Ralph Waldo Emerson made a statement in his famous essay “Self-Reliance” that seems appropriately applicable to Everette Hatcher's quest to defend the 6th-century B. C. dating of the book of Daniel.
If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one sidethe permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true.
What Emerson said reminds me of a sermon title that I spotted on the lawn bulletin of a church while my wife and I were driving to Houston, Texas. The sign said, “Does Jesus Care?” I spoke up and asked my wife if she thought there was much chance that the answer would be that Jesus doesn't care. Since she had not noticed the sign, I had to explain my question to her, and that lost much of the intended effect, which was to convey exactly what Emerson had said: objectivity in sermons just isn't very likely.
In his drive to prove the traditional dating of Daniel, Hatcher has relied heavily on quoting the opinions of writers who, in Emerson's words, are merely retained attorneys, whose livelihoods depend upon their parroting fundamentalist views of the Bible. I doubt that many readers have bothered to wade through Hatcher's tedious listings of titles and publishers, but those who have may have noticed that many of his sources were published in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Nashville, Tennessee. Both are bastions of fundamentalist publishers that crank out books written in defense of traditional biblical beliefs, so we could hardly expect the authors of such books to take positions that would conflict with their belief that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God.
The quality of Hatcher's “sources”: I was already familiar with the religious backgrounds of some of Hatcher's sources, but out of curiosity, I used the internet to gather as much information about them as I could. In the first section of his latest defense of Daniel, Hatcher, at great length, paraded before us the credentials of William Shea and dismissed my comments about Shea's position on the dating of Daniel as “talking down to one of the top scholars in the field of biblical history” (November/December, p. 4). Well, just who is William Shea? Hatcher identified him as a professor at Andrews University in Berien Springs, Michigan, but he didn't mention that this is an institution owned and operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Its web site contains a very telling mission statement.
The Holy Scriptures, the Written Word, and Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, are held to be normative. This constitutes the unifying theme and primary thrust of the program. It is seen to be the fulfillment of the Gospel proclamation, nurturing the person towards Christian maturity “so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16 RSV).
Could any reasonable person expect a professor of religious studies at an institution like this to publish views that conflict with traditional biblical beliefs and the “unifying theme and primary thrust” of the religious studies program at the institution that issued his pay checks?
In the current installment of his article, Hatcher rebuked me with a quotation from Dr. Wayne A Brindle of Liberty University. Even those who don't follow the activities of Bible fundamentalists very closely will probably know that Liberty University was founded in Lynchburg, Virginia, by none other than Jerry Falwell, whose objectivity in biblical matters is certainly questionable. The web page of this university has a mission statement that makes the one at Andrews look downright liberal. After going on and on about the natures and roles of the three persons in the godhead, Liberty's mission statement said this about the Bible:
We affirm that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, though written by men, was supernaturally inspired by God so that all its words are the written true revelation of God; it is therefore inerrant in the original and authoritative in all matters. It is to be understood by all through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, its meaning determined by the historical, grammatical, and literary use of the author's [sic] language, comparing Scripture with Scripture.
Certainly, this mission statement gives us no reason to expect objectivity in the views expressed by a Bible professor at this university. I'll be addressing Brindle's comments more specifically later on, but I'll just say here that it hardly surprises me that he thinks I haven't “learned much from the past 200 years.” Liberty's web site listed the names and e-mail addresses of the faculty members, so I took the time to write to Brindle and challenge him to a debate on biblical inerrancy, which I thought he would welcome as an opportunity to demonstrate to the students at Liberty U how easily the Bible can be defended against charges of errancy.
No, I cannot lie. I didn't really think that Brindle would be interested in debating the inerrancy issue. I expected exactly what happened. Brindle never answered my letter, even though I sent it to him twice. Hatcher knows that I e-mailed the challenge, because I sent him copies. If Brindle really thinks that I haven't learned anything from the past 200 years, I can't help wondering why he wouldn't want to expose my ignorance to the student body at Liberty.
I sent e-mails to some of Hatcher's other sources, but Dr. Brian Colless in New Zealand was the only one who answered. I wrote to ask if he was a biblical inerrantist, and he said that he was. If he holds to the inerrancy view, we shouldn't be surprised that he would resort to his very weak attempt to prove that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Great were the same person. When one has a religious belief to defend, he won't be bashful about resorting to far-fetched arguments.
