While liberal "so-called" biblical scholars reject Daniel as legitimate prohecy for different reasons, there are three we should take note of. First, in an unconvincing move they point to three solitary words - lyre, harp, and pipes - as proof positive for the early dating of Daniel. Their argument goes like this: If Daniel had prophesied before the arrival of Alexander the Great, these Greek words would not yet have been normative in the Aramaic of Daniel 3. In actuality this is a poor explanation. In order for this to work one has to approach the text with the presupposition that cultural interchanges between Babylon and Athens could not have existed before the Hellenistic campaigns of Alexander the Great. This idea flies in the face of both historical evidence and common sense. It is a well established historical fact that "Greek culture penetrated the ancient Near East long before the Neo-Babylonian period" (Hanegraaff, Hank, "The Bible Answer Book"). Read more

Daniel's description was so finely tuned that biblical skeptics began huddling up together claiming the book of Daniel had to be history written after the fact rather than prophecy that was written before. Porphyry, a philosopher from the third-century AD, led the charge. In a polemic titled "Against the Christians," he denies the legitimacy of the book of Daniel and instead calls it a Maccabean fraud: "The book of Daniel was written not by the man whom it is named after, but by someone who lived in Judaea at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes." The New Oxford Annotated Bible also denies the legitimacy of Daniel: "The author was a pious Jew living under the persecution of Antiochus Ephiphanes, 167-164 BC." Liberal biblical scholars of today spew these same lies, but in actuality there is very little to support their position. Read more