Episode 117 – Perfectly Quiet – The Intertestamental Period 3

Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

… a goat with a prominent horn between its eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. … I saw it attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering its two horns. … at the height of its power the large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven. … The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between its eyes is the first king.”

Daniel, chapter 8, verses 5 through 8 and 20 and 21, New International Version

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VK: Hello. I’m Victoria K and today on Anchored by Truth we are continuing our look at “The Intertestamental Period.” This is the period between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. Many people don’t realize that there is a gap of 400 to 450 years that elapsed between the close of the Old Testament canon and the start of the New. I’m in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, how about reminding us about why you thought it was important for us to do a series focused on a time period in history when books of the Bible weren’t being produced?

RD: As we mentioned in our first couple of episodes in this series knowing what happened between the two testaments helps us improve our understanding of both the Old and New Testaments. You might think that the events of the intertestamental period would primarily benefit our understanding of what was recorded in the New Testament. After all, history only unfolds in one direction. So, it would be natural to think that the events of the intertestamental period were primarily important to a student of the Bible because of the historical background they would provide for New Testament events. But actually the intertestamental period provides us with a wealth of insight into the Old Testament, in part because a number of Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled during the intertestamental period. If we don’t know what happened during that period we would lose important evidence that demonstrates that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

VK: Well, maybe you should take a moment and connect the dots for us about how Biblical history helps us improve our confidence in the inspiration of scripture. I think a lot of people tend to view history as one of those subjects we could leave behind when we finished school. I mean many people might think that the Bible is important in that it gives us moral and ethical instruction. And they would acknowledge the Bible contains information on spiritual topics like salvation, heaven, and how to have better lives. But I think that many Christians don’t understand the link between the topics that affect our daily lives, or our future in heaven, with knowing something about history.

RD: Well, let’s start with a refresher. Here on Anchored by Truth we start every show by reminding everyone that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. But how can we know that? How can we be sure of that? Well, one way we can be sure the Bible is the Word of God is by examining evidence that supports this contention. We often talk about 4 lines of evidence that demonstrate that the Bible is inspired: reliable history, remarkable unity, fulfilled prophecy, and redeemed destinies. Redeemed destinies occur when people learn and accept the Bible’s spiritual and moral truths. The Bible has helped untold millions discover the truth that Jesus died to save us from our sin and assures us that we can spend eternity with Him in heaven. But of course redeeming destinies doesn’t stop there.

VK: Besides just leading people into a saving relationship with Christ, the Bible has also helped millions give up addictions to drugs, alcohol, and pornography. The Bible has also helped families be reunited and it has led people to found hospitals, missions, and schools. When we talk about redeeming destinies we’re not just talking about redeeming eternal destinies. The Bible has also helped millions and their families have far better lives here on this earth.

RD: That’s all very true. So, the fact that one book has had such a positive impact on so many lives is evidence that that book is special or remarkable. And it’s important that the Bible has been able to do that across times, places, and cultures. But, as important as that line of evidence is, those redeemed destinies alone don’t demonstrate that the Bible is God’s word. We also need those other lines of evidence to complete the demonstration.

VK: The reliable history the Bible contains shows that the Bible is consistent with what we can see around us, not only in our day and time but in the days and times that have gone before. A book claiming divine inspiration that is manifestly inconsistent with observations of our world and its history automatically surrenders much of the validity of its claim. When we speak of remarkable unity we’re referring to the fact that the books of our Bible were written by over 3 dozen human authors over a period of fifteen hundred years. Yet, despite this variety of human authors and times in which it was written, the Bible is unified. It contains one message about one plan centered on one person for one purpose. This consistency is strong evidence that there is one single Mind behind all the books. And, obviously, that Mind would have to be eternal. Otherwise, it could not have kept that singular focus for fifteen hundred years.

RD: Right. Those three lines of evidence – redeemed destinies, reliable history, and remarkable unity – are all very compelling in demonstrating that the Bible is a remarkable book. But, it is not impossible that a really determined group of people might have crafted a sort of pious fraud that possessed those attributes. It’s highly unlikely but none of those things are beyond the realm of human ability. But one thing that is beyond the realm of human possibility is to accurately predict the future – and not just the near term future – weeks, days, or months – but centuries. And not predict the future in a vague or non-descript kind of way like Nostradamus, Edward Cayce, or the other so-called human prophets. Biblical prophecies name names, give places, describe events, and even designate times with such precision that it would be beyond the ability of any human or group of humans to predict or even arrange.

