Seminary Lecture - The Books of Daniel

Nigel Nicholson, May 18, 2011

[The following begins with a handout given attendees followed by the lecture proper.]

The Handout

The Books of Daniel

Nigel Nicholson, Reed College

Grace Memorial, May 18, 2011, 7:00 pm

Outline

I.     Introduction: Daniel’s strangeness

• Date
• Language: Hebrew and Aramaic
• The Septuagint and alternative Daniels

II.    Daniel’s Narrative Structure

II.    Daniel’s Characters I: Daniel and Bilingualism

III.   Daniel’s Characters II: The King and Narration

IV.    Daniel in its historical context

Timeline of Empires (all dates BCE)

Pre-Babylon:     Unified Israel divides after death of Solomon in 922 into Northern Kingdom (“Israel”) and smaller, weaker Southern Kingdom (“Judah”), which included Jerusalem. Israel falls to Assyrians in 722/1; Judah becomes vassal state. Assyrian capital Nineveh destroyed in 612 by Medes and Babylonians in alliance.

Babylonians       Judah comes into their power in 605 after they defeat Egypt. In 597, Nebuchadnezzar pillages the Temple in Jerusalem; in 586 he razes the Temple, deports elites to Babylon. Belshazzar was co-regent in charge of Babylon in final years of Babylonian rule.

Medes               Never control Jerusalem; taken over by Persians in 550.

Persians            Cyrus the Great takes Media in 550, and Babylon in 539. Encourages return of exiles. Temple rebuilt c.465 under later Persian King. Darius the Great ruled Persia 522-486.

Macedonians (Greeks) Alexander conquers Persia in 331. At his death in 323, his generals squabble over the pieces. Ptolemy grabs Egypt (incl. Jerusalem) and Seleucus Syria. Seleucus descendants, either called Seleucus or Antiochus gradually gain in power, and under Antiochus III (the Great!) take control of Jerusalem in 198. Almost take Egypt in 168/7, but turned back by Romans. Antiochus IV then pillages and desecrates Temple in 167; this precipitates the Maccabean revolt. He dies on campaign in Parthia in 164, and his son Antiochus V returns the Temple to the Jews (see 2 Macc. 22-38). Daniel composed soon after this. In 141 Judah achieves a kind of semi-independence.

Romans              Take control of Judah in 63 BCE under Pompey the Great. Semi-independence continues.

Map of Daniel    

c.1   [Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon] Daniel refuses food      

c.2   [Nebuchadnezzar] Dream of clay-footed statue             

c.3   [Nebuchadnezzar] Golden statue                                             

c.4   [Nebuchadnezzar] Dream of Tree                                           

c.5   [Balshazzar of Babylon] Writing on the Wall                    

c.6   [Darius the Mede] Daniel in the lion’s den                                                                 

c.7       [Belshazzar] Dream of “four mighty beasts” 

c.8       [Belshazzar] Dream of Ram & Goat 

c.9       [Darius the Mede] Revelation of Gabriel 

c.10-12 [Cyrus] Revelation of One in Human Form

[Septuagint --         

c.13      Bel and the Dragon

c.14      Susannah and the Elders]

1. Prophecies of the End of the Desecration of the Temple (all Daniel quotations from the Jewish Study Bible)

• Dan. 7.25: “a time, [two] times and half a time”  [= 3.5 units] = Dan. 12.7
• Dan. 9.27: “half a week”  [=3.5 days]
• Dan. 8.14: “twenty-three hundred evenings and mornings” [=1150 days = 3.x years]
• Dan. 12.11: 1290 or 1335 days [=3.5 years on various calendars?]

2. Language: “The Chaldaeans spoke to the King in Aramaic…” (Dan. 2.4)

3. Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, produced in Alexandria, c.300-100 BCE.

They, like men inspired, prophesied, not one saying one thing and another another, but every one of them employed the self-same nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had suggested all their language to them. (Philo of Alexandria, Life of Moses VII.37, trans. C.D.Yonge.)

4. Promotions

• The king then elevated Daniel and gave him very many great gifts, and made him governor of the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect of all the wise men of Babylon. (Dan. 2.48)
• The king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon. (Dan. 3.30)
• Then, at Belshazzar’s command, they clothed Daniel in purple, placed a golden chain on his neck, and proclaimed that he should rule as one of the three in the kingdom. (Dan. 5.29)
• None in Bel and the Dragon and Susannah and the Elders

5. “[Daniel] illustrated how strict Jewish piety is not only compatible with success at a foreign court, but is precisely the key to such success.” John Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 73.

6. The Writing on the Wall. Daniel 5.25-28, Daniel speaking (the inscription is in Aramaic, and perhaps means “two half-minas make a mina”):

‘And this is the writing that is inscribed: MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN. This is its meaning: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.’

