SRR #59 | The Single Frame Hypothesis (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 4)

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SRR #60 | Pompey and the Pamphylian Pirates (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 5)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. Folks, these are wolves.
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Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves in the church.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate, it's history. It's not bashing, it's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to, Blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. And now
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I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them.
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And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.
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Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills.
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And as soon as he has risen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others.
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Besides these, Daniel, 11, two through four. This podcast is a member of the
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Bible Thumping Wingnut Network. All right. Welcome everybody to another podcast episode with Semper Reformanda Radio.
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That's TrackedPlanet .com Coupon code BTWN Okay, welcome back everybody.
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My name is Tim Shaughnessy and you are listening to Semper Reformanda Radio. So I want to say thank you for checking us out.
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Be sure to like and share our podcast if you're getting something out of it. I want to say thank you to the listeners that we have.
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We've gotten some feedback on this series. Apparently people are liking it. So, I am very grateful for that.
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We are going to be continuing today in our series on eschatology. We're looking at the book of Daniel and we've titled this series
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The Danielic Imperative. Now, before we get to that I just want to let everybody know about some things that are coming up.
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We've got an interview with Jason Peterson who is a Clarkian. We're going to talk to him a little bit about apologetics, a little bit about Clarkianism, what's going on in his ministry, and also talk to him about his book.
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Then we also have an interview that is set up. We're hoping to record next week or sometime after that, sometime soon with Tom Geoditis, the president of the
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Trinity Foundation. Now, this is a ministry that we love. We have promoted this ministry really from the beginning of our podcast.
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So, please check out the Trinity Foundation. You can read articles. You can buy books. It is a publishing company.
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You can also listen to lectures. So, whatever you have time for, they've got some excellent, excellent stuff to offer the church today.
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And then we have an interview with J .D. Hall to talk about his new book.
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So, I believe Conversations from the Porch already interviewed him. But, hey, we are happy to have
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J .D. Hall come on the show and really just talk about pretty much anything. The guy is a wealth of information.
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He's a wealth of knowledge. So, we are looking forward to that. So, let me go ahead and transition now into today's topic.
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We are continuing in Daniel chapter 11. And first, I want to say how grateful
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I am that Timothy Kaufman has come on our podcast. I've been bugging him for quite some time to do this series.
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And he's been researching this stuff for years. So, he is prepared.
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And if you have any questions, feel free to ask. He welcomes questions.
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You can email us at semper .refermanda .radio at gmail .com I also want to mention his blog, whitehorseblog .com
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A lot of the stuff that he's covering here, he's also written about on his blog.
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So, be sure to check that out. But, Tim, I can't thank you enough for coming on to this podcast. I really have nothing to offer to the series that you are doing except maybe to ask questions, which
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I think the teachings have been so thorough that I really haven't had any questions. I've been able to understand everything that you've been saying.
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So, my goal for today is I'm just going to give you the floor. I'm not going to interrupt.
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And I'm going to let you lead us in our topic. And we'll just go from there.
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So, Tim, take it away. Well, thank you, Tim. I appreciate the introduction and glad to be back.
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We're glad to be doing this series. We hope people are enjoying it. We know that a lot of information in this series of podcasts is tedious.
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We want people to be able to revisit the podcast, hear the references, look them up for themselves, and confirm what it is that we're saying.
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But we've called this Eschatology and the Danielic Imperative because Daniel establishes a timeline for us.
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And that timeline is something that Jesus refers to when he talks about the coming kingdom.
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And he even refers to the abomination of desolation that Daniel foretold when he's talking about the signs at the end of the age.
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When Jesus sends an angel to John to help him understand what's about to happen, he invokes a
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Danielic timeline as you can see by the references in chapter 12, 13, and 17 of Revelation where the beasts in their aggregation are depicted as having seven heads and ten horns, which is basically a compilation or aggregation of the beasts of Daniel chapter 7.
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When we approach Eschatology, we absolutely have to have a grasp of the
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Danielic timeline. And what we've been focusing on for the first few episodes is to identify a timeline, but also to identify some of the problems that have occurred when we tinker with that timeline.
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And one of the ways that that timeline has been toyed with a little bit is in Daniel chapter 11.
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And what we talked about last week is that not only has the church historically been awaiting a ten -way division of the
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Roman Empire based on Daniel chapter 7, and the problem with that is that it's not sufficiently harmonized with Revelation chapter 17, which shows that there are still ten horns remaining when the
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Lamb returns and the beast and the ten horns make war against the Lamb. The historical interpretation of Daniel chapter 7 is that the little horn removes three of the ten horns, so that seven would remain, when in reality, what we've explained for the last three weeks is that Daniel was seeing each of those four beasts in its final configuration just before the next empire came to power.
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And what we saw with the Roman Empire at the latter part of the 4th century, that there were 13 dioceses,
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Roman Catholicism claimed three of those and came up among the remaining ten, Roman Catholicism being the little horn that we were warned about in Daniel chapter 7.
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Now, the reason this has caused some confusion is that the little horn, historically, has been presumed to come up among ten and remove three of the ten, leaving seven, and that, of course, has never actually occurred.
