The Book of Daniel in Fausset's Bible Dictionary
AUTHENTICITY. That Daniel composed it is testified by Daniel
7:1-28; Daniel 8:2; Daniel 9:2; Daniel 10:1-2; Daniel 12:4-
5. In the first six chapters, which are historical, he does
not mention himself in the first person, for in these the
events, not the person, are prominent (compare Isaiah 7:3;
Isaiah 20:2). In the last six, which are prophetical,
wherein his divine commission needed to be shown, he comes
forward personally as the writer. Being a "seer," having the
gift and spirit, not the theocratical office and work, of a
prophet, his book stands in the third rank in the Hebrew
canon, namely, in the Hagiographa (Kethubim) between Esther
and Ezra, the three relating to the captivity. Its position
there, not among the prophets as one would expect, shows it
was not an interpolation of later times, but deliberately
placed where it is by Ezra and the establishers of the
Jewish canon. Daniel was "the politician, chronologer, and
historian among the prophets" (Bengel).
Similarly, the Psalms, though largely prophetic, are
ranked with the Hagiographa, not the prophets. He does not,
as they writing amidst the covenant people do, make God's
people the foreground; but writing in a pagan court he makes
the world kingdoms the foreground, behind which he places
the kingdom of God, destined ultimately to be all in all.
His book written amidst pagan isolation is the Old Testament
Apocalypse, as the Revelation of John written in the lonely
Patmos is the New Testament Apocalypse; the two respectively
stand apart, his from the prophets, John's from the
epistles. Porphyry in the third century A.D. assailed the
Book of Daniel as a forgery in the time of the Maccabees,
170-164 B.C. But the forgery of a prophecy, if Daniel were
spurious, would never have been received by the Jews from an
age when confessedly there were no prophets. Antiochus
Epiphanes' history and attack on the holy people are so
accurately detailed (Daniel 11) that Porphyry thought they
must have been written after the event.
But Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah allude to it;
Jesus in His peculiar...
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