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A Contemporary Defense of the Authenticity of Daniel

April 2016

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Kirk MacGregor

McPherson College

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A Contemporary Defense of the Authenticity of Daniel

Kirk R. MacGregor1

INTRODUCTION

The authorship and date of composition of Daniel remains a subject of

great controversy. Conservative scholars have traditionally affirmed that

the book was composed by the exilic prophet Daniel around 530 BC, while

liberal scholars embrace the view of the early Christian critic Porphyry

that the work is a vaticinium ex eventu (i.e., prophecy after the fact) written

by a Jewish priest to encourage the resistance movement against the

tyranny of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 164 BC. Some evangelical scholars,

like John Goldingay in the Word Biblical Commentary on Daniel (1989)

and F. F. Bruce in Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts (1959), have

adopted the critical assessment.2 Further, John J. Collins Daniel (1993),

the most thorough historical-critical commentary to date on this book, has

persuaded many scholars of the pseudonymous nature of Daniel, including

several Roman Catholic exegetes who now dismiss its authenticity.3

However, the liberal explanation fails to withstand the force of several

archaeological and textual discoveries, as scholars including Gleason

Archer, Kenneth Kitchen, Edwin Yamauchi, and Steven Anderson have

illustrated.4 This piece will summarize the critical argument regarding

1 Kirk R. MacGregor (Ph.D., University of Iowa) teaches religion at

Carthage College and philosophy at the College of DuPage.

2 John Goldingay, Word Biblical Commentary: Daniel (Dallas: Word,

1989) xxxix-xl, 304-19, 324-34; F. F. Bruce, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran

Texts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959) 59-65.

3 John J. Collins, Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 122.

4 Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction

Notes

on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel (ed. Donald J. Wiseman; London:

Tyndale, 1965) 31-79; Edwin M. Yamauchi, Greece and Babylon (Grand Rapids:

Baker, 1967) 19-24, 79, 89; idem, The Stones and the Scriptures (Philadelphia: J.

B. Lippincott, 1972), 87-

Bibliotheca Sacra 137 (1980) 3-

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 23 (1980) 13-21; idem,

Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 57-9, 281, 303, 379-82, 389,

Daniel and proceed to refute this argument by presenting the

archaeological and textual evidence which undermines its foundations.

SURVEY OF THE CRITICAL VIEW

While the Jews of late antiquity and Christians disagreed about the role of

Jesus in fulfilling the prophecies of Daniel, they agreed that the book was

an authentic foretelling of future events by the power of God. This notion

was first challenged by the Neoplatonic philosopher and anti-Christian

critic Porphyry (AD 232 305) in his fifteen-volume set Against the

Christians. He argued that the correspondence between the predictions of

Daniel 11 and the events of the Hellenistic age is explained only by the

supposition that the predictions were written after the fact.5 According to

Porphyry, Daniel 11:1-4 reveals that its prophecies are to be interpreted

with regard to the Persian assault on Greece and the subsequent rise of a

mighty king whose kingdom is divided into four parts. The former

reference suggests one of the Persian kings who attacked Greece, possibly

Xerxes who invaded the kingdom in 480 BC. The mighty king is an

obvious allusion to Alexander the Great, who conquered the Persians, and

whose kingdom was divided into four parts among his four generals, as

confirmed in the earlier visions of Daniel 8:20-26. Daniel 8:22-24

indicates that the little horn who destroys the saints emerges from the

four horns or kingdoms that come to power after Alexander.6 In addition,

Daniel 11 surveys the wars between the northern (Seleucid) and Southern

(Ptolemaic) kingdoms, and culminates in a detailed account of Antiochus

IV Epiphanes war against the Jews. Daniel 11:1-39 is remarkably

accurate concerning the events from Cyrus (530 BC) to the Maccabean

Revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the rededication of the Temple

(164 BC). However, Daniel 11:40-45 predicts another disastrous war

provoked by Ptolemy, king of the South, Antiochus IV Epiphanes

conquest of Libya and Ethiopia, and his death along the Palestinian coast,

none of which ever happened.7 Therefore, Porphyry poses the following

question: if Daniel is a true prophecy about the events leading up to and

462-

Dallas Theological Seminary, 2014).

5Collins, Daniel, 25.

6Goldingay, Daniel, 206-8, 217-8.

7Ibid., pp. 282-6, 305.

including the persecution of Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the

Jewish rebellion against the Syrian ruler, why does the book correctly

predict these events only to the point of the rededication of the Temple?

His solution asserts that Daniel is not prophecy, but a symbolic rendering

of actual historical events only up to the writer s own day. Thus, the author

is inaccurate about the events following the rededication of the Temple,

and especially regarding the later career and death of Antiochus IV

Epiphanes, because these events had not yet happened at the time the book

was composed. According to Porphyry, Daniel is not an example of divine

prophecy, but a pious forgery written to help Jews cope with and endure

the crisis of 167 164 BC.8

Liberal scholars such as John J. Collins have championed

Porphyry s thesis and added some objections of their own against the

authenticity of Daniel. Collins alleges that the book s references to

Hellenistic events are accurate, but those concerning Babylonian history

are notoriously confused. 9 He contends that the various sections of

Daniel cannot be reconciled with internal or external data. For example,

Daniel 2 takes place in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar s reign (2:1),

while Daniel 1 assumes that the prophet has already completed a three-

year training period under this king.10 Further, Nebuchadnezzar secured

the throne in 605, and Babylonian sources do not record the capture of

Jerusalem until his seventh year (597 BC). Since Daniel 1:1 claims that

Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem in 605, the book s chronology cannot

be harmonized with the Babylonian records. Hence, Collins insists that

Daniel is the end result of a longer development, bringing together various

pieces by different authors.11 He believes that the Babylonian names given

to Daniel and his three companions in Daniel 1:7 are specious, and the

term Chaldean used in its professional sense as astrologer (2:2) together

with its ethnic sense (3:8; 9:1) is an anachronism, as the texts of

Shalmaneser III (9th century BC) only refer to Chaldeans in the ethnic

sense.12 He feels that Nebuchadnezzar s derangement in Daniel 4 is a

jumbled version of Nabonidus madness in withdrawing to the desert,

8 Ibid., xxxi, 315-9; P. M.

Journal of Theological Studies 27 (1976) 15-33.

