Was Bk of Daniel written AFTER the events foretold?

http://christianthinktank.com/qwhendan3x.html

Daniel - A Christian Thinktank

(4th Qumran cave where most Dead Sea Scrolls came from)

… Conclusion at the end of this article in the above link.

Now, if:

1.        We have early manuscripts from DSS that virtually require a pre-Maccabean date for their exemplar (under commonly accepted 'literary diffusion' time requirements);

2.        ALL the major pre-Maccabean literature--regardless of provenance(!)--utilize elements from  Daniel;

3.        All the "possibly" to "quite probably" pre-Maccabean literature--regardless of provenance--utilize elements from Daniel;

4.        The Maccabean and post-Maccabean works of significance--regardless of sectarian perspective--utilize Daniel;

5.        ALL of the sources closest in time, expertise, and eyewitness-access to the situation [i.e., Qumran, NT, Josephus, Rabbinics] describe Daniel's writings as prophecies of the future(NOT the past!);

6.        ALL of the sectarian groups accept Daniel as canonical;

7.        Several of the documents discussed suggest a date for Daniel around the end of the 4th/start of the 3rd century BCD;

And

8.        The most probable direction of borrowing, in each case, is FROM Daniel...

Then, isn't the discussion over? Isn't that a strong enough case to demonstrate that Daniel is at least pre-Maccabean?

These references  are what's called 'external evidence' and it vastly outweighs as historical evidence that subjective area we call 'internal evidence'. We have not settled a date for Daniel, or its character (that will be assessed in discussions of the problems associated with internal evidence [i.e., historical and linguistic considerations]), but the data we have reviewed should be recognized as being quite strong that the controlling paradigm of a late-date for Daniel needs 'adjusting'...

Where this leaves us is quite clear: ALL the external, manuscript, and literary data we have supports a pre-Maccabean date for the material in Daniel.
Click the links below for related posts.

Origin of Iron teeth Beast  鐵牙怪獸的由來( the origin of this beast)
Dead Men Do Bleed!(鐵齒難醫)
Chinese version below.
鐵齒十角怪獸的由來

A Double Life Exposed

Living A Double Life Catches Up To Cheating Spouse

Brad lived a double life that eventually caught up with him, but just when he thought he could walk out on his wife a near-death experience changed things.

http://www.cbn.com/tv/3397733312001

AN UNBELIEVING PRAYER EXPERIMENT

Dear friends:

Here below is a real story I have just read today. It's an interesting testimony. Guillaume Bignon a French atheist who met two ladies getting lost around a beach where they hitchhiking at the day's end... then he liked one of the ladies....yet her religious beliefs was in their way of any closer relationship... If interested, click the link for the whole story. Part of the story is pasted below for you. Watch the TV too.

CBN TV - Mission to Disprove God Reveals Need for Him

How God turns a French atheist into a Christian theologian

THE ALL-IMPROBABLE HITCHHIKING

...One day, after we had spent the afternoon on a more distant beach on the island ( Caribbean island ), and for the very first time in my entire life, we decided to hitchhike our way home. In a matter of minutes, a car pulled over for us. Two young women, tourists from the US (one from Miami, the other one from New York) had stopped to ask us for directions to their hotel, as they were lost on their way from the airport (the beach was nowhere near the airport or their hotel!) Incidentally, their hotel was right next door to our house. We jumped in and started talking on the way back. They were attractive enough that the radar went up immediately, and we started the smooth-talk to make sure we would see them again during their stay on the island. We did. The one I was interested in lived in New York, and she happened to mention she believed in God (an intellectual suicide by my standards), but worst of all, she accordingly believed that sex belonged only in marriage (an even more problematic belief than theism, if it was at all possible). Nevertheless, we started dating. Spoiler alert: this is not the woman I eventually married.

Vacation ended, she flew back to New York, I flew back to Paris, and there we were, now involved in a problematic long-distance relationship.

THE UNBELIEVING PRAYER EXPERIMENT

Her religious beliefs clearly remained the problem, and my new goal in life was essentially to explain to her why all this was untenable, so that she could put this nonsense behind her, and we could be together without her misconceptions standing in the way. So I started thinking about the whole thing. What good reason was there to think God exists, and what good reason was there to think atheism was true instead?

