Daniel: The Last Thing I Said to the Council

At a Glance

Who wrote it: The stories in chapters 1 to 6 are older tales about a Jew at the courts of Babylon and Persia. The visions in chapters 7 to 12 were written by an unknown writer during the persecution under the Greek king Antiochus IV.

When: It is set from the late 600s to the 530s BC. Most scholars date its final form to about 165 BC, which makes it the latest book of the Hebrew Bible. In my day people called Daniel a prophet (Matthew 24:15), though later Jewish Bibles place his book among the Writings.

Where it fits: Set in the exile told at the end of 2 Kings, in Babylon and then Persia, from the late 600s to the 530s BC. Written about 165 BC, during the persecution under Antiochus IV (1 Maccabees 1).

Where I quote it: The Son of Man coming with the clouds, at my trial (Mark 14:62; Daniel 7:13). “The abomination of desolation” (Mark 13:14; Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11).

If you only read three chapters: Daniel 3, Daniel 7 and Daniel 12.

Words to Know

Apocalyptic — a kind of writing that reveals hidden things through visions, beasts and numbers, usually written to people suffering under an empire.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes — the Greek king of Syria who tried to stamp out the Jewish religion in 167 BC.

Abomination of desolation — the pagan altar Antiochus set up in the Temple. Your Bible may say desolating sacrilege.

Son of man — in Daniel’s Aramaic, bar enash, a human figure in a vision, given an everlasting kingdom.

Resurrection — the rising of the dead. Daniel 12 is its clearest promise in the Hebrew scriptures.

The Book in Brief

Daniel is written in two languages. From the middle of chapter 2 to the end of chapter 7 it is in Aramaic. The rest is in Hebrew. It also falls into two halves.

Chapters 1 to 6 are stories about Daniel and his three friends, young Jews taken from Jerusalem to Babylon and trained to serve the king. They refuse the king’s rich food and stay healthy on vegetables and water. In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue of gold, silver, bronze, and iron mixed with clay, and Daniel tells him what it means. In chapter 3 the three friends refuse to worship a golden statue and are thrown into a furnace, and they come out alive. In chapter 4 the king is struck down and lives like an animal until he honors God. In chapter 5 King Belshazzar holds a feast, a hand writes on the wall, and Babylon falls that night. In chapter 6, under King Darius, Daniel keeps praying to God in spite of a ban and is thrown to the lions, who do not touch him.

Chapters 7 to 12 are visions that Daniel tells in the first person. In chapter 7 four beasts rise from the sea, and then one like a son of man is given an everlasting kingdom. Chapter 8 shows a ram and a goat in battle, and a small horn that desecrates the Temple. In chapter 9 Daniel reads that Jerusalem’s ruin will last seventy years and prays for his people, and the angel Gabriel tells him of seventy weeks set for them. Chapters 10 to 12 are one long vision, in which an angel foretells the wars of a king of the north and a king of the south, and a ruler who sets up an abomination in the Temple. The book ends with a time of great trouble, the dead waking, some to everlasting life and some to shame, and Daniel told to seal up the book.

At my trial, the high priest asked me directly: Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

I said, I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky (Mark 14:61–62).

The first half of that was from Psalm 110. The second half was from Daniel 7. The high priest tore his clothes. That was the end of the trial.

So this book was in my mouth at the most dangerous moment of my life. Here is what it is.

When it was written

Daniel is set in Babylon from the late 600s to the 530s BC. A young Jewish exile named Daniel serves at the courts of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus, and receives visions of the future.

Most scholars think the book reached its final form around 165 BC, nearly four hundred years later. Here is why.

Daniel 11 describes the wars between the Greek kings of Syria and Egypt in remarkable detail, battle by battle, marriage by marriage, up to the persecution by Antiochus IV in 167 BC. Then, at verse 40, it predicts how Antiochus will die: in the land of Israel, between the sea and the glorious holy mountain (Daniel 11:45). In fact, he died in Persia, in 164 BC.¹

The book is precise about everything up to about 165 BC and wrong about what happened next. That is how you can tell when a book like this was written.

The stories also get the 500s wrong. Daniel calls Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar and the king of Babylon. Babylonian records show that Belshazzar was the son of a later king, Nabonidus, and ruled for his father but was never king himself. And Darius the Mede, who takes Babylon in Daniel 5:31, is unknown to history. Babylon fell to Cyrus the Persian.²

Some scholars defend the traditional date. But a pagan philosopher named Porphyry made this argument about Daniel 11 in the 200s AD, and most modern scholars agree with him.¹

None of this makes Daniel less important. It tells you who the book was for. It was written for people being tortured for their faith, to tell them that the empire would not last.