7. Daniel as translator

• Dan. 1.4: “teach them the writings and language of the Chaldaeans”
• Dan. 1.7: “The chief officer gave them new names: he named Daniel Belteshazzar…”
• Daniel itself is a Hebrew frame with an Aramaic center, from 2.4 to 7.28

8. Temple Vessels

• NRSV 1 Macc. 1.20-23: “After subduing Egypt, Antiochus …went up against Israel with a strong force. He arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar, the lampstand for the light and all its utensils. …He took the silver and the gold and the costly vessels; he took also the hidden treasures that he found.”
• Dan. 1.1-2: “…King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. The Lord delivered King Jehoiakim of Judah into his power, together with some of the vessels of the house of God.”

8. Who narrates?

• Dan. 7.1-2: “In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and a vision of his mind in bed. Afterward he wrote down the dream. Beginning the account, Daniel related the following: “In my vision at night, I saw the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea.”
• Dan. 4.1: “I, Nebuchadnezzar, was living serenely in my house, flourishing in my palace.”

The Septuagint version of Daniel

I. Septuagint, Daniel, c.13 (“Bel and the Dragon”), New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2007). Numbers as in the Theodotion version of c 150 CE, the usual version used in biblical apocrypha.

1 From a prophecy of Hambakoum the son of Iesous of the tribe of Levi.

2 There was a certain person, a priest, whose name was Daniel, son of Habal, a companion of the king of Babylon. 3 And there was an idol, Bel, which the Babylonians would revere. Now, every day they were squandering on it twelve bushels of choice flour and four sheep and six measures of oil. 4 And the king would revere him, and the king would go every day and would do obeisance to him. But Daniel would pray to the Lord. And the king said to Daniel, “Why do you not do obeisance to Bel?” 5 And Daniel said to the king, “I revere no one except the Lord God, who created heaven and earth.” 6 So the king said to him, “Is this one, then, not a god? Do you not see how much is spent for him every day?”

7 And Daniel said to him, “Not at all! Do not let anyone mislead you, for this one is only of clay inside and bronze outside. Moreover, I swear to you by the Lord God of the gods that this one has never eaten anything.” 8 And angered, the king called the leaders of the temple and said to them, “Produce the one who eats the things prepared for Bel. But if not, you shall die, 9 or Daniel, who says they are not being eaten by him.” But they said, “It is Bel himself who eats them.” Then Daniel said to the king, “Let it be so. Unless I prove that Bel is not eating them, I shall die, and all those with me.”

10 Now there were seventy priests of Bel, not counting wives and children. So he brought the king into the idol’s temple. 11 And the food was set out in the presence of the king and Daniel, and the mixed wine was brought in and set out before Bel. And Daniel said, “You, yourself, see, O king, that these things are set down. You, then, seal the bolts of the shrine when it is closed.” Now the word pleased the king. 14 Now Daniel commanded those with him, after everyone departed from the temple, to strew the whole shrine with ashes, though no one else except him knew. And then, as he sealed the shrine, he commanded that it be sealed with the king’s signet and with the signets of certain illustrious priests. And so it happened.

15-17 And it happened on the next day that they went to the place. (But the priests of Bel, after entering through false doors, had eaten everything laid out for Bel and had drunk the wine.) And Daniel said, “men, priests, examine your seals, whether they remain. And you also, O king, observe carefully lest anything be out of order to you.” And they found the seal as it was, and they broke the seal. 18 And when they opened the doors, they saw everything that had been set out consumed and the tables empty. And the king was thrilled and said to Daniel, “Bel is great, and there is no deceit in him!” 19 And Daniel laughed exceedingly and said to the king, “Come, see the deceit of the priests.” And Daniel said, “O king, these footprints, whose are they?” 20 And the king said, “Of men and women and children.”

21 And he went to the house where the priests were staying, and they found Bel’s food and the wine. And Daniel showed the king the false doors through which the priests would enter and consume what was set out for Bel. 22 And the king brought them out of Bel’s temple and handed them over to Daniel. And he gave the provision that was for him to Daniel, but he destroyed Bel.

23 And there was a dragon in that same place, and the Babylonians would revere it. 24 And the king said to Daniel, “Surely you shall not also say about this one, that he is bronze! Look, he loves and eats and drinks! Do obeisance to him.” 26 And Daniel said, “O king, give me permission, and I will slay the dragon without iron or club.” And the king agreed with him and said, “I have given it to you.”

27 And taking thirty minas of pitch and fat and hair, Daniel boiled them together, and having made a cake, he threw it into the mouth of the dragon. And after eating, it burst open. And he showed it to the king, saying, “Aren’t these the things you revere, O king?”

28 And all those from the country assembled against Daniel and said, “The king has just now become a Judaean. He has destroyed Bel and killed the dragon.” 30 And when the king saw that the crowd from the country had united against him, he called his companions and said, “I am giving Daniel over for destruction.” 31-2 Now, there was a pit in which seven lions would be fed, to which the conspirators of the king would be delivered. And every day two bodies condemned to death would be provided for them. And the crowd threw Daniel into that pit so that he might be devoured and not even have the good fortune of a burial. And Daniel was in the pit six days.

