Here too, as in Daniel 7 itself, we find another witness to a pre-Christian religious conflict within Israel between those who accepted the very ancient idea of an older-appearing divine figure and a younger one who shares his throne and to whom the older one gives authority, and other Jews who rejected this idea as a seeming contradiction of monotheism.
Thanks for providing something of importance and interest to take our minds away from the omnipresent political theater. That Daniel was accepted, at least by the Pharisees, as canonical and that Fourth Esdras made it into the deuterocanonical texts does, indeed, point to an iceberg. Neither book would have received acceptance if a belief were not already in place regarding, let us say, the character of the Son of Man. Any commentary by Boyarin regarding the frequent use of that term in Ezechiel?
Your point regarding the acceptance of the books is a good one. If the views were so fringe that very few accepted them, then the books would not have been considered authoritative.
Thanks for providing something of importance and interest to take our minds away from the omnipresent political theater. That Daniel was accepted, at least by the Pharisees, as canonical and that Fourth Esdras made it into the deuterocanonical texts does, indeed, point to an iceberg. Neither book would have received acceptance if a belief were not already in place regarding, let us say, the character of the Son of Man. Any commentary by Boyarin regarding the frequent use of that term in Ezechiel?
Not that I recall.
Your point regarding the acceptance of the books is a good one. If the views were so fringe that very few accepted them, then the books would not have been considered authoritative.