DANIEL, the name given to the central figure of the biblical book of Daniel (see below). Two other personages mentioned in the Old Testament bear this name ; see I Chron. iii. 1, Ezra viii. 2, Neh. x. 6. Daniel the prophet is known to us only as a character in Jewish fiction. He is mentioned in Ezek. xiv. 14, 20, between Noah and Job, as one of three foremost saints of Israel, and in xxviii. 3 as the type of wisdom. This may mean either that such stories as those in our book of Daniel were in circulation as early as the 6th century B.C., or (in the present writer's opinion) much more probably that the book of Ezekiel was written in the 3rd century B.C. (see below).
According to Dan. i. 3, the Babylonian chief eunuch was com manded to bring to the court certain youths of the Judaean cap tivity, "of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the nobles," to serve in the king's palace. It is apparent that Daniel is thought of as one of the nobles, or even of the royal line. Thus Josephus, Ant. x. ro, i, and the Lives of the Prophets (various Greek recensions), the latter adding that his birthplace was Upper Beth-Horon, and that he was buried in the royal vault in Babylonia. In the biblical account, the earlier narrator says that his life extended "to the first year of king Cyrus" (1. 21, cf. vi. 29), while the later author represents him as still living "in the third year of Cyrus" (x. 1). In the late rabbinical tradition (Midr. Sir ha-sirirn vii. 8) he is said to have returned to Jerusalem among the exiles freed by the royal edict. The Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (12th cent. A.D.) was shown his tomb in Susa, and notices of this tomb are found as early as the 6th century.
The book consists of two widely different portions: a didactic and popular narrative in successive episodes, chaps. i.–vi. ; and a series of prophetic visions, chaps. vii.–xii. Chaps. ii.–vii. are in Aramaic, the remainder is Hebrew. The unity of the whole has been maintained by the great majority of scholars (Bevan, Comm., pp. 6, 23 note). Recently, however, theories of composite authorship have gained ground; see Dalman, Worte Jesu (1898), p. 11, and the works named below. The differences between the two parts are indeed many and striking, notably in the following particulars. (I) Style, irrespective of the changes in language and subject matter. In the first half, including the Hebrew chapter i., it is generally simple and without any unusual features; in the second half it is obscure and difficult to a remarkable degree. (2) In the mental attitude of the author, and his portrayal of the character of Daniel, there is a profound difference to be seen. (3) The Persian words, so numerous in i.–vi., are entirely absent in vii.–xii. (4) There is nothing in the first half of the book to suggest the presence of the archenemy, Antiochus Epiphanes, always in the background of the second half ; contrast ii. 39-43 with vii. 23-25. (5) There is a manifest contradiction between i. 21 (Cf. vi. 29), the statement that Daniel "continued until the first year of Cyrus," and x. i, the account of the vision in that king's third year. It is natural to suppose that a later author had in mind the words of vi. 29, but forgot, or chose to dis regard, those of i. 21. (6) The use of the two languages finds its only convincing explanation in the theory of dual authorship (see following) .
The great majority of scholars at the present day agree that neither the whole book nor the first half, containing the narratives, can have been written in the time of the Babylonian monarchy, or even in the earlier part of the Persian period. The chief reasons for this conclusion are the following: 1. The position of the book among the Hagiographa seems to show that it was introduced after the final collection of the "Later Prophets" had been made. The collectors of the prophetical writings, who in their care did not neglect even the parable of Jonah, would hardly have ignored the record of so great a prophet and foreteller of future events as Daniel is represented to have been.
2. Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), who wrote about 18o B.e., in his otherwise complete list of Israel's leading spirits, makes no mention of Daniel.
3. The internal evidence is even stronger than the external, as will appear in the particulars which here follow. The historical inaccuracies in the narrative chapters are such as could be credited only to a writer who lived long after the events described. The statement at the very beginning of the book, that "in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim" Nebuchadrezzar besieged and captured Jerusalem, and carried the Jewish king and the vessels of the temple to Babylonia, finds no support in the history known to us, but seems to be the work of a writer who combined II Chron. xxxvi. 6 f. with II Kings xxiv. i. The use of Kasdim, "Chaldaeans," as the name of a class of magicians is a striking anachronism (see CHALDAEA) ; and the position of Daniel, a devout Israelite, as "the master of the magicians" at the Babylonian court (iv. 6) is more easily comprehensible in edifying romance than in actual history.