33 And it happened on the sixth day, and Hambakoum was having bread broken in a bowl of boiled soup and a jar of mixed wine and was on his way to the plain to the reapers. 34 And an angel of the Lord spoke to Hambakoum, saying, “This is what God says to you: the food that you have, take it to Daniel, the one of Baltasar [=Belshazzar], in the lion’s pit in Babylon.” 35 And Hambakoum said, “Lord God, I have not seen Babylon, and I do not know where the pit is.” 36 And when the angel of the Lord had taken Hambakoum by the hair of his head, he set him down above the pit that was in Babylon.

37 And Hambakoum said to Daniel, “Rise! Eat the food that God has sent you.” 38 And Daniel said, “For the Lord God who does not forsake those who love him has remembered me.” 39 And Daniel ate. Then the angel of the Lord put Hambakoum whence he took him on that same day.

40 Now after these things the king came out mourning Daniel.  And when he stooped down into the pit, he saw him seated! 41 And when had shouted out the king said, “The Lord God is great, and there is no other besides him!” 42 And the king brought Daniel out form the pit and threw into the pit those responsible for his ruin before Daniel, and they were devoured.

II. Septuagint, Daniel, c.14 (“Sousanna”), New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2007).

5 And that year two elders from the people were appointed as judges, concerning whom the Master had said, “Lawlessness came forth from Babylon, from elders who were judges, who were supposed to govern the people.” 6 And cases from other cities would come to them.

7 These men, when they saw a woman – elegant in appearance, wife of their brother, one of the sons of Israel, named Sousanna daughter of Chelkias, wife of Ioakim – walking about in her husband’s orchard, 8 and since they lusted after her, 9 they diverted their mind and turned away their eyes in order not to look to heaven nor to remember to make right decisions. …

19 And one said to the other, “Let us go to her!” So having agreed, they approached her and tried to force her. 22 And the Judaean lady said to them, “I know that if I do it, it is death for me, and if I do not, I will not escape your hands. 23 But it would be better for me to fall into your hands by not doing it than to sin before the Lord.” …

28 And when they came to the city assembly, where they sojourned, all the sons of Israel who were there deliberated. 29 And when the two elders and the judges stood up they said, “Send for Sousanna daughter of Chelkias, who is the wife of Ioakim.” … 36 Then the two elders said, “We were walking around in her husband’s orchard, 37 and as we were going around the walk, we saw this woman resting with a man.” …40 …the whole assembly believed them. 44-5 And lo, there was an angel of the Lord as she was being taken off to be executed. And the angel, just as he was ordered, gave a spirit of understanding to a youth, being Daniel.

48 Then Daniel parted the crowd, and after he stood among them, he said, “Are you such fools, O sons of Israel? Without examining or learning the plain truth, do you kill a daughter of Israel? 51 And now separate them far from one another for me so that I can test them.” … 52 And he summoned one of them… 54 “Now, therefore, under what tree and at what sort of place of the orchard did you see them with one another?” And the impious one said, “Under a mastich.” … 56 And after he had this one removed, he told them to bring the other to him. Then he also said to that one, …”Under what tree and in what place of the garden did you catch them having intercourse together?” Then, he said, “Under an evergreen oak.”

60-2 And the whole assembly shouted for the youth, how out of their own mouths he had established them both as false witnesses by their own admission. And as the law states explicitly, they did to them just as they had wickedly intended against their sister. And they silenced them and took them away and threw them into a ravine. Then the angel of the Lord threw fire in their midst. And guiltless blood was saved that day. For this reason youths are beloved by Iakob, because of their simplicity. And as for us, let us watch out for young able sons. For youths will be pious, and a spirit of knowledge and understanding shall be with them forever and ever.

Some Reading!

M. Clermont-Ganneau, “Mene, Tekel, Peres, and the Feast of Belshazzar,” Hebraica 3.2 (1887): 87-102

John Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York, 1984)

David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford, 2^nd ed., 2011)

Erich Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley, 1998)

The Lecture

Introduction

Daniel may be my favorite book in the Bible. It is exceptional for a number of reasons – some unique, some shared, but when they are all added together, they make for a fascinating combination. Apart from the general enjoyment of the narratives, and the vivid images – and the great sayings (feet of clay, writing on the wall – Crystal is very good on these), I want to pick out three particular qualities that make Daniel stand out:

First, in contrast to any other book in the Jewish bible, Daniel can be dated pretty precisely, to around 164 B.C.E. This was an important moment for Jews, particularly those living in Jerusalem. In 167, the Seleucid king who ruled Jerusalem, Antiochus IV or Antiochus Epiphanes, had pillaged the temple and rededicated it to the Greek god Olympian Zeus. This had touched off a rebellion, known as the Maccabean revolt, which was at least partly responsible for Antiochus’ son, Antiochus V, repealing this sacrilege on his father’s death in 164. Judas Maccabeus is allowed to rededicate the temple in December of that year, and the Daniel we have now was composed soon after. I will come back to this history, but my point here is that we can locate the creation of this text in a specific city and in a specific, brief window of time, and that is unique.

