The Failure of the Antiochus Creed
The facts outlined in the previous article of this blog (see “A Biblical Book Against God”) make Daniel the most important book in the Hebrew Bible. It is the only biblical book that mocks belief in divine salvation from within the biblical corpus itself.
The focus of this mockery is the historical destruction of the Second Temple and the evident divine indifference to this destruction. And since Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple in AM 3830 = 69/70 CE, the natural conclusion is that Daniel (as we know it) was written after this date.
This conclusion rests on the temporal ordering of cause and effect. If we assume (and it is an assumption) that a complex historical event is always the cause of its own description, then Daniel is an effect of the destruction. It must therefore follow AM 3830 = 69/70 CE.
And almost nothing can refute this conclusion. To argue against causality stands outside reasoned discourse itself, and any appeal to other forms of evidence is a non sequitur. Paleographic judgments cannot refute this date. The traditional dating of the deposit (and nature) of the scrolls at Qumran cannot refute it. Radiocarbon analyses of the Dead Sea Scrolls cannot refute it. And they cannot for a trivial reason: these forms of evidence can never change what the text itself says. Never.
Of course, this dating of Daniel remains theoretically falsifiable. There are at least two logical counterarguments. One possible counterargument would be a literary argument. Causality does not exclude a refutation by a detailed literary analysis of the text. A skeptic could show that the text itself does not address the destruction of the Second Temple.
But this task is impossible. A skeptic would have to show that the Book of Daniel does not say what it clearly says.
The skeptic, of course, will always insist otherwise. Any skeptical scholar will respond that an alternative reading already exists. They will insist that since 1780, critical scholarship has progressively shown that the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his war to Hellenize Judea are the focus of Daniel 8–12.
The only problem is, this reading is demonstrably false.
Antiochus Epiphanes is not the focus of Daniel 8–12. To be sure, he is a major figure in the historical discourse of Daniel 11:2–45, but he is not its central figure.
The thematic and historical trajectory of Daniel 11:2–45 is the decline and conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt. The discourse has a chiastic structure as follows:
A: Prologue on Persia, Alexander, and the Hellenistic Kingdoms (11:2–5)
B: Ptolemy III and Ptolemaic Egypt Ascendant in the Third Syrian War (11:6–9)
C: Antiochus III, Coele-Syria annexed, and the Near-Conquest of Egypt (11:10–17)
X: Transition from Antiochus III to Antiochus IV (11:18–24)
C’: Antiochus IV, the Near-Conquest of Egypt, and Coele-Syria lost to the Jews (11:25–35)
B’: The Final-Horn King and Egypt Conquered (11:36–42)
A’: Epilogue on Expansion of the Final King and the Destruction of Jerusalem (11:43–45)
(Note that the final verse in this discourse is widely mistranslated. It concerns the Second Temple, not the final king. A correct translation of ויטע אהלי אפדנו בין ימים להר צבי קדש ובא עד קצו ואין עוזר לו is “And he will pitch the tents of his destruction between the seas and the beautiful holy mountain, and it will come to its end, and no one will save it.” It essentially repeats what Daniel 8:9–12 states before it.)
The role of Antiochus within this thematic structure is clear. He, together with his father Antiochus III, is presented as one of two Seleucid kings who attempted the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt and failed. The accomplishment of this conquest goes instead to a third and final king described at Daniel 11:36–42.
Moreover, since the historical trajectory of the discourse is the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt, history itself points to Augustus as the identity of this final king. Unlike Antiochus III and Antiochus IV, Augustus did conquer Ptolemaic Egypt in the War of Actium, the final war of the Roman Republic and the birth moment of the Roman Empire.
And, sure enough, Daniel 11:40–42 reads like a detailed description of the War of Actium. It begins with Egypt on the attack, yet the final king defeats Egypt in a battle involving “many ships.” He then marches overland, conquering many territories, even Israel itself (retaining Herod as its client king), after which he finally conquers the riches of Egypt.
