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![]() These predictions concerned specific events and definite time periods, thus indicating the exact time when particular events would occur. Apparently, the apocalyptic writers assumed that Yahweh knew the future as well as the past and could reveal these secrets to individuals who were chosen to receive them. The recital of these apocalyptic fulfillments inspired confidence that the remaining ones would take place in the near future. These predictions will come to pass exactly as outlined in the vision, with the exception of the last ones before the coming of the catastrophic event. In such a vision, a series of predictions is made concerning events that will occur prior to the establishment of the messianic kingdom. One of the chief characteristics of apocalyptic writing is an account of a dream or vision given to someone who lived a long time before the date of the actual writing. Apocalyptic literature gave them the assurance that the time was not far distant when their deliverance would be at hand. The purpose of the apocalyptic literature was to offer encouragement to the righteous to remain true and faithful to the principles of their religion. The wicked would be destroyed, and the messianic kingdom would be established for all time to come. At the appointed time, a great catastrophic event would engulf the world. Prior to this time, the forces of evil would continue to grow stronger, and persecutions of the righteous would become even more severe. These circumstances led to a conviction that only a supernatural intervention by Yahweh could bring about the desired goal. ![]() ![]() Instead of these hopes being realized, the lot of the Hebrew people was becoming more difficult with each generation, while at the same time the forces of evil were constantly becoming stronger. For centuries, they had looked forward to a reign of justice and righteousness on earth. There may not be many valid comparisons between the Book of Daniel and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, but the device of turning to an earlier historical period to comment on contemporary persecution is something they both have in common.The Book of Daniel is the chief example of apocalyptic writing in the Old Testament, a form of writing that came into use largely in response to the disappointments that were experienced by the Hebrews. Setting the events of the Book of Daniel firmly in the past in an altogether remote period would cloak their contemporary relevance, but those Jewish readers with ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’ would doubtless pick up on the allegorical meaning of the stories for their own time. ![]() But the anonymous writer of Daniel could not call out the Seleucid empire directly, for doing so would invite charges of treason. ![]() During the time of the book’s composition, Jews were facing oppression and persecution from the Seleucids, a group who dwelt on the coast of what is now Syria. The Book of Daniel is, then, historical fiction, like someone of the twenty-first century writing a book set during the English Civil War.īut it’s more than this: it’s historical fiction functioning as allegory. And it’s clear that those events are inventions, perhaps based on earlier legends, to which the name of Daniel has been attached. The miraculous events of the book – Daniel himself remaining unharmed in the lion’s den, Shadrach and his fellow Jews emerging from the fiery furnace unscathed – serve as reassurance to the faithful that God will intervene to protect them.Ĭuriously, though, the Book of Daniel wasn’t composed until around the second century BC – the Dictionary of the Bible puts the date at around 164 BC – even though the events it describes occurred some four centuries earlier. So the purpose of the book is to encourage Jewish people to remain true to their religion, even when faced with pressure (upon pain of death, in some cases) to compromise or turn away from it. The Book of Daniel deals with the Jews deported from Judah to Babylon in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and shows Daniel and his co-religionists resisting the Babylonian king’s tyrannical demands that they leave aside their religious devotion to God. But Daniel was included in the canon of Biblical texts, and its stories have consequently become among the best-known in all of the Old Testament. ![]()
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