Review of Introduction and Dan 1:1-2 The victory of the Babylonians and the start of exile.

We were studying the book of Daniel and we had gotten through the introduction and I was ready to start

Daniel 1 1 but I Think it might be helpful To kind of do a quick review.

So Daniel wrote a book. Okay, we're done reviewing We we talked about the fact that well,

I'll just kind of skim over what we what we looked at in 14 pages of text 15 pages, so the book of Daniel was written in the 6th century

BC by the prophet named in the book It was often it was written in the third person

Which indeed many of the books on the Old Testament were written in the third person in fact We see the

Lord himself Alternating between the first and the third person in some of his in the writings of Christ and of the

Lord and of the father So modern liberal scholars, we talked about the fact that modern liberal scholars follow the lead of a second -century

Heretic named periphery who looked at the prophecies in Daniel and said these are too accurate to be prophecies he must have written this as a history after they happened and That was his thesis

He had no science as they call it to back it up But he was convinced that these are these prophecies were so accurate that they couldn't have been prophecies

They must have been written during the Maccabean period As a historical record of what took place that Daniel predicted

So Daniel lived he lived in the 6th century before Christ around the same time of that period of time

The construction on the Acropolis in Athens began the Mayan civilization was flourishing in Mexico Aesop wrote his fables

Confucius and Buddha lived around this time Greek art Greek art began to truly excel the

Phoenicians made the first known sea voyage around Africa and the

Greeks and this is very important for pasta lovers and Sauce tomato sauce and all that stuff the

Greeks and introduced the olive tree into Italy so Daniel describes events of the second century before Jesus, especially the period between 175 and 164

BC was such precision that the critics believed that it had to have been written During or after that period during the time of the

Maccabees in between the Old and New Testament Supposedly the purpose for writing Daniel at that time was to inspire

God's people on to victory during the Maccabean Wars We went through all of the difficulties with that Thesis that the book the book was actually written some of the problems were the words that were in it and again the accuracy there wasn't much for the critics to hang their hats on but it was enough for them to write a

Plethora of books about how Daniel couldn't have been written early. It had to have been written later So there were also

Concerns and and one of the reasons I'm going to breeze over this a little bit is because Kootenai Community records everything we do now

Much to my dismay and so you can actually go and review The the earlier two lessons that I gave on Daniel and get this history in much more detail if you'd like to do that So three times

Daniel is mentioned by his 6th century counterpart Ezekiel as an example of righteousness in Ezekiel 14 14 14 20 and 28 3 those two were contemporaries there were different ages, but they were contemporaries and so Daniel is indeed the writer of this book.

There are critics who say he didn't even write the book they Postulate that the Daniel spoken of here was a 1 ,400 years before this

Daniel with almost no evidence whatsoever But when you have a plan to upend

God's Word, you'll do it. Anyway, you can you'll do whatever works for you So the date of the book late 2nd century

The late 2nd century is the fake date the real date is the early 6th century

Manuscript evidence there's evidence. There's manuscripts desert discovered at Qumran Especially the four

Elysium found in cave 4q Which date from the Maccabean period which make it very unlikely that the book was written during the time of the

Maccabees since it would Have taken a quite a bit of time for it to have been accepted and included in the canon propagated

It's not like today today. You can send an email And it's in Southern Ukraine in 1 .7

seconds back then if you wrote a letter and You sent it from Egypt to Turkey what will we call modern -day

Turkey? It would have taken months to get there. So these kinds of things

Did not propagate the same way they do today The linguistic evidence

Aramaic Daniel's Aramaic demonstrates grammatical evidence for an early date far more closely associated with the 6th and 7th centuries

BC Than with the 2nd century BC. His Aramaic was an earlier Aramaic clearly

Persian the Persian loanwords in Daniel do not argue against an early date for the book since Daniel who lived under the

Persians Would have placed the material in its finer final form in the final part of his life Persian loanwords and we'll talk about them

We'll actually look at the concerns that the critics have all the way through this book and answer them as we go through it

