Wolters thinks Daniel is talking about
a comet for 4 reasons:
1. Some authorities say the first yzhrw shouldn’t be
there. Wolters disagrees. He says the poetic structure would be spoilt if it were taken
away and that the repetition is deliberate.
2. He argues in some detail that the accepted translation of the
word zhr should not be the abstract and general ‘brightness’. It often
has this meaning in the Hebrew in general usage but not in the Bible. It only appears
twice in the whole Old Testament and seems to mean something concrete on both occasions.
a. (i) The one, in Ezekiel
8.2, talks about a heavenly messenger who is ‘like the appearance of fire’
below the waist and ‘like the appearance of zohar’ above the waist. These
two lines don’t make sense unless zohar is understood as a particular 'bright
object’ rather that just ‘brightness’.
a. (ii) Wolters argues that
something like a luminary in the sky would fit the meaning.
a. (iii) He reinforces this
by pointing out that the Bible commonly describes the glory of heavenly beings in terms of
luminous celestial phenomena.
The other, in the Book of Daniel, suggests five main arguments
against an abstract meaning.
b. (i) kzhr is
balanced in the next line by kkkbym. This is not an abstract word. It means
‘the stars’.
b. (ii) He looks at the
Bible and at translations in the old Greek, the Theodotion, the Peshitta and the Vulgate
texts. Only the vulgate gives an abstract word. All the others translate zhr into
concrete things like ‘luminary’, not the abstract ‘brightness’.
b. (iii) Other Semitic
languages translate zhr and similar words into nouns like ‘Sun’ or
‘Venus’.
b. (iv) In Semitic languages
it is usual for ‘brightness’ words to mean particular objects.
b. (v) He mentions parallel
passages in Enoch 39.7 & 104.2 and Matthew 13.43, where the meaning is much closer to
‘Sun’ or ‘lights’ than to the abstract ‘brightness’.
Apart from the Vulgate, all the above were written much nearer
to Daniel’s time and the writers would have been more in tune with the original
meaning. He concludes that the text is talking about a specific bright celestial object.
3. Next, he looks at the word yzhrw which is a verb coming
from the same root as zhr. It appears 22 times in the Hebrew Bible. It may mean ‘shine’ here but it means
‘to teach’ or ‘to warn’
everywhere else.
Wolters suggests this is a play on
words to be interpreted in three ways.
a) The people who refused to give
in to Antiochus were trying to teach the others to stick to the right ways.
b) They were ‘shining’
examples.
c) The yzhrw kzhr
was a celestial ‘warning light’.
4. Lastly, the book of Daniel is clearly telling us about the death
of Antiochus. This happened in November or December 164 BCE. It talks of the rededication
of the Temple, which probably happened in mid December. It may also be telling us about a
comet which was seen as a portent.
