Daniel

DANIEL. - Prophet, who gave his name to a sacred book of the Old Testament.

I. THE PROPHET

D. belonged to the tribe of Judah (Dan. 1:6) and, in the deportation of 605 B.C., was led to Babylon (1:1), where he was chosen along with other young men to serve at the court of the Neo-Babylonian king, under the name Belteshazzar, after suitable preparation. The episode of Susanna (ch. 13 of the Vulgate) belongs to the period of his youth. It is not known when he left the court, with which he appears sporadically connected because of his fame as a prophet. Episodes of his life and prophecies are known, dated between the years of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562) and the 3rd year of Cyrus (539-529). Unverifiable traditions point to his tomb at Susa.

II. THE BOOK

It contains the narration of six events (chaps. 1-6), more or less miraculous, and four prophetic visions (chaps. 7-12). Narrations stylistically similar to those of chaps. 1-6 contain the stories of Susanna and of Bel and the dragon, numbered in the Vulgate as chaps. 13 and 14.

Chaps. 1-12 are written partly in Hebrew (1, 1-2, 4a; 8, 1-12, 13) and partly in Aramaic (2, 4b-7, 28) and constitute the "protocanonical" book; chaps. 13 and 14 and a complex of narrative and lyric-religious elements, connected with the account of chap. 3 (inserted there as vv. 24-90), are handed down only in Greek and are called "deuterocanonical" parts.

The analysis of the book offers the first means for examining the questions that cluster around this narrative and prophetic material.

The accounts (chaps. 1-6) answer the purpose of showing how the power and superiority of the God of Israel in the face of the pagan divinities had been manifested at the time of the exile. The special wisdom enjoyed by D. and put into action in the subsequent accounts was conferred on the prophet and his companions for their faithful observance of the law of Yahweh (chap. 1). The five following episodes (chaps. 2-6) end with the solemn recognition of the God of Israel by the Babylonian kings: D. explains Nebuchadnezzar's dream about the statue of various materials, shattered by a rock that falls from the mountain, as a symbol of four world empires, which give way to the advent of the messianic kingdom (chap. 2); he and his companions emerge unharmed from the fire, into which they have been thrown for refusing to worship an idol (chap. 3); Nebuchadnezzar is cured of a mental illness that has struck him, in accordance with D.'s prediction, derived from the explanation of a dream of the same king (chap. 4); D. explains to King Belshazzar (v.) the words that a mysterious hand has written on a wall during a banquet, as a forewarning of the imminent end of the kingdom and death of the king (chap. 5); D. emerges unscathed from the "den" of lions, into which he has been thrown for having prayed to his God, despite the prohibition (chap. 6).

The 2nd part (chaps. 7-12) contains four great visions, whose common object is the announcement of a future moment, in which a passage from evil to good must come to pass, after the victory over a complex of adverse forces, which will bring about an extreme struggle. The negative moment, already figured in the statue of chap. 2, is developed alongside the positive aspect of victory in the vision of the four sea monsters, which signify four world kingdoms, and of the human figure ("like a Son of Man": 7:13), who founds a new universal and eternal kingdom (chap. 7); particular aspects of the negative moment are then taken up again in the visions of the he-goat and the ram (chap. 8), in that of the angel Gabriel who brings to the prophet the prophecy of the 70 weeks (chap. 9) and in that of the events that will pass from the end of the Persian empire until the end of the persecution of the "people of the saints" and the death of the persecutor (chaps. 10-12), with a final mention of the positive moment (chap. 12).

III. CRITICAL PROBLEMS

This exposition already shows the firm unity that binds the various parts of the book, by virtue of the thought that pervades and sustains it all: the establishment of the universal kingdom of God, which in some way has a historical precedent in the recognition of Yahweh by the pagans of the ancient East (chaps. 1-6), but which in the visions (chaps. 7-12) is prophesied in minute detail and placed in close connection with the history that has just passed or is still unfolding. More precise observations of stylistic and ideological particulars confirm this impression of the strongly unitary character of the book, which is also the first indication of unity of authorship.

However, the ten episodes of which the book consists present themselves individually as self-contained units, because of their general form, always complete (note the formulas of introduction and conclusion), because of mutual internal incoherences and minute particularities of each, both in the narratives and in the prophecies (for example, the visionistic schema of the universal kingdoms). A further complication is brought about by the fact, mentioned above, of the alternation of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.

