Daniel 7:13-14 and Christ’s Deity: Answering Ibn Anwar’s Eisegesis

Keith Thompson

Muslim apologists are often accused of not handling Christian Scripture’s accurately. Ibn Anwar’s article Is Daniel 7:14 Evidence for Jesus’ Divinity is a good example of why such accusations are so common. For nearly 2000 years Daniel 7:13-14 has been cited in favour of Jesus’ deity. Yet with the rise of modern Islamic apologetics there have come various attempts of trying to dismiss this text as Old Testament proof for the deity of the Messiah. In this paper we will set out to affirm that this text strongly supports the deity of Christ and that Anwar’s attempt at watering down the impact of this passage and surrounding issues is gratuitous.

The text reads:

A Messianic Prophecy

We know that this text is messianic in nature for various reasons. With respect to exegetical evidence the description of this Son of Man closely correlates with other Old Testament descriptions about the awaited Davidic Messiah and what He would do (Ezekiel 37:18-28; Isaiah 9:7; 42:1-8; Psalm 89:19-37; Psalm 110:1). Moreover, in the surrounding context of Daniel, namely 9:24-26, a distinctive 2^nd temple messianic figure is given the title Messiah in the Hebrew (מָשִׁיחַ), demonstrating that the Messiah is clearly in view.(1)

With respect to the New Testament evidence, Matthew 26:64, Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:67-70 (which will be discussed below) also affirm that the Son of Man of Daniel is the awaited Messiah, Jesus.

In the mid 1^st century extra-biblical Jewish apocryphal work 1 Enoch 48:2, reference is made to “the Son of man” and “Head (ancient) of days” demonstrating that Daniel 7:13-14 was clearly being drawn from. In 1 Enoch 48:10 this Son of Man is identified as “His Anointed” – a messianic title. Therefore, 1 Enoch shows that there was a strand of early non-Christian Jewish belief maintaining that the Danielic Son of Man was the Messiah.

Moreover, in his commentary on Daniel, Alan R. Milard notes that ancient Jews would assign to the awaited Messiah the title “he of the clouds”(2), clearly showing that they believed the Son of Man who is said to come on the clouds of heaven was the Messiah. Milard also argues that “Maintenance of this view in Judaism despite its adoption by the Christians suggests it had ancient and authoritative status.”(3)

In the Babylonian Talmud (A.D. 400-600) we see additional attestation that Daniel’s Son of Man was believed to be the Messiah:

It should be noted in passing that the Christian answer to the above question is that Jesus’ 1^st century advent involved riding on a donkey and that His second coming will be the fulfilment of Daniel 7:14 where He will come on the clouds. Hence, both are true. There is more evidence to support the Messianic explanation of this text(5) but this should be sufficient to demonstrate that Daniel 7:13-14 is a messianic prophecy referring to Christ.

Divine Implications of Daniel 7:13-14

In his article Ibn Anwar doesn’t interact with v. 13 at all but limits his discussion to v. 14 for obvious reasons. This is simply because in v. 13 we are told that Christ, the Messiah, comes on the clouds of heaven, which is a motif always connected with deity in the Old Testament as well as the Quran itself. It is always YHWH who comes on the clouds in the Old Testament (Exodus 14:20; Numbers 10:34; Isaiah 19:1; Psalm 68:4; Psalm 104:1-3). And the evil spirit (i.e. Allah) which inspired the Quran and Islam borrowed this concept as well since he claims in the Quran that he is the one who comes on the clouds (S. 2:210). Since Jesus comes on the clouds of heaven, which according to Islam is Allah’s prerogative, Jesus must therefore be God. Therefore according to both the Old Testament and the Quran, Jesus does the very thing only God does.

Equally interesting is the fact that when discussing the issue of this Son of Man being worshiped or served by humanity in v. 14 Ibn Anwar doesn’t actually deal with the original language at all; he limits his discussion to the LXX (Greek Septuagint translation) and related issues which will be covered later.

When the Son of Man receives worship or service the word in the original Aramaic (the language that Daniel 7 was written in) is pelach. The evidence affirming that according to Daniel and the Old Testament this refers to unique divine service or worship which is due to God alone is strong.

