SOURCE: Heaton, E. W. Introduction to The Book of Daniel : Introduction and Commentary, pp. 17-112. London: SCM Press, 1956.

[In the following excerpt, Heaton discusses the author and hero of The Book of Daniel before commenting on its status as apocalyptic literature and on issues surrounding its composition.]

1 THE BOOK IN BRIEF

The immediate occasion which called forth the Book of Daniel was the persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, who reigned from 175 to 163 b.c.

The writer, a pious scribe living in the middle of the persecution, is addressing his contemporaries through the medium of an ancient sage, about whom he recounts stories and to whom he ascribes visions. The stories are set in the Babylonian court during the exilic period (586-538 b.c.), and the visions traverse Israel's history from this period to the writer's own time and concentrate on the years of persecution with their consummation in the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.

The book falls into two main sections: (a) chs. 1-7 and (b) chs. 8-12.

(a) The first six chapters consist of five short stories about Daniel, the Jewish sage, and his three companions, with an introduction (ch. 1) to explain who they are and how they came to be living in exile at the court of Babylon. With the exception of chs. 3 and 6, the stories show how Daniel is inspired by a wisdom superior to that of the professional sages of the court and how pagan kings are subject to the sovereign rule of the God of Israel, who is the giver of all wisdom and sovereignty. The stories of chs. 3 and 6 tell how men of faith can resist temptation and triumph in adversity. The concluding vision of this first section (ch. 7) binds together the separate incidents and gives a theological interpretation of their meaning. In the vision, Daniel is shown the ultimate purpose and victory of God. He sees the judgment of the four gentile kingdoms which had flouted the will of God (here they are represented as Beasts) and the investiture of the true Israel (here symbolized by a human figure) with God's universal and eternal Rule.

(b) The last five chapters consist largely of a more detailed and developed commentary on the message of the first section and a fuller exposition of the crucial years of persecution. The vision of Daniel in ch. 8 is interpreted as culminating in the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ch. 9 is a reinter-pretation of an ancient prophecy to show that the present humiliation will soon come to an end. In chs. 10-12, which form a unity, an angel is represented as revealing to Daniel ‘that which is inscribed in the writing of truth’ (10.21). This revelation takes the form of a survey of the course of history, as it affected the fortunes of the Jews, from the exilic period to the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the tyrant who provoked the crisis for which the whole book was written. In ch. 12, the promise is given that God will vindicate the faithful who remain steadfast and raise the martyrs from the dead on the Last Day to enjoy the blessings of his everlasting Kingdom.

Through all the complexities of its presentation, the writer's main message is clear and simple. It is the response of a loyal and courageous Jewish scribe to an all-out attempt to annihilate true religion. He believed profoundly that God was King of the world, that Israel was his Chosen People and that, therefore, the intense agonies of the persecution could not last long. In the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, the gentile powers, so long opposed to the Rule of God, were summed up and made ripe for destruction. They had at last overreached themselves and brought near their end. Although the investiture of Israel as the human agent of God's Rule could be known in the present bitter time only as a fact of faith, within a few years Antiochus would be destroyed and faith would pass into sight. The true Israelite was called upon, not to fight back, but to endure with unflinching loyalty. The power was of God and not of himself.

The stories and the visions are at one in affirming that the God of Israel is the sovereign ruler of the world in control of human history, and that the world would soon be brought to recognize his wisdom and might by the inauguration of his own universal and everlasting Kingdom.

2 THE AUTHOR AND HIS HERO

THE AUTHOR

Daniel is a curious book because it comes from a tradition of curious learning. In our own day, its author would certainly have been a Doctor of Divinity and would, in all probability, have occupied a Professorial Chair of Biblical Exegesis. Since, on the face of it, such a claim as this seems improbable, it will be advisable to start by giving some contemporary evidence that such men existed among the Jews in the second century b.c.

About fifteen years before our book was written, there appeared in Jerusalem a work by Jesus ben Sira, which we now have in our Apocrypha under the title Ecclesiasticus. Ben Sira (as the writer is called for short) gives us much information about his own life and interests, and there is in his book one particularly instructive passage which is undoubtedly autobiography thinly disguised:

The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure;
And he that hath little business shall become wise …
(He) meditateth in the law of the Most High;
He will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients,
And will be occupied in prophecies.
He will keep the discourse of men of renown,
And will enter in amidst the subtilties of parables.
He will seek out the hidden meaning of proverbs,
And be conversant in the dark sayings of parables.
He will serve among great men,
And appear before him that ruleth:
He will travel through the land of strange nations;
For he hath tried good things and evil among men.
He will apply his heart to resort early to the Lord that made
                    him,
And will make supplication before the Most High,
And will open his mouth in prayer,
And will make supplication for his sins

(38.24; 39.1-5).

That Ben Sira is depicting his own professional class is confirmed both by the rest of his book and the charming preface which his grandson wrote, when he translated the work into Greek some time later: ‘my grandfather Jesus, having much given himself to the reading of the law, and the prophets, and the other books of our fathers, and having gained great familiarity therein, was drawn on also himself to write somewhat pertaining to instruction and wisdom; in order that those who love learning, and are addicted to these things, might make progress much more by living according to the law.’ Ben Sira himself leaves us in no doubt about his learning in the Scriptures (8.8; 24.30-32; 32.15; 33.16-18; 44-49), his capacity as a teacher 51.23-30), his sincere piety (22.7-23.6; 36.1-17; 51.1-12) and his wide experience of men and affairs (29.21-28; 34.11 f.; 39.4; 51.13-22).

We must now ask in what respects the writer of the Book of Daniel resembled Ben Sira and the best way of approaching the question is to investigate a little more closely the origin and function of the scribe. In the days of the early kings of Israel, the scribe was an official of the court, the man who kept the records, supervised various administrative affairs, and corresponded with his opposite number in other nations. No doubt, he had more humble assistants, clerks and writers of various grades, but since we hear of the office of ‘secretary (or scribe) of the king’ (II Kings 12.10; II Chron. 24.11), and the names of some scribes have survived in our records (II Sam. 8.17; 20.25; II Kings 18.18 f.; 22.3, 12; Jer. 36.4), we may safely conclude that the scribe was often an educated person of some experience and importance. In Jer. 8.8 f., the ‘scribes’ and the ‘wise’ appear as interchangeable titles: ‘How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely. The wise men are ashamed.’ The association here of the scribe with the sage is not surprising, if we remember that the educated official of the court would be the most likely person to collect the proverbial philosophy and folk-lore both of his own and other lands. The Old Testament supplies much evidence of the reputation of the wisdom of other peoples (I Kings 4.30 f.; Jer. 49.7; Job 2.11; Gen. 41.8; Ezek. 28.2 f.), and it is probable that the scribe was to a large extent responsible for its becoming current in Israel. We know that in Egypt, for instance, the royal scribes wrote wisdom books.¹

In the period between the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c. and the time of Ben Sira (that is, c. 180 b.c.), we hear less of the ‘scribes’ and more of the ‘wise’. Already in the days of Jeremiah, the sages were recognized as men who stood alongside the prophet and the priest (Jer. 18.18), and they come into prominence in the next four hundred years by the collection and writing of such ‘wisdom books’ as Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. Behind the change of name, there was, however, an unbroken continuity of tradition. The wisdom literature of this period represents not so much the emergence of a new class of person in Israel, as the response of the learned to the new demands made by the conditions of the exile, when there was an urgent need to conserve the ancient wisdom of the people and to meet the fresh problems and temptations of their strange environment. The moving spirits in this literary development were undoubtedly the educated class in Israel—the scribes.

