Everette Hatcher III, in his most recent effort to defend the sixth century BCE date for the book of Daniel, makes what is probably the best case that can be made for this particular position, and that is somewhat unfortunate for supporters of the position, given that he says very little that is new or original here and has chosen instead to simply cobble together an array of familiar and well trodden arguments, buttressed by an assortment of quotations from what are predominately fundamentalist or conservative apologists. He seems not to understand that the central arguments of his thesis have been rigorously addressed by mainstream scholars and have been found inadequate, nor does he appear to see the absurdity in trying to defend his position by simply quoting and citing the arguments of fundamentalist scholars and apologists, as if these, in sufficient numbers, effectively negate the results of higher criticism and mainstream biblical scholarship.
Moreover, he has not properly grasped the central epistemological issues here. All contemporary scholarship (or its armchair equivalent that seeks to engage in scholarly discourse) must, if it is to be taken seriously, respect and adhere to the principles of higher learning, reason and critical thinking, since these govern all postenlightenment research and intellectual activity. It cannot engage in the kind of special pleading and theological a priori question-begging that characterizes the work of the vast majority of fundamentalist scholars. Religious or devotional interests or considerations must be put on the shelf and considered irrelevant to the discussion. The moment you allow religious or other ideological interests to govern or shape the course of the investigation and discussion, you are no longer doing critical scholarship. You are instead doing apologetics.
That said, scholars and those seeking to practice scholarship, must conclude, simply on the basis of the principles of critical thinking and reasoning, that any text that speaks clearly of events now known to have happened cannot have been written any earlier than the events to which it refers. The logic of this position is self-evident and needs no defense. It is unscholarly and unprofessional to allow considerations like “prophecy” to enter the discussion. Such things may have a place in the context of faith and theological discourse, where the normal rules of reasoning and scientific logic do not dominate, but they have no place in a proper critical investigation or discussion.
From the perspective of sound scholarship then, there is simply no real discussion here: the text of Daniel (or at least certain parts of it) refers to events that date up to the time of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and thus this is the earliest possible date of their composition and/or final editing. Arguments based on other considerations then become irrelevant and the reader must assume, even if he cannot explain them all right now, that the problems for this late date are only apparent and stem from his own limited knowledge of the place and time he is investigating (in point of fact there are no real problems for the late date, as we shall see).
I, like most critical commentators, then, consider this a settled issue that is no longer in need of continued debate. Only biblical conservatives (particularly of the fundamentalist kind) are driven by the demands of their faith and belief system to keep beating this dead horse. Nonetheless, out of respect to the research and effort that Hatcher has invested in his latest work, I will make some effort to address briefly at least some of the points he raised.
Note first that a clear and proper distinction is not being made between the earlier chapters 1-6 (the “stories” or “court tales” as they are sometimes called) and the later ones 7-12 (sometimes called the “visions” section). The differences in genre and theology between these two sections, recognized by all scholars, require us to treat each on its own terms (even though this situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that chapter 7 is in Aramaic, a feature that links it to chapters 2-6). Many of the issues Hatcher has raised really apply only to the first section, the stories, which narrate the experiences of Jews living in Babylon during the reigns of Babylonian, Median and Persian kings, and thus do not negate the clear and explicit references in the second section to events of the second century BCE. At best , then, Hatcher has provided some evidence that these early chapters may have had an origin in earlier times.
This, however, is nothing new, nor is it an argument particular to fundamentalist circles. Quite a number of critical scholars (e. g., Montgomery, Humphreys, Wilson, Davies, Collins) have argued for dating these chapters to the Persian period because they seem to reflect the struggles and conflicts of Jews living in a foreign land rather than the persecution of the Jewish religion in the environs of Jerusalem. This would at once dispose of many of Hatcher’s arguments because this provides us with the necessary context in which our author (or authors, given the very real possibility that the stories originally circulated independently) could have known or had access to historical details or other such information presumed to be unavailable to a Palestinian based writer in the second century BCE (e. g., particular Persian words). We need not go all the way back to the sixth century. There is nothing at all unreasonable in the suggestion that a writer living at any time in the Persian period, or even in the early Hellenistic one, could have had access to or have been familiar with this kind of information. In fact, given that our author(s) seem to have a very foggy understanding of many of the things of which they speak, a date late in the Persian period looks very likely. This would explain, for example, how our author(s) could know of the existence of Belshazzar but still make the error of calling him a king, or think that he was the son of Nebuchadnezzar.
