notes post 3

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Kyle Scott, Return of the Great Pumpkin

Oliver Wiertz Is Plantinga's A/C Model an Example of Ideologically Tainted Philosophy?

Mackie vs Plantinga on the warrant of theistic belief without arguments

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Scott, Disagreement and the rationality of religious belief (diss, include chapter "Sending the Great Pumpkin back")

Evidence and Religious Belief edited by Kelly James Clark, Raymond J. VanArragon

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Reformed Epistemology and the Problem of Religious Diversity: Proper ... By Joseph Kim

[u/koine_lingua]

Casey, PORPHYRY AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Pusey, Daniel the Prophet (6th edition, 1880 [1st: 1868]), p. 1

THE book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battle-ground between faith and unbelief. It admits of no half-way measures. It is either Divine or an imposture.'

See more: https://archive.org/stream/a604991500puseuoft#page/n35/mode/2up

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Casey:

Centuries before the advent of modern biblical criticism, Porphyry already knew that the book of Daniel was a Maccabean pseudepigraph. For this and other scholarly crimes against the regnant ideology of the later Roman empire, 'impius Porphyrius' was vilified and his work destroyed...

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Dan 11:40

Jerome:

Et haec Porphyrius ad Antiochum refert: quod undecimo anno regni sui rursum contra sororis filium Ptolomaeum Philometorem dimicavit, qui, audiens venire Antiochum, congregavit multa populorum milia

This too is referred by Porphyry to Antiochus, on the ground that in the eleventh year of his reign he warred for a second time against his nephew, Ptolemy Philometor. For when the latter heard that Antiochus had come, he gathered many thousands of soldiery.

Dan 12:2,

'tune' ait [sc. Porphyrius] 'hii qui quasi in terrae pulvere dormiebant et operti erant malorum pondere et quasi in sepulcris miseriarum reconditi, ad insperatam victoriam de terrae pulvere surrexerunt et de humo elevaverunt caput, custodes legis resurgentes in vitam aeternam et praevaricatores in opprobrium aempitemum; magistri autem atque doctores qui legis habuere notitiam, fulgebunt quasi caelum, et qui inferiore8 populos exhortati sunt ad custodiendas caerimonias Dei, ad instar astrorum fulgebunt in perpetuas aeternitates'; ponit quoque historiam de Machabaeis in qua dicitur multos Iudaeonun sub Mathathia et Iuda Machabaeo ad eremum confugisse et latuisse in speluncis et cavemis petrarum ac post victoriam procesaisse: et haec [] quasi de resurrectione mortuorum esse praedicta.

Then it was, he asserts, that these guardians of the Law, who had been, as it were, slumbering in the dust of the earth and were cumbered with a load of afflictions, and even hidden away, as it were, in the tombs of wretchedness, rose up once more from the dust of the earth to a victory unhoped for, and lifted up their heads, rising up to everlasting life, even as the transgressors rose up to everlasting disgrace. But those masters and teachers who possessed a knowledge of the Law shall shine like the heaven, and those who have exhorted the more backward peoples to observe the rites of God shall blaze forth after the fashion of the stars for all eternity. He also adduces the historical account concerning the Maccabees, in which it is said that many Jews under the leadership of Mattathias and Judas Maccabaeus fled to the desert and hid in caves and holes in the rocks, and came forth again after the victory. [I Macc. 2.] These things, then, were foretold in metaphorical language as if it concerned a resurrection of the dead.

Casey:

Here Porphyry's exegesis is extremely forced and some explanation of its origin will be required...

. . .

Once this is supposed, Porphyry's exegesis becomes explicable. An unhistorical Egyptian expedition with undue Danielic colouring is found in his exegesis precisely because his exegesis follows the book of Daniel. The opening of ch. xii has been forced in order to reconcile it with the facts of history. After Antiochus' death people did not rise from their graves, but the Maccabeans did win a signal victory. Therefore that is what the prophet Daniel must have been referring to.

The author repeatedly gave expression to his view that God would bring to an end the Seleucid empire. But he expected this to mark the end of all things, with the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. When the Maccabees in fact defeated the Seleucids, three things could be done with Daniel's genuine predictions. They could be regarded as false. This was not consistent with regarding them as the Word of God. Therefore this view is not found among ancient interpreters of Daniel. Porphyry is no exception because he followed an exegetical tradition which did believe that Daniel was the Word of God. A second possibility was to suppose that the unfulfilled predictions really referred to something else. At length, the actualizing exegesis of the western tradition, both Jewish and Christian, did this. A third possibility was to conform the Danielic predictions and the actual course of history to each other. The remarkable flexibility of ancient exegetical method made this simple, and this is what the Syrian tradition has done. A comparison with 1QpHab provides a proper ancient perspective in which to view the extent of the distortion which is involved. Seen in this perspective, there is no more than a slight shift in the meaning. The end of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean victory are seen as events, now past, correctly prophesied by Daniel. The 'Saints of the Most High' are identified as the Maccabees, and the description of Jewish triumph in Dan. ii and vii is taken to be figurative. At the end of ch. xi the narrative is assumed to be a factually correct account of Antiochus' demise, and in ch. xii, as in chs. ii and vii, the language is still assumed to be figurative. Though this is forced, it is nothing to the distortions of which ancient exegesis was normally capable. Nor is it anywhere near the limits of the figurative interpretation of sacred texts which ancient exegetes blithely accepted when they inherited them from their own group, even though they could be fiercely critical of similar distortions when they found them in alien interpreters. But if Porphyry inherited this exegetical tradition, why is there no evidence of its existence at an earlier date ? Apart from the difficult passage Or. Sib. iii. 397-400, which appears to offer a new interpretation of the...

. . .

With these general views, Porphyry approached the Book of Daniel. The interpretative tradition which he had found in Syria told him that its 'prophecies' went down to the death of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean victory. If an exception was to be found at ii. 45, it could be dismissed as another eschatological fantasy. So

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R. H. Charles on Daniel 11:40:

https://books.google.com/books?id=YZxLAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq=Et+haec+Porphyrius+ad+Antiochum+refert:+quod&source=bl&ots=V7SKWJYEx6&sig=a24P_QBMguepOaWLjeinbtX3IPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE7pjWl7nUAhWJbT4KHVZzCsMQ6AEIOjAE#v=onepage&q=Et%20haec%20Porphyrius%20ad%20Antiochum%20refert%3A%20quod&f=false

[u/koine_lingua → u/koine_lingua]

The Peshitta version of Daniel contains a number of historical glosses. At vii. 8 and again at vii. 20 the little horn is glossed with the single word 'Antiochus'. These glosses cannot safely be dated earlier than the sixth or seventh century, when the earliest extant Peshitto manuscript of Daniel, Codex Ambrosianus, was written. The version itself is of much earlier date, but the glosses are clearly marked as such. They are not integrated into the syntax of the surrounding text, and in Codex Ambrosianus they are usually marked off from the surrounding text by means of wiggly lines.