Although the title ‘scribe’ does not occur again in association with wisdom until it is used in Ecclesiasticus, it does appear in association with the priestly law in Ezra and Nehemiah. In Ezra 7.6, Ezra is described as ‘a ready scribe in the law of Moses’ and, in Neh. 8.5-8, he is represented as introducing the exposition of the Law in language ‘understanded of the people’. Here, it seems, the Old Testament records the inauguration of that long tradition of the scribal interpretation of the Law, to which Jesus referred when he said, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat’ (Matt. 23.2). The later developments of the scribe's office and the complex relations between scribes and Pharisees do not concern us, but is worth noticing that sometime after the writing of the Gospels, the old association of the scribe with the wisdom tradition re-emerged and the learned Doctors of the Law were once again known as the sages.

It is easy to see that the two most obvious fruits of the diverse learning of the scribe—the Wisdom Literature and the Law—were the inspiration and delight of Ben Sira. The writer of the Book of Daniel was also heir to this same tradition, and even a cursory reading of his work shows how well it manifests what Ben Sira called ‘the wisdom of the scribe’. Following the description in Ecclus. 39 at which we have already glanced, we find that our author clearly meditated in the Law of the Most High (1.8-16; 9.10 f.), sought out the wisdom of all the ancients (1.17; 2.19-22; 4.35; 5.23), and occupied himself in prophecies (9.2). He was interested in the dark sayings of parables (2.27 f.; 4.19 ff.; 5.12; cf. pp. 44 f.), and he represents his hero as serving among great men and him that ruleth (2.46-8; 4.1-3; 6.18-20, 23-8; cf. 3.28-30). There is no doubt that he drew some of his lore from the land of strange nations (ch. 7), although his loyalty and piety as a Jew were beyond reproach. He opened his mouth in prayer (2.17-23; 6.10 ff.) and made supplication for his sins (9.4-19).

Just as Ben Sira disclosed his identity in his description of the scribe, so does our author (or his disciple), when he says that at the height of the struggle against Antiochus Epiphanes ‘they that be wise among the people shall instruct many’ (11.33; cf. 12.3, 10). There can be little doubt that this is a reference to the loyal students and teachers of the Law in whose circles our book was written.

To urge an identity of outlook between Ben Sira and the writer of the Book of Daniel would be to ruin a case by over-statement. They were men of different temperaments, living in very different times. Although Ben Sira seems to have been conscious of the challenge which faced Judaism from the dominant hellenistic culture of his age, no immediate crisis threatened his social life and scholarly pursuits. The author of Daniel, on the other hand, is known to us only through this comparatively brief tract written to meet the full fury of persecution. What is astonishing in the circumstances is not the difference between the two works, but the fact that their common tradition was strong enough to make them comparable.

This common tradition has been somewhat obscured by the unfortunate habit of reading their works as early examples of two schools of thought which in later times were at loggerheads. Thus, Ben Sira has been labelled a Sadducee and the author of Daniel a Pharisee. Such designations, however, anticipate a later split in the tradition of the scribes and would hardly have been recognized in the second century b.c.²

It seems clear that the Book of Daniel represents a less conservative outlook than Ecclesiasticus and (especially in chs. 8-12) more nearly approaches the teaching which characterized the later Pharisaic schools. If we wish to say what kind of scribe our author was, it is best to number him among the ‘Hasidaeans’ (Hasidim, ‘the Pious’), who were the forerunners of the Pharisees and stood out against compromise with the Greeks during the Maccabean persecution (I Mac. 2.42; 7.13; II Mac. 14.6). Although, then, Ben Sira and our author stand for two different emphases among the scribes, it is illuminating to recognize that fundamentally they are brother doctors of the same divinity.

HIS HERO

The choice of Daniel, a young Jew exiled in Babylon in the sixth century b.c., as the hero of the book and the recipient of revelations concerning the future, requires explanation. Is he known to the Old Testament tradition? If we discount the two Daniels of I Chron. 3.1 and Ezra 8.2, the figure mentioned in Ezek. 14.14, 20 and 28.3 is the only alternative candidate offered by the Old Testament. In the first two passages in Ezekiel, Daniel is mentioned along with Noah and Job as a man renowned for righteousness, and in the third passage as one whose wisdom was proverbial: ‘behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee.’ The almost casual way in which Daniel is introduced here and the coupling of his name with that of Noah suggest that he was already a figure of legendary fame when Ezekiel wrote.

The suspicion that the Daniel of Ezekiel must be a figure of ancient legend has been strikingly confirmed by an archaeological discovery made in the last twenty years. Among the clay tablets comprising a scribal library of Canaanite mythological legends and rituals, which were unearthed between 1929 and 1936 at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) on the coast of northern Syria, there was found the story of a certain Aqhat and his son Dan'el. In this story, Dan'el was pre-eminently a righteous man, who cared for the widow and the orphan. Scholars are almost unanimous in identifying this ancient figure with the Daniel of Ezekiel. The reputation of the hero, as well as the date of the tablets (? early fourteenth century b.c.), fit very convincingly.³

Scholars are far from unanimous, however, in extending this identification to the Daniel of our book. Nevertheless, there are strong reasons for thinking that our Daniel has some connection with the ancient figure. The hero-legends glanced at by Ezekiel were also current, it would seem, in the circles to which our author belonged. It is significant that in his detailed survey of the Scriptures, Ben Sira should have singled out for his brief account of Ezekiel just those verses which refer to the three righteous men of old time:

Ezekiel saw a vision,
And described the different beings of the chariot.
He also made mention of Job (among the prophets)
Who maintained all the ways of righteousness.

(Ecclus. 49.8 f.)⁴

From this we may conclude that Job, at least, was known among the scribes of the second century b.c. as one of the famous men of remote antiquity, and the evidence here is that this knowledge was connected with the reference in Ezekiel. Of course, the book of Job itself, combining as it does a folkstory and a wisdom poem, confirms both the ancient reputation of its legendary hero and also the practice among the sages of adopting the characters of legend and developing them for their own purposes. Noah, the other example of righteousness mentioned in Ezek. 14, was certainly such a hero and he too is taken up and developed by later Jewish writers, particularly in the Book of Enoch. Indeed, some scholars take the view that this book contains fragments of a separate ‘Book of Noah’. Incidentally, we may notice that of the Book of Enoch itself (cf. Gen. 5.21-24), shows the same literary method at work.

