Persian & Babylonian Periods: Apocryphal and Historical Book

Solution Preview

Your question was this: "Could you explain the significance of the Persian and Babylonian Periods with respect to the authorship and dissemination of the Apocryphal and Historical Books?"

In apocalyptic prophecy, the stress is clearly on the future. Therefore, the Apocryphal and Historical Books, being prophetic in nature, predict events that have not yet occurred. This poses a problem for scholars who are trying to determine the authorship and dating of these books. The argument goes something like this: How could Daniel possibly be the author of a book that contains information about the Persians and Greeks that had not yet occurred, and did not occur for centuries after Daniel's death. However, this only poses a problem for those scholars who deny the prophetic nature of the Apocryphal and Historical Books of the Bible.

Let's look at Daniel as an example. The book of Daniel is an apocalypse. As such, it has one of the greatest messages in the OT: the kingdom of this world will be replaced by the kingdom of God. In apocalyptic prophecy, the stress is clearly on the future. Other prophets have given glimpses of this future, but in Daniel the message is sustained, revealed in a number of visions throughout the book. The scholars who hold that Daniel is clearly apocalyptic, argue that it is pitiful that a work of such grandeur has been ...