You may ask how we know this. The answer is that the prophecies that appear in the second half of Daniel start going wrong right around the death of Antiochus. Of the four prophecies, all seem to get the death of Antiochus approximately right – placing it either 3 or 3.5 years after the desecration of the Temple [HDT 1]. Chapters 7 and 12 specify the reign of the godless king as “a time, [two] times and half a time” (7.25 and 12.7), which seems to be in accordance with the equally poetic “half a week,” ie three and a half days (9.27). Chapter eight is more precise, and perhaps more correct. Its 2300 mornings and evenings, ie 1150 days, equates to about three years and change (8.14); the different suggestions in 12.11 of 1290 or 1335 days (12.11) are understood by the Oxford Annotated Bible as added when the 1150 day-period had passed without the coming of the Messiah. My opinion is that such would make the text look ridiculous, and more likely is the different totals represent different efforts to calculate the number of days in 3.5 years. Due to the use of lunar months, the number of days in a year was quite variable. 1290, for example equates to 3.5 years of 30-day months + one additional intercalary month to recalibrate.

At any rate, beyond this time, the prophecies become vaguer and less accurate, so we usually assume that this is an example of vaticinium ex eventu, that is prophecy written after the fact when it gets it right. Hence the date. But it is worth noting that parts of the prophecy, particularly of Antiochus’ conquest of Egypt in chapter 11, are simply wrong. That is, that there are strands of prophecy written before 164, but preserved in our post-164 text.

Ok, so that is the first interesting fact about Daniel – Daniel is precisely dateable. Second, Daniel is written in two languages. It begins and ends in Hebrew, but from chapters 2.4 to 7.28 Daniel is in Aramaic. Aramaic was the language of business and official communication in the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires. Jews would have spoken Aramaic in Jerusalem, as their first language. This bilingualism is most unusual for the Hebrew bible: Aramaic is found elsewhere only in one verse of Jeremiahand parts of Ezra. And it is rather playfully signaled. The Aramaic begins to be used at the exact moment when the Chaldaeans are said to be speaking in Aramaic [HDT 2] – yet it does not conclude when they stop speaking! Daniel has a real sense of play that is central to its humanity.[i]

Third, and my favorite, is that we have more than one Jewish version of Daniel. As some of you may know, there are two apocryphal texts of Daniel, which are called in Christian bibles, or at least Anglican bibles, Bel and the Dragon, and Susannah and the Elders. These are central to my talk today and are reproduced on the handout. What makes them apocryphal is that they did not appear in the canonical version of the Hebrew bible, but did appear in the famous Greek translation known as the Septuagint – appearing as chapters 13 and 14. This translation was made over a period of perhaps 200 years, beginning around 300 BCE, in Alexandria (in Egypt). Alexandria was not only the center of Greek scholarship and science, but also the center of Greek-speaking Judaism. Tradition has it that the translation was bankrolled by the Ptolemies – a dynasty spring from one of Alexander’s generals, and that it was completed by a group of 70 scholars – working independently they are said to have produced the same translation [HDT 3]. At any rate, these 70 scholars give the translation its name, the Septuagint – since this is the Greek word for 70. I always tell my students that it is key that we recognize that this was not a Christian bible – this predates the teachings of Jesus and the mission of Paul by at least a century; it is thoroughly Jewish production. But this means that with Daniel we must confront the fact that there is more than one Jewish bible. We have two books of Daniel.

And we could have had more. One of my premises today is that Daniel is the product of a long tradition of folk legends concerning this character, Daniel. When these stories about Daniel began to be told, or which stories came first, is unclear; a Daniel character may or may not be mentioned twice in the biblical book of Ezekiel, but if one is mentioned, it appears with little color or character. But Daniel must have been a more colorful figure in the popular imagination long before the composition of the book of Daniel, as John Collins suggests. Like the character Odysseus – or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton – Daniel surely became a magnet for stories of certain types (imprisonment in lions’ dens, trusting in God, loyal service to a foreign king), displacing other characters from them, and generating variants that told essentially the same story.

We will look at this form later. But for now we should note that there is both some surprising historical accuracy in the legends, and some horrible inaccuracies. One example of each. Darius the Mede is a travesty. The Darius who ruled Babylon was a Persian King; the Persians had defeated the Medes a century earlier, and in fact the Medes never ruled Babylon. On the upside, it was long thought that Belshazzar was equally misconceived; we have long known that the king of Babylon at the time of its sack by the Persian Cyrus was Nabonidus. Well, thanks to more recent discoveries, we now know that Nabonidus reigned with a co-regent, his son Belshazzar, who was in fact in charge of Babylon – since Nabonidus had moved his center of operations to the Arabian peninsular, much to the horror of some Babylonians. Daniel gets this right, but, you may recall, calls Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar – one of the great villains of Jewish history – who razed the first temple of Solomon. You can’t win them all – the legends have old roots, but much have been lost and changed.

So, these are the four things that make Daniel particularly striking. My goal today is to fit this text to its context, to try to explain why this particular text was put together in 164 or 163. The authors of this text had choices – choices in selecting which Daniel legends to use, and choices in adapting, altering and translating the legends they did pick as they formed them into an integrated whole. I am going to try to unpack those choices – by using the texts they did not choose as comparisons. What Daniel offers is a snapshot – a moment when a choice was made to shape a fluid tradition in a certain way. We should think of the figure of Daniel as a kind of platform on which competing ideas of Jewish identity were projected and promoted – much as say the muscled male body functions right now. Different Jewish groups used this platform to promote their ideas of Jewish identity, of what being Jewish meant. They fought to define certain sorts of narrative as Daniel narratives, to define Daniel as a certain kind of hero. The platform brought a ready-made prestige; the aim of each group was to claim that prestige for its own idea.