In view of the subsequent use of two of the names mentioned in Ezek. 14 and of our certain knowledge that all three were ancient heroes, it is excessively cautious to disallow the probability that our author was following an established convention and to deny any connection between the Dan'el of legend known to Ezekiel and the hero of our book. We have the assurance of Millar Burrows that ‘the difference in the spelling of the name is not insurmountable’.⁵

Since we know so little of Dan'el either from the Ras Shamra texts or from Ezekiel, whether or not the Daniel of our book is to be identified with him may seem an academic point of little importance. There is more at issue, however, than merely a name. If the writer did borrow the name of an ancient hero, it is likely that he also took over some of the ideas associated with it in tradition. This possibility is especially important in considering the reference to Daniel in Ezek. 28.3, since there it is linked with two oracles of doom against the king of Tyre which clearly employ themes from ancient legends. Moreover, these two oracles in ch. 28 are very closely related to Ezek. 31, which was certainly known to and used by our author (cf. 4.10-12, 20) as, indeed, were a great many other passages from Ezekiel (cf. 7.9; 8.9, 17; 9.12, 16; 10.4 f., 6, 11).

The point at issue is whether the hero of this book was primarily an exemplary (but otherwise ordinary) Jew of the exilic period, who in the writer's treatment becomes a sage and a revealer of divine secrets, or whether he was primarily a legendary figure of ancient mythology and the very achetype of wisdom, who in the writer's hands becomes naturalized as a loyal and representative Israelite. The choice between these two alternatives is difficult to make, if only because in the book as we now have it, the writer has thoroughly assimilated his diverse traditions and created a character of his very own. To accept the view that Daniel is none other than the Dan'el of Ezekiel and the Ras Shamra legends does not add anything material to the writer's presentation, but it sharpens our response to it and predisposes us to share more fully his elusive learning and the profound theological thought of which it is the medium.

THEIR RELATIONSHIP

As it is now firmly established that our author lived four hundred years later than his hero, the formal way of describing the book would be to say that the stories of chs. 1-6 are anonymous and that the ‘visions’ of chs. 7-12 are pseudonymous. The writer, that is to say, conceals himself in the first half of the book and identifies himself with the hero in the second half of the book (cf. the passages beginning ‘I Daniel’: 7.28; 8.1 f., 5, 27; 9.2; 12.5). The later writers who modelled their work on the Book of Daniel all use this pseudonymous form of presenting their material and a good deal of thought and much ingenuity have been spent on attempts to explain it.

The least theoretical explanation is that advanced by H. H. Rowley.⁶ In his view, the author first circulated separate stories about Daniel anonymously, and when they were well received followed them up with visions ascribed to his hero. His purpose was not to deceive, but to indicate that they were by the same writer as the stories and on the same theme. Pseudonymity, that is to say, was not thought up for theoretical reasons, but rather grew up for practical purposes. Others have suggested that the writer deliberately adopted a pseudonym either as a safeguard against the police of the occupying power, or as a way of gaining authority for his book. It is pointed out in support of the latter contention that the Canon of prophetic writings was complete by 200 b.c., and that it was thought that the age of inspiration had come to an end (cf. Zech. 13.3; Ps. 74.9; I Mac. 4.46; 14.41). In such circumstances, only a name from the old days carried any weight.

These explanations of pseudonymity are widely accepted and attractive by reason of their simplicity, but it is difficult not to suspect that the solution to the problem may well be less obvious and perhaps more significant.

We must remember, in the first place, that the practice of assuming an ancient and revered name was not peculiar to the writer of Daniel and the others who followed in his immediate steps. All Hebrew law of whatever date was ascribed to Moses; many of the psalms were ascribed to David; and most of the wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom) was represented as the work of Solomon, the sage par excellence of Hebrew tradition. The historical writing of the Old Testament is either anonymous or ascribed to prophets (cf. I Chron. 29.29; II Chron. 9.29), and the prophetic books themselves contain much which, had the prophets lived to see it, would have surprised them. Some of the oracles which now appear under the names of the great prophets may have been added simply because there was space on the roll which contained their authentic oracles, but in many cases (e.g. Isa. 24-27; Zech. 9-11, 12-14; and Isa. 40-55), the addition appears to have been made deliberately and purposefully. The later prophets, that is to say, consciously adopted a pseudonym. The explanation of such deliberate pseudonymity may be found in the existence of schools of prophets, founded by men like Isaiah (cf. Isa. 8.16), consisting of disciples who aimed only at maintaining and developing the teaching of their master. In other cases (and here Ezekiel is the obvious example), the pseudonymous oracles may have been added to the prophet's work by much later scribal interpreters, whose pupose was to provide a running commentary in order to bring the old and revered book up to date.

Although the details of this literary activity do not now concern us, it is important to recognize that pseudonymous writing in Israel was not so much the exception as the rule by the time our author produced his book. The new departure he made (although perhaps the credit for innovation should go to the writer of the Book of Job) was the choice of an ancient legendary hero as his pseudonym—the Dan'el of Ezekiel and the Ras Shamra texts. He was followed by other writers whose works survive outside the Old Testament and Apocrypha—the books of Enoch, Abraham and Noah, not to mention the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

The selection of these pseudonyms was probably not in the least arbitrary. As F. C. Burkitt has suggested, ‘the names were not chosen out of mere caprice; they indicated to a certain extent what subjects would be treated and the point of view of the writer’.⁷ As we have seen, our information about the legendary character of Dan'el is meagre, but what little we have is not without significance. From Ezekiel we learn that he was regarded as a shining example of righteousness (14.14) to a crooked and perverse generation, his very name meaning ‘God has judged’. He was also regarded as a sage, but (as the context in Ezek. 28 shows) not simply the kind of sage who was the author and collector of ‘wise saws and modern instances’:

Thus saith the Lord God: Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art man, and not God, though thou didst set thine heart as the heart of God: behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee.

(Ezek. 28.2 f.)

Here the king of Tyre is condemned for presuming to possess knowledge which belongs to God alone, and the point of the comparison seems to be that the king claims to exceed even Daniel in wisdom. It is legitimate to conclude that Daniel was thought of as the wisest of men and perhaps even as sharing to some degree the secrets of God.⁸ The pagan kings in our book are constantly made to acknowledge that the hero possesses what they call the ‘wisdom of the gods’ (5.11; cf. 2.11, 28; 4.8 f., 18; 5.14), and in the stories of chs. 1-6, his gift of divine wisdom is especially emphasized (cf. 1.17; 2.19-23; 4.4-9; 5.10-16). The combination of Daniel's legendary reputation for righteousness and for extraordinary wisdom would sufficiently explain why the writer chose to write under his name.

There is, however, one further consideration. If we may safely conclude from the references in Ezekiel that the reputation of Dan'el was well known in the sixth century b.c., it is possible that stories with an exilic background had already become attached to his name, and that such stories provided the starting point of our writer's work.

To judge by the few indications we possess, Daniel was the ideal pseudonym for the presentation of the writer's burning conviction that the true Israel shared the Wisdom by which the world was made and governed, and would, in God's good providence, triumph in adversity and ultimately rule the world according to his eternal purpose.

3 THE BOOK AND THE SCRIPTURES

None of the familiar labels is adequate to describe the affiliation of the Book of Daniel. On the one hand, it was the inspiration and source-book of a type of literature known as ‘apocalyptic’, which is a name borrowed from the opening words of the New Testament Book of Revelation or Apocalypse (apocalypsis meaning ‘revelation’ or ‘disclosure’). Such books, which enjoyed a great vogue in Jewish and Christian circles from about 100 b.c. to a.d. 100, purported to contain revelations of the heavenly order and the final consummation of world history, hidden from the ordinary mortal, but vouchsafed to seers who enjoyed a place in the secret council of God.

