Daniel Introduction

Daniel — Steve Gregg

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Daniel 1 - 2

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Daniel Introduction

DanielSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg discusses the introduction of the book of Daniel from a religious perspective. Daniel was skilled in interpreting dreams and was elevated in rank due to his God-given gifts. Despite living in a pagan world, Daniel remained uncompromised in his convictions, which serves as a model for us to influence the world around us while holding true to our beliefs. Gregg also addresses criticisms of the authenticity of the book of Daniel, and provides evidence for its historical accuracy.

Transcript

In this session, we begin our study of the book of Daniel, and we will, of course, as we always do with a book, a new book, we have an introduction where we want to get some background so that the book can make sense to us when we begin to read it. Of course, the book can make sense without this background, but it makes a whole lot of difference if we know something about who the man was, when he lived, what was happening, and who the characters in the book are, how they fit together, and so forth. We begin with the historical background considerations.

Daniel and Ezekiel were prophets of the exile. Daniel, actually, technically is not a prophet in the sense that others were. A prophet was usually God's spokesperson to Israel, and mainly the guy who God gave oracles to that would direct his people.

Daniel had prophetic powers, but he didn't have a role like the other prophets. He was not actually ministering to his own people. He was in the courts of pagan kings, and much of what he did had to do with interpreting their dreams, sort of like what Joseph did.

But he had dreams of his own, also, and visions, and so he was a prophet in that sense, and Jesus referred to him as Daniel the prophet. But the Jews, in their canon of scripture, did not place the book of Daniel among the prophets. They placed the book of Daniel among the writings.

It may be because Daniel was really more of a statesman than a religious leader. He was a very religious man, but he had never had any opportunity, really, to direct the religious life or speak into the religious life of the Jewish community in exile because he was separated from them by circumstances. Ezekiel lived among the exiles and did prophesy to them.

Daniel prophesied to Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar, and Darius, and did not really have any contact that we read about with the Jewish community. He was a man who, through no fault of his own, was taken from his people and taken into the king's court. Through the special gifting and providence of God, he was elevated to high rank.

His gifts were recognized by several kings, and he was a counselor to kings, and he had opportunity in that capacity to interpret things that God was revealing through the king's dreams and through his own. Because he was not really a communicator to the Jewish community, probably for that reason, but was more of a political statesman type of person, a godly influence in the cabinet of pagan governments, he was more like Joseph than he was like any of the other Jewish prophets. Joseph, of course, wasn't technically a prophet, though he had dreams, that's what prophets do.

God did reveal things to Joseph, and he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. But for the most part, Joseph was an administrator in a government, a pagan government. And in that respect, Joseph and Daniel resemble each other.

Both of them were taken into captivity against their will. Neither of them ran for office. They were captives first, and were elevated because of their genius and because of their gifts that God gave them.

Now, Daniel, therefore, belongs to the period of the exile. But the exile of the Jews into Babylon occurred in three phases, and he was part of the earliest phase. In the year 605 B.C., after the Battle of Carchemish, when Nebuchadnezzar came to power over the Egyptians, he had already conquered the Assyrians and was now pretty much the new emperor, as it were, of the region.

He wasn't called an emperor, but he had an empire. He came against Jerusalem in the days of Jehoiakim, and he took some captives with him back to Babylon. Jehoiakim was not one of them, but they were people of the royal family, people who were nobles, people who seemed to be people of value to Jerusalem.

He took them away from Jerusalem and took them to Babylon. His intentions for this are not made entirely clear, but some of the ones he had special plans for. He had one of his officers seek the wisest and the most handsome, the most perfect specimens among the Jews for special training so that they could become part of his counseling staff, that they could counsel him and be among his wise men.

In 605 B.C., Daniel was taken away with others into Babylon. That, technically, is the beginning of the exile, though it was a long time before all the other Jews were carried away. We know that in 597, which was eight years later, there was another capture of inhabitants of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

He came against Jerusalem again, and he took the king, Jeconiah, into captivity, along with him several other exiles, including Ezekiel. Ezekiel came to Babylon when Daniel had already been there eight years, and Daniel already had a reputation in Babylon by the time Ezekiel got there. The second wave of the deportation was in 597 B.C. that included the capture of King Jeconiah and the capture also of Ezekiel and others.

Then the last phase of the exile was 586, some say 587. I'm not sure why there's a disparity among scholars, but they still disagree among themselves as to which year it was, 586 or 587. That was the time when Jerusalem was burned down, the city was destroyed, and the rest of the exiles were taken into captivity.

By that time, Jerusalem was not anything, really. Nebuchadnezzar had totally destroyed it and carried away the vast majority of the population into captivity. He left only peasant farmers and so forth to tend the land behind in Judea.

So that's the time frame. By the time that Nebuchadnezzar had taken all these people into captivity, Daniel had been there 19 years, and he was well settled in. In fact, he was well established as a political influence upon Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel had a very long life, apparently, because he went into captivity at its very beginning, and he survived to see its end. He survived into the time of Cyrus, and Cyrus was the one who in 539 B.C. released the exiles from captivity. Now, Daniel must have been a very young man when he went into captivity, because of the large number of years he survived in captivity, and he had an active political life during all that time, it would appear, or at least during parts of all that time.

There may have been seasons where he was kind of neglected. Chapter 5 might suggest that Belshazzar had not really kept track of Daniel, didn't know about him, had to be informed about him, but in any case, he served under four kings that are named. One of them is, of course, Nebuchadnezzar, and another is Belshazzar.

