Apocalyptic

Daniel believes that eating the King’s food will defile him.  Why does he think this?

The NRSV has “royal rations,” the NIV simply has “food.” The Hebrew here uses a Persian loan-word פַּתְ־בַּג (pat-bag), a word is used only here and 11:26 in the Old Testament. The Syriac cognate means something like a delicacy or rich food. Whatever it was, the food was the best quality, not only fit for a king, it was literally eaten by a king.

According to 2 Kings 25:29, King Jehoiachin was also ate the King’s food when in exile. There is nothing judgmental in the 2 Kings passage, although some detect an unfavorable comparison to Daniel here. While Jehoiachin ate the king’s food, Daniel refused.

Why does Daniel refuse to eat the King’s food? There are several possibilities. First, some of the food may have been forbidden according to Leviticus 11 or 17:10-14. Pig and horse was commonly eaten in Babylon (Baldwin, Daniel, 83), both would violate Jewish food taboos. Occasionally someone will claim the food is not kosher, but this is an anachronism since the kosher traditions followed today may not have been developed in 600 BC. Daniel also refused the wine of the king, although wine is never forbidden as unclean in the Law. It is possible the wine had been offered to the gods of Babylon, or that Daniel had taken a Nazarite vow. 

A second explanation is the refusal is Jewish law forbids the eating of meat that is sacrificed to false gods. This is true later in history and it makes sense for Daniel 1. Eating meat sacrificed to idols is always a problem for Jews living in the diaspora and is a serious controversy in some of Paul’s churches (Romans 14-15, for example). But there is not much evidence it was a problem in the Old Testament.

Third, a better explanation is Daniel understands eating the king’s food represents accepting the king’s friendship and patronage. To share food is to commit oneself to a relationship (Gen 31:54, Exod 24:11, Neh 8:9-12). Remember King Jehoiachin accepted the king’s food implying his loyalty to Babylon. In fact, Daniel 11:26 warns against everyone who eats from the “rich food” of the king who is to come (repeating the word פַּתְ־בַּג, pat-bag).

Daniel does not refuse the training of the king or the use of a new name, but he draws the line at the eating the king’s food because it is a public declaration of dependency on the king. Daniel not rely on Nebuchadnezzar, but only on the Lord.

Daniel therefore resolves himself not to eat this food. This is literally “sets his heart” not to eat the food. Daniel understands the situation, and decides, in his heart, what is right and what is wrong, and choose to do the right thing. Once set, Daniel will not be moved.

His plan is to eat only vegetables and water so he will not defile himself. The word זֵרְעֹנִים (zērĕʿōnîm) refers to seeds and herbs, but it probably refers to food grown from seeds. Whatever the food was, Daniel chose not to eat the king’s food. (This is not a pro-vegetarian passage!) The chief does not think this is a wise idea, since he is certain that without the king’s food they four will be weaker than the rest, then he will get into trouble.

After Daniel determines in his heart not to eat the food, the Lord gives favor to Daniel and his fellow captives so that the guard accepts the alternate plan for a trial period.  Just as the Lord was active in the fall of Jerusalem, he is active in the preservation of Daniel and his friends – they might very well have been executed for their refusal of the direct order of the king!

The text says that the boys are “fatter of flesh,” meaning healthier.  This recalls Joseph’s vision of the “fat cows,” meaning very healthy, exactly the way you expect a prize cow to be.  Here is means that the boys are visibly healthier than the other men in the king’s training.

Daniel and the other three young men were brought to Babylon in the first deportation for the express purpose of being trained to serve the Babylonian government. The young men were from the royal family and nobility. According to Josephus, Daniel and the other boys were from the family of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Although not specifically stated, there may have been other Judeans in this training as well as young men from other territory controlled by Babylon.

Why train young men from the nobility? Babylon wants to prepare administrators trained to rule the Jews in captivity. The goal is for the young men to become loyal to Babylon and dependent on the Babylonian government for everything. This training is an honor, even if it is an attempt to integrate the leadership of Israel into the culture of Babylon. Daniel and his three friends are the best that Israel has to offer, intellectually and physically, and as we will see, spiritually.

