The Book of Daniel - Shemaryahu Talmon (essay date 1987)
Shemaryahu Talmon (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Daniel.” In The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, pp. 343-55. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987.
[In the following essay, Talmon argues that, because of its historical inaccuracies, The Book of Daniel should be regarded as a fictional work, and proceeds to explore the book's style, imagery, phraseology, motifs, literary allusions, and plot.]
The linguistic and literary diversity of Daniel reveals a composite structure. The opening and concluding parts (1:1-2:4a and 8-12), in Hebrew, frame a portion in Aramaic which is itself a composite (2:4b-6:28 and 7:1-28). A smooth transition from the opening Hebrew section to the Aramaic part is deftly achieved by the introduction in Hebrew (2:4b), of some Chaldean soothsayers who speak Aramaic: “Then spake the Chaldeans to the king in...
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