It is a position that renders impossible a satisfactory interpretation of the book. In placing the authorship of the book in the second century B.C., many scholars have followed the unbelieving Porphyry, and it is no exagggeration to assert that this position has become dominant in modern scholarship. According to Porphyry, this unknown Jew lied. It was, therefore, written by an unknown Jew who lived in the second century B.C. According to this early opponent of Christianity, the book of Daniel could not have been written by Daniel because he would not have been able to foretell the future. He wrote some fifteen books, which bore the general designation “Against the Christians.” Of these, only the twelfth is extant, and that only as it has been preserved in part in the commentary of Jerome on Daniel. It was his intention to do all in his power to destroy the Christian religion. In the early third century there lived a man by the name of Porphyry who was an avowed opponent of Christianity. It is necessary to say a word about the question of the book’s authorship. And on the other, those scholars who deny the historicity of the book also impose upon it an impossible interpretation and consequently do much to keep it from enjoying the understanding and popularity which it deserves. On the one hand, some advance fanciful interpretions which have obscured the central message of Daniel. For this reason many preachers do not often use the book in their preaching, and the ordinary Bible reader often throws up his hands in despair as he contemplates it. That the prophecy of Daniel in many respects is difficult to understand goes without saying.
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