Four of the 19 Persian words are not translated Well by Greek renderings of about 100 BC implying that their meaning was lost or drastically changed

Meaning that it is very unlikely that Daniel was written in 165 BC The Persian words which are cited in Daniel are specifically old

Persian words dating from around 300 BC and earlier this argues against a 165 date

The three Greek loanwords in Daniel do not need to argue for a late date since there may well have been Greek writing prior to Plato 370

BC where these words could have been used and since they are that given the names of musical instruments which are often circulated law far beyond national boundaries and Since Greek words are found in the

Aramaic documents of Elephantine dated to the 5th century BC I should be moving along here so you guys can keep track

Okay, we'll get it. We'll get caught up again the themes of the prominence of angels the

Last Judgment the years resurrection of the dead and the Establishment of the final kingdom are not themes that are limited to later apocryphal times apocryphal literature

But have their roots in earlier biblical literature and even in books like Zechariah And then literary evidence the reason the development of history seems to stop with Antiochus for Epiphanies is not necessarily because that was when the writer lived it is probably for literary theological reasons he best foreshadows the

Antichrist to come and Then predictive evidence the fourth Empire in Daniel 2 will look at that is not of the

Greeks as those who hold to a late date This is substantiated by the vision in chapter 7 where the second

Empire is not media and the third Empire is not Persia But is Greece which divides into four and we'll see all of that in detail as we get to the predictive sections of Daniel At times this is an interesting bit of trivia

Communist governments prohibited preaching from the book of Daniel because it reveals God's knowledge of the future and it shows that in the end

The Lord God and his people win and they didn't want that information propagated oh my it's

Really nothing changes people human nature is the same. It's the same today as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago

Daniel contains more fulfilled prophecies than any other book in the Bible in New Testament prophecy

Daniel is referred to more than any other Old Testament book and So then I think we had the the location here is the

Syrian desert as you can see this is there's Babylon and All of those geographic locations we looked at that and then set against the ancient

Babylon location where it was Right in the middle of Iraq the one of the other interesting bits of trivia if you will was the size of Babylon When you read about an empire what comes to mind?

Gigantic huge earth encompassing. No, it's about the size of Texas If I remember right

Yeah controlled nearly 130 no it wasn't even as big as Texas, I'm sorry they controlled about a hundred and ninety -four thousand square miles

Which is about seventy three percent of the size of Texas or the size of the states of Idaho and Nevada combined

That was the Babylonian Empire now in that day. That was huge. It was a lot of land

It still is a lot of land actually so the Babylonian Empire of Millennia Actually, it endured for millennia and it had massive ups and downs in both size and influence

It was founded about 2300 BC It grew in size under Hammurabi between 1790

BC and 1750 and then in the Neo Babylon period that Babylonian period The Daniel it was involved with which spanned the years 626

BC to 539 It became the most powerful kingdom in the world at the time

Then we looked at all the we looked at a whole bunch of events and those slides and that That audio was available online and that ended us

December 29th 19 19 2019 yeah, it was a long time ago

So when Daniel entered when Daniel arrived in Babylon, he would have been a teenager Probably Mid teenager years his life spanned about 85 years and in this late in his life

He penned this book It is the most as I said the most quoted book in the New Testament and has as I said more fulfilled prophecies than any

Other book since Daniel was a government official first and a prophet second The book is placed in the

Hebrew writings rather than in the prophets section And we talked about earlier scholar early scholars

Rejecting it because it was too accurate The message the clear message of the book is that of God's sovereignty over angels

Principalities powers nations and human rulers. God is sovereign as we know over everything, but specifically these five things

Nothing escaped God's hand in this writing There are miracles in chapters 1 through 6 and significant prophecies in chapters 7 through 12

So some some of the objections we'll look at that we're going to look at Is that the author is not

Daniel the Daniel we find in the book and there are detailed objections that I laid out in A list that we went through See if we can get to that I should have been plugging this thing along These are all online for you to look at 17 there it is so Some of those objections are listed up there and Actually, there were two pages of them page 1 200