9Collins, Daniel, 26.

10 Ibid., 29.

11 Ibid., 130-4.

12 Ibid., 137-8, 140-1.

described in the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrNab) from Qumran.13 Collins

maintains that many events and persons mentioned in Daniel cannot be

coordinated with otherwise known history. He argues that Darius the Mede

cannot be identified with any historic figure, and that Babylon was

conquered by Cyrus and the Persians instead of the Medes. In addition,

there is no evidence that any officer overseeing Cyrus conquest of

Babylon (other than Cyrus himself) was ever called king of Babylon, or

Darius, and thus Darius the Mede represents a confusion with the later

Persian king Darius the Great.14 Collins asserts that the references in

Daniel 5 to Belshazzar as son of Nebuchadnezzar are blatant earmarks

of forgery, as Nabonidus was the father of Belshazzar.15 Collins observes

that the book Daniel is bilingual, with a Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew

structure, and cites this as undeniable evidence that the book was

composed by at least two different authors, for a single author would not

have written a text in two languages.16 Moreover, he charges that Greek

loanwords in the Aramaic of Daniel demand a late date.17 On the basis of

the Aqhat story from Ugaritic literature (i.e., Ras Shamra texts) which

concerns a righteous king named Dn il who fairly judges widows and

orphans, Collins suggests that Daniel was the name of a legendary wise

man rather than a historic person.18 The literary form of Daniel also

resembles the later apocalyptic works.19 As a result, Collins dates the

tales of Daniel 1-6 as earlier than the prophecies but still Hellenistic in

origin and post-Alexander the Great, Daniel 7 as written early in the

persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes around 167 BC, Daniel 8-12 as

added sometime between 166 and 164 prior to any knowledge by the

author of Antiochus eastern campaign or his subsequent death, and Daniel

12:11-12 as composed just before the rededication of the Temple on 25

Kislev 164.20

13 Ibid., 216-34.

14 Ibid., 30-1, 264.

15 Ibid., 29, 32-3.

16 Ibid., 24.

17 Ibid., 12-20.

18 Ibid., 1-2.

19 Ibid., 56-60.

20 Ibid., 38.

REFUTATION OF THE CRITICAL VIEW

We now enter into a pointwise assessment of the critical view.

1. Who is the king in Daniel 11:36-45?

As Porphyry deduced, Daniel 11:1-4 indeed alludes to the Persian invasion

of Greece, and the mighty king connotes Alexander the Great. Such is

unproblematic for the believer in predictive prophecy. Nevertheless, the

crux of Porphyry s thesis alleges that Daniel 11:40-45 fabricates events in

the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, including his conquest of Libya and

Ethiopia, the war waged against him by the Southern king Ptolemy, and

his death while camping in the coastlands of Palestine. However, Daniel

11:36 12:13, which contains Daniel 11:40-45, does not refer to Antiochus

IV Epiphanes, but predicts incidents that will occur just prior to the end of

the world.21 In the Masoretic Text, there is a clear paragraph break

between Daniel 11:35 and 11:36, where only Daniel 11:21-34 is describing

the life of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.22 As a prelude to the next paragraph,

Daniel 11:35 shifts forward in history by expressly stating that the

following material portrays events near the end of time: Some of the wise

will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until

the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time. This fact is

verified by comparing Daniel 11:28 with Daniel 11:40. To illustrate, all

scholars concur that Antiochus IV Epiphanes is the king of the North in

Daniel 11:28 who plundered the Second Jerusalem Temple in 167 BC.

But, the king spoken of by Daniel 11:40 cannot be Antiochus IV

Epiphanes, for this king is distinguished from the king of the North and

will actually be attacked by the king of the North and the king of the South

at the end of time: At the time of the end the king of the South will

engage him in battle, and the king of the North will storm out against him

with chariots and cavalry and a great fleet of ships. 23

To determine the identity of the king in Daniel 11:36-45, we must

21 -9.

22 Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,

1977), 1409.

23 Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald B. Allen, and H. Wayne House, ed., The

Nelson Study Bible (Nashville: Nelson, 1997) 1441-2.

ascertain the figure symbolized by the little horn of Daniel 7:8, whom

Porphyry correctly equates with the king in question. The visions of Daniel

2 and 7 refer to four kingdoms, as revealed by the prophet in 2:36-45 and

an angel in 7:16-17. The head of gold (2:32a) and lion (7:4) are

Babylonia (2:37), the chest and arms of silver (2:32b) and bear (7:5)

are Medo-Persia (8:20), the belly and thighs of bronze (2:32c) and

leopard (7:6) are Greece, including the Ptolemies and Seleucids (8:21),

and the legs of iron with feet of clay and iron mixed (2:33) and

terrifying and frightening beast (7:7) is the Roman Empire.24 This latter

identification is confirmed by Daniel 2:33, 41-42, 7:7, and 7:19. For

instance, the beast s legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked

clay (2:33) represents the democratic system of checks and balances in

the Roman senate and assemblies.25 The fact that this beast was different

from all the former beasts, very powerful, most terrifying, and had

large iron teeth and bronze claws which crushed and devoured its

victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left (7:7, 19) indicates the

magnitude of Rome s sphere of authority and irresistible power that

surpassed all its predecessors, and the ten horns (7:7) correspond to the

ten toes (2:41-42).26 Liberal scholars repeat Porphyry s error that the

four empires of Daniel 2 and 7 are Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece,

even though the author clearly states that the Medes and Persians

together constituted the second in the series of four kingdoms (5:28; 2:39).

Only through perpetuation of this mistake can the little horn be

classified as Antiochus IV Epiphanes.27

Daniel 7:8 points out that the little horn originated after the ten

horns of the Roman Empire and had eyes like the eyes of a man and a

mouth that spoke boastfully. While the little horn uttered pompous

words, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat

(7:10), and the horn was finally destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire

(7:11). Then, one like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven,

approached the Ancient of Days, and was led into the presence of the

Ancient of Days (7:13). This one like a son of man was given authority,

glory, and sovereign power so that all peoples, nations, and speakers of

every language worshiped him, where his kingdom is everlasting and

24 Archer, Old Testament Introduction, 388.

25 Ibid., 403-7.

26 -5.