VK: Fulfilled prophecy helps demonstrate that the Bible truly has a supernatural origin. And to go back to our point – there is no way for us to know about prophecies that were made and fulfilled without knowing a little history. So, that’s part of what we want to do during this study of the intertestamental period. We want to show that there were numerous prophecies made in the Old Testament period that were fulfilled during this time. New prophecies were not being made during the intertestamental period. But old prophecies were being fulfilled.

RD: Correct. So, the mundane facts of history connect to the Bible’s spiritual messages about salvation and heaven in a very direct way. By reading the Bible and studying history we can see that the Bible contains a large volume of prophecies, hundreds of which have been fulfilled. This solidifies our confidence that the Bible is God’s word so that it can be trusted in matters that are supernatural. And in case anyone thinks that this connection is new or novel, even Jesus made the same point in his conversation with Nicodemus.

VK: You’re thinking about the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verses 11 and 12 where Jesus said:

I am telling you the truth: we speak of what we know and report what we have seen, yet none of you is willing to accept our message. You do not believe me when I tell you about the things of this world; how will you ever believe me, then, when I tell you about the things of heaven?

So, Jesus himself connected the things of this world – like historical events - to the things of heaven.

RD: Right. Nicodemus had gone to Jesus secretly at night because Nicodemus was an important man in Jewish society. Now, Nicodemus may have gone to Jesus at night because he didn’t want to ruin his reputation. But, it’s possible Nicodemus just wanted to be able to speak candidly with Jesus because Nicodemus had become convinced Jesus might be the Messiah. Nicodemus would have had a mastery of the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. He also would have been very familiar with the immediate history of his people. Nicodemus’ study of history and scripture could easily have led him to believe Jesus was the one the Jews had been expecting for hundreds of years.

VK: I see what you’re saying. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Now, most of the Pharisees were skeptical or opposed to Jesus because Jesus was a threat to their power and influence. But Nicodemus was an exception. He wanted to know the truth about Jesus regardless of what it meant for him personally. As a Pharisee Nicodemus would have been an expert in the Old Testament. He certainly would have been familiar with those prophecies that had been fulfilled during the intertestamental period. That would have included the prophecy we heard in our opening scripture.

RD: Right. So, it’s possible Nicodemus went to Jesus because Nicodemus was just trying to find out the truth about Jesus for himself so he wanted some undisturbed time with Jesus. At any rate during their conversation Jesus apparently felt the need to correct Nicodemus’ understanding about some spiritual matters. When he did so it appears Jesus encountered either skepticism or Jesus just hit some gaps in Nicodemus’ understanding. But notice, as he was addressing Nicodemus’s questions about spiritual matters, Jesus plainly connected his teaching about matters of this world with the Jews’ willingness to accept his teaching about spiritual truth. I personally think this is one of the most profound truths we learn from scripture. A lot of people today become very enamored with the esoteric elements of the Bible – eschatology, the operation of spiritual gifts, supposedly hidden messages and Bible codes, and more. Yet, too often these same people have ignored the most basic teachings of the Bible and plain facts about the Bible. The point is that it’s a good idea for every Christian to know enough about Biblical history to be able to answer some basic questions. The question, “how can you be confident the Bible is God’s word,” is not an unreasonable question. As believers, we should be prepared to answer reasonable questions. Good evangelism includes not just proclamation but sometimes explanation.

VK: Well, let’s get back to our discussion about the intertestamental period. As we’ve been discussing fulfilled prophecy is one of the strongest lines of evidence that the Bible is the word of God. And there were a lot of prophecies fulfilled during the intertestamental period such as the ones in our opening scripture. So, let’s focus on it. Our opening scripture came from Daniel, chapter 8. Verse 1 of chapter 8 tells us that Daniel received his vision in the “third year of King Belshazzar’s reign.” Belshazzar was a Babylonian king. When did Belshazzar rule?

RD: Around the middle to latter part of the 6th century B.C. – from about 556 B.C. to 539 B.C. And the mere fact that Daniel dates his vision using Belshazzar is itself significant. At one time Belshazzar was thought to be legendary because many of the well-known ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus made no mention of him as king of Babylon. The last king of Babylon was thought to be Nabonidus who some scholars think had married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. But thanks to excavations at Ur we now know that Belshazzar was a co-regent with Nabonidus who was his father. Nabonidus spent a lot of time in another part of the empire so Belshazzar actually ruled in Babylon.

