The Book of Daniel identifies the prophet Daniel as its author, and it is likely to have been written between 540 and 530 BC. The story of the book is set shortly after Babylon’s first attack on Jerusalem (Merrill Willis). The city and its temple had been plundered, and Babylonians had taken a wave of Israelites into exile (“Meta-historical schemes”). Among them were four men from the royal family of David: Daniel, also named Belteshazzar later in the book, and three of his friends. The latter are mostly known by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego (Rubenstein). The Book of Daniel, therefore, mainly tells about the four friends’ struggles to maintain hope in the land of the people who conquered them.
The structure of the book can appear simple at first. Chapters 1 through 6 tell about Daniel and his friends and their life in Babylon. In turn, chapters 7 through 12 tell about Daniel’s visions of the future (DiTommaso). However, there is another design feature that makes this structure even more interesting: the language of the book. The story begins to be told in Hebrew, the language of the Israelites, and changes in chapters 2 to 7, which are written in Aramaic (Perrin and Stuckenbruck). This language was a cousin to Hebrew, mainly spoken in ancient empires (Yarchin). Chapters 8 to 12, however, are written in Hebrew as well, which highlights the importance of chapters 2 and 7 for the general understanding of the book (Perrin and Stuckenbruck). A practical application of the book’s premise is that similar to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, people should always stand for what they know is right.
Works Cited
DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “The Four Kingdoms of Daniel in the Early Mediaeval Apocalyptic Tradition.” Four Kingdom Motifs before and Beyond the Book of Daniel, 2020, pp. 205-250.
Merrill Willis, Amy C. “A Reversal of Fortunes: Daniel among the Scholars.” Currents in Biblical Research, vol. 16, no. 2, 2018, pp. 107-130.
“Meta-historical schemes.” Persian Influence on Daniel and Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2022.
Perrin, Andrew B., and Loren T. Stuckenbruck. Four Kingdom Motifs Before and Beyond the Book of Daniel. Themes in Biblical Narrative, 2020.
Rubenstein, Jay. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History. Oxford UP, 2018.
Yarchin, William. “The Book of Daniel as Witness to the Pluriform Bible.” Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture, vol. 51, no. 4, 2021, pp. 215-225.