Now, there are a number of kings in between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar in the Babylonian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar is the one who established the Neo-Babylonian Empire after the death of his own father, Neboplazar, and Belshazzar was the last of the kings of the empire under his father, Nebunidas. Belshazzar was the one in charge in Babylon when it fell to the Persians, and Daniel was a counselor to the kings during that whole season, the entirety of the Babylonian Empire's career.

When it fell to the Persians, apparently, depending on which scholar you consult, Babylon may have been under the temporary oversight of a general who is referred to as Darius the Mede for a couple of years before Cyrus came and took command. Other people believe Darius the Mede is another name for Cyrus, so it's not really entirely clear, but Daniel continued into the time of Darius the Mede and Cyrus. It was Darius the Mede that threw Daniel, against his own wishes, actually, against Darius' wishes, into the lion's den, and Cyrus, of course, is the one who released the people to go back to their own land from Babylon.

So these four kings were all influenced in some way by Daniel. There were godly influences on his life, probably. We see at the very beginning when he's carried away into captivity, he's not a very old young man, he's probably in his teens.

He's already extremely devoted to upholding his Jewish purity and remaining faithful to Yahweh. He's gone into a land where there is very little accountability to him in the things of God, a little like Joseph. Joseph had it a little worse.

Joseph didn't know one person who wasn't a pagan when he went into Egypt. Everyone surrounding Joseph were pagans. There was nobody holding Joseph accountable to be righteous except God in his own conscience, and Joseph remained uncompromised.

Well, Daniel and his friends remained uncompromised also. They did have at least the encouragement of each other, but still they were part of a very small minority in a very pagan world, where everything that was done in the society around them was contrary to what they'd been taught in their Jewish environment. Therefore, the fact that they remained faithful and uncompromised is remarkable.

It speaks of them having unusually strong dedication. In fact, the Bible does mention that particular thing in Daniel 1.8. It says, Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's delicacies, food that he, as a Jew, did not feel like he should eat. He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself.

So he is sort of a prototype of the Christian in the pagan world, surrounded by people who are not Christians and a culture that is not Christian. He managed to not defile himself. Many Christians are not quite so successful, but it may be because they were not like him and that he purposed in his heart not to defile himself.

I'm not sure that every Christian has adopted such a firm resolve that they will not defile themselves. But Daniel and his friends remained uncompromised. He was born, it would seem, during Josiah's reforms in Jerusalem.

So at a time when the book of Deuteronomy had been found and was being publicized, and although the reforms were shallow for some people in Jerusalem, apparently for Daniel they were not shallow. He was born and raised under the conviction that he should follow Yahweh and knowing something about Yahweh's laws because of the book of Deuteronomy being so publicized and implemented by Josiah when Daniel was little. Also, he may have heard Jeremiah preach.

Jeremiah was an older prophet in Jerusalem and Daniel, of course, was a young man when he left, but Jeremiah was preaching during that time in Jerusalem. And Daniel may have heard him preach. We know that Daniel had Jeremiah's book because we read in chapter 9 and verse 2 that Daniel was reading the book of Jeremiah.

So he may have even personally known Jeremiah when he was in Jerusalem, but he wouldn't have gotten to know him very well because of his own youthfulness when he was taken away. But he had Jeremiah's prophecies and was clearly influenced by them. He also might have known Ezekiel, though that is not clear.

They lived both in the exile, but they were not in the same geographical area. Ezekiel knew about Daniel, but that would not necessarily mean that Daniel would know Ezekiel. Daniel was, after all, an influential man in government, and the exiles throughout the Babylonian region probably were aware that one of their own countrymen had great influence in the Babylonian government.

And he was probably often spoken of among the exiles. He was probably famous among them. So Ezekiel knew about Daniel.

Daniel might or might not have known about Ezekiel. I say Ezekiel knew about Daniel because he mentions him. If you look at Ezekiel chapter 14, Ezekiel 14 and verse 14, God says to Ezekiel, Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, that is in Jerusalem, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness, says the Lord God.

Now this is in contrast to what God told Abraham about Sodom. If there had been a sufficient small number of righteous people in Sodom, God would spare the whole city. Not just the righteous ones, but the whole city would have been spared because of the small remnant of righteous people.

In his dealings with God about this, Abraham got God to commit to as few as ten. If there were even ten righteous in Sodom, it would have been spared. Now Jerusalem is worse off.

Not only even if they had righteous people, but if they had some of the most righteous people imaginable. Job, Noah, Daniel. Interesting that Daniel, who was a living man at the time, would be listed with very famous people from the ancient past.

Job and Noah. It would be like if we said Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Ronald Reagan or something like that. Or some modern president or someone who's alive.

You know, George Bush or something. Including the modern man with those very famous people would be strange in a way. Not entirely strange if they had similar character, but two of those names are people from what to us seems like the ancient past.

Far history. Whereas one would be a living man. And that's how it was when Noah and Job and Daniel are mentioned together.

By the way, I would point out that some scholars don't believe that the reference to Daniel here in Ezekiel is really talking about Daniel. And they believe it should be understood to be Dan-el. And they've suggested some kind of a, some pagan hero from some pagan stories.

But of course that strikes me as absolutely absurd that someone as well known as Job and well known as Noah would be mentioned with somebody who is not well known from some pagan stories. I think that's just an effort. See what that is is liberal scholars try to argue that Daniel didn't exist.

Or if he did exist, he didn't exist as the stories record him here. Liberal scholars try to discount the book of Daniel continually. So the fact that Ezekiel mentions Daniel as already rather famous among the exiles, famous enough to mention his name and to have him respected along with Job and Noah would tend to confirm what the book of Daniel says.

