Daniel

Daniel (Daniyyēl, “God is my judge”) was a Judean noble, perhaps of royal blood (Dan.1.3), deported to Babylon in 605 BC at Nebuchadnezzar’s first incursion into Judah. Selected with three companions (Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah — better known by their Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) for the imperial bureaucracy, he was educated in “the letters and language of the Chaldeans” for three years and held office across the careers of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus the Persian — a span of about seventy years. The first six chapters of his book are court tales in third person, mostly in Aramaic, recounting his refusal of the king’s food, the interpretation of the four-metal statue and the great tree, the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast, and the night in the lions’ den. Chapters 7–12, mostly first person and back in Hebrew, are apocalyptic: the four beasts and the Ancient of Days, the ram and the goat, the seventy weeks, and the long final vision of “the time of the end.” Daniel is the most prominent figure in second-temple Jewish apocalyptic and a major source for the New Testament book of Revelation.