27 Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 57-8.

the one which shall not be destroyed (7:14). The little horn is further

regarded as different from the other kings (7:24), in that he would

speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the

set times and the laws, and the saints would be handed over to him for a

time, times, and half a time (7:25). Afterwards, the court will abolish his

dominion (7:26), and the sovereignty, power, and greatness of the

kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the

people of the Most High (7:27). Given that the little horn will wage war

against the saints at the time of the end (11:40), prevail against them for

a short time, and be defeated by the return of the one like a son of man, it

is apparent that the little horn, i.e., the king of Daniel 11:36 12:13,

denotes a figure who will emerge near the end of the world, not Antiochus

IV Epiphanes.28 Therefore, the prophecies in Daniel 11:40-45 are not

fabrications concerning Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but are referring to the

reign of a king which will occur during the end times and who will be

defeated by the return of the one like a son of man. Daniel 12 clearly

portrays this end-of-the-world scenario, for the final resurrection of the

righteous to everlasting life and the wicked to eternal condemnation will

take place immediately after the little horn is destroyed (12:2-3).29

2. Are Daniel s references to Babylonian history accurate?

The historical objections presented by Collins, many of which are rooted

in a misreading of the biblical text, have been resolved by archaeological

finds. The alleged irreconcilable problem between Daniel 1, which reports

that Daniel experienced three years of training before entering the king s

service (1:5, 18-20), and the setting of Daniel 2 in the second year of

Nebuchadnezzar s reign (2:1), is explained by the accession-year regnal

system attested by the Nabonidus Chronicle and the Gezer Calendar.30 The

Nabonidus Chronicle is an inscription of the Neo-Babylonian king

Nabonidus (553 539 BC) in the Semitic Akkadian language.31 The four-

28 Archer, Old Testament Introduction, 398-401.

29 Alfred J. Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids:

Baker, 1998) 297, 317-9; Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 82; idem, Persia

and the Bible, 76-7, 86.

30 Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 297.

31 Edwin R. Thiele, A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids:

Zondervan, 1977) 68.

inch high Gezer Calendar, discovered in 1908, is a schoolboy s writing

exercise inscribed in paleo-Hebrew which dates to the reign of King

Rehoboam (922 905 BC).32 In the accession-year regnal system, a king

would regard his first full year as the accession year and start to count his

own reign at the beginning of the next year. Further, the Gezer Calendar

commences in the month of Tishri, the fall month which roughly parallels

our September, and Edwin Thiele points out that Judah counted from

Tishri.33 If Daniel was written by its namesake, a Judean captive who was

well-versed in Babylonian politics (1:6; 2:48; 5:29; 6:2-3), then the book

would have dated Nebuchadnezzar s reign through the Babylonian and

Judean calendars. Daniel 1:1 reveals that Nebuchadnezzar besieged

Jerusalem in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah,

which can be calculated as lasting from September 606 to September 605

upon comparing it with the Israelite Nisan calendar employed by Jeremiah

46:2. Because Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father Nabopolassar as king

of Babylon in 605 BC, Daniel 1:1 indicates that he must have assumed the

throne between January and August of 605. Under the Babylonian and

Judean systems, Nebuchadnezzar s accession year lasted from September

605 to September 604, his first year from September 604 to September

603, and his second year from September 603 to September 602. Because

Daniel was captured when Nebuchadnezzar seized Jerusalem between

January and August of 605 BC, his three-year training period started

between January and August of 605 and ended between January and

August of 602, when the chief official presented him to Nebuchadnezzar

(1:18). Since this training period ended before September 602, the text

correctly reports the subsequent events of Daniel 2 in the second year of

Nebuchadnezzar s reign (2:1).34

Collins assertion that there is no mention of Nebuchadnezzar s

capture of Jerusalem until 597 BC overlooks the Nabonidus Chronicle. It

reports that Nebuchadnezzar conquered all Hatti land, i.e., Palestine, in

605 BC, and that in the accession year he went back again to the Hatti-

land and marched victoriously through it until the month of Sebat (spring

of 604), which directly corroborates Daniel 1:1-3.35 Far from Collins

33 Thiele, Chronology, 69-70.

34 -5.

35 D. J. Wiseman and Edwin M. Yamauchi, Archaeology and the Bible

(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979) 50.

view that Daniel cannot be reconciled with the Babylonian records, these

records actually confirm the historicity of Daniel. With regard to the

Babylonian names given to Daniel and his three companions in Daniel 1:7,

Paul-Richard Berger has verified that these names are authentic and based

on Akkadian analogies. Belteshazzar is from the analogy belet-sar-usur,

Lady protect the king, Shadrach from saduraku, I am very fearful (of

God), Meshach from mesaku, I am of little account, and Abed-nego

means Servant of the Shining One, using the West Semitic abed instead

of the Akkadian arad, servant, and using a play on the name of the god

Nebo.36 Archaeology has unearthed the Greek text of Berossus, which

shows that Chaldeans were known as professional astrologers long before

the time of Daniel: From the time of Nabonassar (747 734 BC) the

Chaldeans accurately recorded the times of the motion of the stars. 37

3. Does Daniel 4 accurately depict something

that happened to Nebuchadnezzar?

Collins posits that the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrNab) from Qumran was

transmuted into the account of Nebuchadnezzar s derangement in Daniel

4. Indeed, there are three broad parallels between these texts. First, a

Babylonian king is afflicted by God in both accounts. Second,

Nebuchadnezzar was tormented seven times, and Nabonidus was

disturbed for seven years. Third, Daniel helped obtain Nebuchadnezzar s

sanity, and an unnamed Jewish exorcist convinced Nabonidus to repent

from his worship of the gods of silver and gold...wood, stone, and clay.

On the basis of these three parallels, Bastiaan Jongeling asserts: It is

fairly safe to assume that the original Nabonidus tradition...was transferred

in Daniel to the well-known Nebuchadnezzar...and that the seer, a Jewish

man, was not yet identified with Daniel in 4QPrNab. 38 However,

Yamauchi challenges the premise of a common tradition between the

Qumran Nabonidus and the Nebuchadnezzar of Daniel, arguing that there

36 Paul-Richard Kyros-Zylinder mit dem Zusatzfragment

Zeitschrift für

Assyriologie 64 (1975) 224-34.