VK: So, the fact that Daniel even dates his vision by Belshazzar is significant evidence of the historicity of the book of Daniel. Herodotus wrote around 450 B.C. Apparently, Belshazzar’s name had disappeared from common historical knowledge by that time. That’s just decades after Belshazzar’s death in 539 B.C. The fact that Daniel correctly identified Belshazzar’s role in Babylon means the book of Daniel must have been written earlier that 450 B.C. Again, this is solid evidence the book of Daniel was written in the 6th century B.C. Right?

RD: Right. In terms of our calendar, chapter 8 of Daniel can be reliably dated to around 550 or so B.C. At that point the Babylonian empire is still intact. But it would only remain that way for another 20 years or so. In our opening scripture we heard about 2 empires that would follow the Babylonian empire – the Medes and Persians and the Greeks. Well, the Medes and Persians actually conquered Babylon during Daniel’s lifetime (539 B.C.).

VK: So, Daniel lived to see a partial fulfillment of some of his own prophecies. Daniel lived to see the Medes and Persians replace the Babylonians. In Daniel’s vision the two-horned ram represented the Medes and Persians. That image made perfect sense because it was a confederation of the Medes and the Persians that actually conquered Babylon. Ultimately, the Persian side of the alliance became dominant but initially both sides were part of the conquests. The two horns of the ram should be contrasted with the single horn of the shaggy goat. The goat represented the Greeks and the Greek empire was led by Alexander the Great who was unmatched in the speed and scope of his conquests.

RD: Exactly. And we’re going to talk more in a moment about why the goat was used as a symbol for the Greeks. But let’s focus for just a second on the remarkable speed and scope of Alexander’s conquests. Alexander the Great conquered all the territory from Greece to India including Egypt and the Mideast and he did it in just over a decade. No other single person in history has ever been as successful as a military leader. That’s why in Daniel’s vision it makes perfect sense that the shaggy goat is said to cross the whole earth without touching the ground. That’s a poetic way of talking about the speed with which Alexander’s conquests would occur. He moved so fast it’s as if he wasn’t touching the ground. But notice that it says that at the height of his power the “prominent horn” – Alexander - would be broken off and replaced by four other horns that would grow up toward the four winds of heaven.

VK: And we know from history that that is exactly what happened. After Alexander died his brother was declared king. But the unity of the Greek power died with Alexander. Alexander died 323 B.C. For about the next 20 years there was a power struggle among Alexander’s generals but in 300 B.C. there was a formal division of Alexander's empire between four of his generals who had taken to calling themselves kings.

RD: Yes. The four former generals who emerged as the “four other horns” (in the Bible a horn is a symbol of power) were Ptolemy, Seleucus, Cassander, and Lysimachus. The Bible is primarily concerned with Ptolemy and Seleucus because Ptolemy became the ruler of Egypt and Seleucus became the ruler of Syria. Of course, geographically Israel is between Egypt and Syria. So, for the next 200 plus years those two powers would struggle for control of Israel.

VK: But the Bible doesn’t refer to these two kingdoms by the names of the generals – Ptolemy or Seleucus. The Bible just calls them the King of the South and the King of the North. The Bible always uses directions using Israel as the point of reference. So, when the Bible says the King of the South it’s referring to a kingdom south of Israel. Same for King of the North. That’s referring to a kingdom that would be north of Israel.

RD: Yes. And we’re going to talk more about the struggle between the King of the North and the King of South in our next episode of Anchored by Truth. But for today we want to just focus on the amazing nature of the prophecies in our opening scripture. We’ve already seen that the speed of Alexander the Great’s conquests is a fitting fulfillment of the prophecy’s description of a shaggy goat crossing the earth that doesn’t touch the ground. Alexander’s conquests were amazingly fast just a running goat not touching the ground would be.

VK: And you’ve also said that using the goat as a symbol for Greece also makes good sense in a couple of different ways. In ancient times Macedonia and Greece were separate states until they were unified under Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father. So, why would it make sense to use a goat as a symbol for Alexander?