Hatcher also quoted Dr. Stephen Miller of Mid-America Theological Seminary. This is another Baptist institution, whose web site is just as blatant in declaring its commitment to biblical errancy.
We believe that the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God, wholly without error as originally given by God, and is sufficient as our only infallible rule of faith and practice. We deny that other books are inspired by God in the same way as the Bible.
In this issue, Hatcher quoted where Miller said that “the author of Daniel exhibited a more extensive knowledge of Sixth Century events than would seem possible for a second-century writer” (p. 3). I'll address Miller's comment later, but here I'll just say that it certainly isn't surprising that a Bible professor at a university like Mid-America Seminary would make a statement like this. What would really be surprising would be a professor at a Baptist or Adventist college who wrote an article that said the writer of Daniel exhibited a profound ignorance of 6th-century BC history, as many renown scholars have said, but I suspect that we would have to look far and wide to find such articles.
Before I begin to address the specific points in Hatcher's article, I want to make sure that everyone understands that I am not claiming that the views of Hatcher's "scholars" are automatically wrong just because they are biblical inerrantists employed by colleges and universities whose avowed mission is to indoctrinate their students to believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God. I recognize that the truth or falsity of any proposition is always independent of its source, but I also recognize that a person's commitment to causes is a good reason to question the reliability and objectivity of his position if that position is directly related to a cause he is emotionally committed to. An article in the NRA Journal, for example, could hardly be considered an objective and impartial source of information on the gun-control issue. A book written by someone deeply committed to the proposition that the famous Roswell incident was a case of visitation by alien beings would lack credibility. In the same way, one would be naïve to expect books written by professors employed by institutions committed to the premise of biblical inerrancy and published at Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be reliable sources of objective information on an issue like the dating of the book of Daniel, yet Hatcher has relied on them throughout this debate and quoted them as if he seriously believes that the opinions of their authors should settle this matter. I doubt, however, that he would attach any reliability at all to information published by The Skeptical Review or The American Atheist. I'm sure that he would immediately react with suspicion to such information for no other reason than its source.
Was Belshazzar the “king” of Babylon? At great length, Hatcher took issue with William Sierichs, Jr., and Dave Matson for saying that Belshazzar was never the king of Babylon. Hatcher quoted his usual array of biblical fundamentalists to show that “although Nabonidus [the father of Belshazzar] was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, Belshazzar was effectively ruling Babylon” (p. 2, this issue) and was therefore “functioning as king.” I don't recall that either Sierichs or Matson disputed that Nabonidus had left his son in charge of Babylon, but being left in charge of Babylon would hardly have made him the king of Babylon. If Hatcher cares to debate this issue with Sierichs or Matson or both, I will make space available for it, but the present debate is with me, and I think that there are bigger fish to fry on the authorship issue. At this point, then, I'll just say that I find it hard to understand why an author writing by the verbal inspiration of an omnimax deity could not have been a bit more exact in matters like this. If Belshazzar wasn't really the king but was only “effectively ruling Babylon” and only “functioning as a king,” why didn't the inspired one just say so? As Bruce Wildish asked in his article in the previous issue, “If this work [Daniel] is, as Hatcher would have us believe, the revealed word of God, then why is it so messy and unclear?” That's a question that Hatcher needs to answer. I myself have asked the same question of inerrantists many times, but I can't seem to get an answer. Ambiguity and linguistic confusion in a book purported to be the inspired, inerrant word of an omnimax deity are evidence alone that it is probably not what it is cracked up to be.
Did the writer of Daniel err when he called the Babylonian king “Nebuchadnezzar” instead of Nebuchadrezzar? I am familiar with this position of some errantists, but I myself have never argued it. If Hatcher wants to debate this issue, then he'll have to do it with those who think it is a point important enough to debate. I prefer to focus on what I consider more important matters, such as the chronological inconsistencies in Daniel 1 and 2, the author's obvious belief that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son, the claim that a Median king ruled over Babylon before Cyrus, the writer's uncanny familiarity with 2nd-century B. C. history but apparent ignorance of 6th-century history, etc. Hatcher is saying relatively little about these points, so I can only conclude that his emphasis of minor issues like the two above is an effort to distract readers from his inability to deal successfully with the important matters listed above.