BC the prophets was added and those are all online for you to look at if you would like to do that We need to understand that the liberal

Critics who reject the authenticity of Daniel start with many presuppositions The first and most glaring is that predictive prophecy is impossible

They must believe that you cannot predict the future in order to reject

Daniel That's one of the first things they need to to adhere to if you will The second is the predict is the rejection of detailed prophecy

The third is rejection of miracles Rejection of his canonicity I should have said is one detailed prophecy miracles

Fourth is textual problems five is problems of language and six is alleged historical inaccuracies

And we'll look at each one of those as we go through the book will peg each of the critics Concerns what they were and how they are answered so much more detail will be added to these as we study the text

So and then I'm gonna finish up with this actually right there we

Adhere to the historical grammatical method of interpretation of the Bible We believe that in order to understand the

Bible you must read it in the historical setting Understanding the words as the people of that time would have understood the words which unders you would understand my chagrin when

I thought that Dodge Actually existed in New Testament times when I found out that John the

Baptist's head was brought to the king on a charger Was it a 68 my favorite year?

No, it couldn't have been If you go back and understand the King James a charger is a platter

And when you look at the original Greek word the interpretation the interpretation is from a

Greek word Which means a plate or a platter? So that's what I'm talking about. You have to understand the the the text as The people who was written to understood it.

That's the historical grammatical method. There are four methods The first one is the historical grammatical Second is the tropological or moral method the third is the allegorical which is the best way to abuse a text

I've ever seen and the fourth is the anagogical which is the second best way to abuse the text that I've ever seen

And we went through each of those and that's all online so then we quickly talked about the principles we would use and I will just highlight a couple of phrases from each of the five

Seven or ten principles we've got here They must the words of the Bible must be Interpreted based on the intention of the author and not on the presuppositions or the suppositions of the reader

Number two interpretation must be based upon the context of the passage in question. There's near context paragraph context

Section context and even the context understanding the author themselves number three the

Bible must be interpreted literally allowing for the normal use of words and Figurative language for example a normal method of explaining that the

Word of God is perfect is found in Psalm 19 7 The law of the Lord is perfect restoring the soul the testimony of the

Lord is sure Making wise the simple a figurative way of saying the same thing would be like comparing

God's Word to illumination thus we see in Proverbs 6 23 for example for the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is a light and Reproofs for discipline are the way of life.

So those are examples of that often we see that in Scripture number four

Use the Bible to interpret itself It is its best interpreter and I'm way behind not that one the first one.

Yes Yes, if literal sense made perfect sense, then all other sense is nonsense and often

Unfortunately, we humans want the Bible to say something. It doesn't so we adopt the nonsense version and Especially when it is attempting

God is through his Word is attempting to point out our sin That's not sin that's just fill in the blank number four use the

Bible to interpret itself So when in the

Old Testament Interpret the verse in question in context only after this is accomplished only after this is accomplished

Should one go to the New Testament for further insight? Some verses are very hard to understand and must be understood both in the local context and in the greater context

And we we just Detailed the one of the sections that Jim had just taken us through.

How long has it been since we were in Hebrews 6? I guess January. Yeah. Yeah. Okay number five

Interpretation is not application And so in Matthew chapter 9 for example an historical event occurred which in which

Jesus was seen eating with a tax collector He was taken to task by the Pharisees. His response to the

Pharisees was a historical statement that occurred in real time His statement rebuked them an

Application for us today would be might be that we when we hear someone or see someone doing something contrary to Scripture we lovingly and compassionately approach them seeking either their salvation or restoration it is not an opportunity for one -upmanship and lording it over others and That dear brothers and sisters is almost always a function of our attitude and our own heart

What are we trying to do are we trying to grow someone help someone or show them how much we know about Scripture and How much they need to be like us?

Yes number six be careful not to misunderstand the distinctions between Israel and the church between the

Old Testament and New Testament and Etc. And finally and Very importantly be aware of the type of literature.

