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The Book of Daniel, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and revolving around the Jewish prophet Daniel, is a book of the Tanakh, in the section known as the Ketuvim (Hagiographa, or the "Writings"), in the Christian Old Testament. Daniel was considered a prophet at Qumran and later by Josephus and was grouped among the prophets in the Septuagint, the Jewish Greek Old Testament, and by Christians, who place the book among the prophets.
The book has two distinct parts, a series of narratives and four apocalyptic visions. The dating and composition of Daniel has been a matter of great debate due to the implications that can be drawn from its putatively prophetic visions.
The narratives are set in the period of the Babylonian captivity, first at the court of Nebuchadnezzar and later at the court of his successors Belshazzar and a 'King Darius' of unclear identity.
Scholarship on the dating of the Book of Daniel largely falls into two camps, one dating the book to the 2nd century BC, the other dating the work to the 6th century BC. However, other views exist as well. Josephus writes in The Antiquities of the Jews that Daniel was in its completed form by 350 BC. John Collins, a modern secular historian finds it impossible for the Aramaic portion of Daniel to have been written in 2nd Century BC due to textual analysis.
Most secular interpreters find that references in the Book of Daniel reflect the persecutions of Israel by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BC), and consequently date its composition to that period.After Alexander the Great conquered the Near East, a number of successor kingdoms were established, one of which was based in Syria. It was known as the Seleucid dynasty, and ruled by the cruel Antiochus Epiphanes IV who did exercise tyranny over the Jews. He desecrated the Temple and forbade all Jewish religious practices. The Jews revolted and eventually defeated Antiochus.
The first part, consisting of the first six chapters, comprises a series of lightly connected court tales, connected instructive narratives, or miracle tales. Only the first story is in Hebrew, the rest in Aramaic from ch. 2:4, beginning with the speech of the "Chaldeans". Three sections are preserved only in the Septuagint, and are considered apocryphal by Protestant Christians and Jews, and deuterocanonical by Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
The second part, the remaining six chapters, are visionary, an early example of apocalyptic literature, in which the author, now speaking in the first person, reveals three visions and one lengthened prophetical communication, mainly having to do with the destiny of Israel:
The vision in the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon (7:1) concerning four great beasts (7:3) representing four future kings (7:17) or kingdoms (7:23), the fourth of which devours the whole earth, treading it down and crushing it (7:23); this fourth kingdom produces ten kings, and then a special, eleventh person arises out of the fourth kingdom that subdues three of the ten kings (7:24), speaks against the Most High and the saints of the Most High, and intends to change the times and the law (7:25); after a time and times and half a time (three and a half years), this person is judged and his dominion is taken away (7:26); then, the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven are given to the people of the saints of the Most High (7:27)
The vision in the third year of Belshazzar concerning a ram and a male goat (8:1-27); Daniel interprets the goat as the "kingdom of Yawan" that is, the Hellenistic kingdom (8:21)
The vision in first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus (9:1) concerning seventy weeks, or seventy "sevens", apportioned for the history of the Israelites and of Jerusalem (9:24)
A lengthy vision in the third year of Cyrus king of Persia (10:1 - 12:13)
The prophetic and eschatological visions of Daniel, with those of Ezekiel and Isaiah, are the scriptural inspiration for much of the apocalyptic ideology and symbolism of the Qumran community's Dead Sea scrolls and the early literature of Christianity. "Daniel's clear association with the Maccabean Uprising in Palestine was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Rabbis, following the uprisings against Rome, downgraded it from its position among the 'Prophets'" (Eisenman 1997, p 19f).
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