Go deeperOther clues in the argument over Daniel’s date

The case for a date around 165 BC rests on more than the mistakes about Belshazzar and Darius. Other clues are argued over, and each side has an answer.

Greek words. The orchestra that plays before the golden statue includes instruments with Greek names: a lyre, a harp and a third that looks like the Greek word symphōnia (Daniel 3:5). Critics say these names fit a book written after Alexander the Great. Defenders reply that Greek soldiers, traders and craftsmen had been in Babylon long before him, and their instruments could have come with them.³

A list that leaves Daniel out. Around 180 BC a teacher named Ben Sira wrote a long poem in praise of famous men. It names Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve prophets, but not Daniel. Some take that to mean the book did not yet exist. Others point out that he also leaves out Ezra, so his silence proves little.⁴

Early copies. At least eight copies of Daniel were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the oldest is dated to the late 100s BC.⁵ That shows the book was valued and spread quickly. It cannot settle whether the book was forty years old when that copy was made or four hundred.

But if not

The stories in the first half are about refusing to bow.

In Daniel 3, King Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden statue ninety feet high and orders everyone to fall down and worship it when the music plays. Three young Jews, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, refuse. The king threatens to throw them into a blazing furnace.

Their answer is one of the bravest things in the scriptures:

If it happens, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up (Daniel 3:17–18).

But if not. They did not know whether God would save them. They refused anyway.

They are thrown in, and the king looks into the fire and sees four men walking, unharmed, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods (Daniel 3:25).

Mercy to the poor

In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great tree cut down. Daniel interprets it: the king will be driven out to live like an animal until he learns who really rules. Then Daniel gives the most powerful man in the world some advice:

Break off your sins by righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your tranquility (Daniel 4:27).

The prophet tells the emperor that the way to make up for his sins is to show mercy to the poor. The emperor does not listen, and ends up eating grass like an ox.

Go deeperThe king who went mad, and the king who built Babylon

Babylon’s own records say nothing of Nebuchadnezzar living like an animal. But a Dead Sea Scroll tells almost the same story about the last king of Babylon.

Nabonidus ruled from 556 to 539 BC. Babylonian texts say he left the capital for about ten years and lived at Tayma, an oasis in northern Arabia, while his son ruled at home.⁶ The scroll, called the Prayer of Nabonidus, is a few torn pieces of Aramaic found at Qumran. In it the king says he was struck by a terrible illness at Tayma for seven years, until a Jewish exile there forgave his sins. Then he writes down his story to honor the God Most High.⁷ Many scholars think the two stories grew from one older tale, and that over the years the king’s name changed from Nabonidus, who really did go away, to Nebuchadnezzar, who was better remembered.

The pride at the start of the story in Daniel does sound like Nebuchadnezzar. He walks on his roof and says, Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty? (Daniel 4:30). The ruins agree. German excavators led by Robert Koldewey dug at Babylon from 1899 to 1917. They uncovered the great Ishtar Gate and the processional way that runs to it, and they found Nebuchadnezzar’s name stamped on bricks across the city.⁸ He did build Babylon, and his own inscriptions boast of it.

Weighed and found wanting

In Daniel 5, King Belshazzar throws a feast and drinks from the gold cups looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. A hand appears and writes on the wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

Daniel reads it. You are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting (Daniel 5:25–27). That night, the kingdom falls.

The lions

In Daniel 6, the king’s officials trick him into signing a law that no one may pray to anyone but the king for thirty days. Daniel goes home, opens his windows toward Jerusalem and prays three times a day, as he always had (Daniel 6:10). He is thrown to the lions, and the lions do not touch him.

The stone

In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a huge statue: a head of gold, chest of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with clay. Then a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet and smashed it. The stone became a mountain that filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:31–35).

The metals are four empires, one after another. The stone is a kingdom that God sets up, which will never be destroyed (Daniel 2:44–45).

When I quoted the stone which the builders rejected in the Temple, Luke remembers me adding, Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but it will crush whomever it falls on to dust (Luke 20:18). That is Daniel’s stone, rolled together with the Psalm.

One like a son of man

Daniel 7 is the vision I quoted at my trial.

Four beasts rise from the sea, each more terrible than the last. The fourth has iron teeth and ten horns, and a little horn that speaks arrogantly. Then thrones are set, and the Ancient of Days takes his seat, with hair like wool and a throne of fire. The beast is killed.

And then:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him (Daniel 7:13–14).

In Aramaic, one like a son of man means one like a human being. After a parade of beasts, which are empires, comes a human figure, and the kingdom is given to him.

