(Amy Merrill Willis) Dissonance and The Drama of D

LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/
OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES
520
Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
Editors
Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University
Andrew Mein, Westcott House, Cambridge
Founding Editors
David J. A. Clines, Philip R. Davies and David M. Gunn
Editorial Board
Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon,
Norman K. Gottwald, Gina Hens-Piazza, John Jarick, Andrew D. H. Mayes,
Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller, Yvonne Sherwood
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DISSONANCE AND THE DRAMA
OF DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY
IN THE BOOK OF DANIEL
Amy C. Merrill Willis

Copyright 2010 by Amy C. Merrill Willis
Published by T & T Clark International

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Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Chapter 1
A POWERFUL AND PRESENT GOD?
SOVEREIGNTY, HISTORY, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE VISIONS OF DANIEL 1
1. Introduction 1
2. The Scope of the Present Study 4
3. Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel:
Issues in the Recent History of Critical Interpretation 5
a. Theodicy and the Powerful God 8
b. The Ideology of Rule and the Political Functions of the Text 12
c. Sovereignty as a Problem in Daniel 15
4. A New Investigation of Sovereignty and the Visions:
Preliminary Considerations 19
5. The Experience of Subordination and the Social Context
of the Scribal Community 20
a. Social and Political Tensions in Second-Century B.C.E. Judea 20
b. Divine Sovereignty and Its Theological Tensions 22
6. Knowing God in Daniels Rsums and Apocalyptic Visions 26
a. Cognitive Dissonance and Failed Prophecy 26
b. Historiography as a Way of Knowing 29
c. Incoherence, Dissonance, and Narrative 33
d. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty 34
Chapter 2
THE SHAPE OF SOVEREIGNTY IN NEBUCHADNEZZARS DREAM
(DANIEL 2:3145) 36
1. Introduction 36
2. Redaction and the Changing Intentions
in Nebuchadnezzars Dream 37
3. The Problem of Foreign Power in Hellenistic JudeaSirach
and Daniel 2 40
4. Translation of Daniel 2:3145 48
5. Nebuchadnezzars Dream and the Experience of Hellenistic Rule 50
6. The Dream Report 52
vi Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty
7. Making God Visible in History 54

a. The Manifestation of God through the King 54
b. God as a Force in Foreign History 57
c. Patterns of History as a Means of Knowing 59
8. Conclusion 60
Chapter 3
VISIBLE TENSIONS: DIVINE POWER AND PRESENCE IN DANIEL 7 61
1. Daniel 7 as the Structural and Theological Hinge 61
2. Translation of Daniel 7 63
3. Form, Structure, and Redaction: The Seam in the Fabric 66
4. Emplotting Sovereignty in the First Vision Cycle (Daniel 7:118) 67
a. The Narrative Pattern of Gods Conict with Chaos
and History 67
b. Threat and Judgment in Verses 48 70
c. The Shape of Divine Justice in Verses 914 73
d. The Ideology of Rule in the First Vision Cycle 78
5. The Second Vision Cycle (Daniel 7:1927):
Disruption and Dissonance after the Rise of the Little Horn 80
a. Triumph of the Holy Ones 80
b. Resisting Closure 80
c. The Threat to the Holy Ones 82
d. The Paradox of Giving 84
6. Conclusion 88
Chapter 4
DANIEL 8 AND THE CRISIS OF DIVINE ABSENCE 90
1. Sequel or Remake? 90
3. A Matter of Time and Space:
The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 8 95
4. The Crisis of Divine Power and Presence 103
5. Resolving the Tragedy 107
a. Resolution as a Matter of Time 108
b. From Theophany to Hierophany: Resolution as a Matter
of Manticism 112
6. Loose Ends and Lingering Tensions 119
7. Conclusion 121
Chapter 5
RESTORING THE SACRED IN DANIEL 9 123
1. Introduction: Daniel 9 as an Oddity 123
3. The Problem of Daniel 9s Duality 127
Contents vii
4. The Threat of Dissonance: Desolation and the Duration