37 In J. A. Brinkman, A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia,

1158 722 BC (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1968) 227.

38 Bastiaan Jongeling, C. J. Labauschagne, and A. S. van der Woude,

Aramaic Texts from Qumran I (Leiden: Brill, 1976) 124.

are far more dissimilarities than resemblances in these two sources. For

example, the names of the two kings are different, and Nebuchadnezzar

was afflicted in Babylon while Nabonidus suffered in Tema of Arabia.

Nebuchadnezzar was banished for a period of seven times in Daniel

4:23, 25, which may not equate to the seven years asserted in the Qumran

Nabonidus text. For the Aramaic word iddan is the general word for

time or season, as illustrated by Daniel 2:8-9, 3:5, 15, 7:12 and the

Aramaic papyri (495 398 BC) found in 1898 on the Elephantine Island

near Aswan in Upper Egypt.39

In 1956 D. S. Rice discovered three stelae at Haran which recount

the death of Nabonidus mother, who lived to be 104. These significant

inscriptions report that Nabonidus had forsaken Marduk, the patron god of

Babylon, to worship the moon-god Sin at Haran and Tema. These stelae

use the Akkadian word adannu to designate the entire period of

Nabonidus sojourn in Arabia, which was ten years and not seven as

previously thought.40 Moreover, Nebuchadnezzar suffered from

lycanthropic insanity, while Nabonidus was afflicted with sehin (literally

inflammation ), a skin ailment (Ex. 9:9; Job 2:7), and not with delusion.

The Persian Verse Account, an Akkadian source which dates from the

reign of Cyrus (539 530 BC), does not depict Nabonidus as insane but

angry: the king is mad (Akkadian a-gu-ug sarru).41 Sidney Smith s

mistranslation of a line in the Persian Verse Account, an evil demon

(shedu) had altered him, 42 has been corrected in the latest version by A.

Leo Oppenheim, (his) protective deity became hostile to him. 43

Jongeling s reconstruction of line 3 in the Prayer of Nabonidus, and so I

came to be li[ke the animals], rests on his presupposition that the Qumran

text conforms to Daniel 4, as conceded by A. S. van der Woude and Pierre

39 -8.

40 Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel, The

Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978) 123.

in The Bible in Current Catholic Thought (ed. J. L. McKenzie; New York: Herder,

Irish

Theological Quarterly 37 (1970) 141.

42 Sidney Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts Relating to the Capture and

Downfall of Babylon (London: Meuthen, 1924) 98.

43 A. Leo Oppenheim

in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (3rd ed.; ed. James B.

Pritchard; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 313.

Grelot.44 Moreover, the literary genres of the Qumran text and Daniel 4 are

quite different. The former is a descriptive narrative, while the latter is a

public proclamation by the king himself. Therefore, Louis Hartman asserts

that [t]here is no sign of literary dependence of one story on the other: the

relatively few words and expressions which they have in common are

standard terms that could occur anywhere, 45 and Yamauchi concurs that

[i]t is in the face of these rather important discrepancies that critics...have

still chosen to derive Daniel s story of Nebuchadnezzar s madness from a

garbled tradition about Nabonidus illness. 46

4. Was Darius the Mede a historical figure?

Perhaps the most intractable problem surrounding the authenticity of

Daniel has been to establish the existence of a Median king who can be

positively identified as Darius the Mede. In 2014, this problem seems to

have been definitively solved by Steven Anderson. Anderson s solution

proceeds in two parts. First, based on the classical Greek historian

Xenophon s Cyropaedia (370 BC), one of two ancient biographies of

Cyrus the Great, Anderson has persuasively argued that Cyrus shared

power with a Median king until two years after the fall of Babylon.47

Xenophon denominates this king as Cyaxares II. According to Xenophon,

Cyrus was the son of Cambyses I, King of Persia, who was subordinate to

his brother-in-law Astyages, King of Media. At Astyages death, his son

Cyaxares II succeeded him to the Median throne at about the time Cyrus

reached adulthood.48 When the Babylonians with the assistance of other

nations attacked the Medes and Persians, Cyaxares II and Cyrus, then the

crown prince of Persia and commander of the Persian army, joined forces

to overthrow the Babylonians. Cyaxares II remained in Media with a home

guard, while Cyrus conducted the war as the commanding general of both

the Medes and Persians.49 In 539 BC, Cyrus became King of Persia upon

44 Jongeling, Labauschagne, and van der Woude, Aramaic Texts, 126-7;

Revue de Qumran 9 (1978)

487.

47 -9.

48 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.5.2, 1.5.4.

49 Ibid., 5.5.38-40; 6.1.6; 6.1.19.

the death of Cambyses I. Later that same year, Cyrus took Babylon by

diverting the Euphrates River and attacking the riverbed on the night of a

feast, killing the troops and the king of Babylon, whom Xenophon

identifies as the son of the king who then was. 50 At the fall of Babylon,

therefore, Cyaxares II was recognized as the highest official in the Medo-

Persian Empire, with Cyrus a subordinate co-regent.51 When Cyrus

returned to Persia and met Cyaxares II, Cyaxares II gave Cyrus his

daughter in marriage and bestowed upon Cyrus accession to the throne of

Media at his death. When Cyaxares II died in 537 BC, Cyrus, now king of

Media and Persia, united the two peoples under a single monarch.52

Second, Anderson presents strong evidence that Darius the

Mede was the throne name of Cyaxares II. Anderson appeals to Berossus,

a priest of Bel/Marduk in Babylon who composed the Babyloniaca, an

account of Babylonian history from the origins of Babylon to the

beginning of the Hellenistic period, between 281 261 BC. The best text-

critical reconstruction of the Babyloniaca contains the following

description of the fall of Babylon:

But it came to pass in the seventeenth year of [Nabonidus ]

reign, that Cyrus came out of Persia with a great army; and

having subdued all the rest of his kingdom, he rushed upon

Babylonia. And when Nabonidus learned of his attack, he met

[him] with his army and joined battle, and was defeated in the

50 Ibid., 4.6.3; 7.5.26-31.

51 Hence it is false, as is commonly assumed by liberal scholars, that

Cyrus made a hostile conquest of Media and dethroned the last Median king. This

assumption comes from Herodotus

the account of Xenophon at various points. However, application of the criteria of

-50). Moreover, on this score Xenophon is

confirmed and Herodotus disconfirmed by Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 10.248)

and Harpocration (Lexeis of the Ten Orators

version of the accession of Cyrus which Herodotus gives is a legendary

embellishment of a deceitful propaganda history created by Cyrus as a means of

legitimating his kingship in the minds of an unfavorable Babylonian populac

-3).

