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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