Page 27 - Daniel

without support. Besides, it is highly questionable whether the Jews
living in the Maccabean period would have accepted Daniel if it had not
had a previous history of canonicity.

Rejection of Detailed Prophecy

Porphyry had claimed that prophecy is impossible. This claim is based
on a rejection of theism in general, a denial of the doctrine of
supernatural revelation implicit in the Scriptures, and a disregard of

God’s omniscience that includes foreknowledge of all future events.
Thus, to claim that prophecy is impossible is to make a dogmatic
assertion based on a non-theistic world-view that the Christian need not
accept.

A more particular attack, however, is made on the book of Daniel on
the ground that it is apocalyptic and therefore unworthy of serious study
as prophecy. That there are many spurious apocalyptic works both in the
Old Testament period and in the Christian era can be readily granted.
The existence of the spurious is not a valid argument against the

possibility of genuine apocalyptic revelation, any more than a
counterfeit dollar bill is proof that there is no genuine bill, or that the
existence of false prophets could invalidate the existence of true
prophets. If Daniel were the only apocalyptic work in the entire
Scriptures, the argument could be taken more seriously; but the
crowning prophetic work of the New Testament, the book of Revelation,
provides adequate evidence that the apocalyptic method could be used

by God to reveal prophetic truth.
Further, it should be observed in the book of Daniel that apocalyptic
visions are not left to human interpretation. Instead, the revelation is

given divine interpretation, which delivers it from the vague, obscure,
and subjective interpretations of ten necessary in spurious works.
Indeed, the problem in Daniel is not that the apocalyptic sections are
obscure. Rather, critics object to the clear prophetic truth the book
presents.

The argument sometimes advanced, that apocalyptic writings had not
yet begun in the sixth century B.C., can be answered by apocalyptic

elements found in the contemporary work of Ezekiel and Zechariah and