Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Daniel’s Date of Composition.

Until recent times, the majority of Biblical commentators took the book of Daniel to represent the memoirs of a 6th cent. exiled prophet (named Daniel).

In recent times, however, that situation has more or less reversed.

The majority of modern-day commentators now take the book of Daniel to have been composed—or at least to have been edited/arranged in its final form—in the days of the Maccabees, in c. 165 BC.

J. J. Collins summarises the situation as follows:

Below, I outline a number of reasons why I’m not convinced by (what I’ll call) ‘the Maccabean Hypothesis’.

First though, a word or two on what the Maccabean Hypothesis (hereafter ‘the MH’) actually asserts.

Acc. to the MH, the book of Daniel isn’t what it appears to be.

It is not in fact a collection of visions/prophecies revealed to a 6th cent. exile; it is the work of a 2nd cent. Israelite...

...who looked back over history and noticed various patterns in the rise and fall of past empires and (on that basis?) came to believe the Messianic era was just around the corner.

A helpful summary of the hypothesis can be found on the website infidels.org (published under the pseudonym ‘Chris Sandoval’), which I’ve pasted below:

In other words, the Maccabean Hypothesis claims to identify—and explain—an important trend in Daniel’s historic/prophetic claims.

Daniel is decidedly inaccurate when he writes about the 6th cent. BC,

becomes progressively more accurate as time goes on,

and, finally, becomes wildly inaccurate when he writes about post 165 BC events,

all of which is neatly explained by the Macc. Hypothesis.

Advocates of the MH also advance other lines of evidence for their view. These include:

🔹 indicators of lateness in the text of Daniel (e.g., Greek loanwords),

🔹 after-the-event ‘prophecies’ and four-empire schemas elsewhere in the ANE,

🔹 Daniel-like documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., Pseudo-Daniel), and

🔹 a sense of bewilderment as to why God would want to reveal intricate details about Seleucid kings to an exiled 6th cent. prophet.

As such, advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis are able to mount a persuasive cumulative case in favour of their view.

The book of Daniel, they claims, is not the kind of ‘book’ a 6th cent. author would write,

yet is exactly the kind of book a 2nd cent. author would write.

So then, what can be said by way of response to the Maccabean Hypothesis?

Many things.

The world of Twitter, however, may not be the best place for a discussion of how many Greek and Persian loanwords a 6th cent. Aramaic composition can reasonably be expected to contain (and isn’t an issue I’m qualified to address anyway).

Rather, then, than call into question the various pillars of the Maccabean Hypothesis (and get bogged down in esoteric debates), I’ll simply set out what I consider to be five major problems with the MH’s ultimate claim.

More specifically, I’ll set out five ways in which I think the Maccabean Hypothesis fails to account for what we find before us in the book of Daniel.

First, on the Macc. Hypothesis, it’s hard to imagine how the book of Daniel found its way into the canon of Scripture…

…and how the Maccabean Daniel came to be referred to as ‘Daniel the Prophet’ at Qumran (cp. Koch 1985:122).

Acc. to the MH, the text of 11.42–12.4 makes three specific predictions (e.g., Porteous 1965:13):

a] Antiochus will conquer Egypt (11.42–43),

b] Antiochus will perish soon afterwards somewhere in Israel (11.44–45), and

c] finally, the Messianic era will begin (12.1ff.).

Acc. to the Macc. Hypothesis, these are the only genuine predictions Daniel made. And not one of them came to pass.

Antiochus never conquered Egypt,

nor did he die in Israel.

And, when the Messianic age was due to begin, the Jewish people found themselves confronted by a large Seleucid army (led by Antiochus’s son).

Advocates of the Macc. Hypothesis are, of course, aware of these facts, but their responses strike me as rather weak.

Consider, for instance, L. Hartman’s claim.

‘That Daniel’s expectation does not correspond to the known data of history’, Hartman says, ‘in no way detracts from his confident faith and sure hope in God’s control over tyrants such as Antiochus Epiphanes’ (Hartman 1979:303).

In one sense, Hartman is right. The Maccabean Daniel had great confidence in God.