First, in every reference where this word is used in the Aramaic portions of the Old Testament it is always the service or worship belonging to God or the service or worship pagans give to false gods. In fact there are places which explicitly show that pelach should only be given to God. Therefore according to the Old Testament it refers to service/worship of deity. It is never generic service or reverence which one shows to a superior or a man approved by God in the Old Testament.

The word is used in Ezra 7:24 of “servants of this house of God” – divine service towards God. The word is used in Daniel 3:12 of divine service to false gods. It’s used in Daniel 3:17 of divine service to the true God. It’s used of Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3:18 with respect to a refusal to offer divine service to false gods. In Daniel 3:28 the word is used in reference to the divine service only God is to receive where we are told that Daniel’s friends “yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.” It’s also used in 6:16, 20 with respect to divine service to God. The word is also used in Daniel 7:27 in reference to service to God despite the fact that this text is often misunderstood as referring to service towards the saints of God.(6)

According to Gesenius’s Hebrew lexicon pelach carries the following meanings: “…to labour, to serve, often in the Targums; spec[ially] to serve or worship God…Dan. 3, 12 sq. 7, 14. 27.”(7) Notice how Gesenius affirms Daniel 7:14’s use of the word denotes worship to God.

The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon assigns to pelach the following meaning: “pay reverence to, serve (deity)”(8), and it attaches the latter meaning to Daniel 7:14’s use of the word as well. In agreement is Stephan R. Miller who in his commentary on Daniel notes that “… in every other instance where the verb פְּלַח (‘worship’; ‘serve,’ NRSV) occurs in biblical Aramaic (nine times), it has reference to service (worship) rendered a deity (Dan 3:12, 12, 17-18, 28; 6:16[17], 20[21]; 7:14; Ezra 7:24).”(9)

All of this shows that according to the Old Testament pelach is only to be given to God. Although the later (2^nd century A.D.) uninspired Targum literature (e.g., Targum Onkelos, Genesis) departed from this strict Old Testament usage by teaching humans received pelach, this is not reflective of the Old Testament’s orthodox usage or position. This would be similar to how in the Quran it is taught that only Allah is Ar-Rabb (the Lord), and yet in light of this seeing Arabic literature written hundreds of years after the Quran assigning to creatures the same title. This wouldn’t mean that according to the Quran or its language that it is acceptable to identify creatures as the Lord, as a deserved title. Just like the Quranic teaching is that only Allah is the Lord (S. 3:64 and Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Q. 1:2), the Old Testament teaches only God is to receive pelach. Hence, when one allows for logical parameters to establish word usage we see that pelach is to be given to God alone according to the Old Testament.

To further show that pelach is worship due to God alone in the Old Testament, the committee of scholars, from various positions and backgrounds, who translated the NIV translated Daniel 7:14 in the following manner: as “… all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him.” These scholars could clearly see that the word pelach refers to the worship, not just service, which God demands that all the nations give to this divine Son of Man.

We, therefore, have strong exegetical, lexicographical and scholarly support for the fact that Jesus receives service/worship which is due to God alone in Daniel 7:14. It is therefore understandable why Ibn Anwar chose not to interact with the original languages but instead focused on later Greek translations of Daniel.

The later LXX translated the word pelach found in Daniel 7:14 into the Greek work latreuo as found in Ralph’s edition and other Greek editions. This Greek word latreuo means divine worship due to God alone.(10) Ibn Anwar concedes this point in his article by quoting Anthony Buzzard who affirms this meaning of latreuo. The fact that this choice was made provides more strong proof that the service/worship Jesus receives in Daniel 7:14 is divine worship due to God. However, in spite of all this evidence Ibn Anwar claims that the 2^nd century A.D. Greek version of Daniel written by Theodotion, which instead renders Daniel 7:14’s pelach into the Greek word douloō, is a better choice of translation. This word douloō has a broader range of meaning and doesn’t necessarily have to refer to divine service/worship to God, though it very well can mean that.(11) It’s important to note that Theodotion’s translation comes after the earlier LXX translation, and that the LXX’s rendering of Daniel 7:14 was already being used as an argument for Jesus receiving latreuo by patristic writers before the non-Christian Jew Theodotion produced his Greek translation of Daniel. Thus, this chronology needs to be kept in mind.

In fact, if one accepts douloō as the proper translation it is clear from the context that the Son of Man is being served or receiving douloō in the same way that the Most High is served or worshiped. Compare the verses again:

Here we see that both the Son of Man and the Most High receive douloō from all the kingdoms of the earth without any distinction being made in that worship or service.