I thought I would briefly give the context for this lecture. I did not write it for Grace Memorial, though I did rewrite it! I wrote it for a Humanities course I teach at Reed where we study the larger Greco-Roman world, of which Jews and later Christians also were a part. Our emphasis is very much on the way that historical changes shape artistic production, and how art is used to express identity, challenge identity or more usually explore the contradictions in one’s identity – and as you will see that is very much my goal here today. I am using Daniel as a window onto how one group of Jews in Jerusalem, confronting the recent desecration and recovery of their Temple, as well as the ongoing rebellion, sought to understand their lives, and in particular their relation to their Greek rulers.

History

Before we analyze the text, we probably need a little more history. As I said, this text is very much a Jewish response to an act of religious violence by a Greek ruler. Yet there are no Greeks in sight in this text – rather Babylonians, Medes and Persians. It has been many years since Jerusalem was part of an independent state, and one of the things that is interesting about Daniel is that it chooses to address its lack of independence through a screen – through the legendary figure of Daniel and his relations to earlier empires.

• Our first major kingdom is that of the Babylonians. In 605 the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar defeat Egypt and gained control of Judah, the southern part of the originally unified Davidic kingdom of Israel that contained Jerusalem. Its unity had collapsed after the death of Solomon in 922, but the stronger Northern Kingdom, known as Israel, had fallen to the Assyrians in 722/1. Judah had stayed clear, but lost its full independence. It had been a vassal state since then.
• The Babylonians tightened their control over Judah. In 597 Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, pillaged the temple, deported the elites; and then in 586, after a revolt, Nebuchadnezzar again besieged Jerusalem, deported more elites but this time razed the temple. This is the end of the First Temple period, as it is known, inaugurated by Solomon’s construction of the Temple.
• The Babylonians had joined with another rising empire, the Medes, to defeat the Assyrians and destroy their capital of Nineveh in 612. The Medes themselves never defeated the Babylonians, but were themselves defeated in 550 by the Persians under Cyrus the Great.
• The Persians go on to take the Babylonian empire also, seizing Babylon itself in 539 – this is the moment on Belshazzar’s feast. Cyrus preached religious pluralism, and allowed the Israelites to return to Judah, now organized as the Persian province of Yehud. Later Persian Kings, probably Artaxerxes around 460, would support the rebuilding of the Temple.
• The Persians rule the area until the coming of Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek, who destroyed the empire in 331. At Alexander’s death in 323, things get complicated. His generals grab whatever they can: Ptolemy grabs Egypt, Seleucus grabs Syria. Jerusalem is in the Egyptian part, but in 198, in the 5^th Syrian War, the tide turns and the Seleucids become the dominant kingdom. Indeed, by 168 the Seleucids under Antiochus IV (the one who desecrated the Temple) have become so powerful, they are threatening to overrun northern Egypt, until the newly muscular Romans step in to preserve balance of power and demand end to the war.
• What happens next is hard to explain, and is largely unparalleled. In 168-7, the humiliated Antiochus ransacks Jerusalem twice, killing some Jews, selling others, and pillaging temple. In 167 he rededicates the temple to Olympian Zeus, setting up idols and sacrificing unclean animals. This provokes an uprising, known as the Maccabean revolt. Why he did so is unclear; it seems unlikely that he was trying to impose a single religion (the Seleucids did not do this, and there is little evidence he oppressed Jews outside of Jerusalem). He may have been trying to destroy this particular elite; he may simply have coveted the enormous wealth of the temple, after being denied the wealth of Egyptian temples.
• Either way, he soon dies, in 164, while on campaign against the Parthians, a power rising in Iran; power passes to his son, Antiochus V, who repeals his father’s decrees concerning the temple and Jewish religious practice. In December, the temple is rededicated; the event celebrated by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Daniel was composed soon after this, 164/3. The status of the rebellion is quite unclear at this point. The rededication seems to be blessed by the Seleucids and a Seleucid garrison was still stationed in Jerusalem, but fighting continued, perhaps over the relative independence being sought. The Maccabees achieve a kind of vassal king status, which continues until and into Roman rule. Herod is not a Maccabee but does marry into the Maccabees.

Analysis of Narrative Form

So let’s now look at the canonical version of Daniel. This book is divided into two groups of six chapters, twelve chapters in all (this is diagrammed in the map on your handout). The first six chapters tell six stories about Daniel and his friends actually doing and suffering things (for example, c.1 tells of Daniel and his friends refusing to eat unclean food; and c.5 of Belshazzar’s feast and the writing on the wall that Daniel interprets). The next six describe Daniel’s revelations about the future and their interpretations.

