Literary Character, Date, and Authorship of Daniel. It has generally been supposed, and is still maintained by some, that the book of Daniel is the work either of Daniel himself, or of a contemporary who composed the narratives and joined to them Daniel's own account of his visions. On this view the narratives are literal history, and the predictive Chapter s describe revelations of the future actually made to Daniel during or immediately after the Babylonian exile.
In recent times, however, a different view of the origin of the book has met with increasing acceptance. It is one which, though startling at first sight to the ordinary reader, has very much to be said in its favour, and ought not to be dismissed until the grounds on which it rests, and the possibility of reconciling it with the divine inspiration of the book, have been fairly considered. The modern conception of the book of Daniel is briefly this, that it dates not from the age in which Daniel's career is placed, but from the close of the period to which its visions refer—in other words from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes; that its apparent outlines of the future are really past history thrown by the author into the guise of ancient prediction; that the narratives, though founded more or less on historical tradition, are to be regarded chiefly as stories with a practical moral, and are valuable mainly on this account; that the aim of the writer, both in the narratives and in the view of history presented in the visions, was to encourage the Jews to constancy under the religious persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes; and that the time prophetic element of the book lies in its confident anticipations of the overthrow of God's enemies, the establishment of God's kingdom, the triumph of God's people, the resurrection of the dead, and the final reward of the righteous. The reasons for this view may be summarised as follows:—(1) The Contrast Between the Predictions in Daniel and other Old Testament Prophecies.Prophecy was not merely, nor chiefly, prediction of the future. The prophets were preachers of righteousness to their own times. Their messages conveyed rebuke, or warning, or encouragement to those among whom they lived. In this work the prophets spoke in God's name, and claimed a special knowledge of His will and purpose. Hence they made use of an element of prediction, foretelling the consequences of evil doing on the one hand, and the results of penitence and obedience on the other. But in so far as these predictions were definite, they related to the immediate future, dealing with the destinies of men and nations already existing, or with the issues of movements already in progress. Further, such predictions were always provisional. Their fulfilment depended upon certain moral circumstances and conditions. Threatened doom might be averted by repentance. Promised prosperity might be forfeited by disobedience. This principle, clearly stated in Jeremiah 18:7, is of universal application. The prophets undoubtedly spoke of the distant future also, but their predictions regarding this were always of a more or less general nature, consisting not of minute anticipations of particular historic events, but of ideal pictures of the triumph of righteousness, of the universal sway of God's kingdom, and of the advent of a perfect King and Saviour. The last-mentioned features are not wanting in Daniel, but in all the other respects which have been referred to, this book differs widely from those of the prophets properly so-called. Except in the solitary exhortation of Daniel 4:27, it contains no practical message for the age of the exile, in which Daniel is placed. Its teaching is expressly represented as sealed up for a future age (Daniel 8:26; Daniel 10:1; Daniel 12:4; Daniel 12:9). The earliest period (as interpreters of all schools agree) in which it was fitted to convey instruction and encouragement, was that of Antiochus Epiphanes, 400 years after the captivity. Again, it appears to predict, not in the conditional manner of the prophets, but with absolute certainty, the leading particulars of the course of history during these intervening centuries, the successive empires which arose after the fall of the Babylonian power (chs, 2, 7), the Persian invasion of Greece (Daniel 11:2), the conquests of Alexander the Great (Daniel 8:5; Daniel 8:21; Daniel 11:4), and the breaking up of his empire (Daniel 8:8; Daniel 8:22; Daniel 11:4), the minute details of the relations between the later kings of Syria and Egypt (Daniel 11:5), and finally the character and career of Antiochus Epiphanes (Daniel 8:9; Daniel 8:23; Daniel 11:21). The contents of Daniel 11 in particular are altogether unique in this respect, and have no resemblance to the predictions of OT. prophecy in general. So obvious is the contrast that some recent scholars, while seeking to maintain the earlier authorship of the book as a whole, have been constrained to regard Daniel 11 as an addition, composed after the events which it describes. But the exceptional features which appear so strikingly in this chapter are more or less characteristic of all the visions in the book, and point to the same conclusion with regard to them all.