The vision in Daniel 2, a vision predicting the rise of four kingdoms starting with Babylon, may support this as it includes what seems to be a clear reference to the division of the Macedonian Empire into the Seleucid and Ptolemaic nations (the feet of iron and clay on the legs of iron, which obviously represented Alexandrian Macedonia). At the very least, then, chapter 2 cannot date prior to the end of the fourth century BCE. Still, neither this vision nor any other part of chapters 2-6 seem to refer to Antiochus or the events surrounding his so-called persecution of the Jews, so this material probably originated from a time very early after the collapse and break-up of the Macedonian empire. This is certainly close enough to the Persian period to allow for a writer of this time to have a fragmentary knowledge of events and persons in Babylonian and Persian history, and so the presence of such details in these stories is just not the problem that fundamentalist scholars think it is.
This helps us understand the manner in which the Median Empire is portrayed in Daniel and the confusion over this subject. Hatcher argued that Daniel regarded them as two aspects of the same empire. Since this is historically wrong, I don’t know why he would want to make this argument, but never mind. A close look at the vision in Daniel 2, however, rules this possibility out and shows that the author of that chapter at least, regarded Media and Persia as distinct kingdoms, which is historically correct. In the vision, tucked between the head of gold which is Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) and the legs of iron (which were Macedonia) are two different kingdoms: the arms and chest of silver and the waist of bronze. Since throughout Daniel there are references to the Medes and Persians occupying this very same position, obviously these two metals/kingdoms represented the Medes and Persians respectively. In Daniel’s exposition of the dream vision he clearly stated that the silver and the bronze represented two different kingdoms and not a unified kingdom.
This interpretation is backed up even further by the sequence of stories themselves: we have stories revolving around Babylonian kings (Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar), then a Median king (Darius) and finally a Persian king (Cyrus). The sequence of kings/stories here precisely parallels the succession of rulers/kingdoms in the dream vision of chapter two. Here we have our explanation for the invention of Darius the Mede (about whom I shall say something in a moment): the historical schema that Daniel was using presumed a distinct Median kingdom between Babylon and Persia (an idea shared by other writers of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, e. g., Herodotus) and thus demanded a story or episode with a Median king. Hence he invented one, using the name of a Persian king from the same general time periodDarius (who succeeded Cambyses). Perhaps he genuinely did not have a clear understanding of who Darius was and where in the succession list he stood, or perhaps he did know but was more interested in preserving his schematic. Who knows? But this is the simplest and tidiest explanation for what we see in this material.
The later vision chapters on the other hand are more vague about the role of Media and its relationship to Persia. None of the verses Hatcher cited demands that we understand them to refer to a unified Medo-Persian empire; each verse could just as easily presuppose two different kingdoms. The symbol of the two-horned ram in chapter 8 may in fact indicate that the author of that chapter understood the empires to be joined in some way but then again it may not. Remember that in visions like this the author uses symbol and metaphor to make a larger point, and one should be very careful about pushing the literalness of each detail too far and of reading too much into what are only representative objects. All we can say for certain is that the horns on the ram and by extension the ram itself represent Media and Persia, but it is not clear whether or not the author understood them to be two parts of a single kingdom or two different kingdoms. There is just not enough attention to detail here to make any kind of pronouncement about what the author of this material knew on this matter, let alone what time period such knowledge presumes.
One of the gravest problems with several of Hatcher’s arguments is that he is clearly trying very hard to give the author of Daniel as much latitude as required in order to prove him correct. That is, rather than simply read what the author says in the most direct and straightforward manner and understand his words in their plain, everyday sense, Hatcher seeks to blur and stretch the meaning and intent of these words so that they can be pressed to mean other things, thus making it possible to defend the author’s historical credibility.
For example, the text clearly and unequivocally says that Nebuchadnezzar was the “father” of Belshazzar, but Hatcher wants to read this word in its loosest possible sense so that it doesn’t mean what it says and can mean instead simply “successor.” There were indeed certain rare (and they were rare) cases when writers of antiquity used terms like father and son to mean something other than a literal genetic relationship, but this does not mean that one can appeal to such cases to defend the practice here. There is absolutely nothing in the context of Daniel that warrants this particular reading. The use of the term father in Daniel to describe Nebuchadnezzar’s relationship to Belshazzar makes perfect sense when understood in its most familiar and straightforward sense and seems to be what the author had in mind (i .e., the succession of the throne by the king’s son, a normal practice in antiquity). Therefore there are no grounds for trying to read it in a more awkward and less natural sense. The only reason to do so is ideologicalto save the historicity of the text.