But the test of a prophet is not his level of confidence; it is the accuracy of his prophecies (Deut. 18.20–22)—a test which the Maccabean Daniel dramatically failed.

And the hope Daniel held out to his people would hardly have endeared him to them when, in the aftermath of Antiochus’s fall, they looked up to see their Messiah but instead saw 80,000 Seleucids on the horizon (and suffered heavy casualties in the resultant battle).

Second, it’s hard to imagine the Maccabean Daniel would have wanted to associate himself with the stories of Daniel 2–6.

Daniel was, in the words of H. H. Rowley, ‘a man with an imperfect knowledge of past history and exaggerated hopes for the future’ (Rowley 1959:180–182).

As such, he was a far cry from the Daniel of ch. 2.

Ch. 2’s theology is simple, explicit, and profound.

God’s people can know with certainty what is hidden to the world’s wisest men.

Why? Because the God of Israel controls the future and speaks to his people (2.10–11, 27–28).

Meanwhile, the gods of Babylon’s wise men are remote and inaccessible.

They ‘do not reside with flesh and blood’ and hence cannot help their followers (2.11).

As a result, the wise men are unaware of the contents of the king’s dream, as they are of Babylon’s imminent fall.

The theology of chs. 3–6 is much the same (cp. 3.15–18, 28, 4.9, 18, 5.23, 6.26–27).

That the Maccabean ‘Daniel’ would have had the nerve to append his ‘prophecies’ to such stories is hard to imagine.

After all, the Maccabean Daniel was in the same boat as Babylon’s wise men.

Like the gods of the wise men, Daniel’s God was remote and inaccessible.

God had not revealed the future to any of Judah’s 6th cent. exiles (hence Daniel 2–6’s material had to be taken from legends),

nor had God revealed the future to the Maccabean Daniel (hence the failed prophecies of 11.42–12.4).

As such, the theology of Daniel 2–6 would hardly have sat comfortably alongside the Maccabean Daniel’s.

Indeed, it would have invalidated his status as a prophet,

which makes the issue of Daniel’s canonisation (discussed above) all the more intractable.

To explain Daniel’s canonisation, we would need to posit the existence of a (2nd cent.?) community of people who viewed Daniel as Scripture and yet disagreed with its theology.

(Note: In response to such issues, we can always dismiss the theology/behaviour of Daniel and his contemporaries as incoherent. But how are we supposed to infer when/why a book was composed if its claims aren’t necessarily coherent?)

Third, it’s almost impossible to imagine the Maccabean Daniel would have made a prediction like 11.42–43’s.

On the Macc. Hypothesis, Daniel was not a ‘prophet’ in the traditional sense of the word,

i.e., a man who had stood in the council of YHWH and seen/heard his Word (Jer. 23.18).

Daniel was merely a ‘sage’ who had sought to guess what would happen in the near future on the basis of his (rather hazy) knowledge of history.

Why, then, would Daniel have predicted such an unlikely turn of events as those described in 11.42–43?

That Antiochus would conquer Egypt (let alone Libya and Ethiopia) was practically unthinkable in 165 BC.

It was precisely what the course of history suggested *wouldn’t* happen!

Antiochus was a spent force.

Meanwhile, Egypt was a fully paid-up member of the protectorate of Rome (the day’s undisputed superpower).

And Antiochus had just been told (by the Romans) to leave Egypt alone in the strongest possible terms.

Antiochus was about as likely to conquer Egypt as Syria are to conquer Russia next year.

#NotAPrediction

Fourth, that Daniel’s historical claims become more accurate as they approach the days of the Maccabees is far from clear.

Consider, for instance, Daniel’s reference to Belshazzar (Babylon’s vice-regent) as /malkā/ = ‘the king’.

Many advocates of the Macc. Hypothesis say Daniel’s reference to Belshazzar as /malkā/ is inaccurate since Belshazzar is never referred to as a /šarru/ in Babylon’s records (e.g., Montgomery 1927:66, Collins 1993:32),

which seems unduly critical. (In the Tell Fekheriye inscription, /mlk-/ refers to a local ruler, and, in 2.44, Daniel himself employs the term /malkā/ to describe a co-regent.)