On the other hand, the Book of Daniel illustrates the growth in Judaism of a tradition of popular story-telling, which came to its full flowering in what is known as the Haggadah of the later Rabbinic schools. The nature of this literature may be judged from the following description quoted by G. F. Moore: ‘The Haggadah, whose aim it is to bring heaven nearer to men and again to lift men up to heaven, appears in this mission as the glorifying of God and the comfort of Israel. Hence, religious truths, moral lessons, discourse on just reward and punishment, inculcation of the laws in which the nationality of Israel is manifested, pictures of the past and future greatness of Israel, scenes and stories from Jewish history, parallels between the divine institutions and those of Israel, encomiums on the Holy Land, inspiring narratives, and manifold consolation—these constitute the chief content of the synagogue homilies.’⁹

Although these two distinctive developments are easy to identify and illuminate elements within the Book of Daniel, it is less easy to single out the traditions upon which our author himself was drawing. The place of his book in the Hebrew Canon among the Writings (and not as in our English Bibles among the Prophets) ought to suggest not only that he came late in the succession of Old Testament writers, but also that he was heir to their manifold wisdom. Our author was a scribe and it belonged to a scribe to study and interpret for his own day the Scriptures of his people.

APOCALYPTIC WRITINGS

The familiar description of this work as an apocalyptic book illustrates the universal human capacity for being wise after the event. It is useful to remember that apocalyptic is the name given by modern scholars, and not by the authors themselves, to a class of writings. It describes, therefore, not the work of a special group of men called ‘apocalyptists’ (on all fours with ‘prophets’), but, rather, certain features in combination characterizing a number of writings, which, therefore, it is instructive to study together. Whether a particular work should be labelled apocalyptic cannot be settled by any rule-of-thumb method. The decision will always depend on whether its contents suggest that it ought to be interpreted with works like the Book of Revelation in mind, or whether it would be more illuminating to approach it with other associations.

The question is unavoidable in the case of the Book of Daniel, because the New Testament Apocalypse (as well as others of a similar kind) clearly drew on it for much of their inspiration and material. Apart from the details, the writers of Jewish apocalyptic works adopted the method of presentation used by our author, whereby divine revelations concerning the future were alleged to have been given to an ancient man of God, written down by him and sealed in a book for the generation to which they referred (cf. 12.4, 9).

To this extent, therefore, and for these reasons, the Book of Daniel is inextricably associated with later apocalyptic writings. We have still to ask, however, whether this association better illuminates our author's outlook and purpose than any other, for a man is not always fairly represented by his disciples. ‘It may be wiser,’ remarked A. C. Welch, ‘to interpret Daniel from his predecessors than from his successors.’¹⁰

If our author could be said to have inherited a clearly defined ‘apocalyptic tradition’, the further development of the tradition in later writings would be of great value in helping to define and illuminate his own particular position and contribution. What we find before the present work, however, is not a formed apocalyptic tradition, but, rather, a miscellaneous body of prophetic teaching and imagery about the coming Kingdom of God. Much of this was taken up and elaborated in such works as I Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, the Assumption of Moses and II Esdras. It is, however, a significant fact (and one too often overlooked) that this prophetic material is almost entirely absent from the Book of Daniel.

To read such key passages as Ezek. 38-39, Joel 3 and Isa. 24-27 is to be forcibly reminded how many of the features which characterize late prophetic teaching about the Consummation of All Things and which appear in apocalyptic writings after the Book of Daniel were ignored by our author. Thus, he neglects the prophets' cosmic imagery (Isa. 2.12-21; 13.9-11; 24.21-3; cf. II Esd. 5.1-12), their great battle scenes (Zeph. 1.15 f.; Ezek. 38-39; Joel 3.9-17; cf. Sib. Or. 3.690 ff.), their lurid descriptions of the fate of the wicked gentiles (Zech. 14.12; Ezek. 39.12 f.; Isa. 34.1-4; cf. I Enoch 90.20-27; II Esd. 13.37 f.; Ass. Mos. 10), their highly-coloured pictures of the final Kingdom as a Golden Age of peace, righteousness and prosperity (Isa. 2.2-4; 11.6-8; 65.17-24; cf. I Enoch 10.17-20; II Bar. 29.5; Sib. Or. 3.741 ff.), and even their usual (but not invariable) interest in the messianic leader of the New Age (Zech. 3.8; 9.9-10; Mic. 5.2 ff.; Isa. 11.1 ff.; Jer. 23.5 ff.; cf. Ps. Sol. 17; II Esd. 7.28).

These omissions are the more remarkable in view of the clear evidence that our author was a student of the prophetic writings. A whole chapter (ch. 9) is devoted to a reinterpretation of a prophecy of Jeremiah, and the book contains numerous echoes of Ezekiel (cf. 4.10 ff.; 7.9; 8.1 f., 15, 17; 10.4-6). There can be no doubt that our author shared the prophets' faith that God was in control of the march of events and would vindicate his Chosen People by destroying their oppressors (cf. Isa. 13-14), but there is little evidence that he derived this faith, and even less the detailed content of his hope, from the prophetic writings directly.

To study the book, therefore, in association with later apocalyptic writing is less illuminating than the familiar description would lead us to expect, and in some ways it is definitely misleading.¹¹ When Daniel is accepted uncritically as an apocalyptic book, there is a danger that the label will divert our attention from the particular historical crisis which called it forth and from the ordinary beliefs current in second century Judaism upon which the writer was drawing. It is even more important, however, that we should not be misled into associating the book with the speculative and pseudo-scientific curiosity of some of the later apocalyptic writers. It is interesting to observe, in this connection, that a popular description of the origin and development of apocalyptic given by H. T. Andrews in Peake's Commentary (p. 432) singles out just those questions about which the Book of Daniel has least to say. He writes: ‘We may say, therefore, that Apocalyptic arose out of prophecy by developing and universalizing the conception of the day of the Lord. Its chief interest lay in the questions and problems connected with this idea. The prophets had left the picture vague and indefinite; the Apocalyptists attempted to fill in the details and give concrete form and body to the vision. What would happen when the “great day” came? What would be its antecedents? What would be the character of “the judgment” and the punishment meted out to the guilty? What would be the nature of the new kingdom that was to be set up? Would it be composed of Israelites only, or would Gentiles be admitted to it? Would it be permanent or only temporary? and, if the latter, what would be its duration? Would the pious dead have any lot in it, and, if so, what would be the nature of their resurrection? Would the wicked also be raised for punishment? What was the nature of the unseen world and heaven and hell? These and many other difficult questions naturally arose, and it was the task of Apocalyptic to attempt to find the answers.’ If this be Apocalyptic, any reader may see that another description must be found for the austere modesty of the Book of Daniel.