Who is he? Later in the chapter, the kingdom is given to the people of the saints of the Most High (Daniel 7:27). Many readers take the human figure to stand for the faithful people as a whole. Others think he is their heavenly champion, the angel Michael.⁹ By my time, many people read him as a single figure to come.

At my trial, I claimed that figure. The beasts were the empires. I was saying that the human one would outlast them.

The abomination of desolation

In 167 BC, Antiochus IV outlawed the Jewish religion. He banned circumcision and the Sabbath, burned scrolls of the Law, and set up a pagan altar in the Temple in Jerusalem, where pigs were sacrificed (1 Maccabees 1:41–64; Josephus, Antiquities 12.253).

The book of Daniel calls that altar the abomination that makes desolate (Daniel 11:31; 12:11). It was the worst thing my people could imagine.

The Maccabees fought back with swords and won. They cleansed the Temple in 164 BC, and that is what the festival of Hanukkah remembers. Daniel speaks of a little help for the faithful (Daniel 11:34), but the heroes of Daniel are not soldiers. They are the wise, who teach and suffer and die without bowing.

When I sat on the Mount of Olives and spoke about the Temple’s future, I said, When you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, then let those in Judea flee to the mountains. And Mark added, in his own voice, let the reader understand (Mark 13:14). Mark was writing around the time the Romans were besieging Jerusalem. His readers did understand.

The seventy weeks

Daniel 9 reinterprets Jeremiah’s seventy years of exile as seventy weeks of years, 490 years, with the Anointed One cut off near the end (Daniel 9:24–27). Many scholars think that anointed one was the high priest Onias III, murdered in 171 BC.¹⁰

Few passages in the Bible have fed more date-setting. Christians have used Daniel’s numbers, these weeks among them, to land on my death, on the year 1844 and much else. Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of his age, spent years on Daniel and wrote a book about its prophecies. In his private papers he reckoned that Daniel’s 1,260 prophetic days would not run out before the year 2060.¹¹

When my friends asked me for a date, I told them no one knows the day or the hour, not even me (Mark 13:32).

Those who sleep in the dust

The book ends with the clearest promise of resurrection in the Hebrew scriptures.

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine as the brightness of the expanse (Daniel 12:2–3).

It was written for people who were being killed for keeping the Law. What about them? Would they just be gone? Daniel says no. They will wake.

In my day, the Pharisees believed this and the Sadducees did not. I sided with the Pharisees on it. And I said, Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43).

Your Catholic or Orthodox Bible has more of Daniel than a Protestant one: a prayer and a hymn sung in the furnace, and two more stories, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. They come from the Greek translation.¹²

Go deeperWhy Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have a longer Daniel

The longer Daniel comes from the Greek translation of the scriptures that my followers used. It has three extra passages. One is a prayer and a hymn sung by the three young men in the furnace. The second is Susanna, in which Daniel, as a boy, saves a falsely accused woman by questioning her two accusers, both elders, one at a time. The third is Bel and the Dragon, in which Daniel shows that the food left for Babylon’s idol is eaten by its priests, and then destroys a sacred dragon the Babylonians worship.

Around AD 240, a Christian scholar named Julius Africanus wrote to Origen that Susanna could not be original, because the Greek contains wordplay that works only in Greek. Asked under which tree he saw the couple, one elder says a mastic tree, schinos, and Daniel answers that the angel will cut him, schisei, in two. The other says an evergreen oak, prinos, and Daniel answers that the angel will saw him, prisai, in two. Origen replied that Jews might have dropped such stories from their own copies because they showed the elders in a bad light.¹³

The Greek Daniel itself exists in two forms. A second version, tied to the name of Theodotion, follows the Hebrew and Aramaic more closely, and the churches came to read it in place of the older Greek. When Jerome made his Latin translation, he put Susanna and Bel and the Dragon at the end of the book and noted that they were not in the Hebrew.¹⁴ That is why Catholic Bibles number them Daniel 13 and 14.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Daniel 7:13–14, then Mark 14:61–64.

You will find: the vision of one like a son of man, and my use of it at my trial.

Then read Daniel 3:16–18. Find the words but if not.

The Short Version

• Daniel is set in the late 600s and 500s BC but most scholars date it to about 165 BC, during Antiochus IV’s persecution. It is accurate up to then and wrong about Antiochus’s death.
• Its stories are about refusing to bow: “But if not, … we will not serve your gods.”
• Daniel told the emperor to break off his sins by showing mercy to the poor.
• At my trial I claimed the one like a son of man coming with the clouds, who outlasts the beasts.
• Daniel 12 is the clearest promise of resurrection in the Hebrew scriptures, written for martyrs.