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The Roman Empire never divided ten ways and Roman Catholicism didn't, or nobody came along and took three of the ten, but the
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Roman Empire was divided thirteen ways and Roman Catholicism came up and took three of the thirteen for itself in what we are calling, what has historically and inaccurately been called the cradle of Christianity, which is the three apostolic seas of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, when in fact those are the three metropolitan cities of three of the thirteen dioceses of the
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Roman Empire. And what came up there was actually what we would consider to be modern day
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Roman Catholicism with all of its trappings, which is part of the reason why we have focused before this series on all the novelties that came up in the latter part of the fourth century.
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But one of the problems that we run into when we address Daniel chapter 7 is that historically, and almost universally, the little horn of Daniel 7 is identified with the northern antagonist of Daniel chapter 11.
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And last week we talked about why that happens. The result of identifying the little horn of chapter 7 with the northern antagonist of Daniel chapter 11 is that the church awaits a little horn that does the things identified in Daniel chapter 7, but they are also expecting that little horn to do the things identified in Daniel chapter 11.
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The problem is that Daniel chapter 7 is largely set in a Roman framework.
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All four of the preceding empires, all four of the empires are identified. Babylonian, Medo -Persian,
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Greek, Roman, and then the empire of the little horn. But it's the fourth beast and its fragmentation and the arrival of a little horn that becomes the main antagonist of the chapter.
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That is set in a Roman framework. But Daniel chapter 11 is set in a
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Greek framework. Daniel chapter 11 starts with a description of the transition from Median dominance to Persian dominance.
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The next big thing to happen is a transition from Persian to Greek dominance. That Greek dominance is the focus of the entire chapter.
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Daniel explains that the king of the Greeks comes to his power and when he is broken, four kingdoms come up in his place.
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What we focused on last week is finding the time, the period of time when the number of Alexander's successors was reduced to four.
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That happened between 294 BC and 281
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BC. What we showed is that that period from 294 to 281 BC is the last period of the successors of Alexander where there were four remaining family lines with the claim to the throne.
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What we find is that those family lines really were the final successors of Alexander.
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By 281, the reason that date is significant is because at that time Seleucus invaded
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Asia Minor. That is, Seleucus from the east and Syria invaded Asia Minor in the north and killed
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Lysimachus. Therefore, that was the end of the period of four successors.
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It is during that period from 294 to 281 BC when we can establish the identity of the four successors to Alexander.
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What we want to focus on is that unless we understand that particular aspect of the chronology of Daniel, it is just like what we saw with the division of the
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Roman Empire. Unless we understand what Daniel was actually saying and what he was actually foreseeing, we will miss the proper division of the
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Roman Empire that was supposed to serve as an indication of when the little horn was going to arise.
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If we don't narrow down the exact moment in time when the successors to Alexander numbered four, then we're going to miss what
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Daniel was foreseeing in Daniel chapter 11. As we mentioned last week, the identification of the little horn of Daniel 7 with the antagonist, the northern antagonist of Daniel chapter 11 has been brought about by the perceived problem that Daniel's prophecy after identifying
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Alexander the Great and his downfall, the prophecy appears to diverge immediately from the historical record because Daniel chapter 11 was foretelling a series of battles between the king of the north and the king of the south and it was fulfilled in a series of battles between the kings of Syria and the kings of Egypt which were in fact east and south in the original framework.
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To answer the question about why Daniel's compass could be so wrong, historians and eschatologists have typically inserted a new frame of reference.
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Although Daniel established a frame of reference north, south, east and west in chapter 11 verse 4, where Asia Minor is north,
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Egypt is south, Syria is east, and Macedonia is west, they say even though Daniel never actually explicitly says it, typically historically we have immediately imposed a shifted frame of reference in which
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Syria is to the north, Jerusalem's in the middle and Egypt is in the south and that is what we call the
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Judean frame of reference. And what happens is that only fixes that only fixes
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Daniel in his, in the fulfillment in the short term because Daniel proceeds through chapter 11 and then we arrive at yet another point in the narrative where there continue to be battles but there's nothing in the historical record that shows that the king of Syria and the king of Egypt had the wars that were described, at which point historians add yet another frame of reference which we call the eschatological frame so that now there's a new frame of reference and Daniel has changed his prophecy from being something that is in the setting and the framework of the
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Greek Empire which is what you would expect based on the introduction that we got in the first few verses he shifted his attention to an antagonist that is in the
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Roman period or in a Roman framework and that's why we see so many historians and eschatologists and commentarians just assuming that at some point in Daniel chapter 11,
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Daniel shifts his framework yet again to an eschatological frame. As we mentioned last week, different historians and eschatologists identify the shift to the eschatological framework as early as verse 21 and as late as verse 39 now as we mentioned last week the result of this approach is absolute chaos.
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One writer centers the eschatological frame of Daniel 11 on Rome and the unwelcome tidings that come from the north and the east are presumed to be from Germany and Constantinople another writer has the news coming from Bulgaria and England.
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Another eschatological frame is centered on the Turks and the tidings that originate from the north and east are coming from north and east of Istanbul others have the frame of reference set from the perspective of Antichrist in North Africa and the tidings from the unwelcome tidings from the north and east come from Jerusalem which is north and east of North Africa still others keeping
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Antiochus in view who is one of the line of the Seleucid kings in Syria.