That this man did live and he did have this notoriety. And so since many liberal scholars wish to totally make Daniel out to be a fictional book about a fictional character, they will try as they can to make Ezekiel not be mentioning Daniel. Because obviously Ezekiel gives independent confirmation of Daniel's existence and notoriety and righteousness.

Now here's what we know about Daniel as far as his biographical information. He's born of the king's seed. That means that he's of the royal family.

He was not a prince in the sense of the direct line of the kings. Kings had many children and many grandchildren, many great grandchildren, but only one was usually in the direct line of succession. Daniel was somehow among those that were considered to be among the king's seed and the royalty, so he must have had some ancestors who were royal in Jerusalem.

As a youth, he was carried away into Babylon as a captive and he was trained for three years there in the language and the ways of the Chaldeans, but he did not compromise himself. He did not surrender the ways of his own faith, although he learned the culture and the language of the Chaldeans. In this respect, he may be a model to those of us who would want to influence the world around us, and that is that we remain uncompromised in our convictions, but we become conversant in the world's culture.

Now, there'd be a limit to how much that would be desirable, but in some respects, to be conversant in the world's culture gives you a means of communicating with them at their level, and Daniel learned that. He didn't ask for it, but God arranged it that he would become schooled in the language and culture of the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans were an ethnic group in the lower regions of the Babylonian Empire, and Nebuchadnezzar himself was a Chaldean.

Like Joseph, Daniel was elevated to high rank because of his ability to interpret dreams, and he served as a statesman under kings of Babylon and Persia until at least 536 BC. The third year of Cyrus is the latest year mentioned in the book. In Daniel chapter 10, verse 1, the third year of Cyrus would be 536 BC.

He may have lived longer than that, but that's the last date we are given on a prophecy that he has given. He apparently did not ever go back to Jerusalem, although he lived beyond the point where the exiles were released to go. It was in the first year of Cyrus that Cyrus gave the proclamation that the Jews could go back to their land, and ordinarily, a pious Jew would be expected to do that.

Daniel did not go. He remained at least two more years, and he may have died in Babylon. He probably did, or it would be Persia by this time, because the Persian Empire had taken over Babylon by this point in time.

Daniel might have been too old to travel. He could very well have been in his 90s, and making the trip might have been impossible, or he might have felt that God still had use for him since he was positioned as very few of the Jews in Babylon were, or in Persia, and that was to have the ear of the monarch. It may be that he felt like he had more of a ministry and could do more for his people by having influence at court for them in the pagan overlord's house.

He was a statesman, as I said, but he was also a prophet. In Numbers, chapter 12, and verse 6, God said, if I, the Lord, raise up a prophet among my people, I will speak to him in a vision or in a dream. Well, that's what Daniel received, visions and dreams, and the interpretation of other people's dreams.

In fact, his first gifts to manifest were not his own dreams and visions, but his ability to interpret a couple of important dreams of Nebuchadnezzar's. Jesus also referred to him as a prophet in Matthew 24, 15, when he said, when you see the abomination of desolation that was spoken of by the prophet Daniel. So, Daniel was a prophet and statesman, and yet he is sometimes criticized as not being a genuine prophet.

The book has been criticized as having certain areas of flaws that would discredit it as a historical document. Now, we have to understand that there is a motivation on many scholars' parts to discredit the Bible as an inspired work from God. Many religious leaders and scholars who are devoted in universities to teaching from the Bible, they nonetheless do not believe the Bible is the word of God, or they don't believe it's inspired supernaturally.

They don't believe in miracles, and they don't believe in the reality of predictive prophecy, where God would actually reveal to a human being events of the future in detail before they happen. Now, of course, we found in Isaiah 41, God said that's the very thing that he credentials his prophets by, that is, by their ability to tell the future, and he challenges other gods to try to do the same thing. The real God can tell the future, and he credentials his prophets by giving them knowledge of the future.

So, to deny that there is such a phenomenon is to simply mean that the books of the Bible that claim to be predictive are not, but there are a few books of the Bible that are more amazing in their predictions than others, Isaiah and Daniel particularly, because Isaiah mentions Cyrus by name a couple hundred years before the guy did anything, and 150 years before he was born. That seems supernatural. And so Isaiah has come under attack from critics.

Daniel is even worse for the critics, because he looks beyond his own time to the rise and fall of several empires that he did not live to see. And there are portions of Daniel that give very explicit predictive descriptions of intrigues and wars between kings that didn't live until the second century BC. Now, realize Daniel's writing in the sixth century BC, and he's describing events that occurred four centuries later.

In particular, there's quite a vivid description of Antiochus Epiphanes and his persecution of the Jews, which occurred in the 160s, the early 160s BC. And there can be very little doubt, even the skeptics do not doubt, that this is Antiochus Epiphanes who's being described, but because they don't believe that there is such a thing as predictive prophecy, they simply believe this book was not written by a man living during the time of Babylon, but he was rather a man living in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. One who could describe the historical actions of Antiochus in symbolic visions, having seen them and having known of them, rather than predicting them in advance.

And so a second century BC date has often been ascribed to Daniel by what we call the higher critics, what we might also call liberal scholars, liberal theologians and scholars of the Bible. This way they don't have to deal with any reality of predictive prophecy. If Daniel wrote this in the sixth century BC, as the book claims, then he was seeing very clearly things that were in the second and third and fourth centuries BC and describing them in ways as they actually happened.

And that would make Daniel one of the most impressive books of the Bible in terms of its ability to really just lay out the future centuries in advance, in detail. So it is a threat to the person of a naturalistic mindset, a person who wishes to believe there is no supernatural intervention in the affairs of men, because predictive prophecy is a supernatural intervention of God. So it's been commonplace from as long as the scholars have been attacking the Bible at all to attack Daniel and to try to find flaws in Daniel.