The four kingdoms of chap. ii. introduce a still greater difficulty. The first kingdom is the Babylonian (vs. 38), the fourth is the Greek empire (cf. chap. viii.) ; the third, immediately preceding the Greek (viii. 20 f., x. 2o), is the Persian. The identity of the second kingdom is then made certain by numerous passages; it is the kingdom of the Medes, whose reigning king, called "Dar ius the Mede," took possession of Babylonia upon the death of Belshazzar, and at the close of his reign was succeeded by Cyrus (v. 3o, vi. i, 29; cf. ix. i, x. i, xi. r). There was, however, in fact no Median power which came "after" the Babylonian (ii. 39) and in turn yielded the throne of Babylonia to the Persians (xi. 1). The name Darius is not Median, and we have certain knowledge that the immediate successor of Nabonidus and Bel shazzar as ruler of Babylonia was Cyrus. Comparison with the list of Persian kings in the book of Ezra seems to show that in the last centuries B.C. the Jewish learned tradition transposed the reign of Cyrus with that of Darius I. Hystaspis, the latter being re garded as king of the Medes. The reign of Cyrus was believed to have been immediately followed by those of Xerxes and Arta xerxes, Ezra iv. 5 (where the reference is to Darius II. Nothus), 6; cf. Montgomery, Comm., p. 423. (See EZRA and NEHEMIAH, Books.) The highly interesting narratives of Nebuchadrezzar and Darius can hardly be regarded as true pictures of these monarchs. The former erects a golden image and commands all the people in his realm to fall down and worship it at a given signal ; afterwards he confesses the God of Israel, and decrees that any subject of his who shall say anything against this God shall be cut in pieces. Darius commands by royal statute that "whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for 3o days," save of the king him self, shall be cast into the den of lions. After Daniel's rescue, the king confesses the God of Israel, and writes to all the peoples, nations, and languages, commanding them to fear this living God, whose dominion is everlasting. All this is plainly popular narration rather than historical record, even though one and another of the items have an undoubted basis of fact. The picture of Belshazzar in chap. v. has quite generally been pronounced unhistorical by modern scholars, but recent discoveries have tended to show that the historical background of the chapter is substantially cor rect. Documents in cuneiform prove that Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, exercised at Babylon such administrative powers as belonged to no mere crown prince; indeed, it is expressly stated that in the third year of Nabonidus the king entrusted the king ship to his eldest son, Belshazzar (Sidney Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts, 1924, pp. 84 sqq.) . This would seem to explain the dignity of "the third ruler in the kingdom," conferred upon Daniel. Whether, and in what way, Belshazzar could be correctly described as the lineal descendant ("son") of Nebuchadrezzar is a question which future discoveries may settle.
4. The late date of the second half of the book, chaps. vii.–xii., is evidenced in many ways, not merely by the fact that its author presents a detailed sketch of contemporary history, especially in chap. xi., extending down to the time subsequent to the desecra tion of the temple at Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes. In both literary and religious character it is a product of the later Greek period. The "apocalypse" as a distinct branch of Jewish litera ture makes its first appearance at this time, in the books of Daniel and Enoch, and continues henceforth in many similar compo sitions; its most characteristic features clearly represent a late stage in the history of Jewish thought. See the article "Apoca lypse" in the Jewish Encyclopaedia; Montgomery, Comm., 78-81. The way in which Daniel in ix. 2 refers to the authoritative scrip tures naturally suggests a time subsequent to the final redaction of the Law and the Prophets. A like impression is given by the angelology of the visions, including the names of the archangels Gabriel and Michael (cf. the book of Tobit). The doctrine of the resurrection, xii. 2, appears now for the first time in clear and definite form (it had already received expression in Is. xxvi. 19). Not only the resurrection of the righteous but also that of at least a part of the wicked among the Jews is predicted; and the fact well illustrates the growing prominence of the individual, as con trasted with the nation, in the type of theology here represented. Some scholars have seen in this doctrine, as well as in other features of the theology of the book, evidence of the influence of Zoroastrianism (thus Kohut, Bousset, and especially Eduard Meyer, Ursprung und Anfange des Christentums), but the argu ments in support of this theory are unconvincing.