These same commentators, however, are notably *uncritical* when it comes to Daniel’s claims about (what they take to be) Maccabean history.

Consider, for instance, the text of Dan. 9.27.

Acc. to the Macc. Hypothesis, the ‘covenant’ described in 9.27 refers to Antiochus’s covenant with the Jews (described in 1 Macc. 1.11–14),

which is generally thought to have been inaugurated at some time between Sep. 175 BC and Apr. 172 BC (cp. Schwartz 2008:231 on 2 Macc. 4)

…or, if the triennial games mentioned in 2 Macc. 4 were inaugurated in the summer of 332 BC (as seems likely: cp. Arrian 2.24.6 w. Schwartz 2008:226–227), between Sep. 175 BC and the summer of 173 BC.

In all likelihood, then, Antiochus’s week-long covenant would have been in force for over ‘a week’ (seven years) before Daniel put pen to paper.

Yet, since advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis expect Daniel to be at his most accurate in the Maccabean era, they invariably overlook Daniel’s (apparent) inaccuracy in 9.27.

Similar issues surround 9.26’s reference to the death of ‘an anointed one’ (Messiah).

That the Maccabean Daniel becomes more accurate in his historical claims over time is, therefore, far from clear.

It seems to depend more on one’s presuppositions than on the evidence involved.

Fifth, whoever arranged the book of Daniel in its final form didn’t view Daniel’s visions/prophecies the way advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis do.

As we’ve seen, the Maccabean Hypothesis isn’t merely a statement about when Daniel was composed;

it goes hand in hand with a particular interpretation of Daniel’s prophecies.

On the Macc. Hypothesis, the reason why Daniel puts pen to paper is to bolster the faithful in the days of the Maccabees.

And, if Daniel’s prophecies reach their climax in the days of the Maccabees/Greeks, then they entail a particular view of Daniel’s four-empire schema. Daniel’s 2nd and 3rd empires can only be depictions of Media and Persia.

As Collins says, ‘Within Daniel’s chronological restraints, the fourth empire cannot postdate…Greece’, which means ‘the second and third empires must be identified as Media and Persia’ (Collins 1993:166).

Towner (another MH-advocate) concurs.

‘Once one identifies Daniel’s fourth empire’s divided kingdoms…with the Hellenistic regimes of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies’, he says, ‘…no list of four world empires other than Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece is really possible’ (Towner 1986:36).

But the {Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece} schema is problematic on a number of different levels.

Below, I’ll outline two of them.

(1). Daniel has no reason to include an independent Median empire in his four-empire schema.

Daniel’s four-empire schema isn’t a list of empires compiled for the sake of historiography.

It’s a depiction of the major influences on Judah’s history over the years—a category to which ‘Media’ doesn’t belong.

The Medes never functioned as Judah’s overlords and had little if any impact on life in ancient Israel (which is why they’re barely mentioned in the OT).

To depict Judah’s history in terms of Babylon, Media, and Persia would, therefore, be an unusual course of action,

as most advocates of the Macc. Hypothesis acknowledge.

As E. Lucas says, ‘The inclusion of Media (among Daniel’s empires) is odd since the Medes never gained control of Babylon or Judah’ (Lucas 1989:192).

Indeed, the notion of an independent Median empire—though essential to the Maccabean Hypothesis—is quite foreign to Daniel.

Every time ‘Media’ is mentioned in the book of Daniel, it is mentioned in the context of *Medo-Persia* (5.28, 6.8, 12, 15, 8.20).

Granted, in ch. 6, Daniel refers to a ruler named ‘Darius the Mede’. But a Medo-Persian empire is bound to be headed up by either a Mede or a Persian. So, to take Daniel’s reference to ‘Darius the Mede’ as a reference to an independent Median empire is entirely unwarranted.

In any case, since Darius the Mede passes a ‘Medo-Persian law’ (6.8, 12, 15), he is clearly supposed to be seen as the head of the Medo-Persian empire. And the flow of chs. 5–6 leaves no room for an independent Median empire.

