SOURCE: Redditt, Paul L. “Daniel 11 and the Sociohistorical Setting of the Book of Daniel.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 60, no. 3 (July 1998): 236-49.

In the following essay, Redditt argues that The Book of Daniel was written by a group of Jewish courtier-scribes who were employed by the Seleucids.

One of the issues in the study of the Book of Daniel is the book's origin. Where, and within what group, did it arise? The questions are not new, of course, though the pursuit of an answer has taken new twists in the last couple of decades. Scholars rightly warn that the book may have arisen in a group otherwise unknown to modern scholars, and that answers to the questions might not furnish really important clues to the meaning of the book. Even so, the questions remain among those most debated in contemporary studies of Daniel. In this study the question of...