more on this shortly). This was to boost their faith and hope. Lose now and suffer, but know that your god would reward you in the after life.

At this time also, the Pharisees gained renown and popularity. When they truly began, no one knows, but best guess was that it must have been after the temple was destroyed by Babylon.

These Pharisees also gave a boost to the idea of the resurrection for they, too, believed in it. Paul was said to be a Pharisee. The aristocratic segment of Judaism, the Sadducees, did not believe in the resurrection. Of course, many this day believe that Jesus may have been a Pharisee, at least in the resurrection idea.

In fact, the words have been put in Jesus' mouth in praise of Daniel as a prophet. More, Daniel's words have become the basis of Christianity, but... Well, what's wrong with it?

Chapter 5Connecting the problems with Daniel's prophecies to the "words" of Jesus.

"...then shall the end come."