The Skeptical Review Online - Print Edition

Hatcher's article above was sent to the mailbag column as a letter, but his distortion and misrepresentation in it were so flagrant that I decided to devote an entire article to answering it so that I could quote extensively from files of the Errancy-II forum to let TSR readers see just how far a defeated biblical inerrantist will go to try to save face. Some will no doubt think that my title is a bit harsh, but I have lost patience with inerrantists who intentionally distort and misrepresent their opponents' arguments to try to gain some debating points. As we will see, Hatcher's distortion in his letter above was so flagrant that it amounts to intentional lying. Thus, I'm just calling a spade a spade.

Before exposing his misrepresentations, I will first address some minor points in his letter. He accused me of wanting "to take away the focus from the fact that Davies basically called [me] an idiot for arguing the point in Daniel 3:1 that the statue the author pictured was a solid gold one, " but if that were my intention, I wouldn't have published Davies' letter in the first place. I am the editor of TSR, so I decide what will and will not be published. If I had wanted to hide that Davies had expressed this opinion, all that I would have had to do was kill his letter. It was sent to Hatcher and Gavin Steingo and not to me, so if I had not published it, no one else but Steingo would ever have known that I had received it. If Hatcher wants to sling accusations, I could accuse him of trying to keep the contents of the letter from me, because it was Steingo, not Hatcher, who forwarded it to me. You can bet that if Davies had expressed agreement with Hatcher's position or had said anything that could have been construed as support for the 6th-century BC authorship of Daniel, Hatcher would have immediately forwarded the letter to me.

As for Davies' charge that "only an idiot would insist on such minute points" as the size and gold content of the image in Daniel 3, I commented on this in my note that followed Davies' letter. I said that "I have to admit that I sometimes find myself asking why I am wasting time debating with inerrantists points that, to borrow Dr. Davies' term, an idiot should see are obviously not historical." I went on to surmise that Davies' has probably never had much experience trying to reason with biblical inerrantists or else he would know why such minute points have to be addressed. Otherwise, I agree with him. Sometimes in the midst of a debate with a biblicist who is defending the inerrancy of patently absurd biblical claims, I will ask myself why I am trying to have a serious discussion with someone who believes such nonsense.

Hatcher objected to my reference to Davies as one of his "own scholars." He protested that he had always "clearly pointed out when a scholar took the traditional view of the church and when he took the critical view concerning the date and authorship of the Book of Daniel" and that he "had always made it clear that Davies takes this critical position." If Hatcher had qualified this statement with an "almost," I would have accepted it, because he usually did-but not always-identified the writers he quoted as liberal or conservative. However, Hatcher has conveniently overlooked a tactic that he often used when he cited what he calls "critical scholars." He would truncate quotations from their works and introduce them with expressions like, "Even the radical [liberal, critical, etc.] scholar So-and-So admitted," and then he would tack on whatever "damaging" admissions he thought the critics had made.

Hatcher used this tactic from the outset of the debate. The title of his first article, for example, was "The Critics'Admissions Concerning Daniel " (March/April 1998, pp. 2-4), and this title was an obvious allusion to what Hatcher calls "critical scholars," i. e., so-called liberal scholars who do or did not view Daniel as an inerrant work. Scattered throughout this article are comments like, "However, the famous Bible critic, Dr. Samuel Driver, admitted..." "Bible critic Norman W. Porteous admits..." "Arthur Jeffrey claims..." "The critic H. H. Rowley admits...." These were all attempts to make readers think that support for Hatcher's view on the dating of Daniel can be found in the works of critical scholars who reject the inerrantist view of Daniel. One of these scholars that Hatcher quoted in this article was Philip R. Davies (p. 4).

Hatcher's second article appeared a year later in the March/April 1999 issue (pp. 2-7), and he stuck to the same tactic. Expressions like "the critic John Goldengay admits..." or "DiLella states..."were used all through the article, and two of them were citations of Philip Davies (p. 5 and p. 7). The last one was a lengthy quotation, which stated Davies' view that some parts of Daniel were "originally products of a Jewish community in a Gentile environment." This was Hatcher's way of saying, "Aha, even a liberal critic recognizes that I am right," as if the quotation from Davies had actually said-which it didn't-that these parts were written in the 6th-century BC.

Hatcher used this tactic all through the series of articles that I published. He was apparently never able to recognize that just because so-called liberal scholars like Davies, Collins, Pfeiffer, Driver, etc. agreed with fundamentalist "scholars" in some rather minor points, this did not prove that they accepted the proposition that he was defending, which is that the book of Daniel as we now have it was written in the 6th-century BC by a Jewish official in the Babylonian government. I published Davies' letter so that readers could see just how profoundly he disagreed with Hatcher on this issue.