52 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.5.18-27.

battle; and, fleeing with a few [troops], he was confined within

the city of the Borsippans. Then Cyrus seized Babylon, and

ordered the outer walls of the city to be torn down, because the

city had been very troublesome to him, and seemed hard to

conquer. He then marched against Borsippa to force

Nabonidus to capitulate. But Nabonidus did not wait out the

siege, but gave himself up. Cyrus at first treated him kindly,

and, giving a residence to him in Carmania, sent him out of

Babylonia. But Darius the king took away some of his province

for himself. So Nabonidus passed the rest of his time in that

land and died.53

This text intersects quite nicely with the account of Xenophon, filling out

its missing details. While Xenophon recounted Cyrus killing of a

Babylonian king who was co-regnant with his father but said nothing more

of the father, Berossus described the surrender, exile, and natural death of

that father, Nabonidus. More stunning for our purposes is the italicized

line, which reveals that Darius was a king whose rule stretched over the

exploits of Cyrus just after the fall of Babylon. Since we know from

Xenophon that the only king with this type of authority was Cyaxares II,

Anderson concludes that Darius and Cyaxares II were one and the same

figure, with Darius serving as his throne name.54 And since this figure was

king of Media, it is only natural that the further designation the Mede

would be added to the throne name Darius.55

Corroboration for this conclusion comes from the first-century AD

Jewish historian Josephus, who reported: Now Darius put an end to the

dominion of the Babylonians with Cyrus his relative, being sixty-two years

53 -52.

54 -7, 152-3. Further, I concur with the

prominent nineteenth-century Old Testament commentator C. F. Keil (against

Anderson) that Cyaxares and Astyages are Median names whose respective

Persian equivalents are Darius and Ahasuerus (Biblical Commentary on the Book

of Daniel [trans. M. G. Easton; Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament;

Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1847] 200).

55 The Greek tragic dramatist Aeschylus (writing in 472 BC) reported

Astyages and Cyrus (Persians 765- -3).

According

bearing the same descriptor.

old when he took Babylon who was the son of Astyages, but was called

by another name among the Greeks. 56 Because the son of Astyages has

been identified by Xenophon, a Greek historian, as Cyaxares II, it follows

inescapably from the combined testimony of Josephus and Xenophon that

Darius was Cyaxares II. The existence of this earlier Darius before Darius

the Great is also confirmed by the second-century AD Greek lexicographer

and rhetorician Harpocration, who traced the derivation of the term daric

to the earlier Darius reign: Darics are gold staters, and each of them also

had the value of what the Athenians call the gold coin. But darics are not

named, as most suppose, after Darius the father of Xerxes, but after a

certain other more ancient king. 57 In sum, the cumulative force of the

ancient evidence permits little doubt that the Median king Cyaxares II was

Darius the Mede.

5. Does Daniel misrepresent Belshazzar s

relationship to Nebuchadnezzar?

Collins faults Daniel for referring to Belshazzar as the son of

Nebuchadnezzar, since he was the son of Nabonidus and the de facto king

in his father s absence. It should be noted that liberal scholars denied the

existence of Belshazzar until 1956, since Nabonidus was known to be the

last king of Babylon and there was no known evidence for Belshazzar

outside Daniel. However, the skeptics were forced to reverse their views

when the Haran stelae were unearthed. These tablets report that Nabonidus

entrusted kingship to his son Belshazzar, thus proving the existence of

Belshazzar and confirming Daniel s allusions to Belshazzar as king (5:1, 5,

7, 8, 9, 10, 17, 18, 30).58 The objection to Belshazzar being styled as the

son of Nebuchadnezzar is petty, because inscriptions from the Ancient

Near East demonstrate that the word son (Aramaic bar) was employed

quite loosely in the political sphere to mean successor. 59 The Black

Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which dates to 830 BC, pictures Jehu bringing

tribute to the Assyrian king: The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri. However,

Jehu was not the literal son of Omri, but a usurper of no relation who

56 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 10.248.

57 Harpocration, Lexeis of the Ten Orators 5.

58 Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 88.

59 Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 321-2.

murdered the previous king, Joram, the grandson of Omri. Thus, the Black

Obelisk of Shalmaneser III certainly takes son in the sense successor.

The Moabite Stone of Mesha (870 BC), one of the earliest archaeological

finds concerning the Old Testament, reveals that Omri had taken

possession of the land of Medeba and [Israel] dwelt in it his days and half

the days of his son, forty years. But we know from 2 Kings 3 that the

son was Joram, the grandson and successor of Omri, and not his literal

son Ahab.60 Further, the Haran stelae designate Belshazzar as the son of

the king, which is almost precisely what Daniel calls him (5:22).61 A

telltale sign of Daniel s historicity is realized when Belshazzar made

Daniel the third highest ruler in the kingdom (5:29) after he correctly

interpreted the writing on the wall (5:25-28). The position of third highest

ruler is noteworthy, as one would have expected Belshazzar to make

Daniel the second highest ruler. However, the Haran inscriptions reveal

that Nabonidus was still the highest ruler and de jure king of Babylon in

absentia. Therefore, as Belshazzar was the second highest ruler, the best

position he could grant Daniel was that of third highest ruler, confirming

the precise accuracy of Daniel.62

6. Do the structure and language of Daniel

demand second-century BC authorship?

Cyrus Gordon points out that the Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew structure of

Daniel reflects the ABA chiastic pattern common in ancient Near Eastern

rules of composition, where the main body of a text is enclosed within

language of a contrasting style. A similar chiastic phenomenon is

displayed by Ezra (c. 420 BC), whose structure is Hebrew-Aramaic-

Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew or ABABA.63 The lingua franca of the

Babylonian Empire was Aramaic, spoken by the king and his astrologers

(2:4), while only the Jews could understand Hebrew. In 1942 an Aramaic

papyrus, a letter from King Adon to an Egyptian pharaoh written in 604

60 Ibid., 308-10; Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 72-3.

62 Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 88-9; Hoerth, Archaeology and

the Old Testament, 381.