Some of these are said to be historical errors. Some of them are said to be literary errors. One of the things that has been said to be the case is that there are, in the book of Daniel, vocabulary words that are what we call Greek and Persian loan words.

Now, what is a loan word? It's a word from another language that is borrowed by a certain language. For example, we have lots of loan words from Latin. We have a lot of loan words from French and German and Spanish in our English.

When we say gesundheit, that's a German loan word. When we say c'est la vie, that's a French loan word. We use a lot of language words and expressions from other languages in English, and all languages do that.

They borrow from other languages of their time. The thing is that the Greek and Persian languages were later, to a certain extent, than Daniel's time, we're told. At least the scholars tried to give the impression that the amount of Persian and Greek loan words in the language of the book of Daniel would suggest a later date.

After all, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians and the Persians later by the Greeks. Therefore, the language of the Greeks and the Persians really belonged to a later period than the time of Nebuchadnezzar. So, we're told.

But, of course, there was Greek language and there was Persian language at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It wasn't the main language of the empire, but there's nothing that would prevent Babylonian language from picking up certain loan words from Greek and Persian. After all, it was basically in touch with those regions.

Those languages were not unknown in the days of Nebuchadnezzar to the Babylonians. To suggest that the Babylonian language would not pick up any words from those languages is simply to ask us to believe what is unreasonable. There's no evidence that the Babylonian language would not pick them up, but the presence of such words in the book of Daniel in the Hebrew and in the Aramaic, because Daniel's written in two languages, is one of those things that's brought up as an evidence of a late date, but it's not at all conclusive and it doesn't prove anything.

It's a rather desperate claim, as a matter of fact. I said Daniel was written in two languages. That's another linguistic concern for some people.

Half the book is written in Hebrew, as most of the Old Testament is, but half the book is also written in Aramaic, which is the language that the Jews later came to speak. For example, in the days of Jesus, the Jews were not speaking Hebrew, they were speaking Aramaic. Aramaic was a language that gradually replaced Hebrew as the common language among Jewish people.

Chapter 1 of Daniel is written in Hebrew, and so is chapters 8 through 12. So there are six chapters of Daniel that are written in Hebrew, but there are six chapters written in Aramaic. They are chapters 2 through 7. Therefore, the heavy use of Aramaic has sometimes, by critics, been said to be an indicator of a later date, when Aramaic was replacing Hebrew as the language of use among the Jews.

How much later this happened, or how much later they want it to be, would of course be somewhat flexible, but on other grounds, they would like it to be in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes that this was written. So they use the fact that Aramaic was used alongside Hebrew as evidence that this was written at a time when the two languages were kind of used side by side, and perhaps that the usage was morphing from Hebrew to Aramaic at the time, which they say would be at a later time than the alleged time of Daniel's story. However, Aramaic was well known in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and it would be very likely, since interestingly the chapters that are written in Aramaic are the ones that are dealing with pagan kings and pagan empires, it would be a language more widely read in the empire than Hebrew.

And so parts of Daniel that are written to concern the Hebrews primarily are written in Hebrew. The parts that concern themselves with Gentile empires are written in Aramaic, and might have been done so because they are for Gentile readership. And it would not necessarily mean that the Hebrews had begun to use Aramaic instead of Hebrew.

Both languages are in the book, so again the presence of the two languages does not speak of a later date, although some would like to make it point that direction. One of the criticisms of, or one of the suggestions that Daniel was written later is thought to be found in the fact that Daniel was not included among the prophets in the Masoretic Canon of the Old Testament. The Masoretic Canon dates from the 6th or 7th century AD.

In other words, a long time after the time of Christ and a long time after the time of Daniel, the Masoretic Canon of the Jews did not place Daniel among the prophets. They had the law, the Torah, which is the first five books. They had the prophets, which included the early and the latter prophets.

The early prophets are what we call most of the historical books of the Old Testament. The latter prophets are the books we call prophets. But then they had the writings.

You've got the law, the prophets, and the writings. And the writings were a collection of books that were neither law nor prophets. They included the books of Solomon, the book of Psalms, Ruth was in there, and Daniel was in there with, you know, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and so forth.

And so the fact that the Masoretic text places Daniel in the writings rather than in the prophets is one of the arguments for saying, well, he wasn't viewed as a prophet in those days. But Jesus himself called Daniel a prophet, and therefore he's no doubt reflecting the view of the Jews at the time. And the reasons for having Daniel placed outside of the group of the prophets, as he was, may well have been, like I said, because he was not one who spoke to the people of Israel as a prophet.

He was not one who was an intermediary between God and the people of Israel, as prophets generally were. But he was one who was basically a politician, a statesman, a man whose realm was not among the Jews, and who did not spend most of his time prophesying. We only know of a few cases, a handful of times, when he received divine inspiration and wrote about it.

What did he do the rest of the 70 years of his career? Well, he wasn't prophesying, apparently, most of the time. He was doing government business. And therefore the Jews recognized he wasn't really a prophet like the other prophets and belongs in a category by himself.

That doesn't mean that they didn't think he legitimately prophesied or that his writings were truly ancient predictions of things that later happened. The main arguments against Daniel's authenticity come from claims that there are historical inaccuracies in the book. For example, in Daniel 1.1, it says, In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

This is in conflict, they say, with Jeremiah chapter 25, in verse 1. Jeremiah 25.1 says, The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. So the claim is that Jeremiah tells us the first year of the king of Babylon was the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign. And Daniel tells us that the third year of Jehoiakim's reign, the king of Babylon, came and besieged Jerusalem.