The 60-cubit tall golden image: In the November/December 1998 issue (p. 1), I cited Nebuchadnezzar's 60-cubit tall golden image as an example of “Silliness in the Book of Daniel,” because an image of this size would have contained a quantity of gold that would have depleted the supply of gold in the treasury. Hatcher thinks that he has solved this problem by quoting a couple of passages that referred to idols that were overlaid with gold. His two texts (Is. 40:19 and Jer. 10:3-4) do refer to idols that had been overlaid with gold, but the problem is that the story in Daniel makes no mention of overlaying at all. It flatly states that “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold whose height was sixty cubits and whose width was six cubits” (Dan. 3:1). In Hatcher's “explanation” of the problem, we see a classic example of the way biblical inerrantists reason. The repeated references to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar as father and son in Daniel 5 are in conflict with extrabiblical records, so inerrantists cite other biblical texts where the words father and son were used to denote looser relationships than strict father and son or to denote the possible senses of predecessor and successor, and so, voilà, the inerrantists declare the problem solved. Never mind that there is contextual evidence in the other passages that the words were being so used but no textual evidence at all in Daniel 5 that the words were used in any but their strictest senses. The inerrantists need a solution, so they reach for any straw in sight.
Now Hatcher is doing the same thing with Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. The text clearly says that Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold and makes no mention of overlaying or gives any suggestion at all that it was anything other than what the text says, i. e., an image of gold, but Hatcher has a problem to solve, so he, or rather his fundamentalist sources, find a couple of passages that refer to idols overlaid with gold, and so they conclude, with no textual justification whatsoever, that Nebuchadnezzar's golden image was cast in some other metal and just overlaid with gold. That the biblical text clearly states that the other objects were just overlaid with gold, whereas the text of Daniel makes no reference at all to overlaying, is of no consequence to Hatcher. He needs a solution, and so he grabs anything he can find. He may think that “Till's criticism is weak,” but what can be weaker than Hatcher's constant claiming that because words were used in senses apart from their strictest meanings in passages where the context makes those secondary meanings clear, he can assume that they had the same meanings in problem passages that give no contextual reasons to think that they were used in any but their strictest senses? Hatcher's approach to proving biblical inerrancy is simple: if he needs a straw, he'll grab it.
In the article that mentioned the quantity of gold that would be in an image 60 cubits tall, I pointed out that extensive records found in Babylonian archives, made no references to such an impressive image as this or to the decree to worship it, under penalty of death, which Daniel 3 claims that Nebuchadnezzar issued. I observed that “it is unlikely that the erection of a magnificent image like this and the laws attendant to it would have escaped the notice of the royal archivists, who recorded such mundane matters as food allotments for captive kings and less impressive religious ceremonies" (p. 1), but Hatcher has never said anything about this. He prefers instead to focus our attention on literarily unsound claims that if other biblical passages specifically mentioned that the idols in these texts were overlaid with gold, we can therefore make a leap in logic and assume that another, entirely separate text that describes an image of gold but makes no mention of overlaying really meant that the image was just overlaid with gold. Yes, indeed, when Hatcher needs a straw, he won't hesitate to grab it.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: In the same article ("Silliness in the Book of Daniel"), I mentioned how strange it was that the extensive Babylonian records also made no mention of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, whom Nebuchadnezzar had appointed to be “over the affairs of the province of Babylon” (2:49) and in whose honor he had issued a decree that “(a)ny people, nation, or language that utters blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins” (3:29), but now Hatcher comes forth with the claim that Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego have been found in the text of a five-sided prism discovered in Babylon. William Shea has identified three names in a list of 50 on this prism as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but before I discuss the merits of Shea's claim, I'll first remind readers that Shea was the professor of religious studies at the Seventh-Day Adventist university mentioned earlier. Since he was employed by an institution committed to upholding the belief that the Bible is “the Written Word,” we would suspect that Shea wouldn't have much trouble finding what he wants to find in ancient records. That suspicion turns out to be true.
