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Darius the Mede: a case history


On the optimistic, if ill-founded, assumption that anyone out there is listening, i thought I'd review something that has struck me for a long time as being indicative of belief trumping reason. namely the evangelical explanation of "Darius the Mede," a character that certainly never existed in history, but only exists in the Book of Daniel.

We first hear of Darius the Mede in Dan. 5:30, 31:

That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.

The problem, with respect to history, is that the Chaldean Empire fell to Cyrus the Persian, not Darius the Mede. Evangelical apologists have, historically, rationalized this in one of two different ways. Both depend on interpreting "Darius" as a title rather than a name. Since Darius is a Hellenized version of Darayawush, meaning "royal one," it is a title. One theory is that theis particular Darius is, in fact, Cyrus. The other theory is that "Darius the Mede" was actually a Mede official named Ugbarru, who was governor over Babylon and its environs and served under Cyrus the Persian.

Neither of these explanations are viable unless one is willing to totally ignore what is said in Dan. 6. I will explain my reasoning in detail in my next post.

Last edited by Tim Callahan, 7/15/2010, 2:41 am
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Re: Darius the Mede: a case history


Was "Darius the Mede" - whom Dan.5:31 says received the Kingdom of Belshazzar - actually Cyrus the Great, king of Persia? That's one of the arguments made by defenders of both the early date and the historical validity of the Book of Daniel. The argument is that, since Darius (or, in the original Avestan tongue, Darayawush) means "royal one" it is a title rather than a name. So, could they be right? Was "Darius the Mede" simply another way of referring to Cyrus the Persian?

Here's what Dan. 6:28 says of Darius and Cyrus( emphasis added):

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

So, according to the Book of Daniel itself, Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian were two separate individuals.

Was "Darius the Mede" actually not a king at all, but rather a governor of the province of Babylon, under Cyrus? I'll answer that question in my next post.


Last edited by Tim Callahan, 7/16/2010, 3:27 am
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Re: Darius the Mede: a case history


Was "Darius the Mede" actually Ugbarru, an official who administered the province of Babylon under Cyrus the Great? To answer that question, let us look at the end of Daniel 5 and the beginning of Daniel 6 (Dan. 5:30 - 6:2):

That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius the Med received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three presidents, of whom Daniel was one. to whom the satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss.

If Darius or Darayawush, the "royal one" was merely governing Babylon an its environs, 120 satraps seem like an excessive number of officials to be working for him.

Daniel 6 is the story of Daniel in the lions' den. After Darius has Daniel taken up out of the den he writes to his subjects that they are to honor Daniel's god (Dan. 6:25, 26a):

Then king Darius wrote to all the people, nations, and languages that dwell in the earth: "Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, . . .

There wouldn't be much point in Darius writing to "all the people, nations and languages that dwell in the earth" concerning a decree limited to his royal dominion if that dominion consisted only of Babylon or even all the lands of the Chaldean Empire. all of the nations that dwell in the earth refers to a colossal empire. The empire of Cyrus included the Iranian plateau and all of the tribes related to the Medes and Persians, all the peoples of the Tigris - Euphrates valley, north and south, Syria, the Levant and all of Asia Minor, including the Lydians and the Ionian Greeks among many others.

Thus, "Darius the Mede" is, in Daniel 6, the the ruler of a vast empire. He is not a Mede official ruling Babylon under Cyrus, and he is not Cyrus himself. As such, he is a totally fictional character. Thus the "history" of Daniel is fallacious.
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Re: Darius the Mede: a case history


Isn't Darius mentioned by Josephus?

BTW, why can't the Old Testament be a source of history? You accept the writings of Herodotus as history, why can't you accept the writings of the author of Daniel as history?
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Re: Darius the Mede: a case history


Yes, Josephus does indeed mention Darius the Mede in Antiquities of the Jews, Book 10, Chapter 11. In item 2 he says the Darius was allied with Cyrus the Persian. In that item, he says that even while the Medes and Persians were besieging Babylon, Belshazzar was having big feast. This is a common fictional motif, which is also told of the fall of Nineveh. Josephus essentially uses Daniel 5 as his source and expands on the story with such embellishments as Belshazzar's feast going on in the midst of a siege.

In item 4 of that same chapter Josephus says that Darius was the son Astyages and a kinsman of Cyrus. He says in that same item at one point that Cyrus took the city of Babylon, at another that Darius took it. So, he seems a bit vague on the history.