You are reading in the scriptures in the Bible. You will find law narrative Oops, I was there

You will find law Narrative wisdom poetry gospel parable epistle and apocalyptic literature and so then we discussed some of those and what they were like and how they worked and then we

And then and just to give you an idea There's there's some of the subtexts of all of that and then we finished and here we are today

With the are there any questions about anything I just rapidly rushed through before we start actually into the text of the book of Daniel So, let's take the book of Daniel and let's read the first chapter together

What a wonderful book it's the best book in the Bible I Know first Corinthians 2nd

Corinthians used to be but we're not studying 2nd Corinthians anymore We're studying Daniel and it's the best book in the

Bible number in in Daniel chapter 1 Daniel chapter 1 in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it and the

Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand Along with some of the vessels of the house of God and he brought them to the land of Shinar To the house of his

God and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God Then the king ordered Ashkenaz the chief of his officials to bring in some of the sons of Israel including some of the royal family and of the nobles youths in whom was no defect who were good -looking showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom endowed with understanding with discerning knowledge and who had ability for serving the king's court and he ordered them to teach them the literature and the language of the

Chaldeans Chaldeans Babylonians and The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food and from the wine which he drank and appointed that they should

Be educated three years at the end of which they were to and enter the king's personal service now among them from the sons of Judah were

Daniel Hananiah Mishael and Azariah Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them and to Daniel he assigned the name

Belta Belta Chazar Belta Chazar to be distinguished from belches are who was a king Belta Chazar and the name to Hananiah Shadrach and to Mishael Meshach and to as a rig as a

Raya Abednego or a bed to go But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank

So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself Now God granted

Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials and the commander of the officials said to Daniel He said this

I am afraid of my lord the king who has appointed your food and your drink for why should he?

See your faces looking more haggard than the use who are your own age, then you would make me forfeit my head to the king

Imagine that losing your head for feeding the wrong stuff. That's pretty severe But Daniel said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel Hananiah Hananiah Mishael and as a

Raya Daniel said this please test your servants for ten days and let us be given vegetables some vegetables to eat and water to drink

Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food and deal with Your servants according to what you see

So he listened to them in this matter. That is the overseer He listened to Daniel in this matter and tested them for ten days and at the end of ten days their appearance seemed better And they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king's choice food

So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food in the wine They were to drink and kept giving them vegetables and as for these four youths

God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams

Then at the end of the days which the king had specified for presenting them the commander of the officials presented them before Nebuchadnezzar And the king talked with them and out of them all not and out of them all not one was found like Daniel Hananiah Mishael and Azariah So they entered the king's personal service and as for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them

He found them ten times better than all the magicians and conquerors Conjurers who were in his realm in all his realm and Daniel continued until the first year of Cyrus the king

There's a ton in that first chapter and what I'm looking forward to when I finally get to be meet the

Savior Is I want to ask Daniel what's missing? What's missing because there's I mean

Persia the Babylonian Empire overran Jerusalem Israel and took everybody captive and we there's

More in other parts of Scripture about that about how that was accomplished But so much information is missing that just interests me

How did they capture? How did they determine which were the best young men? Young people to to take into service.

Where did they take him? How did they take him just a ton of questions, but at any rate that'll be for some time in the future

And I'll ask them questions myself. So let's look at verse 1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged

Jerusalem So in the summer of 605 BC The two extant superpowers of the world at that time clashed

Egypt and Babylon met in battle at Carchemish Babylon defeated Egypt and the armies of Egypt retreated south

They went home By late summer Nebuchadnezzar had taken control of the city of Jerusalem in mid -august

Nebuchadnezzar's father, King Nebuchadnezzar died in Babylon. So Nebuchadnezzar stopped what he was doing.

He hurried home to claim the crown. You had to be present to claim the crown. You didn't get voted in.

And he took with him some of the sacred vessels of the temple and some of the best of the Jewish young men.

