13 - The book of Daniel

Summary

It is clear that the book of Daniel falls into two quite different parts: Daniel A, chapters 1–6, the book of court stories, and Daniel B, chapters 7 to 12, the book of apocalypses. Because the historical background of B is, as was first pointed out by the neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry (circa 260 c.e.) – whom Jerome quotes in order to polemize against him – unmistakably the period when the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163 b.c.e.) first persecuted and then outlawed Judaism, the prevailing critical opinion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of which S. R. Driver's commentary entitled The Book of Daniel (first printed in 1900 and repeatedly reprinted) is a good representative, was that the entire book was produced during that period, though it was admitted that what we have dubbed Daniel A made use of older traditions. During the first half of the twentieth century, however, an impressive number of reputable scholars insisted that there was not the slightest reflection of, let alone allusion to, the Epiphanian situation in Daniel A without benefit of midrash, and therefore assigned a pre-Epiphanian date to it. During the third quarter of our century, however, there has been a retreat to the older critical view. That the reaction is a retrogression will, it is hoped, become clear from the following exposition. [There is considerable agreement between it and the commentary of L. F. Hartman and A. A. Di Lela, The Book of Daniel, AB 23 (Garden City, 1978) (who have adopted many of the present author's previously published views), but it was already in the editorial hopper when their volume came out.]