And the description includes a substantial detail. Despite his many conquests, this king nonetheless leaves “Edom, Moab, and the best land of the Ammonites” untouched. This is a rather accurate description of the Nabataean kingdom that remained outside of the Roman Empire until Trajan annexed it in 106 CE.
Even the description of this final king as מלך הצפון strengthens the identification with Augustus. The Masoretes confused this king with the Seleucids that preceded him and vocalized this title as “the king of the north.” The correct vocalization produces “the king of the treasure,” a wordplay that mocks the earlier Seleucid failure to conquer the wealth of Egypt.
Of course, Daniel skeptics have a response to this reading. To these skeptics, the passage at Daniel 11:36–42 is not about Augustus; it is a failed prophecy about Antiochus IV.
Yet the weakness of this response is obvious: it admits its own failure.
And it presents a simple, scientific test that exposes this failure. We have in the “Antiochus” interpretation and the “Augustus” interpretation two independent hypotheses. Both hypotheses assign distinct and specific episodes of history to Daniel 11:36–42. Under the Antiochus hypothesis, the authors of Daniel 11:36–42 wrote about Antiochus IV in the aftermath of his failed invasion of Egypt. Under the Augustus hypothesis, the authors wrote about Augustus—and specifically his policy toward Egyptian religion and his conquest of Egypt.
And the Augustus hypothesis decisively wins this test. The Antiochus hypothesis decisively fails this test, which is why the skeptic identifies it as a “failed prophecy.” Yet the Augustus hypothesis, in manifest contrast, matches the relevant history with no strain.
Skeptics nonetheless reject this obvious outcome. And to justify this rejection, they imply (in non-mathematical terms) that the Antiochus hypothesis has an a priori probability of nearly one, while the Augustus hypothesis has an a priori probability of nearly zero. And they justify these assignments on the basis of archaeological, paleographic, and radiocarbon evidence. They also imply that these a priori assignments determine the a posteriori outcomes.
The problem, of course, is that they don’t. It may be shown mathematically that these specific a priori assignments have no effect on the specific a posteriori outcomes in question. The Augustus hypothesis wins the test, no matter how low you set its a priori probability. Anyone with a modest degree of good judgment who also understands Bayes’ Law and advanced probability theory can work out this conclusion.
Fortunately for everyone else, the corresponding non-mathematical point is simple. As stated above, no amount of archaeological, paleographic, or radiocarbon evidence can ever change what a text actually says. Non-literary evidence can never corroborate or refute the clear reading of a text.
In fact, this success of the Augustus hypothesis challenges the credibility of any physical evidence that contradicts it. It is stronger evidence than any alleged physical evidence. If any archaeological, paleographic, or radiocarbon evidence truly does exclude the Augustus hypothesis, then the textual success of the Augustus hypothesis is decisive proof that such physical evidence is either misinterpreted, flawed, or even fraudulent.
This assertion is neither idle nor tendentious. It is simply necessitated by the textual facts. The text of Daniel 11:36–42 is not a failed prophecy about Antiochus. It is a description of Augustus and his conquest of Egypt. Anyone who disagrees either has not read the text, cannot read the text, or is ideologically unable to acknowledge its meaning.
To be clear, I do not believe that the physical evidence is either flawed or fraudulent. The archaeologists, paleographers, and radiocarbon labs involved are competent, and the conspiracy needed to maintain any fraud seems improbable in my judgment.
I think instead that this evidence is profoundly misinterpreted, and understandably so. Qumran research has actually uncovered something so profound and so unfamiliar that no reasonable person could have anticipated it. It has uncovered evidence requiring a revolutionary explanation.
And that brings us to the second logical argument against a late date for Daniel. This argument challenges the assumption that a complex historical event is always the cause of its own description. The Hebrew visions of Daniel and the destruction of the Second Temple may simply be a case of correlation. Because Daniel and the destruction of the Second Temple may simply have the same independent cause.