Among those captives were Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. The vessels he took were placed in the temple of Marduk in the temple complex of Esagila, Esagila, Esagila, excuse me, which was set up to honor

Marduk who was the main Babylonian god. This would have been done to celebrate the victory given to them, they believed, by Marduk and to humiliate the

God of the Israelites. So here in verse one, where do you think the critics began their objections?

In verse one. Well, good for them. Here in verse one is one of the first objections that the critics have.

We must remember that because the book of Daniel is the most quoted in the New Testament and has the most fulfilled prophecies of any other book, it will be attacked on every angle, at every opportunity, by liberal critics.

The statement is made that Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king when this happened. And Daniel said, in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, besieged

Jerusalem, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. Well, he wasn't king yet. He hadn't gone home and taken the crown from his father who had passed.

He only found out about his father's death in August and returned home to claim the kingship. Daniel is simply using the narrative sense in what is called a proleptic statement.

That is, he used the title of king in anticipation of the fact that Nebuchadnezzar did indeed ascend to the throne.

This is common language that has been used throughout history. Another example would be the statement,

President Calvin Coolidge was a storekeeper as a boy. Now, was he president when he was a storekeeper as a boy?

Do you object to that narrative sense? No, and neither do I, but the critics do.

He was most certainly not president when he was a boy, but the title attends him and is what he is remembered by.

As in many cases, we will see the answers to the critics' objections are so simple as to be humorous, often silly.

But, answer, they must be. So, that's the beginning of the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar, who became king of Babylon, attacked, besieged, fought

Egypt and won, and then in that section of the world, he scooped up all of the temple gold and utensils and things like that to take back to his god, and he took the best of the best and brightest in Israel and took them back to Babylon to improve the lot of Babylon, if you will.

Any questions about verse one? Yes, I did.

Carchemish, Carchemish, they met at the Battle of Carchemish. It wasn't in Israel. Where's Carchemish?

Okay, one of my flip, one of my answers, one of my statements to you has always been that I will not give flippant answers if I don't know the answer.

I think Carchemish probably isn't in Texas, but I'm not sure where it's at. So, I'll look that up and I'll get back to you.

But it wasn't in Israel. If I said that, it was a mistake. They met on the battlefield in Carchemish.

My guess is that was an area that both of them were trying to take control of, but we'll look it up. Where is,

I will report back to you, sir. Yeah, yeah, we're not gonna get very far into the book of Daniel, so it'll be easy to come back and answer this.

Questions of geography are always fun, especially nowadays when you can just look it up in about three -tenths of a second.

Any other questions? So, that's still not

Texas, is it? Okay, it's in Iran. So, I don't know if I can get back to my map, but I can kind of give you a, for those of us who are not, haven't got that all memorized, he wanted to know where Carchemish was and why they met on the battlefield there.

Was one of them trying to conquer the area or et cetera? So, it was near Iran, and I'll have some maps and some information, yeah.

Well, I've actually, did I lose my cool thing? Yeah, it was an

Egyptian -held city. Okay, so that's most of the answer, but I'll get back to the rest of it next week. Yeah, yeah.

So, he took the time to go over to Jerusalem and scoop up, probably knowing that it was one of the more flourishing cities that probably had lots of good stuff to steal.

If this area was taken over by an enemy invader, more than likely, they wouldn't plunder

Clark Fork, but they would plunder Spokane. Pardon?

I think we're safe. We're, yeah, we're probably not safe either, but any other questions?

Nathal? Egypt. Yeah, yeah.

He brought the kids to Shinar, which is a colloquialism for Babylonia, yeah.

Any other questions? Okay. Verse two. The Lord gave

Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his

God, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God. So contrary to Nebuchadnezzar's belief that his

God had conquered Jehovah, the fact was Jehovah himself had allowed

Nebuchadnezzar to win that battle and to plunder Judah. There are companion verses that give basically the same information about this, against him.

In his days, 2 Kings 24 .1, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three, oh, by the way, 2

Kings calls Nebuchadnezzar the king. The critics didn't take any time to object to that, by the way.

