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Daniel: Blinded by Prophecy

Daniel was blinded by prophecy.

Christians enthusiastically claim that the Book of Daniel proves that the Hebrew Bible predicted the life and crucifixion of their Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, some Jews believe that the Book of Daniel predicted the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.

Both of them, Jews and Christians, insist that the book of Daniel validates their view of God and, indeed, their view of life and falsifies the position of their opponents.

 

In this blog, I will show that they are both missing the point. It must be obvious to any sane person that the concepts of prophecy, divine punishment and guilt by association are morally toxic and spiritually dyslexic.

  1. That God seeks to punish us.
  2. That God would punish a nation for crimes of an elite few.
  3. That God couldn’t explain himself clearly.

In this document, I will show that both Christians and Rabbinical Jews, in their determination to find personal and cultural validation in the Hebrew texts, totally miss a much older and deeper insight into the nature of God. It is to these older texts, and the teachings they contain, that the Jesus of History was referring in the Q-Source.

 

Analysis of the Book of Daniel:

On investigating the language of the Book of Daniel, independent scholars have concluded that the Aramaic and the Hebrew of the Masoretic text strongly suggests that the bulk of the text was written in the second century BCE (over four hundred years later). The latter part of the text cryptically discusses the Greek invasion of Judah, which culminated in the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second quarter of the second century BCE prior to its fall to the Maccabean revolt and the re-establishment of Hebrew hegemony within Judah. HERE

Christians shamelessly forged the text of chapter nine to insert their sacrificed Messiah and rendered the text of their Bible unintelligible in the process. But that fraud is easily overcome by referring to the original Hebrew and can therefore be discarded here, as it is of little interest to this discussion. HERE

What is of interest is the idea of prophecy and what it says about our relationship with God.

 

Human Suffering: “It’s all your fault!”

For most of the history of human beings, we have been trying to make sense of human suffering. Looking back at that philosophical evolution, it seems that the consensus of opinion has oscillated between two camps.

On the one hand, people assume that human suffering, from natural disasters to hitting your thumb with a hammer, is evidence that we have somehow offended God. The Book of Daniel is predicated on the idea that the destruction of the Temple of Solomon, and of Jerusalem, is ‘Ipso facto’ evidence that the Judean people had offended God. The priests and scribes were never asked for evidence of the collective crime of the people nor was any provided.

On the other hand, some people have a deeper relationship with God, and realise, through introspection and analysis, that life is like an interdependent net of causation and effect that stretches infinitely through past, present and future. The drama of life moves like a sea in time and space and events are like ocean currents that catch us up and push us forward.

The book of Koheleth (The Preacher) which Christians call ‘Ecclesiastes’ expresses such a view:

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Koheleth and the Jesus of History recognised that often we are caught up in the dramas of life and suffering cannot be avoided and nor should it be. In fact, it is an invaluable part of life.

“God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

Matthew 5:45

 

Context of the Book of Daniel:

The world of the Levant in the second century was full of Oracles and Prophets who spent most of their time stoned out of their minds (quite literally). Inevitably then, their pronouncements skidded between ‘cryptic’ to total gobbledygook. It is obvious that these apocalyptic pronouncements formed a particular genre of ancient literature.

It was inevitable then that the Judean prophetic tradition would follow this Greek literary form.

Life of Brian: HERE

Unfortunately, history has proved that the big problem with apocalyptic pronouncements in particular and prophecy in general is that they are all totally useless. From Saint Paul’s prediction of the rapture in his lifetime to the never ending predictions of the End of the World, not one word of prophecy has stopped human suffering.

It was for this reason that the Jesus of History said:

“Have you understood the beginning, that you ask about the end?”

Gospel of Thomas 18.

 

In Summary:

The early Hebrew view of God understood the following:

  1. That God is the eternal source of all that was, is and will be. The source of all love and light.
  2. All of us punish ourselves, the nature of our cognitions determines the world we live in.
  3. Connection to God brings clarity and truth – not insanity and ambiguous nonsense.

The Jesus of History maintained that the Judeans had forged the scriptures and their visions of God were not his. The God of the Jesus of History is the God that gave Daniel the courage to enter the lion’s den and remain calm. The same courage and faith that prompted Jonah to go for a swim.