It is admitted today by all that the individual episodes were originally written as independent units, united at a later time into smaller collections, from which in

(phot. Alinari)
DANIEL - Daniel among the lions. Side of a sarcophagus of the 5th century.
Ravenna, Museum.

followed, the book was put together. The manner in which this happened is connected with the problems of the origin of the book and of its vicissitudes, which also explain the linguistic alternation.

IV. ORIGIN OF THE BOOK

On this problem criticism of the various tendencies proposes different solutions.

At one time not only was the Danielic authenticity of the predictions admitted unconditionally (cf. already Mt. 24:15), but the whole book was readily attributed to Daniel himself, who would have written it in old age (end of the 6th century B.C.): the accuracy of the information about persons (for the problems relating to the kings Belshazzar and Darius the Mede [v.]) and Babylonian matters served as confirmation.

Today such a rigid concept of the book's authenticity is no longer in force: one observes the notable differentiation of the Hebrew elocution from that of Ezekiel (Babylonian exile) and the use of Greek words in the Aramaic of ch. 3, a use not conceivable in Semitic territory before the invasion of Alexander the Macedonian.

Rationalism, in general, descends considerably beyond this period, down to the years of the oppression exercised by Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) against the civil and religious independence of the Jews, during which a pious Israelite, using traditions already current about the deeds and visions of a "prophet" Daniel, would have composed the book (protocanonical), in order to encourage the resistance of his persecuted countrymen and to comfort them, showing how imminent was the fulfillment of ancient prophecies that had foretold the persecution itself, its growing intensity and its rapid resolution with the end of the persecutor. It is observed that in all the visions, after a description, sometimes precise, of a state of anguish (=persecution), there is projected at a certain point the announcement, likewise more or less veiled, of the end of evil and the beginning of good at a term fixed in numerical data (7:25; 8:14; 9:24-27; 12:7, 11, 12). In keeping with this, radical criticism profoundly modifies the explicit or implicit data of tradition concerning the person of the prophet (whose historicity it does not consider entirely demonstrable), the history of the book, and the religious meaning of the prophecies.

Conservative critical-exegetical scholarship, with a far more thorough analysis of the book and of the external testimonies, rejects these conclusions as superficial. Studies by various Protestant authors (Hölscher, Haller, Noth) and Catholic ones (Junker) have meanwhile demonstrated the certain existence in the narratives and visions of archaic elements, of varying extent, which the "author" used, reworking them and incorporating them into an organic work that is the present book. If these elements derived from accounts of visions and prophecies, besides perhaps first-person memoirs in the Hebrew language dating back to the exile, nothing prevents them from being recognized as the work of Daniel. The later "author" would have done nothing but disseminate the old narratives and visions in a new form.

The episodes were first gathered into minor collections, still recognizable today (commonly the collection of narratives, chs. 1-6, and that of the visions, chs. 7-12, are pointed out, effectively arranged in independent chronological series), which then formed the book, chs. 1-12. In these vicissitudes the linguistic alternation can find its explanation: for example, supposing that the redactor (or author) gathered in Aramaic the narratives of chs. 2-6; subsequently enlarged the collection with the vision of ch. 7 (still using Aramaic), then with those of chs. 8, 9, 10-12 (preserving the original Hebrew); finally prefixed to the whole collection ch. 1 in Hebrew (also translating vv. 1-4a of ch. 2, so that the Aramaic would begin at 2:4a, where the Chaldean magicians begin to speak).

In fixing the date of this work to the 2nd century B.C., criticism was moved especially by the consolatory purpose that it believed it recognized in the book. But if this purpose is admissible up to a certain point for chs. 7-12, it is not at all so for chs. 1-6, from which the others are not separable: the kings Nebuchadnezzar (chs. 1-4) and Belshazzar

(ch. 5) are not "anti-Semites," they end by acknowledging Yahweh, they honor D. and his companions; Darius the Mede (ch. 6) has an explicitly sympathetic attitude toward D., who "prayed to his God."

Some Catholic scholars, whether for the whole (Junker) or for individual parts (e.g., for ch. 9: Szydelski), admitted a definitive drafting from older materials around the age of Antiochus IV, but it is commonly thought that by fixing the date at ca. 300 B.C., when the book of Chronicles was being composed (whose Hebrew is quite comparable to that of D.) and Judaism was gathering its literary, historical and prophetic heritage, one would give the most satisfactory justification for all the problems concerning this book.

The precision of certain prophecies, especially of ch. 11, is certainly singular: but it is not to be excluded that the text assumed its present form following revisions (v. DARIO il MEDO), so that the prophecies too were revised and expanded in light of their fulfillment.

