Daniel 7 - Further examination by Denis Giron

Denis Giron
April 15, 2014 • 3:19 pm

Thank you, Mr. Williams, for your reply. What follows are some minor points from me.

MR. WILLIAMS WROTE:
{{you have me at a great disadvantage in that I know no Aramaic (the language of Daniel 7).}}

On a side note regarding this point, if you have studied some Arabic, I would recommend Franz Rosenthal’s “Grammar of Biblical Aramaic”. With some Arabic under your belt, once you get past the different script, I think you’ll largely find Biblical Aramaic to come off as something like “Arabic light,” in that it is very similarly structured, yet with fewer phonemes and fewer verb forms.

MR. WILLIAMS WROTE:
{{Your penultimate sentence struck me as significant.}}

Indeed, it is significant, as it alludes to one the chief reasons why people connect the holy ones with the son-of-man-like figure: the vision has an eternal kingdom being possessed by the son-of-man-like figure, while the later explanation has the kingdom being given eternally to the holy ones. The intention of my previous response was to establish that, while I understand that view, there are two counter points, which I will attempt to explain more fully, here:

(1) The “holy ones” seem to correspond to the servants mentioned in verse 10, who appear /before/ the son-of-man-like figure.

(2) In various Jewish and Christian views of the Messianic age, believers will be ruling/judging, with the Messiah as their head/king – in other words, both the Messiah and a cohort of believers underneath him will rule – ergo, saying the servants/saints will be given kingdom need not contradict the Messiah possessing the kingdom, and thus need not be at odds with the view of many Jewish exegetes that the Daniel 7:13 is referring to the Messiah.

We can find many commentaries and scholarly works which take the view that the vision intends to connect the son-of-man-like figure with the holy ones, but I personally have seen none that grapple with the similarities between the holy ones and the servants of verse 10 (and the corresponding points I noted in my previous response, which you kindly reproduced in this blog entry).

Regarding which “kingdoms” the beasts represent, I think that is open to speculation either way. As you know, not only Christian exegetes, but some Jewish exegetes also have seen the third beast as Greece (specifically Alexander of Macedon and the four who succeeded him) and the fourth beast as Rome. Whatever the case, I don’t think which way we speculate necessarily has a profound impact on how we identify the son-of-man-like figure of the vision.

MR. WILLIAMS WROTE:
{{I note in passing the absolute ontological distinction between the ‘Ancient of Days’: God Himself, and one like a human being (literally ‘son of man’) which is idiomatic for human being}}

I’m not certain about an /ontological/ distinction (i.e. I am wary of how that phrase can be used), but I do agree that there is certainly a very real distinction between the son-of-man-like figure and the Ancient of Days. In other words, the one who is “like a son of man” seems clearly to not be identical to the Ancient of Days. Perhaps my comment will take us off topic a bit, but permit me to nonetheless share that this need not be a problem for a Christian view, as Trinitarians indeed believe that the Son is not identical to the Father (and many Trinitarians would say the Son is not identical to God as a whole, as, for example, the Son is not tripersonal, i.e. He does not comprise three Persons).

Now, I understand that, in the other thread, your objection was that the text does not say this “son-of-man-like” figure is God, but I would note that we need to be careful with what we mean, as many Christians (as well as those Chassidic Jews who believe the Messiah is/will-be divine) would affirm the divinity of the Messiah, and consider Him part of the one God, without affirming that He is identical to the one God.

Now, I agree the text does not explicitly say that either, but so too it does not deny it. For what it is worth, it is interesting that Daniel 7 can be interpreted as meaning men from all nations and linguistic groups will /worship/ this figure who is /like/ a human (and thus apparently not merely a human). Regarding the verb in question (yiflchoon, from the FL7 root, Rosenthal’s aforementioned work gives “worship” as the primary meaning, and so too does Reuven AlQalay’s Milon Ivri-Angli Shalem). Now, I understand many sources note the verb can also mean “serve,” but it is interesting that, in all instances of Biblical Aramaic outside of Daniel 7 which employ the verb, it obviously pertains to serving a deity. Biblical Aramaic even has a corresponding word from the same root – falchan – which refers to a religious service (i.e. worship service). As one (admittedly Elokist) Chassidic Jew put it, even if it means to serve, it could be read as meaning that the son-of-man-like figure “will be served the way g-d is served in a service.”

But I suppose, on this point, it really depends what assumptions we bringt to the table. Some will read the passage in a Christian context, others within an orthodox Islamic context, still others within the context of different interpretations of Judaism, and still others against the backdrop of polytheistic systems among other ancient Semites (hence scholarly references to a court made up of lesser gods).

MR. WILLIAMS WROTE:
{{“holy ones of the most high” IMO is not a reference to a hybrid god-man messiah but a reference to a community of believer, an Ummah in Islamic term}}

Here I think we are pretty much in agreement. Verse 27 uses the noun `am, and while Biblical Aramaic itself has the word “umah” (which corresponds almost exactly with the Arabic phrase you alluded to), I think `am too can be thought of as corresponding to the relevant Arabic term, and, more specifically, that verse 27 is referring to a “nation”/”family”/group of specifically believers (i.e. servants of God, as per the connection with verse 10).

On a side note, I do not claim that the holy ones are a reference to the Messiah. Rather I specifically reject the view that the holy ones represent the son-of-man like figure in Daniel 7:13-14 (again, I think they correspond instead to the servants in verse 10). Interestingly, verse 27 has the same phrase which appears in verse 14: leh yiflchoon (which I would translate “Him they will worship”). I would propose that the masculine singular “leh” is referring to the last noun mentioned, in this case the Most High (in other words, I read verses 14 and 27 as meaning the son of man figure and the `Elyoneen [Most High] will be “served” in the same way).