Another goal of the training is to separate them from their former life in every way possible. They are separated from their families and given new Babylonian names. The new Babylonian names were not intended to be degrading or humiliating, but their Jewish honoring the God if Israel is replaced by a Babylonian name honoring a god of Babylon. For example, the name Daniel means “God is my Judge,” but his new name is Belteshazzar, “Bel, Guard his life!” Hananiah means “God has Favored,” his new name Shadrach means” Command of Aku” (Aku is the Babylonian moon god). Mishael means “Who is like God?” but Meshach means “Who is what Aku is?” Azariah means “Yahweh has helped” but Abednego means “Servant of Nebo.”

Physically, they four were to be in the best shape possible. They are were “without any physical defect” meaning healthy enough they would be expected to serve the government for a long time.. Intellectually, they are to be superior and showed aptitude for every kind of learning. They are “quick to understand,” meaning they learn how to apply knowledge, perhaps “self-motivated” learner.

The education that Daniel receives is reserved for the elite of the society. They are to learn the “language and literature of the Babylonians.” The literature of the Neo-Babylonian period was extensive and would have included much of the earlier Assyrian and Mesopotamia culture. They may have been trained as scribes so they could read cuneiform legal documents, religious texts, fables, omen texts, astrological material, mathematical material, economic data and historical records.

This sort of training would have immersed the young men in the culture of Babylon. The literature of Babylon could claim to be as old, if not older than that of Israel, and it was certainly more extensive. It would have been a very attractive culture, one that conquered the known world and built the city of Babylon, the most beautiful city in the world.

Undoubtedly these young men experienced a clash of world views. When their Jewish culture was compared to Babylon, it quite likely they were impressed with culture and power of Babylon. It is also likely they could suffer from what is now called Stockholm syndrome. Often hostages form emotional bonds with their captors and begin to sympathize with them and begin to accept the captor’s way of thinking. In fact, Babylon expected Daniel and the three young men to be so impressed with Babylon they abandon their Jewish worldview and become as Babylonian as possible.

Will this Babylonian brain-washing work on Daniel and his friends? Will these four Jewish young men decide the worldview of Babylon is superior to that of the small, backwater worldview of Judea? Will they reject the traditions of their fathers in favor of the new world order of Babylon?

As is evident from the book of Daniel, there are some elements of culture Daniel is able to accept and he is able to have a long and successful career in Babylon. Yet there are clear lines drawn in Daniel 1 and later in Daniel 3 and 6. Daniel will not “defile himself” in some ways even as he learns the language and culture of Babylon.

In many ways, Daniel can be described as resistance literature outlining how the Jews adapted to the new situation of the diaspora. How can a Jewish person prosper in Babylon? Daniel outlines some principles of adaptation and resistance to whatever culture in which the Jews find themselves. They can really seek the welfare of the cities where they live in the exile (Jeremiah 29:7) while holding tenaciously to some traditions which are non-negotiable.

This is one of the most important applications of Daniel to the contemporary Christian reader. Like the Jews, global Christians do not live in cultures which are Christian. Many Christians live in countries where Christianity is not legal and it is dangerous to publically acknowledge their faith. Even in America, true Christianity is fast becoming a minority. How can the contemporary Christian adapt to an increasingly hostile world? What are the non-negotiable boundaries?

The main reason many people read Daniel for its teaching on the end times. The book teaches that God is sovereign and that he has a plan for the world. This plan will be successful despite human sin and rebellion. For Daniel, this means there will be a succession of kingdoms ruling over Israel until God breaks into history in a spectacular way and establishes a new kingdom of God fulfilling his promise to David. The future in Daniel is based on the foundation of the past.

Before that future arrives, the successive kingdoms of the Gentiles will oppress the Jews and make it difficult for them to live as the people of God. This calls for patient endurance and commitment to God in a pagan world which will eventually attempt to stamp out all godliness altogether.

Many of the eschatological themes from Daniel are echoed in the New Testament.In Matthew 24:15-28Jesus cites Daniel when he describes a future “abomination which causes desolation.” For a Jewish listener in AD 30, this abomination looked back to the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but Jesus says there is another abomination coming in the future. This might refer to the Roman destruction of the Temple in AD 70, or any number of desecrations of the Temple Mount leading up to a still-future sacrilege.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Daniel 7:13-14 for understanding messianic expectations in the late Second Temple period. That Jesus would call himself the son of man (Mark 10:45, for example) and he alludes to the passage when he responds to a direct question from the high priest, “Are you God’s messiah?” (Mark 14:62). Even the Great Commission may allude to Daniel 7:13-14: after the resurrection “all authority in heaven on earth” was given to Jesus.

