DANIEL

P.R. Davies

Sheffield Academic Press

to Marley Close

Copyright © 1985, 1988, 1993, 1998 Sheffield Academic Press

Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
Mansion House
19 Kingfield Road
Sheffield S11 9AS
England

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-850750-02-5

Contents

Preface

1 Preview

2 The Historical Background

3 The Languages of the Book

4 The Story Cycle

5 The Vision Series

6 The God of Daniel

7 The Jewish Hero and the Gentile King

8 The Jewish People, the ‘Son of Man’ and the ‘Holy Ones’

9 The ‘Wise’ and Their Deliverance

10 The Authors

Index of Ancient Sources

Index of Subjects

Index of Authors

Preface

Daniel is not among the most frequently studied of Old Testament books, although it is certainly among the best known, and, among both scholars and laypeople, has long been one of the most controversial, whether as regards its ‘predictions’, its authorship and date, or its membership of that curious literary society of ‘apocalypses’. Partly because of such controversy, its intrinsic theological and literary merits have tended to be undervalued. In this book, while attempting to do justice to all the traditional questions, I have also wished to develop those points of view which are in my opinion characteristic of biblical scholarship as currently practised, especially a sensitivity to literary values. If my comments at times seem to depart from the agenda prescribed by previous work on Daniel, I can only say that I hope I am in some cases anticipating the directions in which study of Daniel may move in the near future, especially in Chapters 6 and 7.

As is now common in Roman Catholic as well as Protestant commentaries on Daniel, only the twelve chapters found in the Hebrew Bible will be treated. I have used throughout the text of the Revised Standard Version, including its verse numbering, which varies slightly from the Hebrew at times. I have also used ‘Daniel’ sometimes to mean the hero and putative author, and sometimes to mean the book. I have tried to ensure that in no case is the meaning ambiguous.

University of Sheffield Philip R. Davies

April 1984

Notes on the Bibliographies

The following abbreviations are used:

ANET J. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 3rd edn, 1969

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

IDBS K. Crim (ed.), The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, Nashville: Abingdon, 1976

IEJ Israel Exploration Journal

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature

JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies

JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

JTC Journal for Theology and Church

JTS Journal of Theological Studies

OTL Old Testament Library

OTS Oudtestamentische Studiën

ST Studia Theologica

VT Vetus Testamentum

Full details of the works cited are given on their first appearance in the Bibliographies. ...