The three names that Shea “identified” were Hanunu, Aridi-Nabu, and Mushallim-Marduk. Shea claimed that Hanunu was Hananiah, Aridi-Nabu was Abednego, and Mushallim-Marduk was Mishael. To see how far Shea was reaching for straws in this “identification,” let's first notice that the Hebrew names of Daniel's three friends were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (1:6), but when they were chosen to be trained in Chaldean culture and language, the king's palace master changed their names to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (1:7).
With this information, everyone should immediately see how far Shea has reached to find the names of these men in Babylonian records. He said that Hanunu was Hananiah, but Hananiah was Shadrach's Hebrew name. If this was indeed a reference to Shadrach, why did this Babylonian record use his Hebrew name (if one can indeed stretch imagination sufficiently far to make Hanunu and Hananiah the same name)? Shea said that Aridi-Nabu was Abednego, so aside from the fact that the only similarity in the two names is that they both begin with the same vowel, does everyone see what Shea is arguing? He is claiming that the Babylonian prism listed Shadrach's Hebrew name (Hananiah) but used the Babylonian name of Abednego (Mishael). Shea then found Meshach (Mishael) in Mushallim-Marduk, which again are names with no similarity except that they begin with the same consonant.
On the prism allegedly containing the names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Shea identified Hanunu (Hananiah/ Shadrach) as “chief of the royal merchants,” Aridi-Nabu (Abednego) as “secretary of the crown prince,” and Mushallim-Marduk (Meshach) as “one of the ‘overseers of the slave girls.’” The biblical text, however, claims that Nebuchadnezzar put Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego “over the affairs of the province of Babylon,” but the positions described in this prism, especially the one assigned to the theoretical Meshach (one of the overseers of the slave girls), hardly seem to be positions that could be considered being “over the affairs of the province of Babylon.” Theoretical Meshach may have enjoyed his position, but it would hardly have been a position as prominent as what the Bible claims. Hatcher can think that my “argument from silence” on the absence of any mentioning of the names of three prominent officials in the province of Babylon has been “completely put to flight” if he wishes, but Shea's strained effort to find these officials in names with no similarity except that they began with the same letters certainly did not put it to flight.
Hatcher wasn't through grasping straws. He went on to claim that the name of Nebuchadnezzar's palace master, Ashpenaz, has also been found, because “(a)lmost the same consonants (spnz)” have been found on an incantation bowl at Nippur. In the inerrantist mind, of course, almost is enough when he is looking for a solution to a biblical problem, but I wonder if Hatcher has given any thought to what this “almost” combination of consonants could have represented in a language that had no written vowels. If English had no written vowels, for example, tm could be Tim or Tom, jd could be Jodi, Judi, Jude, or Jade, and if we want to talk about “almost” combinations, frmk would almost be Frank. This is the type of silly argumentation that inerrantists must resort to in order to find inerrancy in the Bible.
In wrapping up this section of his article, Hatcher returned to argumentation from silence. He repeated that often-made biblicist claim that just because records of certain biblical characters have not been found does not mean that they didn't exist. He said that “not ‘all’ of the Gentile kings have been found in secular histories/inscriptions” and that “(t)he farther back you go... the fewer have been found,” but it seems not to occur to Hatcher that they may not have been found because they really didn't exist. I am not arguing that the silence of secular records in these matters means that these characters did not exist, but it does seem to me that records as extensive and as detailed as scholars indicate that the Babylonian archives were would have made some mention of a Median king who the writer of Daniel claimed captured Babylon and reigned before Cyrus, if this person was in fact a historical figure.
That's the problem that Hatcher doesn't seem to grasp, and his repeated references to the relatively few cases where archaeologists have uncovered evidence of real existence after scholars had assumed that the Bible had fictionalized hardly explains away the silence of contemporary, disinterested records in cases where if the characters were really historical, some references to them would surely have been made. “Darius the Mede” is one such example, so let Dr. Wayne A. Brindle of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University say all that he wants to that I have not “learned much from the past 200 years,” I am at least willing to affirm in a public debate on his own turf that the Bible shows many indications of errancy, but he apparently lacks the same confidence in his position. I will reissue that challenge, so maybe Hatcher can prevail on Dr. Brindle to accept it this time.