The matter of the image of gold in Daniel 3 was an issue that Hatcher introduced in the internet debate when he was cornered by examples of errancy that I had presented. TSR readers who are also members of the Errancy-II forum know how hard it was to get Hatcher to reply to arguments I had posted, because he spent much of his time trying to shift the topic to something else. The image of gold was one of his off-topic issues, which I avoided at first but finally addressed when I couldn't get him back on subject. The Errancy-II archives will show that when I did finally address this point, Hatcher was ground to a pulp.

Hatcher said that he had taken "great joy in giving the evidence from such critical scholars as Jeffery, Collins, Montgomery, Hartman, DiLella, and Driver that demonstrated that objects that were just overlaid with gold were called gold objects in the Old Testament (Ex. 30:3 Is 40:19 Jer 10:3-4)," so let's take a look at what gave Hatcher such great joy.

In the first place, the texts that Hatcher just cited did not call objects that were just overlaid with gold "gold objects." The best way to show this is to quote them.
Jeremiah 10:3-4 For the customs of the peoples are false: a tree from the forest is cut down, and worked with an ax by the hands of an artisan people deck it with silver and gold they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Isaiah 40:18-9 To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol? A workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it silver chains.

Now just where do these passages refer to objects overlaid with gold as "gold objects"? The text in Jeremiah doesn't even refer to overlaying. It mentions a custom of cutting down trees and "deck[ing]" them with silver and gold. The custom was evidently similar to the way that Christmas trees in our culture are decorated with tinsel, but the text says nothing about overlaying, and the trees were not referred to as trees of gold. The text in Isaiah does refer to the overlaying of idols, but the idols were not referred to as "gold idols."

Exodus 30:1-3 You shall make an altar on which to offer incense you shall make it of acacia wood. It shall be one cubit long, and one cubit wide it shall be square, and shall be two cubits high its horns shall be of one piece with it. You shall overlay it with pure gold, its top, and its sides all around and its horns and you shall make for it a molding of gold all around.

Likewise, the text in Exodus does not call the altar of incense a "gold altar" it merely says that the altar was to be overlaid with gold. There are other texts that refer to this altar as a "golden altar" (Ex. 39:38 40:26), but the one Hatcher referred to is not one of them.

The two texts I just cited do confirm Hatcher's claim that sometimes an object in the Bible that was just overlaid with gold was called a "golden" object, but Hatcher's letter was still deceptive because he did not mention that I replied in detail to this point and that he was never able to rebut my reply. In a posting dated 11/27/01, I asked Hatcher these questions:

1. Where does the text in Daniel say that Nebuchadnezzar's image was only overlaid with gold?

2. Where does the text in Daniel imply that Nebuchadnezzar's image was only overlaid with gold?
3. Why would Isaiah's reference (40:19) to idols that were cast and then overlaid with gold prove that the "image of gold" in Daniel 3:1 was only overlaid with gold?

4. Why would Jeremiah's reference (10:3-4) to cutting a tree from the forest and then "decking it with silver and gold" prove that the "image of gold" in Daniel 3:1 was just overlaid with gold?

5. Why would any references anywhere else in the Bible to idols or images that were "overlaid" prove that the image in Daniel 3:1, said to be an "image of gold," was cast in another metal and then overlaid with gold?

Getting Hatcher to answer them proved difficult, but finally he did answer. His answer to #1 and #2 was "nowhere," and his answer to #3 and # 4 was "it would not." In other words, Hatcher admitted in this debate that the text of Daniel 3 doesn't say or even hint that the image was just overlaid with gold or that references in the other passages he had cited to objects that were "overlaid" or "decked" with gold would in any way prove that the image in Daniel 3 was just overlaid with gold.

Hatcher's answer to my 5th question above was, "It would not ‘prove’ it, but it would make it a plausible alternative. This is what you are failing to realize, and this is why you are bringing shame upon yourself." Apparently, Hatcher thinks that a skeptic is bringing shame upon himself when he doesn't accept just any "plausible alternative" that biblicists posit to "explain" discrepancies, but if we accepted all the "plausible alternatives" that biblical inerrantists present as explanations of discrepancies, we would have to believe all sorts of absurdities. The problem for Hatcher is that the writer of Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar erected a 60-cubit image of gold on the plain of Dura, and Hatcher cannot cite any textual language that even hints that it was just overlaid with gold, so just where is the shame that I am bringing upon myself? Am I bringing shame on myself when I say that what the Bible says is what the Bible says?

