Daniel – General
Daniel is a disordered dream, a nightmare. What can be made of this book with its image with a golden head, with breast and arms of silver, with belly and thighs of brass, with legs of iron, and with feet of iron and clay; with its writing on the wall, its den of lions, and its vision of the ram and goat?
Although the book of Daniel was supposedly written during the Babylonian Exile by an official of King Nebuchadnezzar, modern scholars date its writing to the second century BCE. The reasons for this include:
» It is listed in the Writings of the Jewish canon, rather than the Prophets. This indicates that Daniel was written after the collection of prophetic books had been closed (sometime after 300 BCE).
» Parts of the book (2:4-7, 28) were written in Aramaic, which suggests a later date when Aramaic had become the common language.
» The author of Daniel used Persian and Greek words that would not have been known to residents of Babylon in the 6th century BCE.
» The book contains numerous historical inaccuracies when dealing with 6th century BCE Babylonian history. Such mistakes would not have been made by an important official in the employ of King Nebuchadneazzar.
» Daniel is the only book in the Old Testament in which angels are given names (such as Gabriel in 8:16 and 9:21 and Michael in 10:13, 10:21, and 12:1). Elsewhere in the Bible, names for angels only appear in the in the Apocrypha and the New Testament.
» The absence of Daniel's name in the list of Israel's great men in Ecclesiasticus.
» Nebuchadrezzar is spelled Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, which is the way the king's name was spelled, under Greek influence, at a later time.
» In 2:2 the king's wise men are called "Chaldeans". But at the time of Nebuchadrezzar, "Chaldean" would have referred to a nationality. It was only centuries later that this word came to mean sorcerer or astrologer.
Modern historians and bible scholars generally agree on the proper interpretation of the dreams in the book of Daniel. Fundamentalists, however, adamantly disagree both with the scholars and with each other.
Daniel 1:1-2 - The third year of the reign of Jehoiakim would be 606 BCE, at which time Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king of Babylon. It was 597 BCE that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem for the first time (without actually destroying it). By that time Jehohiakim was dead and his son, Jehoiachin, was ruling.
Daniel 3:1 - Nebuchadnezzar built a statue of gold sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. Taking a cubit to be 18 inches and assuming the depth to also be six cubits, this would give a total volume of 270 cubic yards [245.45 cubic meters]; which would have been more than all of the gold that King Nebuchadnezzar possessed, and probably more than all of the gold in all of the kingdoms of the world at that time.
Daniel 3:29 - Nebuchadnezzar, after first trying to burn to death the three Hebrews, now decrees that everyone who says anything against the Hebrew god "shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill." This is an example of the loving kindness and tolerance that supernatural belief inspires in humans.
Daniel 4:10-11, 20 - Daniel's tree is tall enough to be seen from "the end of all the earth." Only on a flat earth would this be possible.
Daniel 4:32-33 - Nebuchadnezzar eats grass, lets his hair grow like eagle feathers and his nails like bird claws. Of course, there is no record in secular history that Nebuchadnezzar suffered any such strange sickness.
Daniel 4:34-35 - After going through a rather bizarre ordeal, inflicted upon him by God, Nebuchadnezzar heaps praise upon God, in whose eyes "all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing." This is certainly a being worthy of our praise.
Daniel 5:2, 11, 18, 22 - Apparently, the author of Daniel know of only two Babylonian kings during the period of the exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, who he wrongly thought was the son of Nebuchadnezzar. But Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Awil-Marduk (referred to in the bible as "Evilmerodach" [see 2 Kg.25:27 and Jer.52:31]). In 560 BCE, Amel-Marduk was assassinated by his brother-in-law, Nergal-shar-usur. The next and last king of Babylon was Nabonidus who reigned from 556 to 539 BCE, when Babylon was conquered by Cyrus. It was Nabonidus, and not Belshazzar, who was the last of the Babylonian kings. Belshazzar was the son and viceroy of Nabonidus. But he was not a king, and was not the son (or any other relation) of Nebuchadnezzar.
Daniel 5:31 - Darius the Median is a fictitious character whom the author perhaps confused with Darius I of Persia, who came to the throne in 521 BCE, 17 years after the fall of Babylon. The author of Daniel incorrectly makes him the successor of Belshazzar instead of Cyrus.
Daniel 6:24 - King Darius, after trying to feed Daniel to the lions, orders those who accused Daniel (and their wives and children) to be cast into the lion den. "And the lions ... break all their bones in pieces."
Daniel 6:26 - Darius makes a decree, "that in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel."
Daniel 8:10 - To Daniel, the stars are small objects that can fall from the sky and then be "stamped upon."
Daniel 8:23-25, 11:21-45 - To many “end-timers”, these verses describe the coming Antichrist. However, it is more likely that they describe a tyrant king of Syria, Antiochus IV. He reined around 170 BCE and persecuted the Jews, sparking the Maccabean revolt. This information gives even more credence to the train of thought that has Daniel's writer living in the second century BCE, than in the sixth. Which wouldn't make these verses prophecy; they would be contemporary history.