That means, wouldn't that be like a year before the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign? If the fourth year of Jehoiakim is the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, according to Jeremiah, then how could there be a king, Nebuchadnezzar, in the third year of Jehoiakim, the year before that, before the first year? And so it is thought that there's a historical inaccuracy here. Another inaccuracy that is said to exist is that Daniel, they said, used the word Chaldeans, not as an ethnic term, which it was, but as a term having meaning that it later came to hold, later than the Babylonian times. In the days of Nebuchadnezzar, who was himself a Chaldean by ethnicity, the term Chaldean did refer to an ethnic group.

However, in later centuries, the word Chaldeans came to be applied to a class of priest magicians, astrologers and such. In other words, it ceased to have an ethnic designation and rather referred to the profession of people. The Chaldeans were famous for their magic arts and their occult practices.

And so, although the Chaldean ethnic group ceased to be spoken of in those terms, absorbed as it was into the Babylonian, yet at a later date, the term Chaldean was used to mean a class of priest astrologers and so forth. And it is said that Daniel uses the word Chaldeans that way. In other words, in a later way than it was used in Nebuchadnezzar's time, in a time where the word Chaldean had simply come to mean not an ethnic group, but a certain kind of profession.

And they point out, for example, that in chapter 2, when Nebuchadnezzar had his dream and couldn't interpret it, in verse 4 it says, then the Chaldeans spoke to the... or he actually called in the Chaldeans in verse 2. It says, the king gave the command to all the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. Obviously, the Chaldeans here is used of a group of people who are like magicians and astrologers and sorcerers, rather than an ethnic group. And so it says Daniel is using the word Chaldeans the way it was used at a later time, not the way it was used in his own time.

In chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar had another dream, in verse 7 it says, then the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers came in. Once again, we see the Chaldeans seem to be a reference to people of a certain profession in the occult arts, not an ethnic designation. Likewise, in chapter 5, when Belshazzar sees the writing on the wall and he's looking for an interpretation, chapter 5, verse 7, it says, the king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers.

So again, Chaldeans is simply in the list with these other kind of professionals. And this is said to be an evidence that Daniel was written later when the word Chaldeans had ceased to be an ethnic designation and was now just used of this particular kind of profession, of soothsayer, astrologer, priest. Then there is, of course, the matter of Nebuchadnezzar's madness.

In chapter 4, we read of Nebuchadnezzar going mad. We are told that while he was mad, he ate grass like an ox, and he ate grass like an ox. His hair grew out like feathers on a bird.

His claws, his fingernails grew out like claws. He went about on all fours. He was a madman.

And this happened and continued for a period that is referred to as seven times, until seven times passed over him. Most understand this times to refer to years. So for a period of seven years, the madness of Nebuchadnezzar.

Scholars have said there is no evidence in history of this madness of Nebuchadnezzar, and it seems very unlikely that a man would go mad to this degree that he couldn't rule his kingdom for seven years, and then later be restored and be able to be king again. Certainly in those seven years, one would think some other person would step in to rule the country, and it would not be easy for Nebuchadnezzar to find his way back into his position, even if he recovered from his illness. And so they say the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness has got to be mythical or legendary, because it just, it can't really be true.

Cartledge, one of the critics, said, history knows nothing of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar reported in Daniel. So that's another historical problem. Then there was the problem of Belshazzar, who was said to be the king in chapter five when Babylon fell.

Obviously he's represented as the last king in Babylon, at the time of its fall to the Medes and the Persians. The problem with that is that there were several records about Babylonian history that named a different man as the king and did not know anything about Belshazzar. Nabonidus is the name that was given by Herodotus, the historian, living about in the fourth century BC, about 400 years before Christ.

The Greek historian Herodotus and Xenophon and Brossus and Abidinus and other contemporary cuneiform writings, they named Nabonidus, not Belshazzar, as the last king of Babylon. So Daniel 5 represents the last king of Babylon as a man named Belshazzar. Everything else in the historical records mentioned Nabonidus as the last king.

So this was considered to be a historical fault. Then last but not least, there's a character mentioned a number of times in Daniel who's called Darius, sometimes the longer phrase Darius the Mede. His role is that of king, apparently, before Cyrus.

And you get the impression that when Babylon fell, it was ruled for a while by this person named Darius the Mede. And yet it was Cyrus that conquered Babylon. It's Cyrus that issued the decree to allow the Jews to go back to their land.

And it was Cyrus who ruled over the empire that he conquered. So this Darius the Mede is not known. But there was another Darius at a later date.

I think his name was Darius Hystepes. And he was a later Persian ruler. And the critics say, well, the writer of Daniel was not a contemporary and lived much later, centuries later, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.

And the author of Daniel, whoever it may have been, made up this character Daniel, made up the stories, and was a bit confused about Persian history and seemed to think that Darius was the first king of the Persian empire. When in fact Darius Hystepes was much later. And therefore it was just a matter of confusion on the part of the author.

It's a matter of confusion of identity. And so these are the mistakes that are thought to have entered into the writing of the book of Daniel that prove that it's not a genuine ancient book written during the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the exile of the Jews. Now all these things have been answered very adequately.

And I'll just share briefly with you how they have been answered. About the dates in Daniel 1.1, the date of Nebuchadnezzar's invasion, it is said to be in the third year of Jehoiakim. And as we pointed out in Jeremiah 25.1, the fourth year of Jehoiakim is said to be the first year of Nebuchadnezzar.

