God's Babylonian, An Introduction to Daniel

The book of Daniel, assigned to the prophets, at the end of Ezekiel, is intended both as a historical book (especially the first half) and as a prophetic book (especially the second half.) It is a strange and fascinating book with famous stories (a fiery furnace, a den of lions) and prophecies about the end time.

As a graduate student at the University of Illinois (1975-6), impressed by Daniel's wisdom in wisely waliking through a smart secular culture, I help lead a Bible study in Daniels Hall.  There we called Daniel "God's Graduate Student. Later, at Mt. Pleasant Community Church in Michigan, I led a study of Daniel in April and May 1997. (I think I co-taught this with Larry Koehler.)  

I've tried to collect my old notes on this book while also rereading the book many times and looking at three commentaries.

An Overview

At the end of 2 Kings (and also at the end of 2 Chronices), the people of Israel are taken captive into Babylon. Among the captive taken there is a young man, Daniel, along with three of his friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. These men are young elites of the old nation of Judah and so they are trained to be administrators in Babylon. As they take these roles, the young Jews have to navigate this pagan society while staying true to their Jewish roots and faith. The book focuses primarily on Daniel, with a few cameo appearances by his friends. Daniel's life, for almost 70 years, is covered in the book; the last chapter mentions his death at an old age.

The book of Daniel breaks naturally into two parts, the first six chapters, consisting of mainly events during Daniel's life and then the next six chapters containing several visions and prophecies. A separate division of he book is caused by the language in which it is written: chapters 2 through 7 are in Aramaic, not Hebrew! (Aramaic was the language of Babylon; Hebrew was the language of Judah.)

Section I

Chapter 1, Captivity and the training of the captives

Chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

Chapter 3, The image of gold and the fiery furnace

Chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzars dream of a tree (and insanity to follow)

Chapter 5, The writing on the wall

Chapter 6, Daniel in the lions' den

Section II

Chapter 7, The four beasts

Chapter 8, Daniel’s vision of a ram and a goat

Chapter 9, Jeremiah's prophecy and seventy sevens

Chapter 10, Daniel's vision of a man

Chapter 11, The kings of the south and the north and the king who exalts himself

Chapter 12, The end times

House argues that prayer is a theme of the book of Daniel. Looking past the exciting stories of lions and fiery furnaces, we have a consistent steady prayer response of Daniel at each turn. Daniel even ends up in the lion's den because he openly prays three times a week.

Legends

Due to the dramatic events in Daniel's life and his impeccable strength of character, numerous stories have collected around the life of Daniel. He was a hero to the Jews throughout the Second Temple period and then a hero to Jews, Christians and Muslims across the later centuries. Today there is a site in Susa that claims to be the tomb of Daniel. In addition to the myths about the magic of Daniel's body (some mentioned in the article on the tomb), there are apocryphal and pseudapigraphical works. The Catholic Bible includes two strange chapter as Daniel 13 (a #MeToo story in which a young Daniel saves a woman's life after she has been accused by two men) and Daniel 14 which includes two short stories of Daniel's wisdom and power. (In the first half of Daniel 14, he reveals trickery by priests of Bel; the second half includes a story in which Daniel kills a dragon and for punishment is back in the lions' den.) There is also an Apocalypse of Daniel dating from the ninth century AD.

Daniel's reputation was such that there are at least eight places in central Asia claiming to be a tomb of Daniel. In March of 2025, Jan and I had an oppportunity to visit Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The tomb of Daniel in Samarkand claims to have a few bones of Daniel, stolen from a tomb in Syria by Tamerlane.

Resources and References

My practice is to read through the text from the New International Version (NIV), copied into the blog and italicized in blue.  At the head of each blue paragraph of text I place a short title; after the text I place my thoughts or comments in black.  I begin this process with my own reactions and thoughts and then supplement these comments with gleanings from a commentary or two.

The real goal of this blog is to force me to read every verse thoughtfully. I hope that you, too, read the passages thoughtfully!   Feel free to disagree -- or to react in other ways! (I place hyperlinks in pink, created so that one can click on a link and see the linked site open in another window... and go down a rabbit hole if you wish!)

For the book of Daniels, I have found three commentaries especially helpful. 

• Long ago I worked through Joyce Balwin's Daniel, An Introduction and Commentary, c. 1978, in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series. Joyce Baldwin was an impressive scholar and writer; Wikipedia has a biography here.
• Forty years later the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series were revised by InterVarsity Press. Their new commentary on Daniel is by Paul R. House, c. 2018.
• I have also used a commentary by Gleason Archer found in the seventh volume of the Expositor's Bible Commentary.

Among the commentaries on Daniel, there are two camps. There are those that believe the original text of Daniel was written prior to some of the dramatic prophecies, that the prophecies are indeed supernatural revelations to Daniel. The three commentaries I've cited above fall into that category. 

There are also commentators who believe that the scroll of Daniel includes additions from the time of the Maccabees and that the prophetic visions, especially those in chapter 11, were history, not prophecy when they were written. 

The orthodox Christian position has been to assume that the scroll of Daniel is what it claims to be, a mixture of history and prophecy, probably written some time shortly after the end of the Babylonian captivity.

In addition to the two commentaries above, there are also:

• Amongst the online commentaries provided by EasyEnglishBible, is an online commentary on Daniel. (The Easy English Bible commentaries are easy to read, with deliberately simple language intended for those for whom English is a second language. The Old Testament text is included in the commentary.) 
• The Gospel Coalition now has a set of online commentaries.  Here is their commentary on Daniel.

As always, the Bible Project summary is excellent. A more extensive Bible Project overview is here.