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They have the final reference frame set in Judea and Antiochus hearing unwelcome news from Syria to the north and from Persia to the east another writer reverses even those and having the tidings originate from Persia to the north and Syria to the east and one writer keeps the reference frames consistent from 11 .5
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to 11 .40 and yet another writer says that that's the wrong thing to do because we don't want to hold too strictly to the literal sense and miss the prophetic sense that's from Eucalyptus commenting on Daniel and he warns don't approach
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Daniel from a single frame of reference because you might hold too strictly to what the literal sense of you know
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I know that he respected the scriptures and revered them but what he has done there is having imposed an eschatological frame of reference at the end of Daniel chapter 11 he's warning us against doing what we really ought to do which is look at Daniel 11 as if it was written in one frame of reference the frame of references change from writer to writer and even from chapter to chapter within a single writer.
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Melanchthon proposed as many as five different frames of reference in Daniel chapter 11 centered on Alexander, Judea, Antiochus IV, papal
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Rome, and the Turks and it's impossible we look at this and I don't believe that we should be constrained to have to choose between one of those interpretations because all of them presume either that the historical record beyond a certain point in Daniel chapter 11 is not intended to conform or actually the prophetic record is not intended to conform with the historical record or that there are so many different frames of reference that we just lose track.
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I don't think that we are obligated as Christians to go to Daniel chapter 11 and choose from one of those interpretations and camp on it.
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I think that what we need to do is go back to Daniel chapter 11 and evaluate the chapter in a single frame of reference from start to finish.
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In spite of the confusion that has erupted because we have introduced so many extra frames of reference to Daniel chapter 11, the interpretation and understanding that we are supposed to impose these frames of reference is so universally applied in the history of Danielic interpretation that it's practically canonical but it's just a tradition that has been applied to Daniel chapter 11 in order to make sense of the chapter because the events depicted in the chapter do not appear to conform to what actually happened.
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And what we want to do is evaluate that and rethink maybe what the early church fathers and reformers and modern commentators have missed is the possibility that all of Daniel 11 is to be read continuously in one single
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Alexandrian frame of reference in which north refers to Asia Minor from start to finish and south always refers to the southern kingdom whatever its boundaries happen to be because we're going to be going to get into that a little bit today as well.
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If we would set aside all the foreign traditional frames of reference that have been imposed on the text and stick with the one that Daniel establishes, perhaps the chaotic jumble of interpretations at the eschatological frame of references will go away having been caused by the fact that we introduced the
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Judean frame at verse 5 in the first place. My point is that we have traditionally for more than a thousand years assumed that we could correct
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Daniel's vision by imposing a separate frame of reference that suddenly makes
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Syria the northern kingdom even though in chapter 11 verse 4
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Syria appears to be the eastern kingdom. So let's think about this. Let's think about what
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Daniel has prophesied and how we have historically interpreted it. The answer to this question, and the question we want to ask is what if the entire chapter is read in a single
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Alexandrian frame of reference and that north refers to the same geographic territory at the end of the chapter as it does at the beginning.
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Well what would happen if we read Daniel the way it appears to be written? And the answer to these questions, it's an answer that is profound for its simplicity, is found in one of the most plainly evident, exhaustively corroborated, widely known, but chronically overlooked facts of post -Alexandrian
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Hellenism. And that overlooked fact that has been exhaustively corroborated and widely known is that even though the
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Seleuces were kings of Syria, after the battle of Coropedium, they lived in and reigned from Asia Minor and Thrace.
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For the entire period that they are called kings of the north in Daniel chapter 11, they actually lived in and reigned from Asia Minor.
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It's shocking when people hear it because they have been trained by the school of eschatology to consider
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Syria to be the eastern kingdom and therefore the Seleuces are the eastern kings, but Syria is in fact the eastern kingdom, but when the
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Seleuces who reigned in Syria were fighting with Egypt and tussling back and forth for dominance as they fought over the remnants of the
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Alexandrian Empire, when they engaged in those battles, they were living in Asia Minor at the time.
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And as long as they live in Asia Minor, Daniel calls them kings of the north.
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What happens over the period of the post -Alexandrian period in Asia Minor, as we mentioned last week, between 294 and 281,
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Lysimachus was established as the king of Asia Minor in the north. Ptolemy was established as the king of Egypt in the south.
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The Seleuces were established as king of Syria in the east and Demetrius and his offspring ended up controlling
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Macedonia to the west. If Daniel has prophesied a series of battles between the king of the north and the king of the south, we should expect for there to be a series of wars between whoever is running
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Asia Minor and whoever is running Egypt and its territories. Well, what happened in 281
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BC is that Seleuces conquered Lysimachus at Choropedium in Asia Minor and from that point forward, the
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Seleucid line actually lived in and ruled from Asia Minor in Thrace and in fact preferred it over their other dominions.
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It was the seat of the Seleucid empire until their catastrophic defeat at the hands of the
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Romans at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. And when we finally see the king of the north introduced in Daniel chapter 11, it is only after two generations of Seleucid kings have lived in and reigned from Asia Minor in Ephesus, as it turns out.
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So when we get to Daniel chapter 11, verse 6, and it says at the end of years they shall join themselves together for the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement.
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What happened was Bernice had been pledged to Antiochus who was in fact the grandson of Seleucis and he was living in Ephesus at the time that proposal was made and Ephesus is in Asia Minor to the north.
