Week 35 - Daniel 1-3, Revelation 6 (Aug 27 - Sept 2)
Notes
Daniel
ABOUT THE BOOK
Date of Authorship The dating of Daniel has been a matter of controversy. Many modern scholars have used comparative literary analysis to place the authorship of this book to as late as the 2nd Century BC, possibly allowing for the Aramaic section (2:4-7:28) to have been written a century earlier. However, traditional dating of Daniel, maintains that Daniel himself wrote the book, dating it to the second half of the 6th century, while the Israelites were exiled in Babylon. A significant data point emerged in this controversy when the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Qumran Community (Jewish essenes living near the Dead Sea) were discovered in 1946. Many of these scrolls were copies of Old Testament texts, while others were devotional and religious writings from this community. the Book of Daniel played a very important and developed role in these writings. Many of the Dead sea scrolls date, themselves, to the 2nd Century BC. This discovery provides a significant problem for the non-traditional, late dating of Daniel, as it would have been nearly impossible for this work to circulate in that short amount of time.
Author Because I prefer an early date for the authorship of Daniel, I think that Daniel himself probably wrote this book. Still, I am interested in the shifts in voice that occur in the book. Notice the third person being used in places like 7:1 and the first person voice being used in 8:1. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Purpose In Chapters 1-6, Daniel provides an account of faithfulness to Yahweh even in exile, showing that the worship of God was not extinguished with the destruction of Israel. In Chapters 7-12, Daniel’s vivid visions provide a prophetic projection of how God will deliver his people and the rise and fall of nations in the intervening time. It is a message of hope for God's people that he's got a plan, and it's on track, no matter how things look.
The Career of Daniel
Daniel lived to be quite old for this period. He was taken into exile from Jerusalem in the first incursion of Babylon into Judah. When i read the story of Daniel, I'm reminded of Joseph. Both were taken away from their family and homeland and both worked hard, were blessed by God, and were successful workers in their new setting. Additionally, both were skilled at the interpretation of dreams and visions. Daniel names 4 different kings that he served during his career, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus, in order, though it is likely that Darius in Daniel is a provincial governor of Babylon under Cyrus known in other historical accounts as "Gubaru," or that Darius is a throne-name for Cyrus, making them one and the same. His career spans two empires as the Persians (Darius and Cyrus) rise to power near the end of Daniel's life. God - through the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 29:10) - told the Israelites that their exile would last seventy years. that time spans from when the first group of exiles were taken away in 605 to when Cyrus decrees permission for some Jews to return from Babylon to Jerusalem in 536. Daniel's career spans the entire seventy-year exile.
Revelation 6: a Scene Change
Chapters 4-5 are essentially an inaugural vision that sets the tone for what follows in the book of Revelation. Then chapters 6-16 are structured by the series of seven seals, trumpets, and bowls. I believe that this section tells and re-tells the spiritual reality behind the story of history and the world. For instance, I think that John believes all the beasts (there are 4) described in revelation to reflect the present reality of the evil and wickedness behind the forces of the world. Chapters 17-22 are a retelling that focuses sharply on the end-times when Christ is victorious and God’s new creation arrives - when the vision that John had seen in heaven in chapter 4, will be true in the world as well.
Revelation 6: The Scrolls
This chapter of Revelation is built around the undoing of the seven seals on the scroll. I think many make a mistake by requiring that these seals must have a chronological sequence in meaning/representation simply because they (necessarily) have a literary sequence (one through six). This is a common mistake that people make all over the Book of Revelation, but literary sequence (especially in apocalyptic literature) does not necessarily mean chronological sequence. Consider the following commentary by NT Wright
This sevenfold sequence (the seals) is not chronological. It is an exposition of a sevenfold reality. In the same way, we should not suppose that this sevenfold sequence of ‘seals’ being opened is supposed to take place before the subsequent sequences of the trumptes and the bowls of wrath. rather, each of the sequences - and the material in between, too - is a fresh angle of vision on the same highly complex reality. (P.63)
so what kind of reality are these seals revealing? The first four clearly display the wicked and darkened forces of power in our sinful world:
Unless we lay out the problems to their full extent, no real healing can take place. Unless the ills of the world are brought out, shown up in their true colors, put on display, and allowed to do their worst, they cannot be overthrown. Unless the four horsemen ride out and do what they have to do, the scroll cannot be read. The victory of the lion-lamb will not be complete.