63 Christianity

Today 4 (1959) 131-4.

BC, was discovered in a jar at Saqqara in Egypt. With regard to the

finding, John Bright comments: [T]hat courtiers should address

Nebuchadnezzar in Aramaic as the story in Dan. 2:4 has it, no longer

appears at all surprising. 64 Daniel 2:4 7:28 was composed in Aramaic,

since these six chapters deal with matters of importance to the Gentile

nations of the Babylonian Empire and thus were written in a language

understandable to all. However, Daniel 8 12 returns to Hebrew, because it

deals with special concerns of the Jews. As a well-educated Jew in the

Babylonian palace, Daniel possessed all the linguistic skills and the

historical and cultural knowledge needed to author this book. In fact, his

language argues for a date earlier than the second century BC. Linguistic

evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which provide authentic samples of

Hebrew and Aramaic writing from the second century BC, verifies that

Daniel s Hebrew and Aramaic was composed several centuries earlier.65

For example, the Aramaic of Daniel bears little resemblance to that of the

Qumran Genesis Apocryphon composed in the first century BC. However,

eight Aramaic epistles, now known as the Hermopolis Papyri, were

discovered in 1945 at Hermopolis in Middle Egypt and date to the late

sixth century BC. Daniel s Aramaic is contemporary with these papyri, as

well as the Elephantine Papyri drafted in the fifth century BC.66 Some of

the technical Aramaic terms in Daniel were already obsolete by the second

century, and the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible

completed between 250 100 BC, translated them incorrectly. Therefore,

Peter Coxon declares the futility of holding a second-century date of

Daniel,67 and Cyrus Gordon assures that Daniel should be understood as a

whole, consciously composed unit. 68

Collins repeats the century-old argument of S. R. Driver that the

Greek loanwords in the Aramaic of Daniel are objective proof for the

book s late date. Since Driver made this statement, a wealth of

archaeological materials have been found which establish that contacts

The Biblical Archaeologist Reader (ed. David N. Freedman and G.

Ernest Wright; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961 64) 105.

65 -2.

66 Archer, Old Testament Introduction, 398-403.

67 Daniel: A Dialectal

Hebrew Union College Annual 48 (1977) 120-2.

between the Aegean and the Near East started long before the reign of

Alexander the Great. The Greeks of Cilicia and Cyprus encountered

Mesopotamia through Assyrian expansion to the northwest in the eighth

and seventh centuries BC. The Greek rulers of these areas paid tribute to

Assyria, and other Greeks were sailors in the Assyrian navy. In the seventh

century BC, Egypt employed Greek mercenaries to defeat the Assyrians.69

A few months before his succession to the Babylonian throne in 605 BC,

Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptian pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in

northwestern Mesopotamia. Excavations here by Leonard Woolley and T.

E. Lawrence unearthed evidence of this battle, including an Ionian shield

which belonged to a Greek mercenary defending the Egyptians.

Nebuchadnezzar also hired Greek mercenaries to fight for the

Babylonians, including the brother of the famous poet Alcaeus, and Greek

mercenaries were stationed in Palestine at this time.70 In 1960 the site of

Mesad Hashavyahu between Ashdod and Jaffa was excavated, and the

large quantity of Greek pottery revealed that it was a small fort built by the

Greeks between 630 625 BC. The settlers were Greek mercenaries

employed by Psammetichus I of Egypt, and the fort was conquered by

Josiah just before 609 BC. Ostraca have been discovered just west of the

Dead Sea at Arad from the stratum which was destroyed by

Nebuchadnezzar in 598 BC. These ostraca mention weapons given to the

Kittim, the Greek mercenaries serving in the remote forts of Judah. It is

significant to note that the Kittim are explicitly mentioned in Daniel 11:30:

For ships of Kittim will come against him. The walls of

Nebuchadnezzar s throne room at Babylon were decorated with Ionic

(Greek) capitals, showing that he enlisted Greek craftsmen. Yamauchi

contends that Cypriote Greeks were well known to Nabonidus. To

illustrate, one Greek sherd of the seventh century BC and sherds of nine

Greek vessels of the sixth century BC have been discovered at Babylon.

Elements of Greek style are also portrayed in the architecture at

Pasargadai, the palace that Cyrus built in 550 BC. He conquered Lydia and

Ionia in 546 BC, and he used numerous Ionian Greeks in his building

activities, as did his successors Darius the Great and Xerxes.71

69 Archer, Old Testament Introduction

Review: Daniel Journal of the Evangelical Theological

Society 41 (1998) 124-5.

70 Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 81.

71 Ibid., 90-1.

All three of these Greek loanwords are musical terms found in

Daniel 3:5: qayteros (Aramaic) or kitharis (Greek), pesanterin (Aramaic)

or psalterion (Greek), and sumponeya (Aramaic) or sumphonia (Greek).

The first instrument was a type of lyre, and the spelling of the specific

Greek word which was borrowed shows that the loan was adopted in the

pre-Hellenistic period. Coxon points out that the Ionic form kitharis is

mentioned in Daniel 3 instead of the Attic kithara, which was used

exclusively in Greek material of the post-Alexander period, including the

Septuagint, the New Testament, and Patristic sources. The spelling kitharis

originated from Asia Minor and the Greek Islands, and it was absorbed by

Official Aramaic as a result of cultural and linguistic contacts well before

the second century BC.72 Although the Greek psalterion was a harplike

instrument, Alfred Sendry proposes that the pesanterin of Daniel was a

dulcimer, one of many musical instruments which was originally imported

from the east, improved by the Greeks, and re-exported to the east.73 The

theory that sumponeya alludes to a bagpipe, as endorsed by the Anchor

Bible commentary on Daniel,74 has been discredited by clear evidence

which shows that this was a very late sense of the word. Yamauchi

explains that the earliest meaning of sumphonia was sounding together,

i.e., the simultaneous playing of instruments or voices which produces

consonant harmony.75 As Jerome commented on this word, The

symphonia is not a kind of instrument, as some Latin writers think, but it

means concordant harmony. It is expressed in Latin by cosonantia.76

Yamauchi points out that the exchange of musicians and musical

instruments played a prominent role at royal courts from time immemorial.