(2) The Resemblance of Daniel to the so-called 'Apocalyptic' Books. At first sight the only alternative to the older view of the book of Daniel appears to be that it is a mere forgery which can have no right to a place in the Scriptures. But a closer acquaintance with the Jewish literature of the centuries before and after the beginning of the Christian era shows that this assumption is by no means necessary. There is a well-defined class of works, known as 'apocalyptic,' which, though unfamiliar in modern and Western literature, was largely represented during the period in question. The most important of them have only come to light during the last hundred years, and the study of them has shown that the very features which distinguish the book of Daniel from ordinary prophecy serve to connect it closely with this other class of writings. The most accessible example of 'apocalyptic' literature is the Second book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. The principal work of the kind, however, is the book of Enoch, and in addition to it there may be mentioned the book of the Secrets of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Sibylline Oracles. Many of these in their present form are composite works, and embody Christian as well as Jewish elements. But in so far as the original groundwork can be separated from the later additions, it may be said in general that these 'apocalyptic' books were written in times when the Jewish religion seemed in danger of being overthrown by heathen oppressors. Their authors preferred (perhaps from prudential motives) to conceal their own personalities and to put their messages to their contemporaries into the mouths of great figures in the past, such as Enoch, Noah, Moses, or Ezra. They based what they had to say about the present and the future upon a view of the world's history as providentially guided and controlled by God, and hence they frequently presented more or less extended surveys of the past under the form of predictions uttered by the great men of earlier times. It was also common for the history, thus disguised as prophecy, to be further wrapped up in symbolic visions. Thus, in the Second book of Esdras, which is to be dated shortly before or after 100 a.d., there is a veiled, yet quite recognisable, description of the Roman emperors of the first Christian century, which is said to have been given in answer to the fastings and prayers of Ezra in Babylon. In the earliest portion of the book of Enoch (dating from the second century b.c.) a prediction of the Deluge is attributed to the patriarch whose name it bears. The Assumption of Moses (written about the beginning of the Christian era) tells how Moses addressed to Joshua a long account of the future history of the Israelites, including the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the restoration of the Jews from captivity, the oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes, the rule of the descendants of the Maccabees, and that of Herod the Great. Now the predictive portions of Daniel have the closest resemblance to this kind of veiled history, and this analogy of itself suggests that the book may be reasonably regarded as a specimen of the' apocalyptic' class of literature, that it was written not earlier than the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and that the writer chose Daniel, a great sage whom he placed in the time of the Babylonian captivity, as the mouthpiece of his teaching. This view of the book of Daniel is borne out by its striking resemblance in several other respects to the 'apocalyptic' writings. In common with them it makes a large and peculiar use of vision and symbol. These, indeed, are found to a certain extent in some of the regular prophets, especially in Ezekiel and Zechariah, but it is only in Daniel and the 'apocalyptic' books that they are employed to represent the prolonged course of history. In Second Esdras, and the Apocalypse of Baruch, as well as in Daniel, the visions are granted after fasting and prayer. The 70 'weeks' of Daniel mark out the course of time according to an artificial scheme, which finds parallels in the 10 'weeks' of the book of Enoch, the 250 'times' of the Assumption of Moses, and the 12 epochs of world-history in Second Esdras. Finally, Daniel is the only OT. book in which angels have names given to them (Gabriel, Michael), and special nations assigned to their care (Daniel 8:16; Daniel 9:21; Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:21; Daniel 12:1). This is a feature which is still further developed in the other 'apocalyptic' books, where additional angelic names (Raphael, Phanuel, Uriel, etc.) appear. While these resemblances between Daniel and the 'apocalyptic' writings are undeniable, it has been supposed by the supporters of the older view of the book that Daniel is a work containing genuine predictions of detailed history, and has simply provided the model after which the spurious predictions of later 'apocalypses' were composed. But this leaves the special features of Daniel without any real parallel either in Scripture or outside of it, and it seems to be a more reasonable deduction from the facts that Daniel not only has supplied the pattern of the other 'apocalyptic' writings, but is actually a member, though the earliest and greatest one, of the same class of literature to which they belong.