It is possible to argue for eternity about the prophecies in the Book of Daniel, if you are a Christian or an Orthodox Jew, I wish you joy of it but please don’t waste my time, as it only proves you have no connection to the eternal source of life and love. It is my prayer that you might be quiet enough, for long enough, to hear his voice for yourself.

Ravi Zacharias

Life without consequences

In May 2020, the famous Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias, sadly passed away after losing his battle with cancer. Almost immediately, and somewhat inevitably, a host of women came forward to accuse the allegedly energetic septuagenarian Ravi of sexual misconduct. Since then, RZIM, his organisation, have been doing everything they can to distance themselves from their founder, including his daughter. Social media has suffered a tsunami of Evangelical Christians denouncing Ravi and explaining how they never liked him anyway.

This somewhat undignified and sordid spectacle is as repetitive as Christian predictions for the end of the world. Every year the Evangelical community raises yet another champion in between tearing down their last. This somewhat pagan cycle of rebirth and death highlights the fact that Christianity has spent the last 2000 years studiously ignoring everything the Jesus of History actually said. Among which was his advice about judging.

“Be merciful even as your Father is merciful. Don’t judge and you won’t be judged. For the standard you use (for judging) will be the standard used against you.”

Luke 6:36 and Matthew 7:1

Before we examine this ‘Logia’, it is important to note two things:

  1. What the teaching implies
  2. What it doesn’t say

What the teaching implies:

The Jesus of History is inculcating the idea that God is inherently merciful; God is his datum for all that is good. He is also saying that we share that essence of God.

The implication of this ‘Logia’ is that we must try to emulate the very nature of God and judge only ourselves.

What the teaching does not say:

What it does not say is that we can do just as we please in life without consequences.

‘The standard you use (for judging) will be the standard used against you.’

How many parents castigate their children for bullying their siblings and yet go to work and bully their secretaries? We judge other people constantly and mostly life seems to give us a free pass, but does it? In reality our own hypocrisy eats at our soul until we are eventually destroyed by the darkness within our deepest self.

Jesus’ students would have been familiar with the Judean phrase:

“…but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbour.”

Leviticus 19:15

Judge Me

It is evident from the phrasing of this Saying that the Jesus of History is making a beat against the accepted interpretation of the Law of Moses. It is obvious that anyone who judges believes that they are judging with righteousness.

Again, the Jesus of History is taking an external teaching and taking it to an inner level. This internalising and logical extrapolation is a keynote of the True Sayings of the Jesus of History.

The Kabbalah – the modern manifestation of the Nazarene tradition – explains the concept clearly.

Rav Michael Berg teaches in his seminal book, ‘The Way’.

“Kabbalah implores us to judge ourselves and our motivations with great care. One of our obstacles on our spiritual path, however, is the tendency to become judgemental about other people…”

His father, Rav Phillip Berg taught (I paraphrase)

“The moment we judge another, the universe pulls the trigger on us; we are judged by the force of our own judgement.”

This is a very deep teaching and not one to be discarded lightly. The words that we speak and think against another person opens a door for darkness to enter our life. This saying only makes sense in context of the following:

“For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

Ecclesiastes 12:14

The Kabbalists teach us that the moment we form a judgement in our mind of another, we separate ourselves from the ‘Light of the Creator’. We effectively create the darkness that will consume us.

Only God can look downAs an example, take a devout Christian who sees homosexual behaviour as the work of the devil. He will see homosexuals everywhere. When his best friend hugs him, in the back of his mind he can’t help suspecting that his friend might be homosexual. His judgement becomes a cancer in his life and ruins his friendship with his boyhood companion.

If he had, on the other hand, taken the Jesus of History’s advice, he would recognise the fact that his understanding of the world and of other people is limited and leave other people’s lives to them and God. He would have done better by concentrating on setting the best example he could of a good family man and father.

 

Taken from the book – “The True Sayings of Jesus: the Jesus of History vs. the Christ Myth

Read the Blog – “The Self of Now

Watch the Video – “The Dangerous Myth of Forgiveness

The True Sayings of Jesus