Okay, back to what we were saying. The verse of scripture says, in his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years, and then turned and rebelled against him.

2 Chronicles 36, five through seven. Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem, and he did evil in the sight of the

Lord, his God. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against him, and bound him with bronze chains to take him to Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar also brought some of the articles of the house of the Lord to Babylon to put them in his temple at Babylon. And then, thus began the 70 years' captivity, spoken of both by Daniel in chapters nine, in chapter nine, one, and two, and in Jeremiah, chapter 25, 11.

In the first year of Darius, the son of Hagiwaris, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the

Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the

Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

So Daniel explains that that time period was the 70 -year period. And then, Jeremiah 25, 11.

This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon 70 years.

See, it's those kind of predictions that the critics can't endure. Why not 69? Why not 58?

Why not 72? Why not just an indeterminate number, like we would do, because we don't know anything about the future? They predicted it specifically, or wrote about it specifically.

Israel had prostituted herself to the gods of the different nations, and as such, had not kept any, or at least had kept very few of the commands of God.

One of those commands of God was to let the land rest every how many years?

Wow, what a coincidence, every 70 years. Nor had they kept the Sabbath day and the sabbatical year.

Jeremiah 34, verses 12 through 22.

I'm gonna read the whole thing. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Thus says the

Lord God of Israel, I made a covenant with your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the house of Boning, saying, at the end of seven years, each of you shall set free his

Hebrew brother who has been sold to you, and who has served you six years, you shall send him out free from you, but your forefathers did not obey me, nor incline their ear to me.

Although recently you had turned and done what is right in my sight, each man proclaiming release to his neighbor, and you had made a covenant before me in the house which was called by my name, yet you turned and profaned my name, and each man took back his male servant, and each man his female servant, whom you had set free according to their desire.

And you brought them into subjection to be your male servant and female servants. Therefore, thus says the

Lord, you have not obeyed me in proclaiming release, each man to his brother, and each man to his neighbor.

Let me stop there for a minute. We set them free, Lord. We followed the specific terms of Scripture.

We set them free. We did take them back into captivity, but we'd followed. How many times does that happen?

Continuing, behold, the Lord says, I am proclaiming a release to you, declares the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and I will make you a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not fulfilled the words of the covenant which they made before me, when they cut the calf in two and pass between its parts, which is what covenant means in Hebrew.

The officials of Judah and the officials of Jerusalem, the court officers and the priests, and all the people of the land who pass between the parts of the calf,

I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. And their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.

Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his officials, I will give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life, and into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, which has gone away from you.

Behold, I am going to command, declares the Lord, and I will bring them back to the city, and they will fight against it and take it and burn it with fire, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.

Thus God, through the captivity, gave the land the rest and forced the observation of the liberty and forced them to observe the liberty portions of his commands.

It is significant that the people of Israel had given themselves over to idolatry and perversion.

This was a very perverse time in the history of Israel, and there's some of it. And I think these slides do go online, do they not?

They do, okay. So we won't read through each one of them, but it shows the progression of perversion of the kings of Israel, the continued ignorance of God's commands to them, and gives a clear explanation to anybody who would be asking, why did

God allow this captivity to happen? They were just radically and regularly disobeying everything they could think of to disobey.

So their continued walk in idolatry and perversion caused them to be carried off into captivity for 70 years as prophesied.

Their captors, the Babylonians, were among the most evil and perverse who had ever lived and reigned.

Such idolatry was never again a serious temptation to Israel after the captivity. Here is the second alleged discrepancy that the critics used to dismiss the book of Daniel as authentic.

The dating of 605 BC seems to have a conflict in that Jeremiah says the first year of Nebuchadnezzar was the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah 25 .1.

The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

The so -called incongruity is easily explained by the fact that Daniel and Jeremiah used different time renderings.

John F. Walvert explains this in his commentary on Daniel. Here it is, Daniel's dating of his exile as 605

BC has long been attacked as inaccurate by critics. They point out the apparent conflict between this and the statement of Jeremiah that the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.