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The reason that the Seleucids are called kings of the north in Daniel chapter 11 is not because Daniel has shifted his frame of reference from an
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Alexandrian frame to a Judean frame. The reason the Seleucids are called king of the north in Daniel chapter 11 is because that's where they lived.
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Seleucis conquered Lysimachus in 281 BC Lysimachus was king of the north.
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When Seleucis conquered him he set up his home and hearth in Asia Minor and lived and reigned there.
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What happened over the course of the next hundred years is that as the
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Seleucids began to expand their reach beyond Asia Minor and Thrace and began to move into Greece, it got the attention of the rising
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Roman Republic. They were not comfortable with the Greek Antiochus coming into Macedonia and the
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Greek Isles and beginning to establish a presence that was too close to the eastern frontier of the
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Roman Republic at the time. They sent warnings to him. They said you need to stop doing that and Antiochus simply responded saying,
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I don't come to Rome and tell you how to run your country and you can't come here and tell me how to run mine.
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I am simply doing what my fathers did before me and what they did is they just live and reign and conquer the adjacent kings around them.
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Well, when he went into Greece Rome had had enough and Rome sent its armies to meet him on the field of battle where he was defeated handily at the
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Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC and this is depicted for us in Daniel chapter 11 verse 18 and this is the verse that says after this he shall turn his face unto the
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Isles and here the Isles are the Greek Isles after this he shall turn his face to the
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Greek Isles and shall take many but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him.
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So, we're going to get into what that passage who the prince of his own behalf is and how the reproach turned back upon him but the point we want to get to is that Daniel chapter 11 verse 18 is the point at which the king of the north over reaches gets all the way to Greece.
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Rome doesn't like it and at the Battle of Magnesia Rome defeated him and he left having been humiliated by Rome and basically fled to Apamea back in Syria.
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Now the significance of that is at the Treaty of Apamea in 188
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BC the Romans imposed terms of surrender and required that he evacuate and remain out of Asia Minor and Thrace.
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He was no longer allowed to come within the Taurus Mountains. He was no longer allowed into Europe and Thrace.
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Those were the terms of his surrender. And so from that point forward the
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Seleucid line was forbidden by Rome to enter into Asia Minor or into Europe.
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So, essentially Asia Minor and Thrace had been the kingdom of the king of the north as established in the four way division of the
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Greek Empire. The Seleucids moved in and conquered Lysimachus and they therefore became kings of the north.
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The entire narrative all the way through Daniel 11 -18 refers to the Seleucids as the king of the north so long as they occupy the northern territory and then
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Rome comes in and banishes the Seleucids from Asia Minor and Europe which is
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Thrace in this case forbidding them to enter and from that point forward the
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Seleucid line is never called king of the north again. The significance here is that we are able to look at the scriptures and look at what happened in history and identify the exact points in history that each one of these references to the king of the north occurs in Daniel chapter 11 and as soon as the
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Romans formally and finally remove the Seleucids from their territories in the northern territory and force them to remain as Syrian kings only
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Daniel simply stops referring to them as king of the north. Now, this reality that the
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Seleucids were actually the northern kingdom for the period that they occupied
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Asia Minor and Thrace has been established historically and it is in fact a well known fact but the problem is that the eschatology of Daniel chapter 11 has been interpreted historically without the knowledge and the understanding that when
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Daniel refers to the Seleucids as king of the north he only does so when they actually occupy the northern territory.
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Now, esteemed historian of the Seleucid dynasty, Edward, Edwin Robert Vivan arrives at precisely this conclusion in his two -volume work,
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The House of Seleuces. This is what Edwin Robert Vivan wrote about it.
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Asia Minor, rather than Syria or the east, seems, until after Magnesia, the chief sphere of Seleucid activity.
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One may well believe that it was the part of their dominions to which the Seleucid kings attached the greatest value.
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It is never so inappropriate to speak of the dynasty as Syrian as in those earlier reigns.
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That's from House of Seleuces volume 1, pages 150 to 151. In the footnotes of the same page, he says
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Asia Minor was in fact considered the real home of the earlier Seleucids. Now, that is, that's a pretty significant component of our assessment of Daniel chapter 11.
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Keep in mind that we have been looking at Daniel chapter 11, which prophesies a series of battles between the king of the north and the king of the south.
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We have assumed the king of the south is Egypt. We've assumed the king of the north is the Seleucids, which in fact is true.
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But because the Seleucids have been historically identified with the eastern kingdom in Syria, eschatologists have simply assumed that Daniel had changed his frame of reference to a
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Judean frame in which Syria is north and Egypt is south. But when we go back and analyze the historical record and find out that the
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Seleucids invaded Asia Minor and made it their home for many generations, and we also notice that the narrative of Daniel chapter 11 does not actually pick up with the north -south conflict until we get to Antiochus II, who is the grandson of Seleucus, and we're well down the line of Seleucids who have long since existed and lived and reigned from Ephesus in Asia Minor before we actually start talking about the king of the north doing anything with the king of the south.
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And the first reference, of course, is where the daughter of the king of the south comes to the north and proposes an agreement.
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And that agreement was between Ptolemy's daughter Berenice and Antiochus II, who in fact was married at the time, and what he did is he left his first wife in Ephesus and moved to Antiochus, but as we find out later, his heart was never far away from Ephesus, and in fact he abandoned
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Berenice and went back to Ephesus where he died at the hands of his first wife because she couldn't trust him not to turn his heart back toward Antiochus.
