Daniel

Daniel (Heb., 'God is judge') is mentioned by Ezekiel (6th century B.C.), along with Noah and Job, as a great example of righteousness and wisdom (Ezek. xiv. 14, 20, and xxviii. 3). According to the book which bears his name, he was one of the Jews carried away to Babylon in the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and gained a high position at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, which he maintained also under Darius and Cyrus, notwithstanding all the intrigues of hostile courtiers. The book stands in our Bible, as well as in the LXX. and Vulgate, immediately after Ezekiel, while in the Hebrew canon it is not included in the collection of the Prophets, but appears among the miscellaneous 'Writings' (see BIBLE). Delitzsch points out that the book nowhere claims to be written by Daniel, and that its position in the canon shows that it is not properly a prophetic book, but an apocalypse. It is written partly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaic, but forms a coherent whole, which is now divided into twelve chapters, the first half consisting of narrative, the second half of predictions. These predictions are not prophetic speeches like those of the other prophetic scriptures, rebuking the sins of contemporaries, foretelling judgment on the impudent, and promising Messianic salvation to the repentant and believing; they are minutely detailed apocalyptic visions embracing the history of four successive world-empires—the Chaldean, the Median, the Persian, and the Greco-Macedonian—culminating in the establishment of the eternal kingdom of the saints of the Most High. Objections to the Danielic authorship of the book were made by the Neoplatonist Porphyry as early as the 3d century A.D., but first found support in the critical investigations of Bertholdt (1806-8), followed by those of Bleek, De Wette, Langerke, Ewald, Lücke, and others. These investigations have led to the view that the book was not written till the time of the religious persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, about 168-165 B.C. But the book is certainly of great importance, and 'has exercised,' says Schürer, 'a profound influence upon the form of the Messianic idea. . . . In this book (xii. 2) the hope in a resurrection of the body is for the first time plainly and decidedly expressed. The Messianic hope is here the hope of a glorious future for the nation, but with the double modification that the future kingdom of Israel is conceived of as a universal kingdom, and that all the saints who have died will share in it.' According to Delitzsch, our Lord's testimony in Matt. xxiv. 15 proves 'that Dan. ix. 26, et seq., is a prophecy of the desecration of the temple in the Roman war, not that it is a prophecy then fulfilled for the first time.' See Hilgenfeld, Die Jüdische Apokalyptik (1857), and the special commentaries by Hitzig (1850), Auberlen (3d ed. 1874), Hilgenfeld (1863), Caspari (1869), Pusey (1864), Desprez (1879), and Robinson (1882).