So even if one accepted douloō as the correct translation it wouldn’t mean Jesus isn’t being served or worshiped as God. As we just saw from the context, that is precisely the kind of service which all the nations are expect to give to Jesus.

However, instead of actually demonstrating that douloō is in fact a better translation of pelach than latreuo, Ibn Anwar simply quotes a few scholars stating that in the New Testament Jesus isn’t said to receive latreuo. From this we are to conclude that the Daniel 7:14 pelach shouldn’t be seen as divine service/worship, but as douloō in the non-divine sense. The problem with this approach is that Ibn Anwar’s reasoning doesn’t follow at all. Even if it were true that Jesus doesn’t receive latreuo in the New Testament, which I will contest shortly, it wouldn’t prove linguistically that according to the Old Testament pelach isn’t divine service/honor (since there is so much evidence that it is) or that pelach ought to not be translated as latreuo (since the evidence shows pelach like latreuo means divine service/worship). Ibn Anwar’s main argument is therefore illogical, his conclusion doesn’t follow from his premise, and he fails to adequately address all the evidence which proves the contrary. His conclusion should therefore be rejected.

Secondly, Jesus does receive latreuo in the New Testament contrary to the claims of Anwar and the few liberal/Unitarian scholars whom he quotes:

Sam Shamoun has provided an excellent exegesis of this text demonstrating that both the Father and Jesus receive this latreuo. Objections are also addressed in that paper. Rather then reproduce all of the arguments I will refer people to that article which must be dealt with if one is going to claim Jesus doesn’t receive latreuo in the New Testament. Hence, even though Anwar’s main argument is illogical and wouldn’t prove his point (Jesus not receiving latreuo in the New Testament proving the Daniel 7:14 service/worship isn’t divine), he is not even correct about Jesus never receiving latreuo in the New Testament. It’s also important to note that nowhere does the New Testament say Jesus shouldn’t be given latreuo which is something one would expect if Jesus were not deity and yet presented in the exalted way that He is all over the New Testament. Such a warning would be a necessary safeguard were Trinitarianism not true.

Further proof that latreuo is a proper translation of pelach can be seen from the fact that the early Greek Christian apologist Justin Martyr (A.D. 100 – 165) translated Daniel 7:14 as “and all nations of the earth by their families, and all glory, serve Him (latreuousa).”(12) We, therefore, have very early patristic support for the fact that in Daniel 7:13-14 Jesus receives service/worship due to God despite what Ibn Anwar claims.

Now, in attempting to water down the impact of the other contents of this Danielic text Ibn Anwar argues that although v. 14 says “And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom…his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed,” v. 18 says something similar with respect to the saints of God: “But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.” His translation of Daniel 7:27 also says “And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.”

Ibn Anwar erroneously argues that everything said about Christ in Daniel 7:14 is said about the saints and by providing his translation of Daniel 7:27 he implies that the saints will receive pelach service/worship as well. However, in footnote 4 we already addressed how v. 27 should read “all dominions shall serve and obey Him (God),” not “all dominions shall serve and obey them (saints)”. Hence, in v. 27 the saints are not said to receive pelach service/worship. Secondly, v. 27 shouldn’t read “their kingdom shall be everlasting”, it should read “His (God’s) kingdom shall be everlasting” (NET, NIV, NLT, NASB, ASV, DRB, DBT, ERV, WEB, YLT). There is no pronoun before “kingdom” in the original Aramaic of v. 27 and “Most High” is the closest antecedent. That’s just a matter of truthfulness despite the fact that saints in v. 18 do receive and possess the kingdom forever which doesn’t refute our overall position. Christ comes on the clouds v. 13 as noted above. The saints do not. The saints serve/worship Christ. He does not serve/worship them. The saints do possess and rule the kingdom (7:18) under Christ, but they still worship Him and the Father in the same exact way (Revelation 5:11-14). However, the fundamental things I listed which affirm Christ’s deity in Daniel 7:13-14 (coming on clouds, receiving pelach from all humanity) are never said to be shared by the saints. The only real commonality between Christ and the saints is receiving a kingdom and dominion; things which don’t concern our argument for Jesus’ deity. It is therefore a gross error for Ibn Anwar to say that “everything that is given to the person in Daniel 7:14 will be given to the saints too! According to the Christian logic the saints are equally Gods. How many Gods are there exactly?”