Paul may have themes from Daniel in mind when he describes the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2. Paul’s description of this final enemy of God is similar to the “little horn” in Daniel 7 and 11. John Goldingay suggests 1 Corinthians 15:23-38 is shaped by Daniel 6 (Daniel², 107).

The New Testament book most influenced by Daniel is obviously Revelation. Daniel provides the outline for Revelation’s vision of the final conflict. In addition Daniel is one of the main sources for Revelation’s imagery of an end-times beast, an anti-God government making war against the people of God, a final judgment using thrones and books, etc.

In the history of the interpretation of Daniel, it is the eschatological themes that have dominated. When will the “fifth kingdom” of Daniel 2 finally arrive? When will God break into history and rescue his people from their oppressors and finally establish his kingdom?  

Church history is full of movements that attempted to make Daniel (and Revelation) apply to their own day by reading the numbers of Daniel as a prediction of the number of years until God destroys the kingdom of the final beast, usually just a few years in the future.

Is it possible to predict the second coming of Jesus as the Messiah? Do the numbers found in Daniel someone extend into present age? Although the book of Daniel does have a remarkably accurate outline of history up to a certain point, it is silent on the period between the cutting off of the Messiah and the return of the Messiah to establish the kingdom.

These attempts to interpret Daniel as a roadmap to current events obscure the real message of Daniel: God is still sovereign and he is still protecting his people as the faithfully serve him in an increasingly ungodly world.

It is easy to get bogged down in the details of apocalyptic literature when reading Daniel and miss the important theology of the book. Daniel has several major theological themes which might be overlooked if we focus only on the difficult interpretive problems. What are the Main Themes of Daniel?

The fall of Jerusalem was a profound crisis of faith for the Jewish people. Prior to 586 BC they believed hey were God’s people and God and God was present on Mount Zion. Because of this, the city of Jerusalem would never be destroyed. They might be oppressed by Assyria or Babylon, but God would always rescue them. It was unthinkable the Temple itself could be dismantled, the Temple treasures stolen and placed at the feet of a pagan god in a temple in Babylon.

Beyond the national disaster, the fall of Jerusalem was a spiritual and theological disaster. For the exiles forced to settle in Babylon, it may have appeared God had forsaken his people. God’s judgment was severe, perhaps he has canceled his promises when scattered his people among the nations to love as foreigners and aliens. Perhaps, the gods of the Babylonians were more powerful than the God of Israel? Maybe Yahweh is a cruel and capricious god who goes back on his promises? Perhaps the Jew in exile should switch loyalties and follow the greater gods of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. After all, where had serving Yahweh gotten them, except exiled from their homeland?

The message of Daniel speaks to these issues. Daniel is clear: God has not changed nor has God been defeated by gods of Babylon. He is still fully in charge of the world and he cares deeply for the suffering of his people. Daniel looks forward to a time when God will restore his people and fulfill all of his promises made to Abraham, David, and the Prophets.

First, the main theme of Daniel is God’s Sovereignty. That God is sovereign over the world is a theme found throughout Scripture but it is in the forefront of the book of Daniel. This theme begins in the first few verses of chapter 1. When Nebuchadnezzar captures Jerusalem and takes Daniel and his three friends captive to Babylon, the writer is clear it is the Lord who handed Jehoiakim into the hands of Babylon. It is the Lord who gives favor to Daniel and gives prosperity to the four you exiles. It is the Lord who protects them and gives them advantage over all of the other exiles being trained for service to Babylon. The Lord gives Daniel his special ability to interpret dreams.

This message would be extremely comforting for the Jew living in the post-exilic world, under the Persians, Greeks, Romans, or at any point in their history. After the captivity the Jews thought they were going to return to Jerusalem and God would restore the kingdom to them. That was what the prophets promised! But this restoration did not happen as many expected. The Jewish people went from submission to the Babylonians to the Greeks and later to the Romans. They never realized the ideal of the Davidic kingdom of the Old Testament.