It is significant that the Jews ignored the later apocalypses, even as they took Daniel into their Canon and, as G. F. Moore pertinently comments, ‘it may well be doubted whether the exegetical and juristic studies of the rabbis, and under ordinary circumstances the hard realities of life for the people, let them get more excited about the end of the world and afterwards than either scholars or the mass of Christians to-day over the cabalistic combinations and chronological calculations of our own millenarians’.¹²Daniel has suffered the misfortune of being classed with his second-rate imitators. They borrowed from him, from parts of the prophetic literature he ignored and from mythology of which he does not seem to have been aware. Of these ingredients, they made a new type of literature which is neither represented in the Old Testament nor appealed to by the writers of the New Testament for the fundamentals of their faith. The Book of Daniel has an undisputed place in both. The writer was interested not in the mysterious future as such, but in the unveiling of the present sovereignty of God. His concern with ‘the time of the end’ was an essentially theological and religious interest, the outcome in a period of intense spiritual agony of his longing for the full manifestation of his conviction that ‘the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men’ (4.17, 25).

POPULAR ROMANCES

Not the least of the disadvantages of thinking of Daniel as an apocalyptic book is that it leaves out of account the stories of chs. 1-6. It is, however, quite impossible to read the book intelligently and understand it as a whole, without giving due weight to the similarity it bears to such (roughly contemporary) writings as Tobit, the Story of the Three Youths (I Esd. 3.1-4.42), Esther and Judith. It is probable that this connection would have been more often recognized if commentaries on the book had generally included the History of Susanna, the Story of Bel and the Story of the Dragon (now to be found in our Apocrypha), which our canonical text attracted to itself very early in its history. For these additions are to be classed with those we have just mentioned as didactic tales or pious romances (see pp. 53 f.).

The main theme of these stories is the relationship of Israel, the People of God, with the gentile world, and their chief purpose is to demonstrate that God has endowed Israel with his own wisdom and might. In loyal obedience to the faith of his fathers, the true Israelite could hold his own in the strange new world beyond the borders of the Holy Land. And not only this—he could attain a pre-eminence and reputation which the gentiles would find enviable and often irresistible. If these tales were not (as has been supposed)¹³ propaganda aimed at a gentile audience, they were certainly intended as domestic propaganda for the Jews who might be tempted to fall in with the way of the world.

As in popular fiction of any age, the literary conventions followed by these writers were fairly standardized. Although Tobit, Judith and Esther were all products of the second century b.c., the time which their authors adopt for the setting of the stories is the distant and dimly-remembered days of the beginning of Israel's exile from Palestine and her dispersal among the nations. Thus, Tobit is an exile living in Assyria in the first half of the seventh century b.c.; Judith is an exile living in Babylon in the sixth century b.c.; and Esther is an exile living at the Persian court in the fifth century b.c. The Three Youths of I Esdras are represented as the bodyguard of the Persian king Darius I. The writers, however, make no attempt to achieve historical accuracy and their characters are about as fictitious as those we have come to expect in the less reputable ‘historical’ film.

These fully-fledged stories may be regarded as developments from romance themes which are to be found in earlier Old Testament writings. We may recall, for example, incidental touches about the friendliness of pagan kings and the willing recognition they accord to Jewish heroes in such narratives as Gen. 12.10 f. and 20, the accounts of the last days of Jeremiah (Jer. 37-40) and the introductory chapters of Nehemiah (Neh. 1, 2). At the end of II Kings (25.27-30), there is a miniature story about Jehoiachin in Babylon, in which the Jewish monarch finds favour at the court and is promoted to a position of honour in the kingdom. However, the most obvious of the romances dealing with the Jew among the gentiles is one of the strands of the saga of Joseph (Gen. 40-41). As we shall see below in the commentary on ch. 2, there is a very close similiarity between the fortunes of Joseph and Daniel, and it seems almost certain that the writer of Daniel was consciously borrowing from the story of Joseph. It also seems extremely probable that parts of the Joseph story reflect the conditions, not of the age to which it is now ascribed, but of the favourite mis en scene of these romances—Israel in dispersion after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c.¹⁴

Speculation about the circulation of such romances among the Jews of the Dispersion was strikingly confirmed by the discovery early this century of The Story of Aḥikar among some Aramaic documents at Elephantine, an island on the Nile, where there was a Jewish military colony in the late fifth century b.c. Aḥikar was a sage and high official of the Assyrian court, whose adventures and wisdom won a quite astonishing popularity among the Jews. The wide currency of the story may be judged by the fact that it has influenced Proverbs, some of the Psalms, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit and perhaps even the present book (see pp. 136, 154). Its influence is most strongly marked in Tobit, where both the sage and his nephew are mentioned (quite casually) by name (Tob. 1.21 f.; 2.10; 11.18; 14.10).

To trace the complicated relationship between these various tales would take us too far from our main purpose, but it is important to notice not only that some of them (like the stories of Joseph and Aḥikar) are closely paralleled in the stories of Daniel, but also that, when they are taken altogether, they form a distinct literary type. Moreover, their thought as well as their form justify our linking them.

The author of Daniel was not the first to present his hero as a sage and a seer. In Gen. 40 and 41, Joseph is the divinely-inspired interpreter of dreams (40.8; 41.16), and he is able to tell Pharaoh ‘what God is about to do’ (Gen. 41. 25, 32). Similarly, the author of Tobit represents his hero as foretelling events in the future on the basis of prophecy—the destruction of Nineveh and Jerusalem, the return of the exiles, the rebuilding of the Temple, and finally the consummation when ‘all the nations shall turn to fear the Lord God truly, and shall bury their idols’ (Tob. 14.4-6). Although our author spans a much longer period between vision and fulfilment, his method is in principle the same. He had before him in the popular romances a precedent for combining the two things which the Jewish people delighted to ascribe to their heroes, namely, success in adversity and confidence in the future. These two themes are those of the Book of Daniel, and there they are developed with a power and originality which come near to masking their familiarity in earlier writings.¹⁵

PSALMS AND WISDOM

If we are correct in representing the writer as a man of his own age and in refusing to limit his scope narrowly to the prophetic-apocalyptic tradition, we ought to be able to demonstrate that he stands in the main stream of normal Judaism. We have at least some of the literature, which as a scribe he must have made his care and delight.

The Psalms, for example, bear witness to a belief in the kingship and power of God which is expressed in terms much nearer the manner of our author than is the teaching of the prophets. For the student of Daniel, two groups of psalms, in particular, stand out as important. The first includes those psalms which affirm faith in God as King and Judge (47, 93, 96.10 f., 97, 98), and the second those psalms which we have been taught to recognize as ‘communal laments’ (44, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89, 94.1-15). Most of the psalms in this second group, intended for use in time of national disaster, used to be associated by scholars with the age of Daniel, but whatever their exact date, they show clearly that the problems and response of our author were by no means unique. It is in these psalms that we find the anguished enquiry ‘how long?’ which echoes through the later chapters of this book (8.13; 9.1 ff.; 12.6; cf. Pss. 74.9 f.; 79.5; 80.4; 94.3); and here also we find the certain assurance of God's victory for Israel over the nations (Ps. 79.13; cf. Pss. 10.16-18; 48.11; 60.12).

Another notable feature of the Psalms is the close association they display between the work of God as creator of the world and his work as redeemer of his Chosen People (Pss. 94.9; 18.7-19; 29.10 f.; 121; 147; 148), and, as we shall see, this is one of the basic themes of our author's thought. The mythological presentation of God's purpose in the creation in terms of his vanquishing the Dragon of Chaos also occurs both in the Psalms (Pss. 74.12-17; 89.9-11) and in the key chapter of this book (ch. 7).

It is not claimed that our author directly borrowed from these particular psalms, but it is suggested that they illustrate something of the common stock of Jewish religious thought upon which he drew.