The six pieces of archaeological evidence: Hatcher began this section of his article by flagrantly begging the question. “Since Daniel was an eyewitness to 6th-century events,” Hatcher said, “he could accurately record historical details.” Well, excuse me, but I thought that whether the writer of Daniel lived in the sixth century B.C. was the issue under debate, so why does Hatcher assume the right just to declare arbitrarily the truth of his proposition? One who argues from assertion could “prove” any proposition under debate, so let's just take a look at Hatcher's six pieces of archaeological evidence to see how solid his proof of 6th-century authorship is.
He went first to what Dr. Stephen Miller thinks. Miller, as noted above, is a professor at Mid-America Theological Seminary, where everyone believes “that the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God, wholly without error as originally given by God,” so we could hardly expect him to find anything in either biblical or extrabiblical records that indicates errancy in the Bible. In this case, it seems that Miller believes that “the author of Daniel exhibited a more extensive knowledge of Sixth Century events than would seem possible for a second-century writer” (p. 3, this issue). Since Hatcher gave none of Miller's reasons for thinking this, I can't be expected to comment on those reasons. This is just another example of how Hatcher seems to think that merely quoting what a fundamentalist “scholar” thinks constitutes proving a point. Hatcher did, however, cite R. H. Pfeiffer's claim that Daniel reported some historical details that we will never know how he learned (p. 4, this issue). Pfeiffer cited Nebuchadnezzar's “creation ” of the “new Babylon ” as an example of “an amazing historical detail” that the author of Daniel knew. This seems to be an amazing historical detail in Hatcher's opinion, because the brief quotation from Pfeiffer didn't speak of it as a detail that was “amazing.”
That Hatcher would consider something as trivial as this as an “amazing detail of history” is just another example of how inerrantists can find “proof” in almost any detail when they are looking for evidence of biblical inerrancy. In the first place, the premise that Daniel knew that the new Babylon was a “creation” of Nebuchadnezzar is probably an assumption drawn from some rather sketchy textual evidence. According to the writer of Daniel, just before Nebuchadnezzar was driven into the wilderness to live as a beast for seven years, he was surveying the city from his palace and said, “Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty” (4:30)? This could have been nothing more than an arrogant statement that the writer attributed to the king without intending it to mean that he was aware of all of the building projects that were done by Nebuchadnezzar, but let's just suppose that it meant exactly what Hatcher is claiming. What would be so amazing about this? Pfeiffer, as Hatcher acknowledged, was not a proponent of biblical inerrancy, so certainly he didn't intend his statement to be an argument that the writer of Daniel must have lived in the 6th century B. C. to know such a detail as this. Pfeiffer simply commented that we may never know how the author of Daniel knew that the new Babylon was a creation of Nebuchadnezzar, but not knowing how the writer knew this is certainly no evidence that the writer was inspired or even a 6th-century witness to life in Babylon. How could we, living 22 centuries after the probable date of authorship, possibly know what sources of information may have been available to the people of that time? To argue that this is an “amazing historical detail” for a second-century BC writer to have known, Hatcher would have to prove that there were no written records or traditions available at the time to let the author know that Nebuchadnezzar had presided over building projects during his reign.
The same principle would apply to Hatcher's other quibbles about trivial details in Daniel. The tribes and nations of that era did not live in isolation. The similarities in their religions, customs, and laws can be most reasonably explained by social and commercial contacts. For example, they all built temples to their gods, maintained priesthoods, and offered animal sacrifices. International social, political, and religious contacts would most probably account for these similarities, and such contacts would also have brought exchanges in information. Hatcher minimizes the many problems in chronology, history, and very fundamental information, such as the relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar in the book of Daniel, and dismisses these problems with speculations about puns, linguistic innuendoes, “explicative waws,” and such like, but then tries to read maximal evidence of inerrancy into trivial matters like the writer's use of fire for Babylonian punishment but lions for Persian punishment. If such details are as historically accurate as Hatcher's sources argued, how could they possibly know that this information could not have been known to a writer living in the post-Babylonian/Persian era? As I said above in the matter of Nebuchadnezzar's building projects, people living over 22 centuries after the Maccabean era are hardly in a position to know what sources and traditions would have been available to a person writing at that time. Hatcher quoted Gleason Archer's opinion that the reference to “Susa in the province of Elam” (8:2) was “an item of information scarcely accessible to a second-century B. C. author,” but just how would Archer be in a position to know this? How could he possibly say 22 centuries after the fact that this was information that a second-century B. C. writer just wouldn't have known? Gleason Archer has probably twisted himself into more verbal knots than any other contemporary inerrantist to try to find harmony in the Bible, so it certainly isn't surprising that he would quibble like this to find “evidence” of authenticity in Daniel.