Also, to save the claim that Belshazzar was king of Babylon, Hatcher treated us yet again to the very old argument that the term was functionally correct if not literally so, because he “functioned” as a king, even if he never officially wore the crown or held the title. Hence we are told that we should not understand statements like “Belshazzar was the king of Babylon” to mean what they say and should understand them to mean “Belshazzar served in the capacity of a king over Babylon.” In other words, we should ignore what the writer explicitly said and apply the loosest possible interpretation in order to make sure he was historically correct, all of which completely evade the key point, that the text explicitly claims that Belshazzar was the king! The statement is true or it isn’t, and as Hatcher’s attempts to explain it away prove, he recognizes that it isn’t. Yet with regard to Darius the Mede, Hatcher tells us to read all references to Darius the Mede to mean Cyrus the Persian!
So what do we end up with by employing this curious methodology? A writer who was so muddled in his thinking and careless in his writing that he said “father” when he meant “successor,” said “king” when he meant “served in the capacity of a king,” and said “Darius the Mede” when he meant “Cyrus the Persian,” and so on. In other words, a writer who couldn't write or communicate clearly and who was instead the author of confusion. Hatcher purchases historical credibility for Daniel by making him an inept and ineffective writer, who constantly said one thing when he meant another! This kind of nonsense just won’t do. If this work is, as Hatcher would have us believe, the revealed word of God, then why is it so messy and unclear? Why was Daniel such a damned poor communicator? Why did he constantly say one thing when he meant another? Why do we have to grant him such extreme license and latitude in order for him to make sense? Many writers in antiquity could do better than this, why not Daniel?
On the issue of languages, Hatcher has simply elected to employ selective quotations to create the impression that the form of the languages involved (Hebrew and Aramaic) were from a sixth-century provenance, but this is not the view of the majority of specialists. The Aramaic of Daniel is believed to be closer in time to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls (second and first centuries BCE) than that of the Persian era, and the Hebrew has clear affinities with late second temple Hebrew of the kind in the DSS and Chronicles. (A detailed discussion of this issue can be found in the 1993 Hermennia Commentary of Daniel by John J. Collins). At any rate, because of the imprecision involved, most scholars have argued against the practice of trying to date the book of Daniel on the basis of its language forms.
The last point I will address is Hatcher’s question concerning the slight reference in chapter 11 to the Maccabees and the failed predictions about the death of Antiochus IV. First, he wondered why, if the work is second century BCE, the Maccabees are not given more attention, but this question assumes a view of history possible only to people of a much later time, one in which the role of the Maccabees and their role in history has been secured. Space prohibits an extended discussion of the complicated issues surrounding the history of the Maccabean revolt and the founding of the Hasmonean dynasty, but it is worth remembering that in the time of Antiochus IV the Maccabees had not yet acquired the notoriety that they would in later times. Strictly speaking, it was not until about 150 or 140 BCE, with their formal ascension to the throne of Judea that the real era and history of the Hasmoneans actually began. The book of 1 Maccabees, a later work written by pro-Hasmonean historians and the basis for every other work written about them (e. g., the histories of Josephus), greatly exaggerated their power and influence in the days of Antiochus IV, and insofar as the failed predictions of Antiochus’ death are concerned, Hatcher regards it unlikely that anyone would make predictions about such a thing for fear of failure. He thus concluded that the predictions made at the end of Daniel cannot refer to the death of Antiochus IV but must refer to an actual eschatological antichrist of some distant future. In this argument, however, Hatcher shows that he simply does not understand both the phenomenon of ancient eschatology or the mindset of people steeped in it. The writer of chapter 11 thought he was witnessing the end times and the final days of history before God would overthrow the nations of the world and institute his eternal kingdom (the rock of chapter 2). He was convinced the events surrounding the activities of Antiochus IV and his allies in Jerusalem (mostly priests in the temple) were the final ones of history. His expectation that the world order was coming to an end in the very near future was genuine, and in that vein, like so many after him, he prophesied about the events leading up to that time. We can never know precisely what went through his mind when he wrote these things, but the fear of making failed prophecies has never been much of a deterrent to self-styled prophets and religious visionaries convinced of their own righteousness and understanding of the divine will. Historical examples of this fact abound. Consider, for example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have made one failed prediction after another about the time of the end. The same can be said for the many fundamentalists who have done much the same thing (e. g., Hal Lindsay whose own track record of failed predictions is almost as bad, and he committed his to print in mass marketed books!). The Christian church itself repeatedly affirmed the imminence of the coming of the Kingdom of God, even as the early generations of believers began dying off. It is simply a product of this kind of religious mentality that those who have it are convinced of the certainty of their own beliefs and feel the need to make predictions about the end times and to keep making them, no matter how many times they err. There is nothing whatsoever illogical or inexplicable about this same phenomenon in Daniel 11.
(Bruce Wildish, 2500 Harman Court, Mississauga, ON, Canada
L5J 1T8; e-mail, wildish@interlog. com)