5. Finally, the linguistic evidence points unequivocally to a date more than two centuries later than the supposed time of the prophet Daniel. Comparison of the language of the sufficiently abundant inscriptions and papyri shows beyond question that the Aramaic of Dan. ii.–vii. represents a type which cannot possibly be carried back of 3oo B.C. (Torrey, Ezra Studies, 161-166; G. R. Driver, Journal of Bibl. Lit. xlv. sqq., 323; and especially Baumgartner, "Das Aramaische im Buche Daniel," Z. A. T. W., xlv. [1927], 122 sqq.). The Hebrew of the book is also of a very late type; see Bevan, Comm., 28-35. The presence of Greek words, especially the names of the musical instruments in iii. 7, io, 15, adds its significant contribution to the many-sided argu ment.
The book, then, is not a record of historical fact, but in its first half an edifying romance, and in its second half a typical apocalypse. The narrative portion is excellently suited to its purpose, and in the handling of the successive episodes the author's ability as a story-teller is as evident as his religious fervour. Chapter v., in particular, is powerfully dramatic, a gem of the world's literature. The popularity of the stories is early attested by the existence of varying recensions. The old Greek version (as old as the middle of the 2nd century B.c.), now ex tant in a single m.s., supported by the Syriac Hexaplaric version, differs very considerably from the standard text in chaps. iv.–vi., and is here probably the rendering of a text which was repro duced from memory. (Our standard Greek is the rendering of Theodotion, 2nd century A.D.) The influence of the second half of the book, the visions, was even more powerful and pervasive than that of the stories, determining to a considerable extent the course of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition, and affecting pro foundly the early Christian scriptures. The visions are strongly patriotic in their immediate purpose, and there is abundant evidence that they gave in full measure the encouragement and the new religious impulse that they were designed to give. Very little attention is paid in them to the unseen world; their author does not concern himself with the secrets of the universe (con trast the book of Enoch). The eschatology of the book—im mensely important as it is, and strongly emphasized by the author himself—is given the briefest possible space, vii. 13 seq., 27, xii. 1-3. That to which everything else is subordinated is the pre diction of the immediate future. The Jews are soon to be de livered from their oppressors, and the faithful will triumph for ever. In making his final and most vivid prophecy, the writer at length passes over from the known to the unknown in a very strik ing manner. In chap. xi., verses 3-39 present in the form of a prediction the detailed history of the Greek empire in the East, from the conquest of Alexander down to the latter part of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. Verses 40-45 continue this with an almost equally vivid description of events which had not yet taken place, but were only expected by the writer, namely, the wars which should result in the death of Antiochus and the fall of his kingdom. The mysterious symbolism employed in the computation of various intervals of time is another highly char acteristic and significant feature of the Daniel visions. Thus, the "time, times, and a half" (xii. 7) which must elapse before the end which has been foretold; the "weeks" (seven-year periods) of ix. 24-27; and the enigmatic numbers of days in viii. 14 and xii. sqq. For the interpretation of these ever-fascinating riddles the reader is referred to the standard commentaries. The influence of the book of Daniel on the Messianic hope of the Jews is still another fact of great importance. The "man" ("son of man") of vii. 13 becomes henceforth a definitely Messianic title, as in the Book of Enoch and the Christian scriptures; on the other hand, the "anointed one" of ix. 26 doubtless refers to the high priest Onias III., who was assassinated at Antioch c. 171 B.C. (II Macc. iv. 33-38), referred to in xi. 22 as "the prince of the covenant." The strange manner of occurrence of the two languages, first Hebrew, then Aramaic, then Hebrew again, the alternation not corresponding to any changes in subject matter or literary char acter, furnishes a riddle which many scholars have been content to abandon as insoluble. The view that the book, as we have it, is in its original linguistic form and the work of a single author (Behr, Kamphausen) certainly leaves the principal difficulties un explained. It has been a favourite theory that the