So these two would not be easy to harmonize. Except for the fact that scholars now unanimously agree, this is not some side theory that a few people have, this is something that's well known now from studies of the ancient world, that in the ancient Near East there were two different ways to speak of the reign of a king. The Egyptians and the Jews used a certain way to describe the years of a king's reign.

The months from the king's accession to the throne until the end of the first calendar year, that is the year he acceded to the throne, the Jews and the Egyptians referred to as the first year of his reign. Even if it had only been a month or two months at the end of a calendar year, that was his first year. And then when the end of the calendar year came, then the following year was his second year.

The Babylonians, however, would not speak that way. And this is well known. The Babylonians would speak of that first segment of the year not as the first year of the king's reign, as the Jews did, but they'd call it the accession year.

And then the first year would begin at the calendar year's end. So if a person came to power in November and ruled for several years, then the year, let's say it was November 2012, somebody came to power. Well, the Jews would speak of 2012 as the first year of his reign, and 2013 would be called the second year of his reign, because the two months at the end of 2012 would be enough to make that the first year to the Jewish reckoning.

The Babylonians would not say that. The Babylonians, speaking of the same case, would call 2012 the accession year. The man reigned only two years in that particular calendar year, and that's his accession year.

Thus, 2013 would be regarded the first year of his reign. 2013 would be called the first year of the reign of a certain individual by the Babylonians, but it would be called the second year of his reign by the Jews. Now, Jeremiah clearly is writing in Jerusalem to the Jews.

Daniel's writing in Babylon to the Babylonians. Thus, the first year of Nebuchadnezzar would be called the second year by the Jews. The first year that the Babylonians would recognize by the Jews.

Therefore, when the Babylonians would speak of the third year of Nebuchadnezzar, the third year of Jehoiakim, the Jews would speak of that same year as the fourth year of Jehoiakim. One is using what's called the accession year method of reckoning, the other is not. Now, this has been solved beyond question.

The critics raised it years ago, but now that we know as much as we do about Babylonian culture and Jewish culture, we recognize that this is a difference only in the way of speaking, not a mistake. The very same year, which is 605 B.C., the Jews would call the fourth year of Jehoiakim and the Babylonians would call the third year of Jehoiakim. Therefore, we have the difference between a Jewish document written to Jewish people and a document written to Babylonian people in their culture.

Remember, Daniel was trained in the culture of the Babylonians. He would speak of the years the way the Babylonians would. Okay, what about speaking of the Chaldeans as a profession, not an ethnic designation? Well, Daniel uses the term both ways, and there's no reason to doubt that it was used both ways in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.

Certainly, Daniel was not ignorant to the fact that Chaldean was an ethnic group, and in Daniel chapter 3, for example, Chaldeans are distinguished from Jews. This would not be the case if Chaldeans were simply a professional group. In Daniel 3.8, it says, therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and accused the Jews.

The distinction here is not between professions, but between ethnic groups. Also, in chapter 5 and verse 30, it's quite clear that Chaldean is used as a ethnic designation. Daniel 5.30 says, that very night, Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, was slain.

Obviously, the king of the Chaldeans means the king of this particular nation, not some professional group. He would not be called the king of the soothsayers or the king of the astrologers. He's the king of a people, and therefore, Chaldeans is used to speak of a people group, not a professional class of soothsayers and astrologers and so forth.

He's the king of the Chaldeans, clearly recognizes Chaldeans as an ethnic and racial designation, not just a professional group. So, Daniel uses the term both ways. He certainly knew about Chaldeans as a racial group.

Now, about Nebuchadnezzar's madness in chapter 4, it is true that we don't have secular records that describe it quite in the terms Daniel does, but there are some interesting things that have been unearthed since the time the critics first raised this objection. First of all, the historical records of Babylon that have come to us record no governmental activity by Nebuchadnezzar from 582 to 575. That's well within the period of his reign.

There are no records of anything he did between those years. That would be a period of seven years, but the number of years is not the most important thing. The fact that there is a season where Nebuchadnezzar was not doing anything that was ever recorded might be the season of that madness.

We should remember this, that things that are embarrassing to a government are not usually entered into the national record, in those days at least. Sometimes people wonder why the plagues of Egypt and the exodus and the loss of Pharaoh's armies in the Red Sea are not found in any of the Egyptian historical records. There's a reason for that.

Ancient kings liked to view themselves as gods, and they liked people to view them as gods. Where they show themselves very weak and vulnerable and foolish, these things were not the kind of things you put into your court records. If you're the recorder and the historian and you value your life, you don't be recording those kinds of things.

However, Daniel writing to his own people probably, or for the benefit of his own people, could record it probably after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. There's a discovery by Sir Henry Rawlinson of a damaged tablet from the period of Nebuchadnezzar which reads, it is damaged and fragmentary, but you can read these words. Nebuchadnezzar says, For four years in all my dominions, I did not build a high place of honor for the precious treasures of my kingdom, I did not lay out.

In the worship of Meredok, I did not sing his praises, I did not clear out canals. In other words, he didn't maintain his empire, and he didn't even worship his god. Now he says for four years.

That might be the length of time that seven times is. Seven times doesn't have to mean seven years. Seven times could mean a complete period of time until whatever needs to be accomplished is accomplished.

That could have been a four year period. In Eusebius' book Preparatio Evangelica, which means preparation for the gospel, he's talking about how things in history prepared people for accepting the gospel. Eusebius is talking about Nebuchadnezzar's madness.

He quotes the historian Abadinus, who is a Greek historian, as saying that in Nebuchadnezzar's later years, quote, it says, he was possessed by some god or other. We might say by a demon. It says, the king went up to his palace to announce the coming of the Persian mule, who is Cyrus, who would bring the people into slavery.