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The point here is that it turns out that Daniel's prophecies of a battle or conflicts between the king of the north and the king of the south were in fact fulfilled exactly the way we would have expected.
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And that is, we saw a four -way division, north, south, east, and west of the
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Greek empire after Alexander. Lysimachus took Asia Minor within the
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Taurus mountains and included parts of Europe, which was Thrace, that's the northern kingdom, Egypt, the
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Ptolemies took Egypt to the south and as we'll find in a few minutes, they expanded their territories considerably and we'll talk about what the boundary ended up being between the north and the south.
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The Seleucids took Syria to the east. And yes, indeed, the Seleucids and the
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Ptolemies battled each other back and forth and in fact those two family lines fulfill the prophecy of Daniel chapter 11.
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But the reason they fulfill the prophecy is not because Daniel had shifted his frame of reference, but because the
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Seleucids had actually moved into Asia Minor. Two conclusions necessarily follow from this. One, that north refers to Asia Minor and Thrace and king of the north refers to its rulers.
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To put it another way, the title king of the north is meant in an Alexandrian frame of reference indicating the ruler of Asia Minor and Thrace.
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And the title attaches not to a particular dynasty but to whomever is ruling the particular geography.
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Thus the title king of the north does not follow the Seleucids. It follows the territory and the Seleucids are only called king of the north when they occupy the northern territory.
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Now that particular distinction of scripture is entirely lost when modern translations continue calling the
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Syrian kings king of the north after Daniel 11 .18. For example, the
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New International Version, the New Living Translation, and God's Word Translation at Daniel 11 .28
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refer to the Syrian kings as king of the north, which is something that Daniel actually doesn't do in the original text.
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He doesn't call them king of the north. That's simply a gloss in the text intended to help us understand the chapter when in fact it actually clouds the meaning of the chapter because Daniel never calls the
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Seleucids kings of the north after they get kicked out of Asia Minor. That gratuitous interpolation there along with the eschatologist's insistence on imposing a
35:49
Judean frame at 11 .5 have both worked catastrophically against us as we try to interpret the chapter.
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The translations have been modified and the Judean frame has been imposed ostensibly to help our understanding of the chapter and yet what it does is actually cloud the chapter's meaning.
36:06
The same objection can be raised regarding the king of the south and we're going to be talking about him in just a minute. As we demonstrated in our earlier discussion on this chapter, all manner of nationality and geography is freely used to describe everything else in chapter 11 except the two kings.
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The two kings are always north and south. They are never described in their geographic territories.
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Just as the angelic narrator never calls Syria king of the north, the angel never actually calls
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Egypt the king of the south. Although he plainly refers to Egypt multiple times in the chapter, he never actually says that Egypt is actually the southern kingdom.
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But to some translators, the temptation to assign a dynastic or national name to the angel's southern designation is just too great to resist.
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So what is billed as the translation of the Septuagint into contemporary English, the official title is a
37:01
New English Translation of the Septuagint, at 11 .5 Daniel 11 .5
37:06
he translates this as the king of Egypt shall grow strong. Yet in the original text, that is not what
37:12
Daniel said. Daniel said the king of the south shall grow strong. And as we can see throughout the chapter, the angel never actually equates south with Egypt and provides no indication in the text that Egypt and king of the south are equivalent.
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When the angel means Egypt, he actually says Egypt, but whenever he says south, he avoids saying whether he means
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Egypt or other possessions of the southern kingdom, which as it turns out were many. And the significance of this from an eschatological perspective is seen in the fact that the holdings of the
37:40
Ptolemies, once the Diadochi had been reduced to four, actually extended well beyond Egypt's borders.
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To this point, we have been just for convenience referring to the Ptolemies as being in Egypt to the south, but they actually owned much more than just what was contained within the borders of traditionally been considered
37:58
Egypt's borders. Roger Bagnell in his book,
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The Administration of Ptolemaic Possessions Outside of Egypt, reminds us that before Seleucus ever invaded
38:10
Lysimachus' possessions in Asia Minor in 281 BC, Ptolemy's kingdom included not only
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Culseria, Cyprus, and Palestine, but also significant portions of Asia Minor.
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He writes, To students of antiquity, indeed to the literate public, the name of the Ptolemies immediately suggests
38:28
Egypt, which they ruled for nearly three centuries, from the death of Alexander the Great to that of Cleopatra VII in 30
38:35
BC. The association is not unjustified, for Egypt was in fact the first dynastic possession to be acquired.
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But Ptolemy had no sooner acquired Egypt in the division of Babylon in June of 323 than he began looking outside of Egypt.
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At his death in 283 BC, he left to his son a collection of possessions, including
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Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Phoenicia, Palestine, Culseria, and this is the key phrase here, and various parts of Asia Minor.
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As we'll see momentarily, we can now add the Bay of Pamphylia on the southern coast of Asia Minor to Ptolemy's possessions.
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This is absolutely critical for us, because where we're heading is showing that the boundary between north and south was not the
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Mediterranean Sea, but in fact was the Taurus Mountains themselves. Because, as we'll show, the
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Ptolemies, at the time of the division of Alexander's empire, when it was divided four ways,
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Lysimachus took Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains, and Ptolemy took
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Asia Minor south of the Taurus Mountains. Now, if our listeners will just create a map, a mental image in their mind of a map of Asia Minor, just think of it as a rectangle.