It would be very easy for a Jew to doubt God was truly in charge of world events. How could God allow the Babylonians to destroy the Temple of God in his most holy city Jerusalem! This is the complaint of Habakkuk, who questioned God’s use of the Babylonians to punish Israel. Yet Daniel presents God as raising up the empires and humbling him according to his will.

Second, God cares about the suffering of his people. There are several stories presenting Daniel and his friends in difficult situations where their faith is tested. There is a potential for suffering in the first chapter. Daniel 3 and 6 put the characters to the test in life threatening situations (a fiery furnace and a lion’s den). In each case, God protects them even though they are willing to die than break important boundaries of their faith in God.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jewish people may have thought God no longer cares for his people. He handed them over to the Babylonians and they are “getting what they deserve.” But this is not the attitude of the Lord. He genuinely cares that his people continue to follow his will and his Law even in a new context where it is inconvenient and even dangerous.

To the post exilic Jew, this message is extremely challenging once again, whether that is under the Persians, Greeks, Romans, or at any point in history. One of the reasons Daniel is thought to be written in the Maccabean period is that it fits so well in that context. The Jews were faced with a challenge to their very existence as Antiochus IV Epiphanes sought to impose Hellenism on rebellious Jews.

Some of the problems of the Greek period were simply examples of subtle compromise. Styles of dress, for example, seem trivial to us, but to the Jew they were matters of national significance. Would a young godly man stand up against the trends of the day and not behave like a Greek? Will he turn his back on the traditions and laws of his people? Would a young Jewish man stand up against Antiochus himself, even if it meant his life? Daniel teaches that God honors those that make a stand against the godlessness of their times even in the little things.

This is perhaps the most pertinent message for the twenty-first century Christian. It is fairly easy to be a stealth Christian in America. Just be politically correct and avoid public demonstrations of personal faith. A Christian makes subtle compromises all of the time because they do not seem to mean very much. Obviously few conservative Christians would choose to compromise on the big issues (abortion, for example), but they are quite willing to compromise on speaking the truth, in order to maintain relationships. Worse, many Christians are willing to compromise their faith for political gain.  

Because Daniel and his friends did not compromise in what seem to the modern reader like small issues, they were able to stand against the bigger issues. American Christianity might just have that backwards. Shout out loud and angry on one or two big issues and ignore all the rest. For example, people complain about those anti-Christian red cups at Christmas but fail to examine their consumerism, greed, and complete ignorance of the poor and needy the rest of the year.

Despite the clear application to the Jews in their persecutions, Daniel is therefore a critically important book for the present time, in our time of minor “inconveniencing.”

One of the more difficult questions for studying the book of Daniel is when the book was written. The answer to this question touches on the genre of Daniel and the clear prediction of historical events leading up to the Maccabean Revolt and possibly the Roman Empire in the first century. For some readers Daniel is predictive prophecy made by a historical figure. For many others Daniel is an apocalyptic re-casting of current events from the perspective of the middle of the second century B.C. This is a highly contentious debate because conservatives tend to make the date of Daniel a litmus test for conservative orthodoxy. But the later date for the book is a similar test of one’s scholarly credentials. For most in the academy, “no serious commentator” would consider an earlier date.

The traditional view is that Daniel was written at the end of the sixth century or early in the fifth century, soon after Daniel’s death. The book would have been completed after 537 BC, the last date recorded in the Daniel. Although Daniel 7-12 is in the first person, there is no clear claim that Daniel himself is the author. The first six chapters of the book are stories about Daniel and make no claim to be written by Daniel himself.

One compelling factor is the presence fragments of nearly every chapter of Daniel among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although some of these fragments are very small, there are more” copies of Daniel than any other book in the Hebrew Bible” (Goldingay, Daniel², 99). Goldingay seems to overstate his case here, including allusions to Daniel in other manuscripts such as 4QFlorilegium or the Prayer of Nabonidus. (Thanks to James R. for pointing this out, see the response below!)

One of the manuscripts can be dated to about 120 B.C., only a generation or so after the events recorded in the latter chapters of the book. For conservatives, this argues for an earlier date since it seems unlikely Daniel would be considered canonical only 40 years after it was written. As Goldingay points out, however, we have almost no information on what was or was not canonical in the first century BC and it is anachronistic to impose later canonical guidelines on the Dead Sea Scrolls. This argument may be part of an inductive argument pointing toward the possibility of an earlier date, but it is not certain proof.