The issue of the critics that Hatcher appealed to was also discussed extensively in the debate. I pressed Hatcher to quote exactly what these critics had said, and he finally posted quotations from Montgomery, Hartman & DiLella, Jeffrey, and Driver. It turned out that none of them had cited any textual evidence to support their position but had merely used Hatcher's fallacious argument that if other biblical texts referred to overlaid objects as "gold" objects, this would mean that the image in Daniel 3 was also made from another substance and then overlaid with gold. Here was the "evidence" from his critics with Hatcher's comments parenthetically inserted.

James Montgomery, pp. 195-196: The gold consisted of overlaid plates, for which we possess not only abundant classical evidence (e. g. Montgomery listed a Greek source that I am unable to type), but also that of the Bible, e. g., Isaiah 40:1941:7 Jeremiah 10:3ff and the practically contemporary statements of Bel and the Serpent 5:7 and the Epistle of Jeremiah 8, 55, 57 (and then Montgomery lists some more sources).

Hartman & DiLella, p. 160 of the Anchor Bible: The story does not say that it was of solid gold. The plating of stone obelisks with precious metals was not unknown in ancient times.

Arthur Jeffrey, Interpreter's Bible Commentary, p. 395: It is not necessary to think of the image being of solid gold. In Exodus the altar is called "an altar of gold," though actually it was only overlaid with gold (Exodus 30:3). So as huge a statue as this would probably have been of wood plated with gold.

Samuel Driver, commentary, p. 35: [made an image of gold] The expression does not mean necessarily that it was of solid gold it might be used of an image that was merely (in the ancient fashion) overlaid with gold: the altar of gold of Ex 39:38 was in reality only overlaid with gold (Ex 30:3).

These critics did nothing more than cite the same biblical texts that Hatcher did, but as I showed above, he has admitted that texts in other biblical passages that mention objects that were overlaid with gold would not prove that the image in Daniel 3 was only overlaid with gold. On 12/2/01, I replied in detail to each of the critics quoted above, but the replies are too long to include here. If anyone with e-mail would like to see these rebuttals, I will be glad to forward them upon request. Those who read them will see that Hatcher was thoroughly defeated on this issue that he himself injected into our internet debate.

In my Errancy-II replies to Hatcher on his claim that biblical passages that refer to gold and silver overlaying provide a "plausible alternative" to the solid-gold view, I analyzed several texts that mentioned overlaid objects and pointed out that there seemed to be a pattern in the Bible that when overlaying was done in fabricating objects, the writer would specifically mention it. I asked if this pattern would not indicate that since Daniel 3 said nothing about overlaying, the writer meant for readers to understand that the image was a solid-gold object, but Hatcher evaded this question. Furthermore, I analyzed Daniel 3 to identify obvious points of exaggeration, which I then related to other biblical examples of exaggeration, and asked why an exaggerated size of an "image of gold" in a chapter filled with other exaggerations would seem so "implausible" to Hatcher, but he evaded this question too. In a word, the record will show that Hatcher's position in this matter was thoroughly refuted, and that is why I would be very glad to forward those records to anyone who requests them. I want everyone to see how dishonest Hatcher was in his letter.

Belshazzar as "acting king": Hatcher referred to Davies' recognition that Belshazzar had been "acting king" in Daniel's era and then misrepresented me again when he said that I had argued "along with Matson and Wildish" that Belshazzar had not served in this capacity. This is not the first time that Hatcher has attributed this to me, but I have never argued it. I challenge him to quote where I have ever taken that position. In the March/April 2001 issue of TSR, I made it clear to Hatcher that this was a matter between him and Sierichs and Matson and that I would say only that I find it strange that if Belshazzar was only "functioning"as a king, the inspired writer would not have said so (p. 6). Hatcher may think that ambiguity in a book allegedly inspired by an omni-everything deity is not a problem, but I obviously don't share that view. In my opinion, a book filled with rampant confusion and ambiguity, which requires would-be apologists like Hatcher, Turkel, and Hutchinson to write pages and pages and pages to "explain" what was really meant is evidence within itself that this book was not inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, and I have yet to see a convincing argument that proves otherwise.

The Aramaic issue: Hatcher made repeated efforts to try to divert the discussion in our debate to issues that I had not mentioned in my affirmative arguments. I just as repeatedly told him that I would not allow him to shift the subject away from errors I had identified in my postings but would gladly reply to his Aramaic article, "co-written" with a Baptist professor at Mid-America Baptist Seminary, when we had finished discussing my affirmative arguments, which had identified errors in the book of Daniel that would surely not have been made by an official in the 6th-century BC Babylonian court. In fact, I have written replies to this article that I will post if Hatcher ever returns to the debate, which he appears to have dropped out of several weeks ago. If he doesn't return to the debate, I will post his article and my reply at the new website; when it is in operation. Everyone will see then that Hatcher's attempt to prove an early authorship of Daniel through appeals to Aramaic (a language he knows nothing about) has failed as miserably as his other arguments.