(3) The Absence of External Evidence for the Earlier Date of Daniel. Along with the foregoing considerations there must be taken the important fact that there is nothing to show that the book of Daniel existed before the age of Antiochus Epiphanes. The mention of Daniel's name in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 14:14; Ezekiel 14:20; Ezekiel 28:3) has no bearing upon the date of the book, since these prophecies of Ezekiel were uttered, the one before, and the other immediately after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c., while the book of Daniel, at the earliest, cannot have been composed before the third year of Cyrus (536 b.c.) to which its narrative comes down (Daniel 11:1). Then, though in the English Bible Daniel appears among the prophetical books, it is not classed among them in the Hebrew Bible, but belongs to the miscellaneous group of 'Writings,' which forms the third division of the Jewish Canon. Now the Jewish Canon of the Prophets was not closed till after the date of Malachi (about 450 b.c.), and if the book of Daniel was in existence then it is not easy to understand why it should not have been included in this collection. It is probable, indeed, that 'the books' (Daniel 9:2), among which Jeremiah was included, are to be understood of the Canon of the Prophets as already complete when the book of Daniel was written. Again, the book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha, written about 200 b.c., contains (Daniel 44-50) a list of the worthies of Israel, in which Daniel is not found, though Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Zerubbabel and Joshua (from Ezra), and Nehemiah, are all mentioned. The earliest references to the contents of the book of Daniel are those in the Sibylline Oracles, an 'apocalyptic' work written about 140 b.c., and in 1 Maccabees, a book of the Apocrypha, composed about 100 b.c. This silence about Daniel, previous to the age of Antiochus Epiphanes (176-164 b.c.), is significant. Though the mere absence of allusions to the book before that time does not by itself prove that the book was not then in existence, it nevertheless lends an additional emphasis to the arguments for the 'apocalyptic' character and later date of the work, which have been already given.
(4) Historical Difficulties in Daniel. The book of Daniel seems to contain certain historical inaccuracies regarding the earlier period with which it deals, which present grave objections to the view that it was written by the Daniel of the exile, or by one of his contemporaries. These features, however, present no difficulty on the other view, and in no way diminish the value of the book of Daniel as an 'apocalyptic' work. It is not surprising that an 'apocalyptic' writer, casting into the form of prediction a series of past events, should be more accurate in describing those which are more recent than in his account of those which are more remote. Thus in Second Esdras the author confounds Ezra with Zerubbabel, calling him the son of Salathiel, and placing his vision in the 30th year of the captivity, about a century before Ezra's real time. The Apocalypse of Baruch, again, is dated in 'the twenty-fifth year of Jeconiah, king of Judah', though Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) only reigned 3 months and 10 days. In the same way while the visions of Daniel describe accurately and minutely the events of the age of Antiochus Epiphanes and his predecessors, the book is rather meagre and vague with regard to the history of Daniel's own time, and in particular its statements about the supposed date of Daniel's captivity, the position of Belshazzar and his relationship to Nebuchadnezzar, and the reign of Darius the Mede, are difficult to reconcile with our knowledge of the period derived from other reliable sources.
(5) Peculiarities in the Language of Daniel. The name of the Babylonian conqueror of Jerusalem is always spelt in Daniel as Nebuchadnezzar, while contemporary writers like Jeremiah and Ezekiel generally give the correct form Nebuchadrezzar (Nabû-kudurri-utsur), which is found on the monuments. The 'Chaldeans,' who in Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the same as the Babylonians in general, appear in Daniel as a special class of Babylonian wise men. This usage is found elsewhere only in the later classical writers. It points to a time when the Babylonian empire had passed away, and when the name formerly borne by all its people was confined to the sages or magicians who were the only survivors of its lost civilisation. Lastly, in addition to the Aramaic section of the book, there are in Daniel certain Persian and Greek words, and the evidence of date furnished by the language has thus been summed up by Professor Driver: 'The Persian words presuppose a period after the Persian empire had been well established: the Greek words demand, the Hebrew supports, and the Aramaic permits a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (b.Daniel 332).' All these lines of enquiry lead to the same general conclusion, that the book of Daniel belongs, as to its literary character, to the extensive class of 'apocalyptic' writings, and that its author lived not earlier than the age of Antiochus Epiphanes. The references to the setting up of the 'abomination of desolation' show that it was written after Antiochus had set up his heathen altar in the Temple at Jerusalem in 168 b.c., while on the other hand the general terms in which the death of Antiochus (164 b.c.) is spoken of indicate that the writer was not acquainted with the exact circumstances in which it took place. If the modern view of the character of the book be accepted its composition may be placed with certainty between these two dates.