In fact, what makes Ibn Anwar’s argument all the more fallacious is that he appeals to the LXX to show that it doesn’t use the word latreuo, but conveniently fails to mention the fact that according to the LXX v. 27 doesn’t refer to saints receiving worship, but to the Most High!

Now compare the way the LXX renders v. 14 which is about Christ:

Hence, this ancient version supports our position, not Ibn Anwar’s claims that v. 27 refers to the saints being worshiped just as Jesus is.

Divine Implications of Jesus’ Use of Daniel 7:13-14

At Jesus’ trial before His crucifixion and resurrection He applied Daniel 7:14 to himself in Mark 14:62 (cf. Luke 22:67-70; Matthew 26:64). Before addressing how Jesus’ application of this text affirms His deity, Ibn Anwar’s abuse of the parallel in Matthew 26:64 needs to be covered. Elsewhere Ibn Anwar quotes liberal scholar E. P. Sanders who argues that Jesus’ trial shows that He believed the coming Son of Man was someone other than Himself:

However, scholars like D. A. Carson have not only produced massive tomes refuting Sanders’ central theology, the new perspective on Paul(13), but in his commentary on Matthew Carson also indirectly refutes Sanders’ argument concerning Jesus’ response to the high priest:

Now, Jesus’ claims at this trial as well as the response of the high priest/council to Jesus’ words need to be examined in order to see the divine implications of Christ’s statements:

By saying He would be at the right hand of power Jesus was applying Psalm 110:1 to Himself in the sense of eschatological judgement (“The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”). This “right hand” of God concept was understood in ancient Judaism as a metaphor for YHWH’s power and majesty. In other words to say that the Messiah sits at the right hand of God is to say that when God shows His power it is actually the Messiah pouring out or displaying God’s majesty and glory because of how unified they are(15). And by saying He was the Messiah the Son of the Blessed who will come on the clouds of heaven, He applied Daniel 7:14 to himself. This amounted to Jesus saying that although this Jewish council was judging Him presently, the time will come when He will be judging them as the Lord of Psalm 110:1 and as the divine Son of man of Daniel 7:13-14 who resides in God’s presence, who shares the throne, authority and majesty of God, who is worshiped by humanity like God, and who is thus equal to God. This is why the high priest and the council then charged Him with blasphemy. As Walter E. Wessel notes:

Indeed, the reason why the council declared Jesus’ statement to be blasphemy was because they correctly understood Him to be saying that He would be sharing in the unique majesty and unique authority of God, which no creature could ever do, while also judging not only them but all of humanity as this divine messianic Son of Man who comes on the clouds. Because Christ was who He claimed to be this is of course not blasphemy however, but the truth. Both Daniel 7:13-14 as well as Jesus’ application of that text strongly affirm His deity.

Conclusion

In conclusion Ibn Anwar’s attempt at demonstrating Daniel 7:14 doesn’t affirm the deity of Christ has failed. He did not deal with the original language at all which is what he would need to do in order to refute the Christian position. He was mistaken about the later Greek translations of Daniel. The scholarship he utilized was incorrect on many levels. And he didn’t adequately address the context of Daniel 7:13 at all which is important in this discussion. We have provided many arguments which Ibn Anwar would need to interact with if he still wishes to bolster the specious claim that this text does nothing to show that Christ is God. To the honest reader the issue should be clear.

Christ has risen, He is Lord!

Footnotes:

1.) “The writings of Daniel contain important messianic data. Daniel is unique in that he boldly speaks of ‘Messiah the prince’ (Dn 9:25), identifies him as the ‘Son of Man’ (7:13), and says he suffers (‘cut off,’ 9:26). This statement of the cutting off (i.e., death) of the Messiah makes possible his work of atonement (9:24)” (Walter A. Elwell, Philip Wesley Comfort, Tyndale Bible Dictionary, [Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2001], p. 888). See also Scott Hahn, Reading Salvation: Word, Worship, and the Mysteries, [Emmaus Road Publishing, 2005], p. 52 and N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, [Fortress Press, 1997], p. 515 for more scholarly support demonstrating that the figure in Daniel 7 and 9 is the same messianic figure.

