Page 26 - Daniel

7:13]. 24

The discoveries at Qumran have given impetus to the trend to
reconsider late dating of such books as the Psalms and 1 and 2
Chronicles. On this basis of recent discoveries, Brownlee indicates that
the Maccabean authorship of the Psalms can no longer be held. He
states, “If this is true, it would seem that we should abandon the idea of

25
any of the canonical Psalms being of Maccabean date.” Myers gives
ample evidence that the Maccabean dating of 1 and 2 Chronicles (after
333 B.C.) is no longer tenable since the publication of the Elephantine
materials. He concludes that 1 and 2 Chronicles now must be considered

written in the Persian period (538–333 B.C.). 26
This trend toward recognition of earlier authorship of these portions of

the Old Testament points to the inconsistency of maintaining a late date
for Daniel. If, on the basis of the Qumran scrolls, Psalms and Chronicles
can no longer be held to be Maccabean, then Daniel, on the same kind of
evidence, also demands recognition as a production of the Persian period
and earlier. Harrison has come to this conclusion: “While, at the time of

writing, the Daniel manuscripts from Qumran have yet to be published
and evaluated, it appears presumptuous, even in the light of present
knowledge, for scholars to abandon the Maccabean dating of certain
allegedly late Psalms and yet maintain it with undiminished fervor in the
case of Daniel when the grounds for such modification are the same.” 27

Harrison points out that the Qumran manuscripts of Daniel are all
copies; and if the Qumran sect was actually Maccabean in origin itself, it
would necessarily imply that the original copy of Daniel must have been
at least a half century earlier, which would place it before the time of
the book’s alleged Maccabean authorship. The principles adopted by

critics in evaluating other manuscripts and assigning them to a much
earlier period than had been formerly accepted, if applied to Daniel,
would make impossible the liberal critical position that Daniel is a
second-century B.C. work. Strangely, liberal critics have been slow to
publish and comment upon the Qumran fragments of Daniel that seem to

indicate a pre-Maccabean authorship. The facts now before the
investigator tend to destroy the arguments of the liberals for a late date
for Daniel. The supposed evidence against the canonicity of Daniel is