This step was important, because my own unbelief was comfortably resting on the fact that (smart) people around me didn’t believe in God either, but it was more a reasonable life assumption than the conclusion of a solid argument. So I started to take the question seriously, to objectively assess its credibility. But of course, if I was going to refute Christianity, I first needed to know what exactly it affirmed. So I picked up a Bible to figure it out. And at the same time, since I’m a scientist, I figured there was at least one experiment that could be carried out to dis-confirm the belief that God exists: I thought “if any of this is true, then there is a God who exists right now and presumably cares greatly about this project of mine”, so I started to pray in the air as an atheist “If there is a God, then here I am, I’m looking into this, why don’t you go ahead and reveal yourself to me. I’m open.” Well, I wasn’t, really, but I figured that shouldn’t stop God if He existed. So I read in the gospels about this Jesus of Nazareth. And there, it didn’t exactly feel like what I expected. I was impressed by the authority of that man’s teaching. Sure enough, I didn’t have much room in my worldview for his talks of God and supernatural activity, but I was rather impressed by the way he maneuvered in conversation, and the wisdom of some of his retorts. I could say what I want, this man knew what he was doing, he spoke with authority, and it made me somewhat uncomfortable. Additionally, even as an atheist, I knew that the person of Jesus of Nazareth was not just a piece of mythology; it seemed clear he was at least a person of history who walked the roads of Palestine in the first century, and apparently his story was compelling enough that these ancient followers of his believed it and even suffered for preaching his death and resurrection. These considerations were making it harder to completely throw out the whole thing, and I knew that at some point I would need to give a coherent account of who I thought Jesus in fact was...

Also 

Spiritual Journey Ends At The Cross

A near death experience set 19-year-old Mike on a spiritual journey through eastern religions, but one day Mike decided to learn more about Jesus, resulting in a miraculous revelation.

1http://www.cbn.com/tv/3527070794001

Can 500 People Hallucinate Same Thing at Same Time?

Dear friends:

I totally agree with the writer of following article that the resurrection of Jesus is the most important truth and a historical event that has established "Jesus is God Himself" and He is not a man made god. How can Jesus convince any Jews to believe He is also God( Trinity God, God the Son) when the Jews firmly believe there is only One God,YHWH, )(Jehovah God) even today? How can anyone convince one's own half brothers to believe that He is God? How can more than 500 people see the resurrected Jesus at the same time? Last but not least, how can Jesus' archenemy, Paul , burnt his bridges to the Jewish community without assurance of acceptance by the Christian community. The only explanation is that he encountered real Jesus on the road to Damascus to put Christians to jails and death. Because to Paul that is a blasphemy to the only God therefore those early Jewish Christians deserved being put to death. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-9, Paul was quoting the earliest Christian creed around 35-40 AD, that was immediately after Jesus' crucifixion. No legend is able to be developed and to be embellished in such a short time. (In 40 days, the resurrected Jesus has appeared to Peter, to His disciples, many Jews...etc. to various people in various places. the resurrection appearances are not just a couple of days!)

Now examine the Bible passage 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 for yourself and read a few explanations below. Read the whole article in the following link, if you are interested.

http://www.stephenjbedard.com/the-most-important-passage-for-doing-apologetics/

... I firmly believe that the most important truth that we can express is the resurrection of Jesus and this is the best passage for defending the resurrection of Jesus.

1. The passage from 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 (except for the last part) was not written by Paul. For critical scholars, that usually means that it is later. In this case, it means that it is earlier. This is an early church tradition that Paul is quoting. First Corinthians is already an early letter (around 55 AD) and so that would put this tradition 35-55 AD, probably on the earlier side. This would be our earliest tradition of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

2. Jesus died for our sins. Everyone other than Muslims would agree that Jesus died. But this passage shows us that the atoning nature of Jesus’ death was in the earliest tradition. It was not just a tragic or unjust death, it was a death that made a difference in our relationship with God.
Jesus appeared to more than five hundred. I once heard Gerd Ludemann present a reasonable case of how Peter could have hallucinated the appearance of Jesus based on the regret of his denial. That is fine but it does not explain the appearances to the five hundred. How do five hundred people hallucinate the same thing? Paul seems to suggest that people who doubt the resurrection of Jesus could go to Jerusalem and talk to these people....