of Divine Abandonment 129
a. Desolation, Exile, and Divine Abandonment in the Prayer
and Oracle 129
b. Divine Absence and Intention in the Prayer and Oracle 133
c. Cognitive Dissonance and the 70-Year Prophecy 135
5. Reclaiming the Sacred and Overcoming Desolation 137
a. Blame, Shame, Absence, and Empowerment in the Prayer 137
b. Experiencing the Divine in the Oracle 140
c. The Scribalization of Piety 147
6. Conclusion 150
Chapter 6
RE-VISIONING SOVEREIGNTY IN DANIEL 1012 151
1. Introduction 151
2. Translation of Daniel 10:2012:4, 13 152
3. Loose Ends and the Function of the Final Rsum 157
4. Re-Conguring History and Sovereignty 160
a. The World-Historical Context for Divine Power 160
b. The Local Context for Divine Power 164
c. Re-Visioning the End 166
d. Completing the Pattern 167
5. The Crisis of Divine Presence and the Ideology of Rule 171
a. The Invisibility of the Divine 171
b. Embodied Power and Presence: The Angels and Maklm 173
c. Invisible Men 177
6. The Sense of an Ending? 178
Chapter 7
CONCLUDING COMMENTS 181
1. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty: A Summary of Findings 181
2. The Function of the Visions: Symbolic Resolution
and Resistance in the Plot of Sovereignty 188
3. The Theology and the Ideology of Rule 193
4. Loose Ends: Divine Sovereignty and Time 194
Bibliography 196
Index of References 209
Index of Authors 216
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present volume is the result of a journey that began in Atlanta,

Georgia as my doctoral dissertation written under the supervision of
Carol Newsom at Emory University and ended on the other side of the
country at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. The nished
project thus owes much to many people between here and there, whom I
gratefully acknowledge at the outset. It goes without saying that the
deciencies of the following work are mine alone.
It has been my great good fortune to have Carol Newsom as my
dissertation adviser. Like many of her other students, I have found
Carols strengths as a teacher and scholar to be extraordinaryher
intellectual acumen, her exacting standards, and her willingness to help
others develop scholarly voices. Carols patient guidance allows students
to undergo transformationintellectually, professionally, personally. Of
course, transformation can be painful and frustrating, but I have a deep
appreciation for Carols high standards and her willingness to create the
room and space for that transformation to happen.
It is with great appreciation that I acknowledge my dissertation
committee members, David Petersen and Sibley Towner. They were both
supportive and helpful at every turn and graciously worked within my
timeline, despite the huge demands on their own time. Sibley Towners
presence in my professional journey has been serendipitous in many
ways. It was under his tutelage that I rst began to think about the
Hebrew Bible as my passion and career. He was my rst Hebrew teacher
and he also nurtured my interests in Apocalyptic Literature from the very
beginning.
I wish to thank the institutions and individuals who supported this
project at every step along the way: the staff of the library at Hebrew
Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, espe-
cially David Gilner, Director of Libraries for Hebrew Union College,
and Noni Rudavsky, Senior Associate Librarian, who allowed me full
borrowing and inter-library loan privileges during my six years of
residence in Cincinnati. My thanks also go to Gonzaga University, which
employed me during the completion of this project and provided various
1
x Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty
forms of support. Graduate assistants Christina Fusch, Adam Rasmussen,

and Cathy Anderson performed hard and often tedious work to prepare
the bibliography and proof the footnotes for me.
I have been accompanied on this journey by many other friends and
colleagues. I offer special thanks to my colleagues Patrick Hartin, Rob
Hauck, Frances Fite, Suzette Lemrow, John Sheveland, and especially
Kevin McCruden and Armin Siedlecki. Ever-present to me through the
wonders of cyberspace have been my dear colleagues Neal Walls,
Jacqueline Lapsley, Carleen Mandolfo, and Tim Sandoval. I cannot say
enough about the wisdom, compassion, and support they have given me.
They are extraordinary people and scholars and it is a deep privilege to
know them and to call them friends.
My biggest debt is that owed to my family. My deepest appreciation
goes to my mother, Miriam Merrill. Though she considers herself to be a
befuddled reader of the Scriptures, she was my rst teacher in the Bible.
Finally, I must attempt to thank my husband, Steve Willis, and my
children Nate and Cate, who have loved me, lived with me, and have
given so much of their lives to bring this journey to a successful con-
clusion. To them I dedicate this work in heartfelt recognition of their
labors of love.
1
ABBREVIATIONS
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols.

New York, 1992
BDB Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and
English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1907
CTA Corpus des tablettes en cuniformes alphabtiques dcouvertes
Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 1939. Edited by A. Herdner.
Mission de Ras Shamra 10. Paris, 1963
IDB The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A.
Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962
IDBSup Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume.
Edited by K. Crim. Nashville, 1976
LXX Septuagint
MT Masoretic text
NIB The New Interpreters Bible
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
OG Old Greek
TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. J.
Botterweck and H. Ringgren. Translated by J. T. Willis, G. W.
Bromiley, and D. E. Green. 8 vols. Grand Rapids, 1974
Theod Theodotion
Vg Vulgate
Chapter 1
A POWERFUL AND PRESENT GOD?