We have already observed how fully the pursuits ascribed to the ideal scribe in Ecclus. 39 correspond to the different elements combined in the book. This connection invites us to consider further the common stock of Jewish religious thought. Ben Sira, who was undoubtedly a scribe akin to the ideal he depicts, by no means confined himself to a single theme. Like Daniel, he was as passionately devoted to the Law of Moses as to the pursuit of wisdom, and, indeed, he boldly identifies the two (Ecclus. 1.26; 6.37; 9.15; 19.20; 21.11; 24.23; cf. Deut. 4.5-6). Although the ancient wisdom tradition to which Ben Sira was heir was the common possession of many nations, he was himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews, rejoicing in the Temple and its worship, no less than our author mourned its loss (Ecclus. 50.1-21). But most significantly of all, Ben Sira reveals an ardent faith that God had chosen Israel as his own people and would deliver them from the oppression they were suffering:

Have mercy upon us, O Lord the God of all, and behold;
And send thy fear upon all the nations:
Lift up thy hand against the strange nations;
And let them see thy mighty power.
As thou wast sanctified in us before them,
So be thou magnified in them before us.
And let them know thee, as we also have known thee,
That there is no God but only thou, O God.
Shew new signs, and work divers wonders;
Glorify thy hand and thy right arm.
Raise up indignation, and pour out wrath;
Take away the adversary, and destroy the enemy.
Hasten the time, and remember the oath;
And let them declare thy mighty works.
Let him that escapeth be devoured by the rage of fire;
And may they that harm thy people find destruction.
Crush the heads of the rulers of the enemies,
That say, There is none but we.
Gather all the tribes of Jacob together,
And take them for thine inheritance, as from the beginning.
O Lord, have mercy upon the people that is called by thy name,
And upon Israel, whom thou didst liken unto a firstborn.
Have compassion upon the city of thy sanctuary,
Jerusalem, the place of thy rest.
Fill Sion; exalt thine oracles,
And fill thy people with thy glory.
Give testimony unto those that were thy creatures in the beginning,
And raise up the prophecies that have been in thy name.
Give reward unto them that wait for thee:
And men shall put their trust in thy prophets.
Hearken, O Lord, to the prayer of thy suppliants,
According to the blessing of Aaron concerning thy people;
And all they that are on the earth shall know
That thou art the Lord, the eternal God.

Ecclus. 36.1-17; cf. 10.4; 35.18-20; 44.21; 45.25; 47.22; 48.10, 24 f.)

The faith of Ben Sira is expressed in petition, but it was fundamentally the same faith which the writer of the Book of Daniel more boldly affirmed. It is evident that by the time of Ben Sira (c. 180 b.c.), the sages had become the students, guardians and teachers of the whole Jewish tradition and that all Hebrew literature was now by adoption and interpretation the wisdom of the scribe.

THE PARABLE OF THE SCRIBE

It demands not a little imagination to compass the diverse wisdom such as we are suggesting belonged to the scribe who wrote the Book of Daniel. There is no one English word adequate to characterize his work, although there is a term in Hebrew, which, in the course of time, gathered so rich a store of related meanings as to suggest the fundamental unity of these chapters without concealing their obvious diversity. It may indeed (though this is not capable of proof) not only describe the various elements of the book, but also to some extent illustrate that fusion of religious traditions in the scribal schools upon which these chapters are based. The Hebrew word is mashal.

In the earliest use of the term in the Old Testament, mashal means the popular proverb (I Sam. 10.12; 24.13) and the saying of the wise. Thus Solomon, the king of sages, ‘spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes’ (I Kings 4.32 f.). Presumably, Solomon, the master of proverbs, would have taken an interest in such natural history as is represented by the fable of the trees in Judg. 9.8-15, and although the term mashal is not used there to describe it, the term is used to describe the related and similar allegory of the Eagle, the Cedar, and the Vine in Ezek. 17.2-10. Three features of this allegory in Ezekiel are of interest: (a) it is also called a ‘riddle’ (ḥidah); (b) it is a prediction of the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar and the triumph of Israel; (c) it was probably in the mind of our author when he wrote the account of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in ch. 4.

Evidently the mashal had become associated with the obscurity of the riddle, so that it required (like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar) divine wisdom for its interpretation. It is the obscurity of dreams and visions which is said to characterize the riddle in Num. 12.7 f. This interesting association of the mashal with the riddle occurs again in Ps. 78.2:

I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings (‘riddles’) of old:

and the Psalmist makes the connection, because (in the words of B. T. D. Smith) ‘he proposes to teach his contemporaries the lessons of Wisdom indirectly, by means of stories from the past’.¹⁶ It would be difficult to find a better description of the purpose of the writer of chs. 1-6 of the Book of Daniel.

The mashal of Ezek. 17.2-10 is not only obscure; it is also prophetic, foretelling the downfall of the king of Babylon. Our term is similarly used of the taunt-song in Isa. 14.4-20 (see v. 4), which again foretells the doom of a Babylonian king. Like Ezek. 17.2-10, it was almost certainly used by our author with reference to Nebuchadnezzar (see pp. 148 f.).

That these cross-references are not accidental is made clear by the use of mashal for the inspired predictions of Balaam in the Book of Numbers (Num. 23.7, 18; 24.3, 15, etc.) and for the apocalyptic predictions of the Book of Enoch. Thus, along one line of development, the wisdom of the sage is related to the wisdom of the seer, the lesson from the past to the unveiling of the future.

There was, however, another line of development. In the schools of the scribes, the term mashal, while continuing to indicate the sayings of the wise, came to be used primarily of the parables in which Rabbinic literature abounds. ‘In the Talmud and Midrash almost every religious idea, moral maxim, or ethical requirement is accompanied by a parable which illustrates it.’¹⁷ In particular, these parables were used for the exposition of Scripture. As we study the close relationship between the stories of the Book of Daniel and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, it will become obvious that parable in this sense is the best way to describe them.

There is a puzzling comment in St. Matthew's Gospel, which ought to be clearer for our brief review of the meanings of this rich term mashal: ‘All these things spake Jesus in parables … that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world’ (13.34 f.). Here the evangelist (quoting Ps. 78.2) associates in the closest possible way the parables of Jesus with his teaching about the Kingdom of God, his stories with his unveiling of God's eternal Rule.

This association is explicit in the Book of Daniel. From a rich store of Scriptural and other learning, our scribe brought forth things new and old. His vehicle was the mashal—the story, the dream, the vision, and the riddle, combined to make a remarkable and powerful message for the confirmation of his contemporaries, when they were tempted to deny the wisdom and sovereignty of Israel's God.

4 THE COMPOSITION OF THE BOOK

As we know so little about our author and as, therefore, we are not in a position to evaluate the degree of his personal authority, any attempt to distinguish between primary and secondary elements in the book and to describe the stages of its composition may appear singularly unprofitable. Such an attitude may, indeed, be thought to find support from the lack of agreement among competent scholars about the critical analysis of the book. The measure of disagreement among the experts has been admirably demonstrated by H. H. Rowley only recently.¹⁸

The subject, however, is not simply a matter of idle or merely academic curiosity. Whether one takes the view of the majority of scholars that the book was not written by a single author, or whether one follows scholars like H. H. Rowley in defending its unity, the interpretation of its message is vitally affected.