At this point, Hatcher returned to the issue of Belshazzar and wondered how a post-Babylonian author would have known about him. Hatcher quoted the “staunch critic” J. J. Collins, who said that the preservation of the name of Belshazzar “suggests that the underlying tradition had its origin close to the end of the Babylonian era,” but I hope that readers noticed what Collins did not say. He did not say that the preservation of the name of Belshazzar suggests that the book of Daniel was written close to the end of the Babylonia era. He said only that the preservation of the name suggested that the tradition had its origin at this time, and this is a point that Hatcher is conveniently sidestepping. What traditions and sources could the writer of Daniel have had access to in the second century that we just don't know about today? That information about Belshazzar was accessible at that time is shown by the references to him in the apocryphal book of Baruch, which dates from the second century B. C. Hatcher has ignored my repeated quotations of Baruch 1:10-13, where the writer indicated a clear belief that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son. Belshazzar was not Nebuchadnezzar's son, but how could the 2nd-century B. C. author of this book have known about Belshazzar unless the name had somehow been preserved? Resorts to such “arguments” as these underscore just how desperate biblicists are to find evidence that the book of Daniel is authentic.
The Medes and the Persians: Another “piece” of Hatcher's archaeological evidence that the author of Daniel lived in the Persian period was his use of Medes before Persians in such expressions as “the law of the Medes and Persians,”because writers who came later reversed the order and said Persians and Medes. Hatcher conceded that this was just a “small” detail that didn't qualify as an “amazing historical” one but did apparently consider it important enough to include in his “archaeological evidence.”
I needed only about fifteen minutes to see that this straw is too weak even to be considered a “small” detail of evidence of 6th-century B. C. authorship. The apocryphal book of 1 Esdras dates from the second century B.C. (ca. 150-100), but it used the order of the words interchangeably.
King Darius gave a great banquet for all his retainers, for all the members of his household, all the chief men of Media and Persia... (3:1).
According to Hatcher's argument, the order in which the writer listed the names would be evidence that this book was written early in the Persian era, but its 2nd-century authorship is hardly disputed. I doubt that Hatcher would argue that 1 Esdras is a 6th- century work.
Farther along in this same chapter, he author reversed the order of the names.
When the king awoke, he was handed what they [the king's bodyguards] had written. Having read it, he summoned all the chief men of Persia and Media... (3:13-14).
So the writer of this book, in the same context, used what Hatcher alleges was the early Persian order of the names but then turned around just 12 verse later and reversed the order of the names. I think that even Hatcher recognized the weakness of this “argument,” because he noted a problem in his own proof text, i. e., the book of Esther. He listed three verses where the writer, presumably someone living in the Persian era, used “Persia and Media” as the order of the names, but then Hatcher himself noted that this order was reversed in Esther 10:2, where “Media and Persia” were used. Rather than having any kind of evidence for dating, Hatcher has shown only that what was true of the order of these names as used in the 2nd-century book of 1 Esdras seemed to be true of earlier works presumably written in the Persian period: the order of the names was inconsistent; sometimes Persia and Media were used, and sometimes Media and Persia were used.
The “unchangeable ” laws of the Medes and the Persians: Hatcher himself noted that the claim in Daniel (and Esther too) that decrees once issued could not be changed is disputed, yet he chose to align himself with those who argue that this was indeed a fact of Medo-Persian law. I have tried to find evidence that this was a Median/Persian law, but I have found none. I could play Hatcher's game and quote the scholars who have said that no historical records of any such law have ever been found, but I see no benefit in playing the “your scholars vs. my scholars” game.
Let's just assume that such a law did exist. What would it prove? How could Hatcher prove that a post-Persian writer could not have known of this law? To know this, he would have to know exactly what traditions and sources were available to a post-Persian writer, and this is something he doesn't know.
In the next issue, we'll see that he didn't do any better in
the third part of his article.