SOVEREIGNTY, HISTORY, AND IDEOLOGY
IN THE VISIONS OF DANIEL
1. Introduction
The driving concern of this study is the apocalyptic depiction of Gods
power and presence over history. While this may seem well-documented
in the vast scholarly literature on Daniel, in fact, new theoretical
approaches demand a reassessment of Daniels depiction of and convic-
tions concerning divine sovereignty. In particular, careful examination of
the numerous symbolic depictions of the divine and divine activity
suggest not certainty about Gods triumph over arrogant kingly power,
but an ongoing conversation about Gods actions and plans for human
history.
The emergence of rhetorical and ideological methodologies in biblical
interpretation has demonstrated that biblical texts are not simply reec-
tions of reality or statements of fact, but are instead suasive and argu-
mentative.1 They respond to a particular historical situation or emerge
from an implicit dialogue of ideas. Moreover, texts reect and reproduce
ideologies that frame reality through language, in a way that may then be
internalized by the reader.2 In a texts capacity to affect ones perception
of reality, which it often does on the level of the unconscious,3 the text
1. Y. Gitay, Rhetorical Criticism, in To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduc-

tion to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (ed. S. McKenzie and S. Haynes;
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 136.
2. G. Yee, Ideological Criticism: Judges 1721 and the Dismembered Body, in
Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (ed. G. Yee; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1995), 14849.
3. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic
Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). Jameson argues that the contradiction
being resolved is fundamentally ideological and political. Here, Jameson picks up
the argument of C. Lvi-Strauss, articulated in his essay, The Structural Study of
1
2 Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty
becomes symbolic action.4 The text acts on the world, but that action is
symbolic and not concrete. In particular, Fredric Jameson argues that the
formal action of the text works in the realm of unconscious social and
political realities in order to resolve in the symbolic world the contra-
dictions that may not be resolvable on the level of the conscious and the
concrete.5
Rhetorical and ideological analyses have proven to be especially apt
for studying visionary6 and apocalyptic texts7 where the symbolic world,
as distinct from the material world, is explicitly and intentionally pre-
sented for the audiences consideration. The visionary world in these
texts offers the opportunity to imagine the transformation of concrete
Myth, in Structural Anthropology (2 vols.; trans. C. Jacobson; New York: Basic

Books, 1963), 1:20631. Lvi-Strauss argues that the purpose of myth is to provide
a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction. Jamesons use of Lvi-
Strauss differs slightly from Stephen OLearys use in Arguing the Apocalypse: A
Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3444,
in which OLeary argues Lvi-Strausss thesis to assert that apocalyptic discourse, in
general, uses eschatology to mediate contradictions regarding the problem of evil. I
judge Jamesons use of Lvi-Strauss to be more appropriate to Daniel, for reasons
that will be argued further below.
For Lvi-Strauss and Jameson, this contradiction need not be explicit or con-
sciously acknowledged. For Jameson, it is the political unconscious that seeks to
resolve this contradiction; it does so by means of any kind of narrative or aesthetic
production, not just myth.
4. Ideological criticism and rhetorical criticism have both been deeply impacted
by Kenneth Burkes concept of discourse as symbolic action, which he denes in
terms that are somewhat different from Jamesons appropriation of the concept (see
Jamesons denition further below). Burke describes it as the use of words by
human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents (quoting
from B. L. Brock, Rhetorical Criticism: A Burkeian Approach, in Methods of
Rhetorical Criticism: A 20th Century Perspective [ed. B. L. Brock and R. L. Scott;
2d ed.; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989], 34849).
5. Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 79, writes, We may suggest that from
this perspective, ideology is not something which informs or invests symbolic
production; rather the aesthetic act is itself to be seen as an ideological act in its own
right with the function of inventing imaginary or formal solutions to unresolvable
social contradictions.
6. See, for example, M. Foxs discussion of Ezek 37 in The Valley of the Dry
Bones, HUCA 51 (1980): 115.
7. Rhetorical and ideological analyses of apocalyptic discourse of the biblical
and non-biblical variety include C. Newsom, Knowing as Doing: The Social
Symbolics of Knowledge at Qumran, Semeia 59 (1992): 13953; Barry Brummett,
Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (New York: Praeger, 1991); and OLeary,
Arguing the Apocalypse.
1
1. A Powerful and Present God? 3
realities and the mediation of oppositions, such as God bringing to life a