For instance, the influence of Asiatic on Egyptian music in the fifteenth

century BC was considerable, as new instruments included the long-

necked lute, the lyre, the angled harp, and the double flute, and the Syrian

musicians who introduced them popularized new melodies and dances.

Twelfth-century BC texts from the Kassite period of Mesopotamia recount

that Elamite singers entered the royal household of Marduk-apal-iddina I

at Dur Kurigalzu. The ND 6219 tablet from eighth-century Nimrud shows

72 Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 380-1.

73 Alfred Sendry, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical

Library, 1969) 297.

74 Hartman and Di Lella, Daniel, 157.

75 Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 381.

76 Quoted by Sendry, Music in Ancient Israel, 325.

that the king s male choir comprised Kassite, North Syrian, and Assyrian

singers.77 The Near Eastern double flute, or oboe, has been discovered in

Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus, Crete, and Greece, and the

Syrian word embubu passed into Latin as ambubaiae, which specified both

the double flute and the Syrian girls who played them.78 E. Y. Kutscher

argues that Greek musicians were dominant enough in the seventh and

sixth centuries BC to influence Near Eastern languages, just as Italian

musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries AD caused many

loanwords like piano, soprano, opera, libretto, tempo, adagio to be

adopted by all North-European languages.79 This argument is confirmed

by Greek loanwords inscribed in the fifth-century BC Elephantine Papyri.

Therefore, in light of the widespread Greek contacts before Alexander the

Great and the documented exchange of musicians, instruments, and terms,

the Greek loanwords in Daniel do not imply a late date.80

7. Was Daniel a historical figure of the sixth century BC?

Collins identifies Daniel with the legendary king Dn il from the Aqhat

story in the Ras Shamra texts rather than a historical figure, largely on the

presupposition that Daniel is not mentioned by name in any Jewish

literature until the Sybilline Oracles of 140 BC. On this point, Collins

wants to have his cake and eat it too, as the motive for pseudepigraphy in

the first place is to employ some famous person s name for the sake of

one s own views. But, one may ask, if Daniel is not mentioned in any

Jewish literature until 140 BC, then how famous could he be? However,

there is substantial evidence that Daniel is mentioned by Jewish literature

prior to this date. Ezekiel 14:14, 20 quotes God warning Israel about the

destruction of Jerusalem: [E]ven if these three men Noah, Daniel, and

Job were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness

(v. 14). In Ezekiel 28:3, God asks the ruler of Tyre, Are you wiser than

Daniel? Is no secret hidden from you? In order to maintain his view that

Daniel is unknown to Jewish literature until 140 BC, Collins ingeniously

78 Friedrich Ellermeier, Sibyllen, Musikanten, Haremsfrauen (Herzberger

am Harz: Junger, 1970) 12-9.

79 Current Trends in Linguistics VI (ed. T. A.

Sebeok; The Hague: Mouton, 1970) 401-2.

80 Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 393-4.

interprets the evidence to claim enough parallels between the Ugaritic

Dn il and Ezekiel s Daniel so that he can identify the former with the

latter. For example, he notes that the spelling of the name Daniel in

Ezekiel (i.e., daniel) consistently differs from its occurrence in the book of

Daniel (i.e., daniyyel), while the Ugaritic Aqht Text has a spelling closer to

Ezekiel.81 But this orthographic argument is weightless. As Harold H. P.

Dressler notes in rebuttal, the name Danilu, Danel is well attested (in

different writings and perhaps with different meanings attached to it) in

Old Assyrian, Old Babylonian, Northwest Semitic and that Danil is the

Babylonian pronunciation of non-Akkadian Semitic Dan il, Daniel .82

Even John Day, a prominent defender of the equation between Ezekiel s

Daniel and the Ugaritic Dn il, concurs with Dressler that there are no

linguistic objections to the equation of Daniel of Ezekiel xiv 14, 20 and the

hero of the book of Daniel, since Ezekiel simply spells the name without

the vowel letter yodh.83 Dressler argues that the yodh was intended by

Daniel himself to be a personal infix as a constant reminder of his

relationship with Yahweh, and thus it would be missing in Ezekiel s

spelling of the name. While Daniel s spelling reminds him of his own

responsibility before God and of his own humility, Ezekiel leaves out the

yodh to broaden the scope of Yahweh as judge.84

Liberal scholars maintain that the position of Daniel between two

figures of antiquity, Noah and Job, shows that Daniel was not a

contemporary of Ezekiel. But Dressler points out that Ezekiel does not

assign importance to precise enumeration patterns, as evident from the

random order of lists elsewhere in the book. Further, Dressler contends

that Ezekiel intended to write an inferential foreword to the book of

Daniel by his three references to his prophetic colleague.85 Such a thesis is

corroborated by earmarks in Daniel that the author expected skepticism of

his audience to accept him as a real prophet of Yahweh because of his

political status in the foreign Babylonian regime. Two of these indications

are the many parallels with Joseph, son of Jacob the patriarch, in Daniel 1

81 Collins, Daniel, 1-2.

Vetus Testamentum 29 (1979) 155-6.

83 the Hero of the Book

Vetus Testamentum 30 (1980) 181.

85 Ibid., 177.

and 2, which create a positive and subconscious déjà vu experience in the

minds of the readers, and the interlacing of Daniel s personal history with

prophecy to emphasize his own piety. These factors argue for a sixth-

century BC date of Daniel, as second-century BC Jews never doubted the

prophetic status of Daniel. Moreover, two valid connections can be

illustrated between Noah, Daniel, and Job: all three were faithful to God

despite not residing in the Promised Land, and all three were delivered by

God for their righteousness (Gen. 8:1; Dan. 6:16-23; Job 42:10-16). Both

of these elements are directly implied by Ezekiel 14:14, 20, since God

declares that Noah, Daniel, and Job...could save neither son nor daughter

but would save only themselves by their righteousness (v. 20).