RD: The first king of the Macedonians was thought to be Caranus who began his reign about 800 years before the Christ. There’s a story that Caranus was led to establish the city of Edessa as his capital when he was led to the city by a herd of goats. As such, the goat became associated with Macedonia and subsequently the unified Greece and Macedonia. Bronze figures and architectural elements have been found that showed the goat as a symbol of Macedon. There’s a particularly fascinating pilaster, which is essentially a decorative framework for a building, which shows a man in Persian dress holding the single, large horn of a goat. The pilaster seems to depict the time when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia, a territory that had been colonized by the Macedonians. That kicked off a year conflict between the Persians and the Greeks that lasted more than 200 years. And some of the battles in that conflict have made it into our popular culture of today.

VK: The Battle of Marathon is a good example. It occurred during the first Persian invasion of Greece in 490 B.C. The Greeks, principally the Athenians, defeated the Persians on the Plain of Marathon. Then various accounts say a Greek runner ran the entire distance to Athens to tell of victory so the Persians could not falsely claim they had won. The name of the Greek runner varies in different accounts and some say he died. Marathon is 26.1 miles from Athens and that’s why today’s marathon running event is 26.1 miles.

RD: That’s a good example. So, is the legendary stand of the Greeks at the pass of Thermopylae. According to popular movie versions there were only 300 Spartans who blocked a huge invasion force of Persians, but in actuality there were probably around 7,000 Greeks from Sparta and a variety of other city-states. It is true, though, that the Spartans and about 1,000 other Greeks remained guarding the pass when the rest of the Greek army retreated. At any rate, the Persians repeated incursions into Greece between 490 B.C. and around 450 B.C. obviously branded them as enemies of the Greeks. So, when Alexander the Great became king at the age of 20 after his father, Philip, was murdered Alexander was determined to get revenge. At the time Daniel received his prophecy in Chapter 8 all of that was still in the future. It would be almost 20 years after Daniel received the vision before the Babylonians would fall to the Medes and the Persians. It would be another 200 years after that before the Persian Empire would fall to Alexander the Great.

VK: And it was 13 years after Alexander conquered Persia that he died – or as the scripture says “at the height of its power the large horn was broken off.” And it would be another 23 years after Alexander’s death before the formal division of the Greek empire – or as the scripture put it “in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.” You know, that is a lot of unfamiliar names, dates, and places.

RD: True enough. And I understand why it can be daunting for someone who has never investigated Biblical history to begin to understand it.

VK: It can seem very far away from the things that we usually think about when it comes to our faith – salvation, heaven, living better lives, overcoming bad habits.

RD: Yes. And I get that. And I wouldn’t want to suggest that we can’t live lives that are individually pleasing to God without mastering the dates and places of the Greco-Persian wars. But I would suggest that the church collectively won’t fulfill its mission if we don’t reclaim the idea that the Bible and Christianity aren’t just subjectively comforting but objectively true?

VK: And you would say that the current state of our culture is ample evidence that when the church tried to become popular it lost some or much of its preservative character?

RD: Exactly. The church is supposed to be salt and light to the culture. Salt is a preservative. Light is necessary for clear direction. But we lose those attributes if allow the Bible to be treated as just another interesting book – entertaining at times but ultimately a book that we can leave or take. That’s certainly not how Jesus treated the scriptures.

VK: In Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 and 18 Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to make their teachings come true. Remember that as long as heaven and earth last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with—not until the end of all things.” That’s the Good News Translation.

RD: Exactly. Well, one of the teachings of the prophets Jesus referred to are the prophecies found in Daniel. So, we honor Jesus’ words when we take the time to develop a solid understanding of the truth contained in the prophets. And, at our point in the grand plan of redemption, that means understanding enough about Biblical history to be able to confidently communicate at least a few basics.

VK: And we want to make that easier on our listeners. So, one way listeners can help others develop a better understanding is just by informing others about the availability of Anchored by Truth. Anchored by Truth can be a simple way for listeners to help other believers, or unbelievers, begin to strengthen their faith and communicate the message that the Bible really is the inspired word of God.

RD: Yes. Knowing something about Biblical history not only helps increase our confidence in the Bible itself but helps us get a better understanding of our own times. We see from history that the Jews persistent refusal to accept warnings and correction from the Lord caused them to go into captivity. They were later given permission to return to their homeland but how much better it would have been to listen to the Lord in the first place. I think that message is just as important today as it was 2,500 years ago.

VK: This sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today's prayer is a prayer for our young children. We not only want them to grow up healthy and strong but also in the love, nurture, and admonition of the Lord:

---- PRAYER FOR YOUNG CHILDREN.

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(Bible Quote from the New International Version)

Daniel, chapter 8, verses 5 through 8 and 20 and 21, New International Version