And Abadinus continues, quote, he, when he had uttered this prediction, immediately disappeared. So these secular records might supplement some of what Daniel says, and Daniel might supplement them. At least it cannot be said that we know enough about Nebuchadnezzar's reign to suggest that there was not such a period of madness.

You cannot disprove from the records that there was such a period of madness. And there are some allusions to sickness, to being possessed by some kind of a god, and acting crazy and so forth in the secular records as well. Whether this corresponds with the period of madness that Daniel speaks of or not may be disputable, but it actually encourages us to think that there are some veiled references to it in terms that are less embarrassing to the king in the actual Babylonian and Greek records.

Now what about Belshazzar? Remember Herodotus and Berossus and other and the cuneiform tablets named Nabonidus as the last king of Babylon when it fell. Nabonidus alone said that the last king's name was Belshazzar. Since Daniel was standing against all other known historical records on this, it was considered a given that Daniel was mistaken, that Belshazzar was a fiction, that the writer of Daniel lived much later than the fall of Babylon, didn't know the historian, and kind of made up the character to be the last king of Babylon until 1854.

Now that's a long time ago now, they were doing things against Daniel prior to that for a good long time, but they stopped using this one in 1854 because in Ur, which was a Babylonian city, the same one that actually Abraham was born in, a cornerstone of a temple built by Nabonidus was found which read, May I, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, not sin against thee, and may reverence for thee dwell in the heart of Belshazzar, my first born favorite son. Now the finding of this inscription was the first time ever that the name Belshazzar was found outside the book of Daniel, and it was written in the hand of Nabonidus, who is the king that all the other historians named as the last king of Babylon, but Nabonidus had a son named Belshazzar. Since then, other cuneiform tablets have been found and much more has been learned about Belshazzar.

It was just 1854 that kind of broke the ice, and suddenly it turned out that Daniel knew something that even Herodotus didn't know. Herodotus wrote 400 years before Christ, Daniel was closer to the source than that, he knew about Belshazzar, Herodotus didn't. Turns out that when Babylon fell to the Persians, Nabonidus, the father of Belshazzar, was in semi-retirement in Arabia, and he was not in Babylon.

He had left his son there and called him the king of Babylon. Nabonidus was in fact the older king, his son was also given a provisional title of king, which explains something that is harder to explain otherwise, and that is in Daniel chapter 5, when Belshazzar sees the writing on the wall and finds himself incapable of deciphering it, he offers a reward to whoever will be able to read it for him, and he offers him to be third ruler in the kingdom. Daniel does not mention why he would say third ruler, but history now has supplied the information that Belshazzar himself was only the second ruler under his father Nabonidus.

And so Daniel actually harmonizes with what we now know from secular history, the very sources that were thought to disprove Daniel, prove Daniel knew more than those sources. Belshazzar was the king at the time Babylon fell in the city, and yet he had been completely forgotten for over 2,500 years, except that Daniel remembered him, and then archaeology discovered him again. And so Daniel proved to be right again, and the critics wrong again.

What about Darius the Mede? It is not clear who Darius the Mede is. It remains a somewhat unsolved mystery. Cyrus was not a Mede.

Cyrus was a Persian. Although he had connections with the Mede, he had become a king over the Medes before he conquered Babylon. Jeremiah speaks about the king of the Medes is going to come and destroy Babylon, or in Jeremiah chapters 50 and 51, he talks about the Medes, and specifically the king of the Medes conquering them.

Cyrus was the king of the Medes. And the Persians. The Medes and the Persians had been somewhat joined before the time of Cyrus' conquest of Babylon, and he was the king of both groups.

But there is another character that is sometimes thought to be a reference, the one referred to as Darius. For example, Darius might have been a throne name rather than a personal name. It might have been a name sort of like Pharaoh.

Pharaoh is a term that was used for all the kings of Egypt. No matter what their personal name was, it was more like a title. And Darius may have been like that too, because there were several Darius' in Persian history.

And it may be that another man whose name was not actually Darius was referred to by the title Darius the Mede. The theory is that it may have been a reference to Gubaru, whom the Greeks called Gubrius in their histories. Gubaru, or Gubaru, I don't know where the emphasis lies on which syllable, but it's either Gubaru or Gubaru.

Probably Gubaru sounds a little less goofy. This man was actually a general under Cyrus who was involved in taking the city of Babylon and who was left to be like the governor or the ruler of the city for a couple of years while Cyrus went off and handled other matters. And then Cyrus came back to Babylon a couple of years later and took command.

And so this man Gubaru, or the Greek form of his name is Gubrius, and the Greek historians mention him by that name, he actually was the ruler in Babylon for a couple of years after it fell to Cyrus. And some have suggested that Cyrus conquered Babylon, issued his decree allowing people to go home, and then left. And the ruler in Babylon then was this man Gubaru.

Gubaru for a couple of years. And that he might be the man that is referred to as Darius the Mede. Now we are actually told more historical information about Darius the Mede in Daniel than about most other important characters.

For example, we're told who his parents were, we're told his nationality, we're told how old he was, he was 62 years old when he came to power according to Daniel. To suggest that Darius the Mede was not a historical character when so much information is given about him is certainly counterintuitive. There is more personal information given about Darius the Mede in Daniel than there is about Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar, who were seemingly more important men.

Daniel knew something about this man. He knew his age, he knew his nationality, he knew his parentage, he knew how long he reigned, and it's not a fiction. But who the man was has been questioned.