39:52
Currently, Turkey, if we just look at that rectangle of land that reaches out from Asia and almost touches
40:00
Europe, that rectangle of land is called Asia Minor. It's what the
40:05
Romans called Anatolia, what we call Turkey today. But along the southern coast of Asia Minor, there is a mountain range, and it is an imposing mountain range that runs along the entire southern coast, and then as it gets close to Syria, starts turning northward.
40:22
That mountain range that runs along the southern coast of Asia Minor actually is the boundary between north and south, because what we find as we examine the historical evidence is that the
40:34
Ptolemies actually possessed the entire southern coast of Asia Minor when Alexander's empire was divided four ways.
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This matters to us because as we've demonstrated in our discussion on the king of the north, that the
40:47
Seleucids are only called kings of the north while they possess the northern territory, and then when they're not in possession of the northern territory, they're not called king of the north.
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Later on in the chapter, we get to verse 40 where the king of the north comes back, and it can't be one of the
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Seleucids because the Seleucids have long since been kicked out of the northern kingdom. What we should be looking for instead is who possessed
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Asia Minor and Thrace at that time, and that is who is the king of the north for that part of the prophecy.
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And just as important, we have to know what the boundaries of the southern kingdom were so that we understand who is fighting whom, and what we'll find as we get to the end of Daniel chapter 11 is that there was, in fact, a battle that took place between the king of the north and the king of the south, the person that possessed and controlled the territory of Asia Minor north of the
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Taurus Mountains, and the person who owned and possessed and controlled the territory of Asia Minor south of the
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Taurus Mountains. And that battle is described for us in explicit, exquisite detail in Daniel chapter 11 from 40 to 45, the last six verses of the chapter, and it was actually fulfilled before the formal rise of Rome as an empire, and we're going to get to that in this episode or the next, but what we want to turn to now is what happened after Alexander died, and during the time when the empire was split four ways, particularly what happened to the territory of the
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Ptolemies, who took Egypt, but also took a tremendous amount of the territory along the coastline of Asia Minor.
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As we explained when we were talking about post -Alexandrian Hellenism from an historiographical perspective, it's one of the darkest periods in human history, it's just one of those points where there's very very little historical record for us to go on, and so we actually have to try to reconstruct this point in history from very limited records, and as it turns out, some very recent findings are actually shedding some light on exactly how the territory was divided when
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Alexander's empire was split four ways. So I'm returning now to Roger Bagnell and his work,
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The Hellenistic Period, Historical Sources and Translation, and just by way of reminder, he says for the period from the end of the 4th century to the
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Roman triumph a quarter millennium later, we have no connected, completely preserved historical accounts, just pieces of varying size here and there.
43:19
It is simply one of the most difficult periods in the history of Western civilization to reconstruct, and yet, there's one aspect of that very difficult period that's even darker still, and it is to that point in the history of the division of Alexander's empire that we now have to turn.
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The darkest part of the darkest period in Western civilization is the hinge upon which
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Danielic eschatology must now turn, and it relates to the possessions of the Ptolemies in Pamphylia, a narrow crescent of fertile land tightly nestled against the
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Taurus Mountains and between the Taurus Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea on the southern coast of Asia Minor.
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Now, I want to turn now to Andrew Meadows. He's an Oxford University professor of ancient history, and he explains just how mysterious this puzzle is to those who wish to study post -Alexandrian
44:13
Hellenism in Asia Minor. Ptolemy's overseas kingdom, based on the extremely limited epigraphic evidence, appears simply to blossom from nothing in the early 3rd century
44:23
BC, and no recorded account of it has ever been found, and yet the evidence for his possessions beyond Egypt are quite significant, and yet there's simply no evidence of the rise of that overseas kingdom, and that's what we're going to study next.
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So he says, this is writing in Imperialism, Cultural, Politics, and Polybius, and this is actually,
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Meadows was a contributing writer for this, and he writes, The Ptolemaic Empire overseas came as it were from nowhere.
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Not a single ancient historical account survives of the process whereby this overseas empire came into being.
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As a result, few modern accounts deal with the problem in anything more than a cursory fashion, and who can blame them?
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What little documentary evidence there is for the early history of this empire is fragmentary, disjointed, and far from providing the means to create a connected narrative account.
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So, the question we have is, when did the Ptolemies acquire the southern coast of Asia Minor, and in particular, when did they subjugate
45:25
Pamphylia? Until only very recently, and by recently I mean in the last century, it has been difficult to answer this question.
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Even in 1976, when Roger Bagnell was writing about the
45:39
Seleucids, he wrote in his book called The Hellenistic Period, Historical Sources in Translation.
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Bagnell held that the Ptolemaic administration of Pamphylia on the southern coast of Asia Minor could be attested no earlier than 278
45:54
BC, which is several years after the Battle of Coropedium. Now remember, Coropedium occurred in 281
46:00
BC, and that was when the Diadochi were reduced from four down to three, and so as we were saying, the division of the empire has to coincide with the reduction of the
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Diadochi to four, and once the Diadochi are reduced to three, we're past the period when the boundaries of the four kingdoms can be established.
