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Document Details : Title: The Book of Daniel in the Light of Recent Findings Subtitle: Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense XL (1991) Author(s): VAN DER WOUDE, A.S. Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses Volume: 68 Issue: 1 Date: April 1992 Pages: 194-198 DOI: 10.2143/ETL.68.1.542171 Abstract : Renewed interest in apocalyptic and the discovery of Daniel manuscripts among the Dead Sea scrolls, one of which should be dated only half a century later than the final redaction of the biblical writing, have given a fresh impetus to the study of the book of Daniel. But the problems posed by it are far from being resolved: its bilingualism is an enigma that asks for a convincing answer, its genesis is disputed and its social background is wrapped in riddles, not to mention the ongoing debate concerning the essential characteristics of apoca¬lyptic. In order to treat these and other issues relating to the book of Daniel, sixteen specialists from seven different countries were invited to present and discuss their views with their colleagues and an international audience at the 40th session of the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense which took place in August 20-22, 1991 in the Pauscollege at Leuven1. The congress was attended by about one hundred participants and turned out to be a most stimulating meeting that induced to reconsider prevailing views and to take notice of new insights. In his presidential address A.S. VAN DER WOUDE refrained from giving an overview of Daniel research in the last hundred years or so because K. Koch, P.R. Davies and R.G. Kratz have provided the scholarly world with comprehensive and critical surveys of Daniel studies in the named period. Instead of this, he presented his audience with a more or less new proposal with regard to the bilingualism of the book by claiming that this problem requires at least two answers. In the case of Daniel 7 it must be assumed that the relatively small extent of the verses added by the Maccabean author to the original Aramaic text constituted a motivation for supplementing the chapter in Ara¬maic. On the other hand, the leading principle which led to the translation of Dan 1,1-2,4a from Aramaic into Hebrew, was the assigning of the authority which the original Aramaic book (ch. 1-7) already enjoyed, to the book as a whole, after the chapters 8-12 were added to the writing. |
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