It could have been this man, Gubaru, who is called Darius the Mede. Now we don't know from any of the other records about Gubaru, which are found in the heathen histories, we don't know his age, we don't know even if he was a Mede. So we cannot confirm the things that we know about Darius the Mede with what we know about Gubaru, except that it is the career of Gubaru in Babylon would coincide with that which Daniel attributes to Darius the Mede, and that may be enough to make the identification.

Not all scholars are agreed about that, and many scholars believe that Cyrus himself is referred to as Darius the Mede. Again, Darius being a title, and calling him the Mede would not be in order to say that was his nationality so much, as that he was the king of the Medes. And so some have argued that way.

This remains an unsolved mystery, but those who say that there was no Darius the Mede and that the author was mistaken should learn a lesson from those who said there was no Belshazzar, because Daniel gives evidence of having been very much intimately acquainted with the political structure of the early Babylonian, later Babylonian, and early Persian empire. He was there, and if he said Darius the Mede was there, then that's a historical witness of the highest character. If we don't have confirming historical witnesses yet, well, the case of Darius might be very similar to that of Belshazzar.

We should be very careful not to jump to conclusions against Daniel's veracity. Now there are some other things in Daniel that actually point to his early date, because of his knowledge of certain things that a later writer might not know, that we do know from other sources now. For example, we mentioned the knowledge of Belshazzar.

The other sources didn't know about Belshazzar. Even Herodotus didn't seem to know about Belshazzar, which means that Daniel seems to have been more ancient than Herodotus. But besides that, Daniel chapter 2 and verse 12 indicates that Nebuchadnezzar could change his decrees if he wanted to, but Daniel chapter 6 verses 8 and following states that Darius could not.

And we now know that the Babylonian kings had the power to enact and cancel laws, if they wished, but the Persians did not have that. The laws of the Medes and the Persians could not be changed. Once they were made, they couldn't be changed.

The writer of Daniel knew that, because Nebuchadnezzar, a Babylonian king, changed on a whim his decrees about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for example. And about the killing of the soothsayers and the astrologers. He could just change his mind.

But Darius, the Persian ruler, couldn't. He was bound by the laws of the Medes and Persians. That's a rather arcane detail of, you know, legal practice of the Medes and the Persians versus the Babylonians that not everyone would know.

Daniel, who was, of course, involved in the government of both groups, would know that. You wouldn't expect a person living in the second century B.C. to know such things. Another difference between the Babylonians and the Persians that Daniel knew, and later people probably would not, unless they were experts on it.

And if they were experts, they'd know about Cyrus and Nabanidus and things like that, too. In other words, a Jew who knew enough to know there was a Belshazzar would have done a lot of research. And he wouldn't make the kind of mistakes that some people say were made in the book.

But Daniel acknowledges that the Babylonians, when they wanted to punish someone, would throw them into a fiery furnace. That's what, of course, was done to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego by Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 3. The Persians, however, considered fire to be sacred, and they would not use it to execute people. Instead, they would throw people into the dens of wild beasts.

That was a normal Persian way of killing people. And therefore, we see that Darius, who is obliged to execute Daniel, he throws him into a den of lions because he's a Persian king. The Babylonians used fire.

And so the book of Daniel testifies to that. And of course, more importantly than that, Jesus testifies to it. Because in Daniel 24, 15, when he says, Daniel the prophet, he doesn't say Daniel the false prophet or Daniel the historian posing as a prophet.

He says Daniel the prophet. Jesus recognized Daniel as a true prophetic voice inspired by the Holy Spirit. Now, we're about done here.

So the theme of the book of Daniel is God's sovereignty over the nations. The author is Daniel, mentioned several times. The book is prophetically accurate, and it has certain parts of it are written in an apocalyptic genre.

It's divided. There are different ways to divide it. One way would be into its historical and prophetic sections.

The first six chapters are historical, just stories. There's a prophecy and a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, but it's within a story. So chapters one through six are historical narrative, and chapters seven through 12 are visions, prophetic.

The book divides right in half that way. But you could also divide it into its Hebrew and Aramaic sections, which is a little different. The Hebrew section, chapter one, and verses eight through 12, the Aramaic section is from chapters two through seven.

The Aramaic section, chapters two through seven, has an interesting structure in that the six chapters are set up in a, what we would call, ABC-BCA structure. That is to say, the chapters on the end, each end of that section, the first and last of them, which is chapters two and seven in the Aramaic section, they have a similar subject matter. As you move toward the middle, the second one and the fifth one, which are chapters three and six, have a similar subject matter.

Then, as you get to the middle, four and five have a similar subject matter to each other. Here's how it is. Chapters two and seven, which flank the section that's written in Aramaic, both talk about four empires and God's kingdom.

The Babylonian, Median, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires are mentioned in both sections, followed by the kingdom of God. As you move toward the middle of that section, chapters three and six talk about God's supernatural preservation of his people, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in chapter three, Daniel in the lion's den in chapter six. Then, chapters four and five, in the middle of this section, both have the humiliation of proud kings.

Nebuchadnezzar is humiliated by being made mad for a season. In chapter four, Belshazzar is humiliated by the writing on the wall at his great feast in chapter five. There's a chart at the bottom of your notes that shows the Babylonian, Median, Persian, Grecian, Roman, and God's empires, and goes through several different chapters, chapter two, chapter seven, chapter eight, chapter nine, and chapters 10 through 11, and shows how these empires are spoken of in different prophecies in Daniel.

We will say more about that when we come to those relevant chapters, but as you look that over, you can see that the same period of time, the same empires, are repeatedly mentioned in the book of Daniel, and each prophecy tells us a little something different about them. But that's going to have to suffice as the end of our introduction, and next time we'll get together and take chapter one of Daniel and move right through the book.