book was originally written in Hebrew, and that a portion of it was lost or destroyed in the Maccabaean wars and afterward supplied from an Aramaic version (so Lenormant, Bevan, Prince). "This hy pothesis stumbles on the fact that the Aramaic begins neatly at the appropriate point" (Montgomery, Comm., p. 92). There are other significant features, mentioned above, for which it fails to account. A theory first proposed by the present writer and adopted by Montgomery, Comm., recognizes two distinct halves of the book, an earlier and a later, and explains the alternation of languages as the work of the later writer, who himself devised this way of joining his own work to that of his predecessor. The original work, consisting of popular narratives written in Aramaic, comprised the first six chapters, vi. 29 forming the natural con clusion. The author of the apocalyptic chapters, vii.–xii., writing in the name of Daniel and with the purpose of supplementing the book already existing, composed his first vision, chap. vii., in Aramaic ; wrote the remaining chapters, viii.–xii., in Hebrew (the natural, almost essential, language of the older Jewish apoca lypses) ; and replaced the original Aramaic of i. 4a with his own rendering of it into Hebrew. An excellent place for making the transition was offered by ii. 4, the verse in which the Chaldaean soothsayers first address the king. This ingenious proceeding made of the whole an indissoluble unit. Chap. i. is indispensable to ii. seq., while on the other hand viii. seq. (Hebrew) could not pos sibly be separated from vii. (Aramaic), for the successive revela tions are manifestly all of one piece, and viii. Lb significantly alludes to the preceding vision.
The date of the latter half of the book (and thus of the com plete work) is given approximately by allusions to contemporary events. It was written in the time of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, after the desecration of the temple (viii. ii–I4),which took place in Dec. 167 B.c. (for this date, and the others here given, see Kolbe's epoch-making Beitriige zur syrischen und jiidischen Geschichte, Berlin, 1926). If, as some think, viii. 14 implies that the writer had seen the rededication of the sanctuary (Dec. 164), while on the other hand the passage xi. 40-45 shows, as all agree, that the death of Epiphanes (April 163) was still in the future, the visions are dated almost to the month.
The date of the first half of the book, the stories, is indicated with great probability by the allusions and the symbolism in chap. ii. The historical sketch terminates with the attempted alliance, through marriage, of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms (so most comms.) at a time when the contrast between the two was like that between iron and clay. This would perfectly apply to the political conditions at the time when the crushing blow was inflicted on the northern kingdom by Ptolemy III. Euergetes in 246 B.C., immediately after the murder of Antiochus II., the Seleu cid king, and his newly espoused wife, Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy II. At no other time in the history of the two kingdoms was the contrast so strongly marked; the northern kingdom was not only impotent, it was actually crumbling. The provinces of the Euphrates and Tigris were now lost ; Asia Minor was soon to follow ; the two sons of Antiochus II. were arrayed against each other. The most probable date for Daniel i.–vi. would seem to be between 246 and 24o, the year of the peace concluded between Ptolemy III. and Seleucus II. This dating satisfies all the con ditions known to us; nor is there any evident objection to it, if the fact of composition is accepted. Those few who postulate for Ezekiel a date c. 23o obtain an interval sufficient to account for the allusions to Daniel (see above) and for the mention of Ezekiel by the Siracide.
The most interesting part of the story is the latter half, which deals with the trial. It has been plausibly conjectured that the characteristic features of this section point to its composition about 100-90 B.C., when Simon ben Shetah was president of the Sanhedrin, and when the Pharisees were attempting to bring about a reform in the administration of the law courts. See Ball in the Speaker's Apocrypha, ii. 329 f.
The language was Semitic. The original of Theodotion's Greek seems to have been Hebrew ; notice especially the idiom (not Aramaic) in vs. 15. In the "Septuagint" version the evidence is not so clear; certain features seem rather to point to Aramaic. See further Ball in the Speaker's Apocrypha; Rothstein in Kautzsch's Apokryphen; D. M. Kay in Charles' Apocrypha.