This is the answer (like all answers to do with Revelation, it remains partial and puzzling: this is a book designed to go on making you ponder and pray, not one designed to answer everything to your satisfaction) to the problem that many readers have when they get to Revelation 6. We have just celebrated the magnificent scene in the throne room with the whole of creation singing a glorious, thunderous hymn of praise to the creator God and to the slaughtered lamb. We have celebrated the fact that he has won the victory: now God's plan to rescue the whole world can go ahead! So, surely, all we have to do is to turn the page and there we will find...
And there we will find that the dark powers of evil are given their head. Things have to be exposed before they can be dealt with. Things have to come to light before the surgeon can perform the operation. Ancient memories of guilt and sorrow must be raked up, however painfully, before they can be prayed through and healed. Revelation is, as it were, a cosmic version of the tough pastoral struggle over the deeply wounded soul.
The soul of the world is aware of immediate problems and pains; but unless we look deeper, to the ancient patterns of conquest, violence, oppression, and death itself we shall not Nots begin to understand what needs to be done if the world is to be healed, really healed rather than merely patched together for a few more years.
Thus, when the lamb opens the first four seals on the scroll, instead of four glorious remedies for the world's ills we find the four living creatures summoning four horses and riders, each (so it seems) to make matters worse. (The four strange horsemen owe something to Zechariah's visions in his chap- Mode ters 1 and 6, but are here given quite a new role.) The first, the white horse with the rider and his bow, is sometimes supposed to be the Messiah himself, on the basis of the partial parallel in 19.11. This is not impossible, but I think it's more likely that he symbolizes the conquering kings of the earth who have charged to and fro, overcoming mighty nations and claiming sovereignty (the 'crown') over them. What happens when the 'seals' are opened is that the forces of human conquest and oppression are allowed to do their worst, before the divine purpose, which is to deal with the world's ills, can be read from (Wright, P. 60)
Revelation 6: The Sixth Scroll and the End of the World
The sixth seal reveals a terrifying, apocalyptic scene:
12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
This is the fate and judgment awaiting our wicked world and the people who have acceded to it’s wicked powers. But what would it physically look like for the heavens to be “rolled up” or to have stars fall to the earth?… STOP trying to imagine it! That is not how apocalyptic literature works. You are not being given an encoded physical-scientific depiction of the end times. You are being given a representative depiction that is primarily correlated to reality in intensity. Here, again, NT Wright:
Once again we must be careful about the symbolism. It is true that many in the ancient world saw eclipses, earthquakes, shooting stars and the like as signs and portents. John may be happy for people to hear those echoes. But in the Old Testament, language about the sun turning black and the moon becoming like blood, the stars falling from heaven, and so on, was regularly employed as a way of speaking about what we would call' earth-shattering events' - not at all meaning actual earthquakes, but rather tumultuous events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the smashing of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001: events for which it is hard to find appropriate language except through vivid symbol and metaphor.
This is certainly how it is here. If heaven and earth were really disappearing, if this was actually the end of the universe of space, time and matter, why would the rich and famous be hiding in caves? Rather, we should see the fresh revelation given by the undoing of the sixth seal as a time of huge political and social turbulence, resulting in a scene which many ancient prophets had described (e.g. Hosea 10.8). Those we call the great and the good, and many more besides, are thrown into a sudden panic. They realize they are entirely at the mercy of the God who rules the world. Their own schemes have come to nothing; what is now to become of them? (P. 67)