Allusion has been made above to the cmi|MuiB« which may be instituted between Daniel and i<««fi who stand at the beginning and the close of the di^ history of the Jews as representatives of the trat Ga. in heathen courts (Auberlen, Daniel, p. 82, 38). la ^ respect the position of Daniel must have exeidtt^ i powerftd influence upon the form of the rertlatHif conveyed through him; and in turn Uie asthoi^ which he enjoyed renders the course of the exik asi the return clearly intelligible. By station, bj edsu* tion, and by character, he was peculiarly fitted ts iii- fil the work assigned to him. He was not oalr a J&' ident in a foreign land, like Jeremiah or Exddel, b;S the minister of a foreign empire, and of sucoesBTe ij- nasties (Dan. ii, 48 ; vi, 28). His politica] experiesce would naturally qualify him to give distinct expm- sion to the characteristics of nations in theiasehtiw and not only in their relation to God's people. Ha intellectual advantages were as remarkable as his dri dignity. Like the great lawgiver who was '^tnioe^ in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," the great am was trained in the secrete of Chaldisan wisdom, isd placed at the head of the school of the Magi (Dsn. s, 48). He was thus enabled to preserve whateranf true in the traditional teaching of the East, and to act his revelations into a form suited to their spectsi cbl^ acter. But, though engaged in the service of a kt- then prince and familiar with Oriental learning Db- iel was fh>m the first distinguished by his strict ^ servanoe of the Mosaic law (i, 8-16 ; comp. vi, 10, IP In this way the third outward condition for his wk was satisfied, and at the dose of the exile be offend i pattern of holiness for the instruction of the Di^tenks
DANIEL
663
DANIEL
alter timet (oomp. Auberlen, Daniel^ p. 24, etc). >e pAiyricT^ Book of.
VariooB apociyphal firagmente attributed to Daniel e collected by FabridnB iCod.Pteu(L V. T. i, 1124), id his wiadom is extravagantly lauded by the Babbins vemara, Yoma) ; but it b aurprising that his £une in ter times seems to have been obecnred (Hettinger, Ut, XhienL 92). Comp. Epiph. VU. Dm, ii^ p. 248, ed. etav. ; Vii, Ikm, ap. Fabric. ; Josephns, Ant. il^ 11, 7. -Kitto, s. v. ; SmUh, 8. y. See Daniel, Apoobt-
HAL. Al>I>mOK8 TO.
DANIBL, Book op. This important and in many »pect8 remarkable book takes its name not only rem the principal person in it, but also and chiefly roxn him as its real author, there being no just cause f donbt that, as the book itself testifies, it was com- osed by Daniel (comp. vii, 1, 28; viii, 2; ix, 2). It ccupies, howeyer, but a third rimk in the Hebrew anon ; not among the PropketM^ but in the Has^ogrc^ ohcL, owing apparently to the correct view of the com- KMers of the canon, that Daniel did not exercise his kTophetio office in the more restricted and proper sense >f the term "prophecy,'* but stood to the theocracy n a different relation from those real prophets whose sailing and profession consisted exclusively in declar- ing the messages they received, and in tiie commn- [lion which tl^y held with God. These latter are termed, in the ancient Hebrew idiom, D*^M*^33,|)rqpA- ete, in contradistinction to Q'^th, seen^ who, though they were equally ikvored with divine revelations, were nevertheless not prophets hjprofettion, a calling tliat claimed the entire service of a man's whole life. See Canon. The Babylonian exile supplied the out- ward training and the inward necessity for this last form of divine teaching ; and the prophetic visions of Ezekiel form the connecting link between the charac- teristic types of revelation and prophecy (oomp. Lucke,
Versuchy \, 17 sq. ; Hitzig, Daniel^ Vorbem, § 9 ; Hil- genfeld. Die Jud, Apok, 1 sq.). The following account
of this book is in part compiled from the articles of
Kitto and Smith. See Daniel. 1. The book of Daniel divides itself into two parts,
Mgtorical (ch. i-vi) and prophetic (ch. vii-xii), arranged
respectively in chronological order. In the first seven
chapters, accordingly, Daniel is spoken of MttorioaUff
0, 8-21; ii, 14-49; iv, 8-27; v, ia-29; vi, 2-28; vii,
1, 2) ; in the last five he appears pertonattg as the writer (vii, 16-28 ; viii, 1-ix, 22 ; x, 1-19 ; xii, 5). Its object is by no means to give a summary hi^rical account of the period of the exile, or of the life of Dan- iel himself, since it contains only a few isolated points both as to histbrical facts and prophetic revelations. But the plan or tendency which *so consistently runs through the whole book is of a far difiTerent character ; it is to show the extraordinary and wonderfU means which the Lord made use o^ in a period of the deepest misery, when the theocracy seemed dissolved and fost approaching its extinction, to afford assistance to his people, proving to them that he had not entirely for- saken them, and making them sensible of the fact that his merciful presence stiU continued to dwell with them, even without the Temple and beyond the Land of Promise.
The wonders related in Daniel (ch. i-vi) are thus mostly of a peculiar, prominent, and striking charac- ter, and resemble in many respects those performed of old tune in Egypt. Their divine tendency was, on the one liand, to lead the heathen power, which proudly &ncied itself to be the conqueror of the theocracy, to the acknowledgment that there was an assential difier- ence between the world and the kingdom of God; and, on the other, to impress degenerate and callous Israel 'whh the full conviction that the power of God was StiU the same as it was of old in Egypt