6. Jesus appeared to James. In the Gospels we find James and the rest of Jesus’ family refusing to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. In Acts we have James as the leader of the Jerusalem church. How did this happen? The key is the special appearance of Jesus to James.

7. Jesus appeared to Paul. This is the part that Paul added to the earlier tradition. Why is this appearance to Paul important? In becoming a Christian, Paul burnt his bridges to the Jewish community without assurance of acceptance by the Christian community. The only explanation is that he experienced something real on the road to Damascus.

1 Corinthians 15:3-9English Standard Version (ESV)

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, thento all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

My skeptical mind started churning...

 

Origin of Life - What's the latest theory?  

When it comes to the origin of life, "evolutionary theory" is still the foundation of today's scientific worldview. By and large, the text books teach that organic life sprung from non-organic matter exclusively through a natural mechanistic process on a pre-biotic earth. That original life form then evolved into more complex life forms through a natural process of random mutations and natural selection. In a nutshell, the majority scientific hypothesis is that matter randomly acting on matter for a long period of time created everything we see. 

That's pretty much what I remember - no real change there... 

Wait! My skeptical mind started churning... 
How can nothing explode? Where did all that matter and energy come from? What caused its release? How did this explosion of everything (from nothing) order itself? How can simplicity become complexity? Where did the chemical elements come from? Where did the mathematical laws and physical properties come from? How do we explain the design, complexity and fine-tuning inherent in spiral galaxies, solar systems, and stars? 

How did life come from a rock? How did a bird come from a lizard? Why don't we see birds come from lizards today? Why are there no transitional fossils in our museums today? Why have we never observed beneficial mutations? Where did the information code in DNA come from? Where did the language convention that interprets DNA come from? How can we explain the random development of the human eye, reproductive system, digestive tract, brain, heart and lungs? What about the subconscious mind? What about love, morality, ethics, and emotions? Can these things really evolve gradually and randomly over time? 

Jeepers! What was happening to me? 

- See more at: http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/origin-of-life.htm#sthash.QSJiMbW7.dpuf

In Killing God, Man Has Also Killed himself!

Dear friends:

You may find this following article intriguing to

read. Please think deeply as you read.

The Absurdity of Life without God

William Lane Craig

Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.

The Necessity of God and Immortality

Man, writes Loren Eiseley, is the Cosmic Orphan. He is the only creature in the universe who asks, "Why?" Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has leamed to ask questions. "Who am I?" man asks. "Why am I here? Where am I going?" Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. "You are the accidental by-product of nature, a result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death."

Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man's life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever. Therefore, everyone must come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called "the threat of non-being." For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call "myself" will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

I remember vividly the first time my father told me that someday I would die. Somehow as a child the thought had just never occurred to me. When he told me, I was filled with fear and unbearable sadness. And though he tried repeatedly to reassure me that this was a long way off, that did not seem to matter. Whether sooner or later, the undeniable fact was that I would die and be no more, and the thought overwhelmed me. Eventually, like all of us, I grew to simply accept the fact. We all learn to live with the inevitable. But the child's insight remains true. As the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre observed, several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity...

...

My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that at Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all the Ten Commandments were reversed. Mankind had never seen such a hell.

And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: there is no absolute right and wrong; all things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the issue of the composer's anti-Semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly Sartre, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste, of equal value with its opposite.8 In his important essay "Existentialism Is a Humanism," Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that at Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all the Ten Commandments were reversed. Mankind had never seen such a hell.

And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: there is no absolute right and wrong; all things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the issue of the composer's anti-Semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly Sartre, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste, of equal value with its opposite.8 In his important essay "Existentialism Is a Humanism," Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

Read more:  Click the link below.

The Absurdity of Life without God