When was the book of Daniel written?

Two answers

The book is set in Babylon between 605 and 539 BC, and its visions speak in the first person: “I, Daniel.” For most of history Jews and Christians read it as the work of that exile, a prophet foretelling empires to come. Jesus speaks of “Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15). Most modern scholars instead date its final form to the 160s BC. The argument is old. In the third century AD the philosopher Porphyry of Tyre argued that the book was written in Judea in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; we know it because Jerome quoted him, to refute him, in his Commentary on Daniel of 407.

The clue in chapter 11

Daniel 11 is a long vision of wars between “the king of the south” and “the king of the north,” which read like the history of Alexander’s heirs, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria, told in code. It grows sharper as it reaches Antiochus IV, who outlawed Jewish practice and defiled the Temple.

Forces from him will profane the sanctuary, even the fortress, and will take away the continual burnt offering. Then they will set up the abomination that makes desolate.

1 Maccabees dates that pagan altar, built over the Temple’s own, to the fifteenth day of Chislev in the year 145, December 167 BC (1 Maccabees 1:54). Then the vision changes. It foresees one more war with Egypt and the king’s death in the land of Israel:

He will plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the glorious holy mountain; yet he will come to his end, and no one will help him.

Antiochus actually died in Persia, in late 164 BC (1 Maccabees 6:1–16), and the book never mentions the Temple’s rededication that December, the first Hanukkah. So most scholars conclude it was finished after the end of 167 BC and before news of his death arrived. Traditional readers answer that the closing verses look further ahead, to the end of time.

Clues in the language

Daniel is written in two languages. It opens in Hebrew, switches to Aramaic in mid-verse, when the Chaldeans speak to the king “in the Syrian language” (Daniel 2:4), and returns to Hebrew from chapter 8. Its Aramaic borrows Persian words for officials, and its music borrows Greek. Three of the instruments in Nebuchadnezzar’s band (Daniel 3:5) carry Greek names, among them symphonia, the ancestor of symphony. Scholars who date the book late see the Greek world after Alexander. Others reply that Greek traders and soldiers were in the Near East long before him.

Witnesses from outside

• Ben Sira, about 180 BC, praises Israel’s heroes one by one, from Enoch to the twelve prophets, but never Daniel (Sirach 44–49).
• The Hebrew Bible places Daniel among the Writings, not among the Prophets, a collection many scholars think was already closed.
• 1 Maccabees, about 100 BC, has the priest Mattathias, dying in 166 BC, recall Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael “saved out of the flame” and Daniel “delivered from the mouth of lions” (1 Maccabees 2:59–60).
• The Dead Sea Scrolls include eight copies of Daniel. The oldest was copied around 125 BC, only about forty years after the date most scholars give the book. Traditional readers find that too soon for a new book to become scripture; others answer that a book for martyrs spread fast.

What the date changes

On the late reading, the furnace and the lions are older stories, retold for Jews being forced to eat pork and give up the Sabbath: stand firm, “but if not,” still don’t bow (Daniel 3:18). The book then closes with the Hebrew Bible’s clearest promise of resurrection (Daniel 12:2), written for families burying their martyrs. On the traditional reading, it is prophecy written centuries in advance. Either way, Daniel ends by telling its reader to “seal the book, even to the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4).