(tim_from_pa;56733)
Now, for the first half. There is nothing wrong with my calculations. As a matter of fact, I derived them myself and to my surprise it agreed with others later on when I compared them. The whole pivotal point of your argument is whether or not there is a 360-day prophetic year. Of course I believe this, but I'm going to let you hang on that one. The reason is simply this: if there is a 360 day prophetic year, then these calculations show the exact date. If there is not, then it's "coincidence". It'll let you have that uncertainty so that truth does not smack you too much in the face. But let's face it..... the argument for or against Daniel's prophecy hangs on the balance of the 360-day year. IMO, the only straw a skeptic has left is to dispute that idea of a 360-day year. Again, I will let you have that. But for myself, I am convinced. I have my sources.
There is simply too much fuzzy, unsubstantiated guesswork in the math for me to be convinced by it. In order to buy into this theory, we must accept as premises thatA) When Daniel says weeks he is in fact referring to years, even though the Jews very clearly understood the distinction between these two.
These years are 360 days rather than 365, even though at no point in the rest of the Bible have the Jews used a 360-day prophetic year and it would in fact render other prophecies in the bible nonsensical to do so.C) The last week of the prophecy, even though it never happened, doesn't matter for some reason.These are three very large and unfounded premises. Now if you accept enough random redefinitions of what time means, you can render any prophecy coherent and say it isn't "coincidence." You could start saying that any part of a prophecy that wasn't fulfilled is just referring to an arbitrary point in the future, even. But that isn't suggested anywhere in history or in the bible. It's just one's own conjecture. Even if I accept premise A, Daniel's prophecy is, by any reasonable standard, off by many years. That, coupled with the huge number of other unfulfilled prophecies in Daniel, and the rest of the bible, and in particular the fact that Daniel's "prophecies" somehow all came true up til 167 BC (when the book was written) and then started to all fail afterwards, leads me to believe that Daniel and the other writers of the bible were not gifted with prophetic ability.Heck, Daniel is the only example the apologetic can muster of an exact date mentioned in biblical prophecy, so even if it were accurate the sheer number of other botched prophecies in the bible would leave me to believe it was an anomaly. When you need to start introducing these random notions of "prophetic years" and all the other guesswork involved, I am even more unconvinced.
Now, for the first half. There is nothing wrong with my calculations. As a matter of fact, I derived them myself and to my surprise it agreed with others later on when I compared them. The whole pivotal point of your argument is whether or not there is a 360-day prophetic year. Of course I believe this, but I'm going to let you hang on that one. The reason is simply this: if there is a 360 day prophetic year, then these calculations show the exact date. If there is not, then it's "coincidence". It'll let you have that uncertainty so that truth does not smack you too much in the face. But let's face it..... the argument for or against Daniel's prophecy hangs on the balance of the 360-day year. IMO, the only straw a skeptic has left is to dispute that idea of a 360-day year. Again, I will let you have that. But for myself, I am convinced. I have my sources.
There is simply too much fuzzy, unsubstantiated guesswork in the math for me to be convinced by it. In order to buy into this theory, we must accept as premises thatA) When Daniel says weeks he is in fact referring to years, even though the Jews very clearly understood the distinction between these two.