For Stephen Miller, the three references to Daniel in Ezekiel (14:14, 20; 28:3) is the strongest argument for the early date of Daniel (Daniel, NAC 18, 42–43).  He rejects claims that Ezekiel refers to a mythological Danel in the Ugaritic epic “The Tale of Aqhat.” Miller arguing it is unlikely for Ezekiel to cite an Ugaritic wise man favorably while condemning idolatry in Judah. The reference to Daniel in Ezekiel is also a highly contentious debate, but it does seem that Ezekiel is referring to three wise people from three distinct periods of history, Noah at the flood, Job at the time of Abraham, and a contemporary Daniel.

The consensus opinion of modern scholarship is that Daniel is an apocalyptic book written in the mid-second century B.C. Because the book contains very detailed prophecies of the Persian and Greek period, some scholars argue the book was written as late as 164 B.C., after the events described precisely in Daniel 11. Rather than prophecy, the book is a commentary on the relationship of the Jews and the nations, focusing on the (present) difficulties under the Greek Seleucid rule. This is the nature of apocalyptic prophecy such as the Animal Apocalypse which is in some ways similar to Daniel 11.

A date no later than 164 B.C. is commonly accepted because Daniel 11 describes Antiochus IV Epiphanes, his desecration of the Temple, and his persecution of the Jews. But Daniel 11 is clear on his death and does not seem to know about the Maccabean Revolt. For this reason, S. R. Driver and others date the book late enough to know Antiochus as the persecutor of Judea and to encourage Jews in facing persecution. The book presents God as sovereign over the nations. He has ordained the events leading up to the crisis of 164 B.C. But Daniel 11 does not know about the success of the Maccabean revolt or the re-dedication of the temple. Michael does not fight on behalf of Israel nor does God empower a son of man who will judge the nations and establish a kingdom that will never end (7:17).

Does it matter if the book of Daniel is written in the sixth or second century? Both of these two positions have good arguments and both answer objections to their view satisfactory (at least from their own perspective). What is the interpretive pay-off if Daniel is written earlier and predicts the general flow of history, or later and interprets that history?   

If Daniel claims to be prophecy, re-dating of the book to the second century means Daniel is not really prophecy. For most conservatives, this would be a denial of inspiration of Daniel. By claiming something that is not true, then the book is a lie. If Daniel is not predictive prophecy outlining events leading up to God’s Kingdom, then one might wonder if God really has a plan in the first place.

But is Daniel actually a prophet? In the book itself, Daniel does not claim to be a prophet and he does not function as a prophet in way Isaiah or Jeremiah did. He either interprets the dreams of others or has a vision himself that must be interpreted. His visions are described as giving the sense of “what will be,” but Daniel himself is not prophesying “thus says the Lord.”

If one defines Daniel as “apocalyptic” as giving a veiled commentary on the history and social conditions of the present of the writer using a pseudonym, then there is nothing in Daniel that might be construed as “errant.” Within the genre of apocalyptic, Daniel as a second century document is perfectly acceptable to conservative descriptions of inspiration and inerrancy.  

In the second edition of John Goldingay’s Daniel commentary (WBC 30, 2019), he observes Daniel scholarship in the twentieth century came to an impasse with respect to the date of Daniel. Both critical and conservative scholars approach the text with assumptions with respect to the date and reliability of the stories found in Daniel. For Goldingay, “it makes surprisingly little difference to the book’s exegesis whether the stories are history of fiction” (Daniel², 134). What the book says about God is true regardless of when the book was written.

But is Goldingay correct? Does the date of the composition of Daniel make “makes surprisingly little difference”? What would it matter if Daniel was written in the second century? Does this destroy Christian faith? How would this challenge conservative approaches to Daniel? On the other hand, how would the interpretation of the book be different if Daniel is in fact predictive prophecy?

Some Bibliography: Robert Vasholz, “Qumran And The Dating Of Daniel” JETS 21 (1978): 315-321.  This article is based on his dissertation, “A Philological Comparison of the Qumran Job Targum and Its Implications for the Dating of Daniel” (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, 1976). T. Muraoka, “The Aramaic of the Old Targum of Job from Qumran Cave XI,” JJS 25 (1974) 425-433.  K. A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel (London: Tyndale, 1965) 31-79.