Daniel 8 - Introduction

Chapter 8 The Rise of the Greek Empire and The Resulting Evil King Whose Persecution Brought About Such a Transformation of The True Remnant In Israel That The Time of God's Wrath Against Israel Came to An End (Until Israel Rejected The Messiah).

This chapter, which moves from the Aramaic of the previous six Chapter s to the Hebrew of chapter 1 and of the remainder of the book, both debunks the theory of a separate Medan empire in Daniel (as does Daniel 5:28) and explains at the same time why it was thought necessary. It was mainly because the horn (the small one) of chapter 7 was wrongly equated with the ‘small horn' of chapter 8, both of which were identified with Antiochus Epiphanes, a king arising from the Greek empire, who savagely persecuted Israel.

But small horns are small because they are those which start to come up later, that is they come up after others that precede them, therefore there can be any number of them. It depends what beast they are on. And in fact these two are presented so differently that to identify them would be to lose all sense of reality. What such interpreters fail to acknowledge is that Antiochus Epiphanes is in fact but an example of the greater Anti-God yet to come.

At this time the Babylonian empire was weakening and new powers were arising, first the Medes, and then the Persian empire under Cyrus II who rebelled against the Medes and conquered them (550 BC). He then conquered Lydia (547 BC) and Babylon (539 BC). His son Cambyses followed him (530 BC) and conquered Egypt, followed by Darius I (522 BC) and Xerxes (also named Ahasuerus - 486 BC). Both Darius and Xerxes sought to conquer Greece which was made up of a number of nation states, the last part of their world which remained unconquered. But, after some success, they finally failed. However, the empire continued and at last seemed on the point of taking over Greece as a result of bribing the Greeks to fight each other, thus weakening them considerably, but civil war developed in the empire preventing consolidation of the position, and they failed, although the Greeks of Asia did still remain under their control.

Then Philip of Macedon united the Greeks, followed by his son Alexander the Great (336 BC) who invaded the Persian empire, and having first ‘delivered' the Greeks in Asia, Alexander defeated the main Persian army in 333 BC. From there he went forward and conquered the whole of the Mediterranean world and beyond. But when he died (323 BC) his enfeebled son was unable to do anything and his empire was eventually divided up into four empires, two of which were the Seleucids, north of Palestine (Babylonia and Syria) and the Ptolemies, south of Palestine (in Egypt), the ‘king of the north' and ‘the king of the south'. Both empires were ‘Hellenised', that is, strongly influenced by Greek culture.

The Ptolemies ruled Palestine for the next one hundred years but interfered little in their internal and religious affairs, until eventually there arose a Seleucid king name Antiochus III, ‘the Great' (223-187 BC), who annexed Palestine in 198 BC, and showed the Jews great consideration. Meanwhile Hellenisation continued apace in Palestine, causing growing dissension between the Hellenised Jews with their new ideas, which at a minimum flirted with the Greek gods, and the more orthodox. Then Antiochus III, encouraged by Hannibal of Carthage who was now a refugee in Asia, advanced into Greece where he came into conflict with the might of Rome (192 BC), who drove him back from Greece and followed him into Asia, totally defeating him. Antiochus III died in 187 BC while plundering an Elamite temple for needed treasure, for he was still subject to Roman tribute. His son Seleucus IV (187-175 BC) who succeeded him began to meddle more in Jewish affairs (2 Maccabees 3).

Things, however, came to a head in the reign of his successor and brother Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) (175-163 BC) who had been a hostage in Rome. Threatened by both Rome and Egypt he determined to unify his empire round Hellenistic culture, including the worship of the Greek gods, which included himself as the manifestation of Zeus, (depicted on his coins), and sought every means of building up his treasury, plundering a number of temples in the cause. He took more seriously what others before him had claimed.

He was a strange man. He would mix among the common people and partake in their fun, and yet he could rob their temples, and treat them savagely, especially when he thought that they were being unreasonable.

Internal dissension among the Jews, largely about Hellenisation and who should be High Priest, meant that all parties looked for assistance to Antiochus, which was a great mistake, and eventually, as a result of opposition to his policies, and probably with his eye on the temple treasures, (he was an infamous robber of temples), he sacked Jerusalem and practically forbade the practise of Judaism, suspending regular sacrifices, destroying copies of the Scriptures and forbidding circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath. Moreover all without exception were to offer sacrifices to Zeus (see the Jewish histories 1Ma 1:41-64; 2Ma 6:1-11).

This was later followed by the erection of an altar to Zeus in the temple, on which he sacrificed a pig, an abomination to the Jews, a Desolating Horror. This latter took place in December 167 BC. While a deliberate snub to the Jews he almost certainly could not understand why there was so much fuss. No other part of his empire would have objected strongly to such moves.

This all resulted in a rebellion by the Jews under the Maccabees which enabled them through good generalship, great bravery and fortuitous circumstances to free themselves from Antiochus' yoke and restore and cleanse the temple in December 164 BC, three years after its desecration.

The vision in this chapter sees this period as pivotal for Israel. The persecutions of Antiochus were seen as the final and most furious manifestation of God's indignation against His people. The faithful remnant who resulted were seen as free from wrath and as opening the way for the coming of the Davidic Messiah, Jesus, (as depicted in chapter 7).