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They have to be established during that period when there were only four ruling lines. The problem for us here is that Ptolemy does not appear to control the southern coast of Asia Minor until about 278
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BC, which is several years after the Battle of Coropedium. And this is what Bagnell writes for us. He says, the earliest dateable testimony for the
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Ptolemies in Pamphylia comes from a decree in 278 BC.
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And he says, about the nature of the administration of Ptolemy in Pamphylia, little can be said.
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One has the impression of a series of strongholds along the coast rather than a pacified countryside, but Termesso shows that this situation need not have been the case.
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New finds may yet greatly expand this limited picture. So, he talks about Termessos is a decree in 278 that identified what appears to be an officer named the
47:11
Pamphiliarch residing in Pamphylia as an Egyptian governor. Now, that's in 1976 and Bagnell is explaining that the earliest evidence we have for the presence of the
47:24
Ptolemies on the southern coast of Asia Minor is three years after the Battle of Coropedium. But, as Bagnell anticipated, he said that new finds may greatly expand this limited picture.
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Well, new finds did indeed come to light and by 1978 another inscription was discovered.
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This time in a place called Termessos, also along the southern coast of Asia Minor. And this greatly enhanced our understanding of the
47:48
Ptolemaic administration of the southern coast of Asia Minor. This inscription was dated to about 279
47:53
BC, but along with the new discovery came another development of profound significance. The system of dating had been off by as much as four years and that moved
48:03
Ptolemaic control of the region four years earlier than Bagnell had imagined. In other words, what was becoming clear from the historical data is that even before the
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Battle of Coropedium, Pamphylia had been firmly part of the Ptolemaic Empire. The significance here is that we are narrowing in on a definition of the boundaries of the southern kingdom and what we're finding is that when we examine the historical record, we find that Ptolemy did indeed control
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Egypt, but he also controlled the whole southern coast of Asia Minor, including a section of land called
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Pamphylia. What this shows us is that because the Ptolemies actually controlled the southern coast of Asia Minor, during that critical period when
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Alexander's empire was divided four ways, it shows us that the division between north and south in Daniel's prophecies was not the
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Mediterranean Sea, but actually the Taurus Mountains that run along the southern coast of Asia Minor. This is what
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Meadows wrote, continuing from his previous citation. It says, When the
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Telmestis stone was published, the publisher took the fourth year of Ptolemy to be 279
49:10
B .C., but matters have since moved on. As is now clear from the Telmestis decree, by August or September of 282
49:18
B .C., the Telmestians regarded themselves as being part of the Ptolemaic Empire, and relying on the military support of Ptolemy's generals.
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While we may not be able to answer the major question of how the Ptolemaic Empire came into being from the literary sources, there is now documentary evidence which opens a window on Ptolemaic activity in Asia Minor in the late 280s.
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Meadows' work on the Ptolemaic administration of Pamphylia is nothing short of remarkable, because the epigraphic discoveries of just the last 50 years moved the control of the
49:48
Ptolemies over the southern coast of Asia Minor all the way back into the middle of the 280s
49:54
B .C., which is right in the middle of the time frame when the four -way division of Alexander's empire was occurring, and therefore the four -way division of their territories.
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Because of the new information that's become available, and because of the recalibration of the dating system, they have moved
50:12
Ptolemaic administration of the southern coast of Asia Minor right into the time frame when the boundaries of the southern and northern king would have been established.
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And so what that does for us is because we know that overseas empires do not spring up overnight, suddenly it appears that the
50:27
Ptolemies were actually controlling the southern coast of Asia Minor right in the middle of that period when the boundaries would have been established.
50:34
And that means the boundary between the north and the south actually would have been the
50:40
Taurus Mountains themselves, rather than the Mediterranean Sea. And this shows us that the king of the south is not limited just to Egypt, or even to some of the adjacent territories to Egypt, but also the entire southern coast of Asia Minor, including the
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Bay of Pamphylia, which as we will discover in our next episode, is going to be an extremely important crescent of land from an eschatological standpoint.
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Now we want to pause briefly here and look at two passages from Daniel chapter 11 that really make the point, or accentuate the point that we're trying to make, and that is the king of the north should be considered the ruler of Asia Minor north of the
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Taurus Mountains, and Thrace and the king of the south would necessarily include the territory south of the
51:29
Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor. The first passage I want to look at is Daniel chapter 11 verses 7 to 9, and this basically summarizes the
51:38
Laodicean War, the third Syrian war in which the Ptolemies had to make retribution against the Seleucids for the murder of Bernice.
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Bernice, of course, being the daughter of the king of the south, who was identified in a previous verse, who was given in marriage to the king of the north, who was
51:54
Antiochus II, who was living in Ephesus in Asia Minor at the time. She ended up dying, being murdered, actually, and so the
52:02
Ptolemies have to make retribution against the Seleucids. Here's the verse, it's Daniel 11, 7 to 9, it says, but out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and shall deal against them, and shall prevail.
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And shall also carry captives into Egypt, their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and gold, and he shall continue more years than the king of the north.
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So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall return to his own land. Now typically this has been taken to refer to the
52:33
Ptolemaic campaign into Syria, and in that campaign, he invaded Syria, met no resistance at all, proceeded all the way to Babylon, raided the temples, and then returned to Egypt with all the booty that he'd raided from the temples.
