Untitled Sermon

Author, Date, and Book Structure

Traditional view that Daniel authored this book in 536 B.C. This would signify that Daniel had supernatural inspiration and that these divine prophecies were accurate because of an omniscient and sovereign God. This particular view went unchallenged for 1,800 years, except for Porphyry (232 - 303 A.D.) He believed, in his writtings “Against the Christians,” that the prophecies and predictions of this book were written after the fact.

The modern view is that this book was recorded by an anonymous Jew, who took the pseudonym Daniel, at sometime during the 2nd century B.C. According to this understanding, the purpose of the book of Daniel was not to record historical events accurately or to provide prophecies, rather this view propagates that Daniel was written to encourage the Jews during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 - 163 B.C.). That also means that Daniel would have been the last OT book written.

In order to accept the traditional view, one would accept the omniscience of God, the sovereignty of God, and the immanence of God.

Reasons for accepting Daniel as the original author:

The author “exhibited a more extensive knowledge of sixth-century events that would seem possible for a second-century writer” - new Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar’s claim, Belshazzar was reigning during king Cyrus’ acquisition of Babylon (only mentioned in Daniel and in Babylonian records. - that Babylonians punished by fire and that Persians punished by throwing to the lions, despite the Persian’s belief in Zoroastrianism

2. A Maccabean view would have presented Babylon and Persia as hostile toward the Jews. However, since both Babylon and Persia present these governments as favorable toward Daniel and his friends, this contradicts the attitudes of a Jew under Antiochus IV.

3. Language - Daniel 1 - 2:2a and 8-12 is written in Hebrew, Daniel 2:2b - 7 was written in Aramaic. Driver says this, “… the number of Persian words in the book indicates a late date… about half of the Persian expressions found in the book are in the class of governmental terminology. The Greek loan word, “zither” (kitharis), “harp” (psalterion), and “pipes” (symphonia). Kitchen shows that apocryphal books, written during the second and first centuries, demonstrated the influence of the Greek language of that time period.