Daniel, Book of

Daniel, Book Of This important and in many respects remarkable book takes its name not only from the principal person in it, but also and chiefly from him as its real author, there being no just cause of doubt that, as the book itself testifies, it was composed by Daniel (Da 7:1,28; Da 8:2; Da 9:2). It occupies, however, but a third rank in the Hebrew canon; not among the Prophets, but in the Hagiographa, owing apparently to the correct view of the composers of the canon, that Daniel did not exercise his prophetic office in the more restricted and proper sense of the term "prophecy," but stood to the theocracy in a different relation from those real prophets whose calling and profession consisted exclusively in declaring the messages they received, and in the communion which they held with God. These latter are termed, in the ancient Hebrew idiom, נבִיאִים, prophets, in contradistinction to חֹזִים, seers, who, though they were equally favored with divine revelations, were nevertheless not prophets by profession, a calling that claimed the entire service of a man's whole life. See CANON. The Babylonian exile supplied the outward training and the inward necessity for this last form of divine teaching; and the prophetic visions of Ezekiel form the connecting link between the characteristic types of revelation and prophecy (comp. Lucke, Versuch, 1:17 sq.; Hitzig, Daniel, Vorbem. § 9; Hilgenfeld, Die Jud. Apok. 1 sq.). This book has given rise to many and various polemical discussions both mi ancient and modern times.

1. The book of Daniel divides itself into two parts, historical (ch. 1-6) and prophetic (ch. 7-12), arranged respectively in chronological order. In the first seven chapters, accordingly, Daniel is spoken of historically (Da 1:8-21; Da 2:14-49; Da 4:8-27; Da 5:13-29; Da 6:2-28; Da 7:1-2); in the last five he appears personally as the writer (Da 7:15-28; Da 8:1-9:22; Da 10:1-19; Da 12:5). Its object is by no means to give a summary historical account of the period of the exile, or of the life of Daniel himself, since it contains only a few isolated points both as to historical facts and prophetic revelations. But the plan or tendency which so consistently runs through the whole book is of a far different character; it is to show the extraordinary and wonderful means which the Lord made use of, in a period of the deepest miisery, when the theocracy seemed dissolved and fast approaching its extinction, to afford assistance to his people, proving to them that he had not entirely forsaken them, and making them sensible of the fact that his merciful presence still continued to dwell with them, even without the Temple and beyond the Land of Promise.

The wonders related in Daniel (ch. 1-6) are thus mostly of a peculiar, prominent, and striking character, and resemble in many respects those performed of old time in Egypt. Their divine tendency was, on the one hand, to lead the heathen power, which proudly fancied itself to be the conqueror of the theocracy, to the acknowledgment that there was an essential difference between the world and the kingdom of God; and, on the other, to impress degenerate and callous Israel with the full conviction that the power of God was still the same as it was of old in Egypt.