Skeptics assert that an identification of the Daniel mentioned by

Ezekiel with the hero of the book of Daniel presents chronological

difficulties, as Daniel would have been a youth whose reputation was only

of a local nature. However, if the historicity of Ezekiel is maintained, then

a thirty-year period exists between the events of Daniel 2 and Ezekiel s

composition c. 570 BC, which is enough time to establish Daniel s

Babylonian fame.86 The deathblow to the liberal identification of Ezekiel s

Daniel with the Ugaritic Dn il is the attribution of righteousness

(Hebrew sedaqah) to Daniel in Ezekiel 14:14, 20. Sedaqah is an antonym

to unfaithfulness in the sense of idolatry, i.e., the worship of Baal.

However, the Aqhat story in the Ras Shamra texts clearly states that Dn il

was a devoted worshiper of Baal. Thus, by definition the Ugaritic Dn il

was a completely unrighteous man, as sedaqah entails that one does not

worship Baal, and it is incredible to think that Ezekiel would have used a

Baal-worshiper to illustrate the virtue of not worshiping Baal. Hence, the

Daniel cited by Ezekiel is the prophet of the book of Daniel, and its sixth-

century BC date remains intact.87

8. Do the apocalyptic elements of Daniel imply a late date?

Collins correctly notes the resemblance between Daniel and late

apocalyptic writings, but fails to acknowledge that these apocalyptic

writings were patterned after and derived from Daniel rather than vice

versa. The antiquity of Daniel is displayed by Akkadian prototypes of

86 Ibid., 157-8.

87 Ibid., 160-1.

Daniel s prophecies, which date to the early second millennium BC. In

their article on these Akkadian Prophecies, A. K. Grayson and W. G.

Lambert contend that the book of Daniel has many similarities to the

Akkadian Prophecies.88 In addition, the account of Daniel s rise, fall, and

rise is paralleled by an undisputed fifth-century BC Aramaic document,

the story of Ahiqar. Yamauchi declares: It is now quite certain that

Ahiqar was a historic figure at the Assyrian court of the seventh

century. 89 Daniel also exhibits an accurate knowledge of sixth-century

BC geography, including his description of the city of Shushan as

contained in the province of Elam during the time of the Chaldeans (8:2).90

Another significant discovery portrays Daniel as an authentic work

of the sixth century BC. The ceremony in which Nebuchadnezzar ordered

his subjects to worship his gold statue (3:2-6) is quite different from the

usual rites which were conducted by the priests in private. However, this

ceremony has been confirmed by the discoveries of Woolley in the Neo-

Babylonian stratum at Ur. Woolley writes concerning the E-NUN-MAH

sanctuary originally dedicated to the moon god Nannar and his wife Nin-

gal: Nothing could be more unlike the conditions of the old temple than

this spacious building in which there was room for a multitude of people

and everything was arranged as to focus attention on the rites in progress,

and the change in the temple plan must correspond to a change in

religious practice. 91 At the time of the discovery, the mode of worship

was traced back to Daniel 3, and this explanation has been generally

accepted. Regarding the sanctuary, Woolley notes that what was novel

here was not the setting up of the image but the order that all were to share

in the adoration of it, as Nebuchadnezzar was substituting a form of

congregational worship for the mysteries of an esoteric priesthood. 92

CONCLUSION

It is clear that liberal scholars are ignorant of the flood of archaeological

88 Journal of

Cuneiform Studies 18 (1964) 10.

89 Yamauchi, Stones and the Scriptures, 89.

90 Archer, Old Testament Introduction, 408.

91 Leonard Woolley and M. E. L. Mallowan, Ur Excavations IX: The

Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (London: British Museum, 1962) 24.

92 Ibid., 25.

and textual materials supporting the authenticity of Daniel. Porphyry s

thesis, which serves as the foundation of any modern argument for a late

date, collapses under the fact that Daniel 11:40-45 refers to the future reign

and destruction of a figure during the world s end times instead of the

military defeat and death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The Nabonidus

Chronicle and the Gezer Calendar demonstrate that no contradiction exists

between the chronologies of Daniel 1 and 2, and the Nabonidus Chronicle

verifies that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Palestine in 605 BC. Akkadian

analogies authenticate the Babylonian names given to Daniel and his

friends, and the Greek text of Berossus shows that Chaldeans were

professional astrologers long before the sixth century BC. A careful

comparison of the Qumran Prayer of Nabonidus with the portrait of

Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4 establishes the literary independence of these

texts. Recent analysis of Xenophon s Cyropaedia indicates that Darius the

Mede was the throne name of the sixth-century BC Median king Cyaxares

II, who headed the Medo-Persian Empire at Babylon s fall in 539 BC.

Inscriptions from Haran demonstrate the existence and kingship of

Belshazzar. Further, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III and the Moabite

Stone of Mesha endorse Daniel s loose description of Belshazzar as the

son of Nebuchadnezzar. The Hebrew-Aramaic-Hebrew structure of

Daniel reflects the ABA chiastic pattern of Near Eastern composition, and

the Hermopolis and Elephantine papyri along with the Dead Sea Scrolls

exhibit that Daniel s Hebrew and Aramaic parallel fifth-century BC

linguistics rather than second-century BC writings. Excavations at

Carchemish, Mesad Hashavyahu, Arad, Babylon, and Pasargadai reveal

ample contacts between the Aegean and Near East before Alexander the

Great, and the Greek words for musical instruments in the Aramaic are

therefore no obstacle for an early date of Daniel. Since the Ugaritic Dn il

from the Ras Shamra texts was a Baal-worshiper, the Daniel mentioned in

Ezekiel 14:14, 20, and 28:3 must correspond to the namesake of the book

of Daniel. The Akkadian Prophecies and the story of Ahiqar demonstrate

that late apocalyptic writings were modeled after Daniel and not vice

versa, and Daniel s precise reference to the city of Shushan in the province

of Elan displays his sixth-century BC knowledge. The E-NUN-MAH

sanctuary discovered in the Neo-Babylonian stratum at Ur portrays the

mode of worship described in Daniel 3. In sum, the plethora of

archaeological and textual evidence surrounding the book of Daniel

constitutes a powerful cumulative case that cries out for authorship by the

historical prophet Daniel c. 530 BC.

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ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.

A Contemporary Defense of the Authenticity of Daniel

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