The division between the two halves is thus dramatic, but it is clear that the two halves were joined together to form a coherent whole by the composer of this book. First, the two halves form a unified time sequence running from the time of Nebuchadnezzar to the death of Belshazzar and the rise of Cyrus, then to the rise of Alexander, the death of Antiochus and forward to the coming of the kingdom of God. Daniel is the pivot here – the first six books are in Daniel’s time, the last six after Daniel. But there are also subtler chronological frameworks structuring the order. The forward progression of the second half mirrors that of the first, as both move from Babylonian rulers, to Median and then Persian kings. Chap.6 thus finishes by noting the succession of Cyrus the Persian, but c.7 returns to the beginning of the sequence with the Babylonian Belshazzar.

Each half is also tightly unified. In many ways, the plot of all six stories in the first half is the same: a Jew passes a test set for him by his foreign ruler (whether it is an interpretation consciously set or a test of piety unconsciously set); the king recognizes the power of the Jewish God, and rewards the pious Jew handsomely, usually by promoting him in the civil service. This last point is worth stressing [see HDT 4]. Daniel becomes ruler of the province of Babylon in c.2, and then the third-ranking official in the Babylonian empire, presumably after Nabonidus and Belshazzar, in c.5. Despite surface differences, the stories are all the same, like a Sherlock Holmes story. Only unlike with Holmes, Daniel gets a promotion as well as the satisfaction of solving the case, and the king does not go to jail.

In the second half, we get four prophecies, all telling almost exactly the same story: the Babylonian empire will give way to the Medes and Persians, and then to the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. After him will come the Hellenistic Kings, and then one of these will desecrate the temple. Two of the prophecies end with the fall of this king (cc. 8, 9), but two go on to foretell the dominion of God (cc. 7, 10-12). The four prophecies fall easily into two pairs. The first two come under the reign of Belshazzar and involve animals appearing to Daniel, which an angel then relates to specific empires. The second pair has angels revealing the future without a symbolic vision being seen first; in place of the vision come acts of piety, prayer and fasting.

As Collins suggests (HDT 5), a consistent set of values emerges from these tightly controlled narratives: first, in the big picture, God is organizing history – behind the chaotic sequence of foreign powers lies God’s order, and the darkest hour of Jerusalem is, paradoxically, evidence that God’s dominion is all the closer; second, on the personal level, piety under foreign dominion, keeping the covenant of prayer and dietary regulations, is rewarded with survival and temporal advancement. Persecution by foreign kings of the pious brings promotion, whether of individuals like Daniel, or of God, or of God’s people as a whole.

Comparison to Apocrypha

We may compare these values to those of the story of Bel and the Dragon that is printed on your handout. In this story, Daniel repeatedly demonstrates to a king, who turns out to be the Babylonian Belshazzar, that his various gods are not so godlike. The king is convinced that Bel (that is Marduk, the god of Babylon) feasts on his many offerings every night, but Daniel points out that clay and bronze cannot eat and then catches Bel’s priests red-handed entering the sanctuary by a trapdoor and making off with the goodies. The king then suggests that a local dragon is a god; in response Daniel gives it some herbs to eat that cause it to explode. Daniel’s enemies then trick the king into throwing Daniel into a lion’s den, but Daniel is preserved by God’s will and by the miraculous appearance of a prophet who brings him food. The king is pleased to find Daniel alive.

Much is familiar in this story, particularly the lion’s den: Daniel’s exclusive devotion to his God is tested by a foreign king, and Daniel is proved correct. But one element is missing, and that is Daniel’s promotion. Daniel’s enemies are, as in c.6, thrown in the den, and Belshazzar, as usual recognizes the greatness of God, but Daniel is not promoted. The fact that this element is lacking in the story that is not included in the Hebrew Bible’s version of Daniel suggests that it was particularly important to that composition – it is not just that God will protect the pious, and be recognized as great, but that the pious will prosper in material terms.

Indeed, the fact that promotion is missing from the end of the Bel and the Dragon story shows how peripheral promotion really is to the underlying structure of the story. The foreign king’s recognition of the Hebrew God is an entirely satisfying conclusion – as it is in Daniel c.4. There is no need for a promotion in narrative terms. Indeed, in some cases this ending is a tad ridiculous. In c.5 Belshazzar promotes Daniel to third rank in the kingdom, presumably after himself and Nabonidus, despite the fact that Daniel has just prophesied the imminent end of the kingdom. In the circumstances, not a great promotion.

It is worth emphasizing how odd this particular narrative conclusion is in global terms also, for it is not one we see a lot in the ancient context. Greek texts end with marriage, kingship or the return home – or all three, in the case of the Odyssey. The narratives of the Pentateuch offer a number of different conclusions also, but marriage, return home and, if not kingship, then a kind of dominion are frequent among them. Daniel does not become king, does not have a love interest, and does not return home. Even when the Babylonian empire falls and the Medes and Persians take over, and presumably many other Israelites return to Jerusalem, Daniel remains in old age beside his foreign kings. Empires come and go, but Daniel remains in Babylon.