52:45
But in fact, there's actually more information than just that, and I'm referring now to the
52:50
Adullas inscription. The Adullas inscription actually documents the campaigns of Ptolemy in this war of retribution against the
52:59
Seleucids, and what happened was, like I mentioned, they met no resistance in the Syrian campaign, and so they had to invade
53:06
Asia Minor as well, and that's why the Adullas inscription actually recounts or describes this war as an engagement that enveloped the two lands of Asia, referring to Asia Major to the east, which was
53:19
Syria, and Asia Minor to the north. It's in the Adullas inscription that we find out that Ptolemy did not return with all the booty from the two campaigns until after he'd invaded both
53:29
Asias, that is, the Asia to the east and the Asia to the north, which would be Asia Minor. And it's only after he invaded
53:36
Asia Minor did he return to Egypt, and it says that he brought back all that he'd recovered in Persia, along with the rest of the treasure from the various regions that he'd invaded, and he lists in the
53:50
Adullas inscription all the exploits that had occurred in Asia Minor.
53:56
So here we have evidence that a passage of scripture that has typically been taken to refer to Syria and the invasion of the
54:04
Ptolemies into Syria to make retribution against the Seleuces for the murder of Bernice, it turns out that in that same campaign they actually invaded
54:13
Asia Minor, collected all their goods and wares as well, and then returned to Egypt with all that booty.
54:19
Now the second example that I want to give is the one that illustrates for us the fact that the king of the south would actually include the territory along the southern coastline of Asia Minor, and that verse for us is 1115.
54:33
It says, So the king of the north shall come and shall cast up a mount, and shall take the most fenced cities, and the arms of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.
54:45
Now the significance here is that typically the fulfillment of this passage is understood to be the siege of Sidon and Caucasia, because in fact the
54:56
Seleucids did in fact invade Syria, or call Syria, where the king of the south actually had some possessions, and it is assumed to refer to the siege of Sidon.
55:06
Now what's amazing is that Jerome actually did record for us the actual fulfillment, it's just that he didn't realize that that's what he was recording for us.
55:15
Because what happened was after that summer campaign in Syria, the
55:21
Seleucids then turned their attention to the southern coast of Asia Minor where the Ptolemies had fortresses all along the southern coast.
55:30
And what he did is one by one, going from east to west, he sailed along the southern coast and conquered all the fenced cities, or the fortified cities of the
55:39
Ptolemies along the southern coast of Asia Minor. That's actually from Jerome's commentary in Daniel 11 .15
55:45
where he writes, As for the statement, he shall cast up a mound, this indicates that Antiochus is going to besiege the garrison of Scopus in the citadel of Jerusalem for a long time, while the
55:56
Jews add their exertions as well. And he's going to capture other cities which had formerly been held by the
56:01
Ptolemaic faction in Syria, Cilicia, and Lycia, for at that time Aphrodisias, Soloi, Zephryon, Malus, Anamurium, Salinas, Choracesium, Coricus, Andriace, Lymera, Patera, Xanthus, and finally
56:18
Ephesus were all captured. These things are related by both Greek and Roman historians.
56:24
What's fascinating about this particular citation from Jerome is he briefly draws our attention to Syria where the
56:32
Ptolemies actually had some cities, and refers to actually the sieges that took place there.
56:38
And then he turns our attention back to the southern coast of Asia Minor where the actual fortresses of the king of the south were actually located.
56:46
And we actually find this as well in Livius' history where he talks about Antiochus actually did invade
56:54
Col Syria, which was in fact in possession of Ptolemy. But then it says, after his invasion of Col Syria, he then turned his attention to the southern coast of Asia Minor.
57:05
And it says, his attempt was the reduction of the cities along the whole coastline of Cilicia, Lycia, and Korea, which owed allegiance to Ptolemy.
57:13
That's Livius' History of Rome, book 33, 19. So, what we want to highlight here is that there are two examples that support what we're talking about, and we wanted to bring those examples out for the consideration of the listeners.
57:27
One is that in one of the passages of scripture, Daniel 11, verses 7 -9, that has historically been taken to refer to the
57:36
Ptolemaic invasion of Syria actually refers to the invasion of the king of the north, and in fact, we're living in Asia Minor and Thrace at the time, and in fact, the historical record shows that the
57:47
Ptolemies invaded Asia Minor. And the second one is that in Daniel 11, 15, where it talks about the king of the north come and taking the fenced cities and putting up a siege against the fenced cities of the king of the south, we actually have in the historical record the fact that Antiochus came and fought against the
58:05
Ptolemies and then turned his attention and then conquered all the fenced or fortified cities all along the southern coast of Asia Minor.
58:11
The southern coast of Asia Minor was, in fact, a possession of the Ptolemies at the time that Alexander's empire was divided four ways, and what we find in the fulfillment of prophecy is that when
58:23
Antiochus comes and fights against the king of the south, he fights against him in his territories, and his territories include the southern coast of Asia Minor.
58:32
And that's where we're going to pick up next week with episode 5. Thank you very much for listening, everybody, and we appreciate your attention.
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We appreciate you downloading the podcast. Please don't hesitate to send emails if you have questions, and we hope you keep listening because it gets even more interesting next week when we talk about the historical, documented fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel 11, 40 -45.