V. THE DEUTEROCANONICAL PARTS

They are for the most part judged to be further embellishments of writings concerning the name of the great prophet, which came about when the protocanonical book was already complete. Both their Semitic origin and their belonging since antiquity to the Jewish-Alexandrian canon and to the Catholic canon of the inspired Scriptures are certain.

VI. PROPHECY AND APOCALYPSE

Notable peculiarities of literary and ideological structure set Dan. apart from all the other prophetic books and bring it close instead to a group of other writings, outside the canon, of the "apocalyptic" genre; among these peculiarities: a taste for complicated visions, an interest in eschatological subjects, a vast use of expressions tending to veil the thought and to create a mysterious atmosphere, symbols, numbers, etc. Its application to the case of Dan. is today admitted by many; but notable reservations are imposed by the fact that the "style" of this book does not have those exaggerations that are proper to the literary genre of the "Apocalypses."

The incomparable superiority of D. over the apocalyptic writers appears especially from the loftiness of his thought. D. predicts a future affirmation of associated forces of good, as the fruit of struggles victorious over the forces of evil, which he nonetheless describes in their historical aspect as organized entities ("kingdoms"). Disparate elements that constitute the two aspects foretold in the future, evil and good, have led exegesis to recognize that three are the struggles and victories foretold by him: the Maccabean liberation with the end of the oppressor Antiochus IV, the founding of the eternal and universal messianic kingdom, and the final victorious affirmation of the kingdom of God against the Antichrist, with the resurrection of the dead and the triumphant assignment of eternal punishment and reward.

Giovanni Rinaldi

VII. ICONOGRAPHY

The prophet D. appears from the earliest representations of cemetery art naked between the two lions, according to the interpretation of Dan. 14:30-31. Sometimes he is depicted in the pit and, more rarely, while he strikes down the idol, with a clear reference to the prophetic value of the gesture. In Danielic iconography, in fact, the hidden symbolic meaning of the linking of the prophet's martyrdom to that of the Redeemer is quite evident.

The theme of D. among the lions enters the iconographic repertoire of the very earliest Christian painters: it is found then in many frescoes of the catacombs, from the cemetery of Domitilla to the crypt of Lucina, to the vigna Cassia at Syracuse; in the sculptures of the sarcophagi, in the historiated glass, in small terracotta lamps and in many other funerary furnishings, quite abundant after the 3rd century. The same scene is repeated in a powerful Byzantine relief, assigned to the 6th century on the facade of the church of Sts. John and Paul in Venice and in a fragment of a marble ambo, of the 9th century, in the cloister of the cathedral of Novara.

The great ivory casket of the Christian Museum of Brescia, of the 4th century, which takes up motifs from the sarcophagi of Rome, presents instead the scene of D. in the pit with Habakkuk offering him food; the same connection of the two episodes, with the allusion to the Eucharist, is found again in a sculpture of the first half of the 12th century on the rear door of the church of St. Fedele in Como.

With the decline in the use of biblical representations, the stories of D. were seldom an object of interest for Renaissance and modern artists. But among the prophets, often depicted from the 16th century onward in the pendentives of domes, in the spaces between windows, etc., for the purpose of decorating the architectural parts, D. was never missing, even if the treatment was limited to the sole figure of the prophet in the act of reading and writing the sacred texts. See the admirable example by Michelangelo in the vault of the Sistine Chapel.

Giovanni Carandente

VIII. APOCRYPHON OF DANIEL

A book attributed to Daniel under various titles (prophecies, visions, interpretations of Daniel), attested from the 8th century A.D. onward. Substantially, in its various forms, it reworks the dynastic series of the kings of Constantinople, imitating the sacred book of Daniel.

Of the Greek originals, an "apocalypse of Daniel," the work of Methodius of Patara, was published in the Monumenta SS.PP., I, Basel 1569, pp. 93-99. Various Bohairic manuscripts of the canonical Daniel preserve a Coptic version of it (G. Baldelli, Daniel coptomemphiticus, Pisa 1849, pp. 103-12); the manuscripts of the Armenian version append it to the canonical text, under the title "seventh vision of Daniel" (G. Kalemkar, Die siebente Vision Daniels, in Wiener Zeitschr. f. die Kunde d. Morgenl., 6 [1892], pp. 109-36).

Another "apocalypse of Daniel," of a different form, was published by E. Klostermann, Die Apokalypse des Propheten Daniel, in Analecta zur Septuaginta, Leipzig 1895, pp. 113-20.

Francesco Spadafora