There is, of course, an obvious sense in which the book must be understood as a whole. Even if we are convinced that its composition was not undertaken either at one single time or by a single author, considerable weight must be attached to the fact that the later writer (or writers) deliberately took over the earlier material, made additions to it and presented the book as we now have it as a single work. Critics have sometimes forgotten that there is a meaning in the final whole as well as in its constituent parts. If, however, within this overall and final unity, the evidence suggests diversity of authorship, we must be prepared to recognize a diversity of religious outlook. The architecture of an ancient cathedral, for instance, is not adequately described in terms of the Gothic restorer, who in the reign of Queen Victoria took over and made his own the work of his more distinguished predecessors.

Just as it is a matter of some delicacy to isolate the architect of many of our cathedrals, so it is difficult to say precisely what we mean by the author of the Book of Daniel. The task, however, is not so difficult as to make any attempt hopeless.

The part of the critical problem which scholars have found most teasing is the lack of coincidence between the division of the book suggested by language and that suggested by form. Hebrew is the language of the introductory and concluding chapters (1.1-2.4a and 8-12), and Aramaic (cf. 2.4 and note) that of the rest (2.4b-7.28). While consideration of the language would naturally lead us to reckon Daniel's vision in ch. 7 with the stories about Daniel in chs. 2-6, its form suggests that it belongs rather with the visions of chs. 8-12. It is not surprising, therefore, that ch. 7 has become a kind of disputed no-man's-land among those who wish to divide the book into two parts.

Taking this as our clue, we may concentrate on ch. 7 as holding the key to the critical problem and make bold to identify it as the creative centre of the whole book. It binds together and interprets the stories that go before it, just as it introduces and inspires the more explicit chapters of commentary which follow. Here, if anywhere, we meet the writer who deserves to be called the author of the book.

Many scholars recognize that on the evidence of historical standpoint, the book divides with the language at the end of ch. 7. In chs. 8-12, the Temple has been desecrated and its sacrifices abolished (8.11; 9.26 f.; 11.31; 12.11), whereas the absence of any such references in chs. 1-7 may be taken as almost conclusive evidence that they were written before the occupation of the sanctuary in 167 b.c.¹⁹ The literary critic who remembers that his function is to make literary discriminations will be ready to confirm that the poverty of invention, the pedestrian style and the more formal and explicit manner of chs. 8-12 mark them off from the first half of the book, no less than do the differences of language and historical perspective.

It is, however, from theological discrimination that the most weighty evidence comes. Although the bulk of chs. 2-7 consists of popular stories, it is this section which conspicuously employs the fundamental ideas of Jewish religion and delineates with massive simplicity the religious issues and theological convictions which constitute the book's distinction and value. In this first section, it is impossible to read more than a few verses without being made aware of the sovereign presence and purpose of the living God, whereas in chs. 8-12 one gets much more the impression that events move according to plan. In this second section, the emphasis is less on the purpose of God than on the fate and restoration of the sanctuary, less on the end of time than on the time of the end, and the angelic War in Heaven of ch. 10, though ambiguous and undeveloped in detail, seems to belong to a range of ideas more easily paralleled in later Jewish teaching than in the first section of the book. As a theological document chs. 2-7 could stand alone, whereas chs. 8-12 seem to be in large measure dependent on the first section and are probably best regarded as a commentary on it, composed at a later time, in different circumstances, and by another hand.

It may be noted in passing that this division of the book is not really in conflict with the division of the book suggested by form. The alleged distinction between the form of chs. 1-6 (‘stories’) and chs. 7-12 (‘visions’) breaks down on closer examination. The dream of ch. 2 has almost as much claim to be classed as a vision as the dream-vision of ch. 7 (with which, incidentally, it is inextricably connected), and a greater claim to be so reckoned than the ‘visions’ of chs. 8-12.

In a rapidly changing situation such as that during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, we need not suppose that there was necessarily any great interval of time between the composition of the two sections. Unless we resort to arbitrary critical surgery and excise from ch. 7 the more precise historical references to Antiochus Epiphanes (e.g. vv. 7b, 8, 11a, 20-22, 24 f.), the bulk of chs. 2-7 must belong in its present form to a period of his reign when he had already declared himself an enemy of the Jewish people. We know that he plundered the Temple as early as 169 b.c. (see p. 76), and it is not unreasonable to suggest that these chapters left our author's hands after that date, but before the desecration of the Temple in 167 b.c. It is then possible to suppose that the expansion of the work in Hebrew was undertaken by a disciple of the original author who was associated with him in the circles of the Hasidim. As he was ignorant of the circumstances of Antiochus' death in 163 b.c. and the re-dedication of the Temple on 25 December 164 b.c., we may with some certainty say that he wrote before the end of 164 b.c. and, therefore, that the whole book was produced within a period of five years.

This does not mean that none of our author's material existed before the reign of Antiochus. Although H. H. Rowley has demonstrated that point can be found for every story of the first section in the setting of the Maccabean age,²⁰ this does not establish the view that it was then that they were originally conceived. All it shows is that they could be appropriately used (as they are now used) by a Maccabean religious leader. If the author had been fashioning stories either out of his own head, or from unformed traditional material, it is impossible to explain why (during the Jews' bitter experience of Antiochus) he represented Daniel as being so deeply and comfortably engaged in the service of pagan kings, or the pagan kings as being so favourably disposed both towards him and his God (2.46-48; 3. 28-30; 4.1-3, 34-37; 6.14, 16, 18-20, 23-28). It is most reasonable to suppose that our author received the stories of chs. 2-7 in a fairly fixed form and used them (despite the obvious fact that in some respects they fitted rather badly), because they were familiar and demonstrated the conviction of his circle that ‘Judaism is the only true wisdom, as it is the only true religion’.²¹ They exposed the absurd pretensions of the priest-diviners and kings of Babylon and depicted the victories of Israel's faith in the teeth of persecution. What could be better as a counter-blast to the tyranny of the Seleucid king and his debased hellenistic culture? Our author bound together these miscellaneous stories, by a certain amount of redrafting, and by writing, as a more explicit interpretation of their meaning, the tremendously powerful vision of ch. 7. Although we may become aware that certain passages in the stories seem to be more closely related to our author's purpose than to the narrative of which they are now a part (2.14-23, 41-43, 49), we shall be wise to avoid dubbing them editorial ‘additions’. It is better to reflect on the fact that re-drafting a traditional story is a process more subtle than the interpolating of odd verses and one which we can no longer hope to measure.

It is now impossible to determine exactly what our author received from tradition. It is highly probable that the stories of chs. 2, 4, 5 and 6 came from a cycle of romances concerning the adventures of a young Israelite called Daniel and (if our views concerning his identity with the Daniel of Ezekiel are tenable) that this Daniel was not a historical person, but a legendary figure of the remote past (rather like our St. George), who had been clothed with flesh and blood by the men of the exile, and made their patron saint and representative hero. It is possible that Daniel stood alone in the original stories and that his three companions have been introduced from the quite independent (and later) story of the Fiery Furnace (ch. 3).