What you have to remember about Josephus is that what he wrote about from his own time was often as an eyewitness. What he wrote about in the Hellenistic period was reasonably fresh history, particularly with respect to Antiochus Epiphanes. However, for his earlier history he simply recounted the biblical text and added mythic embellishments. Here are two examples:

In Antiquities he tells that, when Moses was still a prince of Egypt, he was besieging the capitol of Ethiopia. Tharbis, the daughter of the Ethiopian king, looked down from the battlements, saw Moses and instantly fell in love with him. She sent him a secret message that, if he agreed to marry her she would show him a secret entrance into the city. He agreed, and they were married. Tharbis, says Josephus, is the Cushite wife of Moses against whom Aaron and Miriam spoke in Numbers. In fact, Cushan was another name for Midian (see Hab. 3:7), Moses' "Cushite" wife was none other than his Midianite wife Zipporah. Variants of the myth of a princess faling in love with the dashing leader ofthe troops besieging her father's city are found in Greek nd Roman mythology.

In Wars of the Jews Josephus speaks of the iron gate Alexander the Great set up in a pass of the Caucasus mountains to keep Gog and Magog (i.e. the Sarmatians) from invading the civilized lands. Interestingly, the same tale, one of the legends that grew up around Alexander the Great, is recounted in Surah 18 of the Qur'an, where Alexander is referred to as D'uhl Qarnayn, meaning 'two horns." The Qur'an says this barrier is still standing, but that Godg and Magog will break it down in the last days. Suffice it to say, there is no such structure nor remains of any such structure in the Caucasus Mountains.

That Josephus uncritically incorporated these two tales as history is an indication that his material on anything before the late Hellenistic period is unreliable.

I'll respond to your question about the Bible as history in my next post.

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Re: Darius the Mede: a case history


quote:

Elim10 wrote: . . . BTW, why can't the Old Testament be a source of history? You accept the writings of Herodotus as history, why can't you accept the writings of the author of Daniel as history?



As to using the Old Testament as history, there are two types of ancient documents, with respect to the manner in which they have come down to us: preserved documents and transmitted documents.

Preserved documents are inscriptions on stone, cuneiform writing on baked clay tablets, paintings and inscriptions on tomb walls and even ancient writing on papyrus or parchment. Some Egyptian papyri are as old or older than 1500 B.C. Of course, the Dead Sea scrolls are preserved documents from the second century B.C through to 70 A.D., which tell us, among other things, that the body of Hebrew Scriptures - our Old Testament - was essentially complete by the second century B.C.

Another form of preserved document is imagery. This can be in the form of paintings, reliefs or sculpture. We know from vase paintings on vases accurately dated to the classical Greek period that many of the Greek myths were being told back when those vases were made. A vase form the Aegean island of Mykonos, dating form ca. 800 B.C. has a relief on it, rather than a painting, depicting the Trojan Horse being pulled into the city. This corroborates the dating of Homer's Odyssey, in which we find an account of the Trojan horse, as being written at about that time. The relief on the Triumphal Arch of Titus, of Roman soldiers bearing spoils from the Jerusalem temple -including the great menorah - in a triumphal parade corroborates the account in Josephus of the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in the year 70.

The other form of ancient documents is transmitted documents. These are transmitted by repeated copying and are transmitted to us long after the original has been destroyed. With the exception of certain inscriptions and the imagery, just about all Greek and Roman documents are transmitted copies. Of course, with the exception of the Dead Sea Scrolls, an inscription on silver from ca. 700 B.C. of the Aaronic benediction and a few fragmentary papyri of New Testament books - such as the Rylands Fragment, from the Gospel of John, dated to ca. 125 - the Bible is also a transmitted ancient document - or perhaps I should call it a transmitted library.

The historicity of the Bible's books vary. I'll continue this discussion in a new thread, titled "Historicity of the Bible" in the biblical origins section, since this gets away from the issue of Bible Prophecy. Let me just say this about accepting writings of Herodotus as history: I take him with a grain of salt. For example, he says that the Sarmatians came from the union of young Scythian men marrying Amazons. This accounted for the fact that women among the Sarmatians fought as warriors (in order to be allowed to marry, a Sarmatian girl had to go on at least one raid and return home with the severed head of an enemy), whereas the Scythian women did not. In fact, the legend ofthe Amazons might well have been derived, in part, from the Sarmatian women, not the other way around, as Herodotus has it. Often Herodotus was a better story-teller than a historian.

Last edited by Tim Callahan, 7/19/2010, 12:06 pm
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