This set of conclusions can be measured against the second story that appears in the Septuagint version of Daniel but is absent from the Hebrew/Aramaic version, Susannah and the Elders.[ii] In this story, Susannah is a beautiful woman who is the victim of unwanted advances by two Israelite elders. When they are rebuffed, they accuse her of adultery to the people, saying that they saw her lying with a man in an orchard. The people believe them and condemn her to death. But a youthful Daniel springs forward and objects; he secures the chance to interrogate the two elders separately, and asks each under what tree they saw her. Each gives a different answer and is exposed as a false witness and executed.

This story obviously has different concerns also. There are no foreign kings, though we are in Babylon; the story concerns how to negotiate corruption within one’s own community, both among the judges and among the people as a whole, as as Erich Gruen argues in Heritage and Hellenism. There is no testing of Daniel’s piety, no predicting of the future through reading symbols, and no promotion. The conclusion, rather oddly, is an exhortation to treasure the purity of young Jews. Finally, Daniel is the Daniel of Bel and the Dragon, exposing hypocrisy among the priestly class through a trick – only the priestly class is that of Israel, not Persia. All the Daniel stories show how truth can confront power, but the power involved here is quite different from the very targeted concerns of the Hebrew-Aramaic version.

Analysis of Character: Daniel and Bilingualism

Further specific concerns of the canonical Daniel narratives can be seen if we analyze the main characters. There are not many of these. The first is Daniel. The Daniel of the Hebrew bible is rather anodyne – he is not cunning or resourceful. He has two fundamental qualities, his piety, that is, his faithful adherence to the covenant, and his ability to read signs and see the future. Sometimes this comes direct from God, or from an intermediary like an angel, but sometimes, as with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the tree in c.4, or Belshazzar’s writing on the wall in c.5, he interprets the symbols without aid. This does not seem to me to cunning so much as intelligence; it lacks the manipulative, suspicious character of Odysseus, say, or Sherlock Holmes.

Compare our apocryphal Daniel. This Daniel is much more Odyssean, as Erich Gruen argues in Heritage and Hellenism. In Bel and the Dragon, he realizes that the priests of Bel enter the sanctuary through some secret entrance and sprinkles ashes around in order to catch their footprints; and then he concocts a herbal cake that makes the dragon explode. In Susannah, he tricks the elders. There is here a kind of Machiavellian-ness missing from the simple, direct Daniel of the Hebrew version. His intelligence is put in the service of defeating enemies, not explaining symbols.

We should push the Hebrew Daniel’s skills further. He is above all a translator; his skill lies in decoding symbols, whether symbols like trees and goats with many horns, or the words of the writing on Belshazzar’s wall. He can take these symbols and translate them into words that the kings can understand. His interpretation of Belshazzar’s writing is particularly deft (HDT 6). The four words, “mene mene tekel upharsin,” are Aramaic words much disputed. I like the reading of Clermont-Ganneau, which takes tekel as a verb, mene as a mina, a coin or weight, and upharsin as two half-minas: “a mina is a mina, weigh two half-minas” or “ two half-minas make a mina.” The idea is that Daniel’s reading judges Belshazzar deficient compared to his father Nebuchadnezzar – the father is the mina, the son the half-mina because he has not learned like his father the sovereignty of the Hebrew God. And Daniel adds another touch; in Aramaic, the word for Persian, Paras, shares the root of upharsin (meaning, at base, division), so for Daniel the weighing, and finding wanting are related to the coming of the Persians.

So, Daniel shows considerable linguistic facility – translation in the grandest sense, the ability to see the meaning in symbols. This is, of course, central to his life as advisor to a foreign king. In 1.4 we are told that he learns the language of the Chaldaeans, presumably Akkadian; and then in 1.7 that he received a new name, Belteshazzar (HDT 7 lists these elements); this name continues to be referred to throughout the book – indeed, it serves to collapse the space between Daniel and his king – Belshazzar and Belteshazzar. Further, he does not just negotiate Babylonians; part of the overall structure of the book is that Daniel negotiates not just successive kings, but successive empires, which operated with different languages – the Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians. Daniel is the consummate diplomat, the king of foreign languages.

Further, this linguistic facility is highlighted by one of the most remarkable features of this text: its bilingualism, noted earlier. Just as Daniel the person has two names, so Daniel the text has two languages. There is no need to choose between the two – indeed, it is a condition of Daniel’s world that one has more than one linguistic identity. This is not true in the aprocryphal Daniel’s world.

Analysis of Character II: The King and Narration

The second main character is the foreign king. In Bel and the Dragon, the poor king is rather an idiot, a second point made by Gruen. He is tricked by own priests into thinking that a statue eats, and then is revealed as believing in the divinity of a rather useless snake. The tone is comic and a little pantomime-like. But in the Hebrew version of Daniel, the kings are more serious, and rather dignified. They may be godless, and consistently wrong, but they are given respect, and in turn are depicted as genuinely fond of Daniel. Daniel wishes that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the tree “be for your enemy and its meaning for your foe” (4.16); he tells Belshazzar that Nebuchadnezzar was “grand, glorious and majestic” (5.18), and Belshazzar is not angry for his criticism of his own conduct.