This supposed chronological area is used as the first in the series of alleged proofs that Daniel is a spurious book written by one unfamiliar with the events of the captivity.

There are, however, several good explanations. One explanation is that Daniel is using Babylonian reckoning.

The discussion in the introduction on Nebonidas and Belteshazzar, that's in a different part of this commentary,

Belteshazzar. It was customary for the Babylonians to consider the first year of a king's reign as the year of accession and to call the next year the first year.

Finnegan has demonstrated the phrase the first year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah actually means the accession year of Nebuchadnezzar in the

Babylonian reckoning. Tadmor was among the first to support a solution and the point may not be considered as well established.

Daniel is a most unusual case because he of all the prophets was the only one thoroughly instructed in Babylonian culture and point of view.

Having spent most of his life in Babylon, it is only natural that Daniel should use a Babylonian form of chronology and date

Jehoiakim's reign from his second year. Remember when Daniel wrote this? He had been living in Babylon probably 70 years.

And so he had adopted the Babylonian calendar as his method of reckoning. If you don't do that in the place that you're living, you gotta keep three watches or four or month books,

I guess. Having spent most of his life in Babylon, it is only natural that he should use the Babylonian form of chronology and date

Jehoiakim's reign from his second year. By contrast, Jeremiah would use Israel's form of reckoning. That included a part of the year as the first year of Jehoiakim's reign.

This simple explanation is both satisfying and adequate to explain the supposed discrepancy. Two different calendars.

If you really wanna get mixed up, we have had our calendar changed because people don't like using

BC, before Christ, because that acknowledges the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it's before the current era now, BCE. New calendars. The term

Shinar was used by the Hebrews to refer to the area that Babylon was in, that is

Mesopotamia. It had a subtle, this is related to your question, Nathael, it had a subtle negative slant and then it referred to places that were hostile to faith.

It had direct association to Nimrod. Now, in Genesis 10, 8, now

Cush became the father of Nimrod, he became a mighty one on the earth, he was a mighty hunter before the Lord, therefore it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the

Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Akkad and Chalna in the land of Shinar.

It was the location of the Tower of Babel. In Genesis chapter 11, one through four. Now, the whole earth used the same language and the same words.

It came about as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said one to another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

And they used brick for stone and they used tar for mortar. And they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven.

And let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. By the way, would you say a tower that reached into heaven was biblical hyperbole?

Or do you think that they could have made a tower that went up 250 ,000 miles out of brick and tar?

Was it maybe hyperbole? Okay. Just observations that sometimes people will object to some of the things scripture says without looking for the obvious meaning.

Zechariah 5 .11. Then he said to me, to build a temple for her in the land of Shinar.

When it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal. So a third supposed inconsistency in the mind of liberal critics is that the expression he brought, he brought, is incorrect because it appears to indicate

Daniel and his friends were carried away at this time. The mention of captors is in detail in the following verses.

And so there being no need to mention it twice, the obvious solution is that this verse is talking about the vessels that Nebuchadnezzar took.

This being a natural result of his conquering of the land and wanting to offer homage to his god

Marduk. Nebuchadnezzar would have immediately confiscated those items and taken them back to Babylon with him.

Again, we find a simple explanation is clearly in the text. So verse two simply says, and the

Lord gave Jehoiakim into the hand of Judah, king of Judah, gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand along with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his god.

He was talking about the vessels, not the youth. Does that not appear obvious?

I mean, maybe if I read it like this. Okay, we're gonna stop there, because we went too long.

Any questions about verse two? Or anything we've said so far? Yes, yes.

So did Daniel, having lived from a youth into his 80s, did he ever see some of the people returning to Babylon?

We will get to that. That's what the guy says when he really wants to say,

I don't know. Yeah, we will get to that. Any other questions?

Okay, well let's close in prayer. Lord, thank you for an opportunity to look into your word, to hear from you, and it is you that we want to hear from.

And again, we are delighted to be back together to celebrate your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Might we do that with joy and fervor this morning.