In 5.28, Babylon falls to the army of a two-pronged alliance, viz. the empire of ‘the Medes and the Persians’ (5.28), which is what is depicted in ch. 7’s vision, where Babylon is succeeded by a lop-sided bear.

The notion of an independent Median empire is, therefore, quite foreign to the text of Daniel.

Of course, advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis are not insensitive to these considerations, and have sought to account for them in various ways.

Since four-empire schemas are attested elsewhere in the ANE, most commentators think Daniel took the schema {Assyria, Media, Persia, Greece} and simply replaced Assyria with Babylon.

But such ‘explanations’ do not explain a great deal.

Why, if the Maccabean Daniel felt free to substitute Assyria for Babylon, didn’t he combine Media and Persia and hence end up with the schema {Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, the Messianic Kingdom}—a schema which would have been consistent both with history *and* the text of ch. 5?

(2). The Macc. Hypothesis’s four-empire schema turns a coherent set of visions into a disjointed set of images.

Consider by way of illustration a traditional view of Daniel’s visions.

(For the moment, I’ve simply labelled Daniel’s 4th empire as ‘the world’. More details will have to wait for another time/thread/person.)

As can be seen, Daniel’s schema makes good and obvious sense.

The two-armed torso aligns with the two-sided bear and the two-horned ram;

the four-headed leopard aligns with the four-horned goat;

and the ten-toed feet align with the ten-horned beast.

Daniel’s schema also makes sense in light of *history*.

The Medo-Persian empire was composed of two sub-empires (the Medes and the Persians),

and the Greek empire splintered into four sub-empires.

Now, consider, by way of contrast, the schema posited by advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis:

Daniel’s visions now look decidedly out of kilter.

The two-sided bear is no longer aligned with the two-horned ram;

the four-headed leopard is no longer aligned with the four-horned goat;

and the ten horns of the beast have been replaced with a mere four horns for no apparent reason.

Daniel’s visions are also out of sync with *history*.

The independent Median empire didn’t consist of two distinct parts;

the Persian empire didn’t splinter up into four sub-empires;

and the Greek empire was never ruled by ten co-regents.

What’s gone wrong isn’t hard to see.

Since the advocates of the Maccabean Hypothesis have identified Daniel’s 4th empire as Greece, they’ve been obliged to treat what our author treats as a single empire (Medo-Persia) as two independent empires (Media and Persia).

As a result, the two-sided bear has been shifted out of alignment with the two-horned ram,

and the four-headed leopard has been shifted out of alignment with the four-horned goat.

It’s clearly not the way Daniel’s visions are supposed to be understood.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

In sum, then, the Maccabean Hypothesis fails (at least in my view) to explain what we find before us in the book of Daniel.

In historical terms, it struggles to explain Daniel’s status as Scripture (as well as Daniel’s wild prediction of Egypt’s fall).

In methodological terms, it lacks consistency.

In theological terms, it leads to incoherence.

And, in exegetical terms, its attempt to cram the contents of Daniel’s visions into the interval between Nebuchadnezzar’s rise and Antiochus’s fall makes a mess of Daniel’s imagery.

None of that, of course, forces us to view the book of Daniel as the memoirs of a 6th cent. exile instead.

Indeed, the traditional view of Daniel has difficulties of its own.

But to say the book of Daniel has conclusively been shown to have been put in its final form in the 2nd cent. BC is, I believe, quite incorrect.

Ultimately, the book of Daniel invites us to approach it with a particular attitude of heart.

Those who approach the text of Daniel convinced it is the product of merely human authorship are likely to walk away from it with their presuppositions confirmed.

But those who view the text of Daniel as a potentially divine revelation may well, like Daniel, hear the voice of God speak to them as they consider its contents (cp. 12.10).

THE END

P.S. For those who’ve asked, a pdf version is available below, complete with various amendments in light of helpful comments/feedback. (Thanks in particular to @bnuyaminim.)

Note: The pdf might not immediately be viewable, but should be downloadable.

academia.edu/41459263/