This friendliness and respect should be a complete surprise. Nebuchadnezzar was one of the great bad guys of Jewish folklore; Nebuchadnezzar was the man who destroyed the first temple and deported much of the Israelite upper class. Moreover, in this context he (and his son Belshazzar) represent Antiochus IV, the man who desecrated the temple by taking its vessels – in Daniel, it is more important that Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels in 597 than that he razed the temple in 586. Yet Nebuchadnezzar is here treated with equanimity, as part of god’s plan (HDT 8): “The Lord delivered King Jehoiakim of Judah into his power, together with some of the vessels of the house of God” (1.2).

The sympathetic attitude to such national villains is emphasized by the way the stories are narrated. The Hebrew version of Daniel makes considerable use of first-personal narration, that is narratives told from the point of view of an ‘I’ that speaks the narrative. Except for a couple of initial introductions (cc.7 and 10), cc.7-12 are wholly narrated by Daniel [HDT 9]. This makes sense – particularly if Daniel was recited or read by its audience – audience members then become Daniel as they perform the text. Their I becomes Daniel, and thus Daniel serves as a kind of costume, a particular type of identity that readers put on. Yet none of the earlier stories are narrated by Daniel. But one is largely narrated in the first person, and that is c.4, but the narrator is Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar tells of having a bad dream and getting Daniel to interpret it for him. The narration shifts back into the 3^rd person for a while, but it again concludes with a first-person narration with Nebuchadnezzar praising God. This seems to be a remarkably humane moment. Readers become Nebuchadnezzar, see things from his point of view (albeit his discovery of God’s power) – but such an adoption of his perspective must humanize Nebuchadnezzar. He is not the comic king of Bel and the Dragon.

The text of Daniel thus seems to promote in its readers the ability to see the world through the eyes not only of one’s own people, but also the foreigners who have oppressed them. I would join this shift in the person of the narration to the larger theme of translation, and the negotiation of different cultures. Just as Daniel operates as both an Israelite and a Babylonian, as both Daniel and Belteshazzar, so the reader must change identities, shifting between being the characters and looking at the characters, often with dizzying speed, as in c.4. The respect accorded the kings shows that this lesson is not simply a lesson in survival; rather it is a remarkable act of empathy. This text lifts its readers out of the comfort of external narration and makes them see the world through the eyes of their arch villains.[iii]

Conclusion: History

A number of conclusions can be drawn at this point. The concerns of the Hebrew text of Daniel are how to survive under foreign rule. The hero of the text is someone who maintains the covenant, who operates within more than one language, who with God’s help sees the future, but is yet loyal to and respectful of his foreign lord. Indeed, he prospers and is promoted for his good service. Returning home is not a goal, nor is overturning the foreign domination, nor working deceptively against the foreign master. At the same time, there is a deep faith that everything is following God’s plan, and that foreign domination itself is a sign of God’s control of human affairs and of the eventual coming of God’s dominion on earth.

We must return to the year 164. What attitude, then, does this text of Daniel represent to the rule of the Seleucids? Surprising though his position might seem, my close reading makes me agree with John Collins that this is not a doctrine of rebellion, that the composers of this text did not support revolution. This is not to say there were not those who wanted revolution, but in this text there is no rage against foreign domination, no creation of an inhuman enemy that one could hate and kill. Instead I see four qualities. First, an obsession with foreign rule. Second, a pragmatism. This Daniel suggests that foreign domination is a fact of life, that the liberators Darius and Cyrus are continuous with the captors Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, and that empires will rise and fall, but the Jews will always be under foreign control – and that success in a career is a worthy goal. Third, this pragmatism does not exclude the belief in a very different future, the conviction that foreign domination will end, to be replaced by the Kingdom of God. This produces a very complex result, that one should serve two masters, God and the King – God first, but the King genuinely also. Fourth, and finally, this is a humane text. In response to the sacking of the Second Temple, Daniel offers a dignified and even affectionate portrait of Nebuchadnezzar, the original Temple sacker, and recommends loyal service to him and encourages us to see the world through his eyes. Such humanity and tolerance in such a crisis is a great surprise – a model for us all.

Works Cited

M. Clermont-Ganneau, “Mene, Tekel, Peres, and the Feast of Belshazzar,” Hebraica 3.2 (1887): 87-102

John Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York, 1984)

David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford, 2^nd ed., 2011)

Erich Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley, 1998)

[iii] [I should add a note of qualification here. Careful readers will note that rather more animus against the foreigner and the foreign king can be found in the apocalyptic chapters. In C.7 the Mede is a bear-like monster with three tusks that “eats much meat,” or “devours many bodies” in the Oxford translation, while Alexander and the Greeks are pictured as a “fearsome, dreadful and very powerful [beast] with great iron teeth that devoured, crushed and stamped the remains with its feet.” This is perhaps what we expect; apocalypses tend to deal in vastly inflated Manichean visions of good and evil with nothing in between – it is the apocalyptic Revelations that will name the Pergamene altar Satan’s throne. Yet, such vitriol is rarely so generously spread around, even in these chapters; here it is largely reserved for Antiochus Epiphanes, the temple-sacker. The Medes, Persians and Greeks are usually relatively cuddly animals like rams and goats.]