Daniel
DANIEL, or, in Hebrew, Daniyye'l; hero of the biblical book that bears his name. Daniel is presented as a Jew in the Babylonian exile who achieved notoriety in the royal court for his dream interpretations and cryptography and for his salvation from death in a lion's pit. He also appears in the last chapters of the book as the revealer of divine mysteries and of the timetables of Israel's restoration to national-religious autonomy. As a practitioner of oneiromancy in the court, described in Daniel 1–6 (written in the third person), Daniel performs his interpretations alone, while as a visionary-apocalyptist, in Daniel 7–12 (written in the first person), he is in need of an angel to help him decode his visions and mysteries of the future. It is likely that the name Daniel is pseudonymous, a deliberate allusion to a wise and righteous man known from Ugaritic legend and earlier biblical tradition (Ez. 14:4, 28:3).
The authorship of the book is complicated not only by the diverse narrative voices and content but by its language: Daniel 1:1–2:4a and 8–12 are written in Hebrew, whereas Daniel 2:4b–7:28 is in Aramaic. The language division parallels the subject division (Daniel 1–6 concerns legends and dream interpretations; 7–12 concerns apocalyptic visions and interpretations of older prophecies). The overall chronological scheme as well as internal thematic balances (Daniel 2–7 is chiliastically related) suggest an attempt at redactional unity. After the prefatory tale emphasizing the life in court and the loyalty of Daniel and some youths to their ancestral religion, a chronological ordering is discernible: a sequence from King Nebuchadrezzar to Darius is reported (Dn. 2–6), followed by a second royal sequence beginning with Belshazzar and concluding with Cyrus II (Dn. 7–12). Much of this royal dating and even some of the tales are problematic: for example, Daniel 4 speaks of Nebuchadrezzar's transformation into a beast, a story that is reported in the Qumran scrolls of Nabonidus; Belshazzar is portrayed as the last king of Babylon, although he was never king; and Darius is called a Mede who conquered Babylon and is placed before Cyrus II of Persia, although no such Darius is known (the Medes followed the Persians, and Darius is the name of several Persian kings). Presumably the episodes of Daniel 2–6, depicting a series of monarchical reversals, episodes of ritual observances, and reports of miraculous deliverances were collected in the Seleucid period (late fourth to mid-second century BCE) in order to reinvigorate waning Jewish hopes in divine providence and encourage steadfast faith.
The visions of Daniel 7–12, reporting events from the reign of Belshazzar to that of Cyrus II (but actually predicting the overthrow of Seleucid rule in Palestine), were collected and published during the reign of Antiochus IV prior to the Maccabean Revolt, for it was then (beginning in 168 BCE) that the Jews were put to the test concerning their allegiance to Judaism and their ancestral traditions, and many refused to desecrate the statutes of Moses and endured a martyr's death for their resolute trust in divine dominion. All of the visions of Daniel dramatize this dominion in different ways: for example, via images of the enthronement of a God of judgment, with a "son of man" invested with rule (this figure was interpreted by Jews as Michael the archangel and by Christians as Christ), in chapter 7; via zodiacal images of cosmic beasts with bizarre manifestations, as in chapter 8; or via complex reinterpretations of ancient prophecies, especially those of Jeremiah 25:9–11, as found in Daniel 9–12.
The imagery of the four beasts in chapter 7 (paralleled by the image of four metals in chapter 2), representing four kingdoms to be overthrown by a fifth monarchy of divine origin, is one of the enduring images of the book: it survived as a prototype of Jewish and Christian historical and apocalyptic schemes to the end of the Middle Ages. The role and power of this imagery in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century work of the exegete Isaac Abravanel, the scientist Isaac Newton, and the philosopher Jean Bodin and among the Fifth Monarchy Men of seventeenth-century England, for example, is abiding testimony to the use of this ancient topos in organizing the chiliastic imagination of diverse thinkers and groups. The schema is still used to this day by various groups predicting the apocalyptic advent.
The encouragement in the face of religious persecution that is found and propagandized in Daniel 11–12 contains a remarkable reinterpretation of Isaiah 52:13–53:12, regarding the suffering servant of God not as all Israel but as the select faithful. Neither the opening stories about Daniel and the youths nor the final martyrological allusions advocate violence or revolt; they rather advocate a stance of piety, civil disobedience, and trustful resignation. Victory for the faithful is in the hands of the archangel Michael, and the martyrs will be resurrected and granted astral immortality. Presumably the circles behind the book were not the same as the Maccabean fighters and may reflect some proto-Pharisaic group of ḥasidim, or Pietists. The themes of resistance to oppression, freedom of worship, preservation of monotheistic integrity, the overthrow of historical dominions, and the acknowledgment of the God of heaven recur throughout the book and have served as a token of trust for the faithful in their darkest hour.
Bibliography
Bickerman, Elias J. Four Strange Books of the Bible: Jonah, Daniel, Koheleth, Esther. New York, 1967. See pages 53–138.
Braverman, Jay. Jerome's Commentary on Daniel. Washington, D.C., 1978.
Hartman, Louis F., and Alexander A. Di Lella. Book of Daniel. Anchor Bible, vol. 23. Garden City, N.Y., 1978.
New Sources
Collins, John J., and Peter W. Flint, eds. The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception. Boston; Leiden, 2002.
Van der Woude, A. S., ed. The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings. Leuven, 1993.
Wills, Lawrence Mitchell. The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends. Minneapolis, 1990.
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