Just as ch. 7 unifies and interprets the religious significance of these stories, so ch. 1 gives them a common introduction and a common setting in the Babylonian court. The much-discussed problem of the mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic in the book reduces itself (according to the view taken here) to the use of Hebrew in 1.1-2.4a. There is no difficulty in accepting the presentation of the popular stories in the Aramaic vernacular and the more sectarian temper of chs. 8-12 accords well with their having been written in Hebrew—the proper language for self-conscious nationalist faith. What is difficult to account for is the Hebrew of 1.1-2.4a. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that it came from the hand of the writer of chs. 8-12, and represents either a translation or a revision of an Aramaic introduction, which was undertaken to improve the book's reception in Hebrew-speaking circles, and perhaps, even, to emphasize Daniel's orthodoxy, for example, in keeping the food-laws (cf. 1.8-16). There would be a certain dramatic appropriateness in suspending the Hebrew at 2.4a for the Chaldeans' reply to the king. It must, however, be admitted that these suggestions fall far short of carrying complete conviction and can stand only faute de mieux.

As an appendix to this brief treatment of the composition of the book, it is worth recalling that the Apocrypha of our English Bibles contains the following additions to our canonical text: (1) The Song of the Three Holy Children; (2) The History of Susanna; (3) Bel and the Dragon. Although these pieces are known to us only in Greek translation, many scholars take the view that they were originally written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, and it is generally agreed that they were added to our canonical book before 100 b.c., that is, within sixty years or so of its composition. If we may take it that this additional material emanated from the circles in which our canonical book was produced or, if not produced, at least handed down, it confirms our interpretation in two main ways. First, they show that the scribes expanded with suitable material books which circulated in their schools. This fact (if fact it be) lends support to the view that chs. 8-12 represent a scribal expansion of chs. 2-7, regarded as the original book. Secondly, they further illustrate the nature of the tradition to which our book belonged. The History of Susanna is a popular tale used to illustrate the piety and God-given wisdom of Daniel. Here we have another example of the method and purpose which lie behind chs. 2-7. The teaching of the two poems now embedded in The Song of the Three Holy Children (vv. 3-22 and 29-68) may be said to represent an undeveloped form of Pharisaism, akin to that of chs. 8-12, and especially that of Daniel's prayer in 9.4-19, which the first poem very much resembles. The story of Bel (vv. 1-22 of Bel and the Dragon) shows how Daniel cunningly brings idolatry into ridicule, and the second story, portraying his ingenious method of slaying the Dragon (vv. 23-42), again illustrates the scribe's love of a good tale and may even dimly echo the Babylonian myth of creation, which is used with great effect in ch. 7.

Although these additions cannot possibly be regarded (with Roman Catholic writers) as an integral part of the book, they are not incongruous, and the fact that they were associated with our author's work at an early date throws light both on the tradition to which he belonged and on his own interests and methods.

Notes

1. Egyptian writings (c. 2000 b.c.) have been found which praise the learning of the scribe and satirize the manual worker very much in the manner of Ecclus. 38-39.

2. G. F. Moore, Judaism [Harvard, 1927–30], I, p. 44; II, p. 317.

3. The text of ‘The Tale of Aqhat’ is given in J. B. Pritchard, Near Eastern Texts, pp. 149 ff.

4. See R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Vol. I, ad. loc. The RV is based on the Greek Version.

5. What mean these Stones? p. 263. In a monograph on The Literary Relations of Ezekiel, the same scholar comments: ‘Certainly the Daniel to whom Ezekiel refers corresponds exactly both in his wisdom and ability to reveal secrets (28.3) and in his righteousness and power as an intercessor (14.14, 20) to the Daniel of the Book of Daniel’, p. 99. And H. St. J. Hart thinks that the name in Daniel and Ezekiel ‘is probably from the Danel of the Ras Shamra texts … and therefore it goes back at least to the fourteenth century b.c.’. He adds: ‘No wonder Ezekiel should number him with Noah’, A Foreword to the Old Testament, p. 171.

6. The Relevance of Apocalyptic [by H. H. Rowley, Lutterworth, 1944], pp. 37 ff.

7. Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, p. 18.

8. The Hebrew of Ezek. 28.3 is obscure and rare, but the key-word is repeated in reference to the concealed visions of Daniel in 8.26 and 12.4, 9.

9. Judaism, I, pp. 161 f.

10. Visions of the End, p. 129.

11. ‘In some respects, his position is so peculiar as to make it legitimate to say that his book is not a typical specimen of apocalyptic literature, as, e.g. the Book of Revelation is typical’, A. C. Welch, Visions of the End, pp. 101 f.

12. Judaism, I, p. 127.

13. See the refreshing paper by J. R. Coates, The Saving History, ch. 5.

14. The present writer has developed this theme in The Expository Times, LIX, 5 (February, 1948).

15. We may compare the judgment of F. W. Farrar in an old commentary, which is nevertheless most illuminating on the stories of chs. 1-6. ‘In short,’ he writes, ‘the Book of Daniel may be illustrated by the Apocryphal books in every single particular. In the adoption of an illustrious name—which is the most marked characteristic of this period—it resembles the additions to the Book of Daniel, the Books of Edras, the Letters of Baruch and Jeremiah, and the Wisdom of Solomon. In the imaginary and quasi-legendary treatment of history it finds a parallel in Wisdom 16-19, and parts of the Second Book of Maccabees and the Second Book of Esdras. As an allusive narrative bearing on contemporaneous events under the guise of describing the past, it is closely parallel to the Book of Judith, while the character of Daniel bears the same relation to that of Joseph, as the representation of Judith does to that of Jael. As an ethical development of a few scattered historical data, tending to the marvellous and supernatural, but rising to the dignity of a very noble and important religious fiction, it is analogous, though incomparably superior, to Bel and the Dragon, and to the stories of Tobit and Susanna,’ The Book of Daniel (The Expositor's Bible), 1895, pp. 84 f.

16. Italics mine. B. T. D. Smith, The Parables of the Synoptic Gospels, p. 7. The whole of this section is greatly indebted to Dr. Smith's introduction.

17. Quoted by B. T. D. Smith, op. cit., p. 14, from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

18. The Servant of the Lord, ch. 7.

19. Ch. 3 is clearly relevant to the New Paganism of Antiochus, but the idol is specifically Babylonian and not Greek. Moreover, the theme is traditional. The story stands apart from the others, however, and may have found its way into the book independently.

20. The Servant of the Lord, pp. 264 f.

21. G. F. Moore, Judaism, I, p. 38.

Bibliography

Commentaries

Charles, R. H., The Book of Daniel (The Century Bible), T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1913

Driver, S. R., The Book of Daniel (The Cambridge Bible), 1900

Farrar, F. W., The Book of Daniel (The Expositor's Bible), Hodder and Stoughton, 1895

Charles, R. H., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Oxford, 1929

Montgomery, J. A., The Book of Daniel (The International Critical Commentary), T. and T. Clark, 1927.

Expositions

Welch, A. C., Visions of the End, J. Clarke, 1922

Porter, F. C., The Messages of the Apocalyptical Writers, J. Clarke, 1909

General Works

Hart, H. St. J., A Foreword to the Old Testament, ch. VI, A. and C. Black, 1951

Bevan, E. R., Jerusalem Under the High-Priests, E. Arnold, 1904