2.) Alan R. Milard, Daniel, ed., F.F. Bruce, New International Bible Commentary, [Zondervan, 1979], p. 861. Milard refers to the Babylonian Talmud which states: “R. Nahman said to R. Isaac: 'Have you heard when Bar Nafle [Son of the Cloud] will come?' 'Who is Bar Nafle [Son of the cloud]?' he asked. 'Messiah,' he answered…” (bSan 96B)

3.) Ibid.

4.) Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 98a

5.) Raymond Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology, [Paulist Press, 1994], pp. 92-96

6.) “The one text that might be cited as an exception is Daniel 7:27, where the proper translation is disputed. Some versions read ‘serve and obey him’ (NASB, NKJV, NIV), and others read ‘serve and obey them’ (NRSV, ESV, NLT), that is, the ‘saints of the Most High’ (ESV). The dispute arises from the Hebrew use of ‘serve and obey’ with no pronoun following; thus the translators supply the pronoun to make for more idiomatic English. The Hebrew text refers earlier in the sentence, however, to ‘his kingdom’…and both Greek versions of Daniel have ‘him’ (auto), not ‘them,’ at the end of the verse. In the immediate context the antecedent for ‘his’ and ‘him’ would be ‘the Most High.’ Thus, Daniel 7:27 confirms that ‘service’ (pelach) properly goes to God alone” (Robert M. Bowman, J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, [Kregel Publications, 2007], p. 303 n. 6).

7.) Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, A Hebrew and English lexicon of the Old Testament: including the Biblical Chaldee. From the Latin of William Gesenius, trans. Edward Robinson, [Houghton Mifflin and company, 1888], p. 847

8.) Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs, The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, [Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1906], p. 2718

9.) Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, New American Commentary, [B&H Publishing Group, 1994], p. 217

10.) [latreuo refers] “primarily to cultic worship with all one’s heart and soul …” (Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity, [Eerdmans Young Readers, 2008 ], p. 152). For Biblical proof latreuo is to be given to God alone see Matthew 4:10; Acts 24:14; Romans 1:25; Revelation 7:5; Revelation 22:3.

11.) Thayer’s lexicon notes that douloō can mean to “to be a slave… to worship gods” (Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: being Grimm's Wilke's Clavis Novi Testamenti, [Harper, 1887], p. 157). In fact the word is quite often used of submissive slavery or service to the one true God as recognition of his sovereign lordship over a person’s life (Matthew 6:24; Acts 20:19; 1 Thess. 1:9). In defining the word douloō and the other words in that group Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament notes that “we have a service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, which he has to perform whether he likes it or not, because he is subject as a slave to an alien will, to the will of his owner. [The term stresses] the slave’s dependence on his lord” (Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, “Doulos”, in Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Geoffrey Bromily, trans., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eardmans, 1964], 2:261). Hence, if this were used in the context of Daniel 7:14 where the Son of Man comes on the clouds it would surely refer to divine service.

12.) Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 31

13.) See Carson, Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1, 2

14.) D. A. Carson, Matthew, ed., Frank E. Gaebelein, The Expositors Bible Commentary with the New International Version, Volume 8, [Zondervan, 1984], p. 555

15.) The Pseudepigraphal book titled Testament of Job (First Century B.C. - First Century A.D) is a Greek work which teaches that YHWH’s right hand is a metaphor for His power or majesty. In other words to say that Jesus is at the right hand of God is to say that Jesus is so intimately connected with the Father’s being that when the Father shows His power or majesty, it is actually Jesus doing it as the power of God: “Now I will show you my throne with the splendor of its majesty, which is among the holy ones. My throne is in the upper world, and its splendor and majesty come from the right hand of the Father. The whole world shall pass away and its splendor shall fade. And those who heed it shall share in its overthrow. But my throne is in the holy land, and its splendor is in the world of the changeless one. Rivers will dry up, and the arrogance of their waves goes down into the depths of the abyss. But the rivers of my land, where my throne is, do not dry up nor will they disappear, but they will exist forever. These kings will pass away, and rulers come and go; but their splendor and boast shall be as in a mirror. But my kingdom is forever and ever, and its splendor and majesty are in the chariots of the Father.” (Testament of Job, Ch. 33)

16.) Walter W. Wessel, Mark, ed., Frank E. Gaebelein, The Expositors Bible Commentary with the New International Version, Volume 8, [Zondervan, 1984], pp. 769-770