dead people (Ezek 37) or divine holiness living in the midst of what
constantly threatens to be unclean (Ezek 4048).8 The rst steps of this
kind of analysis have already been taken in Daniel scholarship and have
tended to focus their attention on Daniels central concern, which is
unquestionably ruling power. In particular, attempts have been made to
uncover the ideology of Daniels editors, the maklm (also the produc-
ers of the visions in chs. 712),9 by examining the ideology at work in
the text that might reect or advance their ambitions in relation to kingly
power. These discussions often look for moments of ambivalence as clues
to social and cultural conict present in the symbolic world of text.10
The present project seeks to address another site of ambivalence in the
Daniel narrative, that is, the representation of divine power. John
Goldingay has observed that divine power and activity is at once both the
subject of emphatic assertion in the book and also completely absent
from other places.11 Gods actions are recounted and spoken of by Daniel
and his friends in every narrative in chs. 16, graphically on display in
ch. 7, and yet invisible and rarely mentioned directly in chs. 9 and 1012.
8. On the contradictions undergoing mediation in this vision, see especially

J. Lapsley, Doors Thrown Open and Waters Gushing Forth: Mark, Ezekiel, and
the Architecture of Hope, in The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God (ed. B. R.
Gaventa and P. D. Miller; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 13954.
9. I am in agreement with the growing body of scholarship (especially English-
speaking scholarship) that understands the apocalyptic visions to be the work of a
well-educated scribal group living in Judea whose members identify themselves in
Dan 11:33 as the wise ones or maklm. This group is largely understood to be a
loose grouping of scribes with a non-sectarian perspective. The group is also
responsible for editing the nal book, which joins the tales to the visions. P. Redditt,
Daniel 11 and the Sociohistorical Setting of the Book of Daniel, CBQ 60 (1998):
46374, argues that this group is a continuation of the scribal group who produced
the tales in the diaspora and then returned to Judea sometime in the late third or
beginning of the second century B.C.E., at the beginning of the Seleucid rule over
Judea. The redactional composition and dating of the individual chapters that form
the basis of this study will be discussed in further detail in subsequent chapters.
10. Philip R. Davies and D. Smith-Christopher are notable proponents of this
procedure, though their ideological analyses are usually undertaken in the process of
doing other types of critiques, such as sociological criticism or post-colonial
criticism. See, for example, Daviess discussion in Reading Daniel Sociologically,
in The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (ed. A. S. van der Woude;
Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1993), 34561, where Davies explores the
ambivalence of the maklms own political goals represented in the texts.
11. John Goldingay, Daniel in the Context of Old Testament Theology, in The
Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception (ed. John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint;
2 vols.; Boston: Brill, 2002), 2:64547.
1
C. L. Seow rightly observes that although divine ruling power or sover-

eignty12 is staked out at every turn, whether explicitly or implicitly,
there is considerable ambivalence regarding the books perspective on
the manifestation of divine rule on earth13
From the perspective of rhetorical and ideological analysis, one won-
ders why divine rule generates both tremendous energy and also signi-
cant ambivalence in its representations. What is the text both saying
and not saying about divine power? What is the text, as a symbolic act,
trying to do about divine power, and to what concerns or implicit argu-
ments is it responding? To get at this question, this study will examine
Daniels rhetoric of sovereignty and its connection to the socio-cultural
and theological contexts to which it is responding. With respect to social
settings, scholarship has long recognized that at the heart of Daniels
apocalypses is the prolonged and sometimes catastrophic experience of
foreign rule in Judea, especially that of Antiochus IV during the years
167164 B.C.E. Yet this study contends that, in contrast to much schol-
arly assessment, the assertions of sovereignty in Daniels apocalyptic
narratives are not unqualied afrmations of divine power designed to
encourage the faithful to withstand persecution and even martyrdom. Nor
are they theodicies responding to the experience of evil and unjust suffer-
ing. The historical rsums at the heart of Daniels visions and dreams
are attempts to adjudicate the incoherencies raised by the experience of
foreign rule (especially Seleucid rule) with the communitys expectations
of Gods visible power in history and presence with the community.
2. The Scope of the Present Study

A study of divine sovereignty could easily lead one into an examination
of the entirety of Hebrew Danielthe tales as well as the apocalypses.14
12. In the second half of this chapter, I will further develop the conception of
sovereignty with which I will be working in the remainder of the study. For present,
however, I use sovereignty interchangeably with divine power.
13. C. L. Seow, Daniel (WBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), and
idem, The Rule of God in the Book of Daniel, in David and Zion: Biblical Studies
in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts (ed. Bernard F. Batto and Kathryn L. Roberts; Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 21946.
14. The consensus view is that Daniel is comprised of these two fundamental
genrestales (chs. 16) and apocalypses (chs. 712). See, for instance, John J.
Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (FOTL 20; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 89. Nevertheless, within this consensus there remains
an ongoing discussion and disagreement. L. Wills, in The Jew in the Court of the
Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends (HDR 26; Minneapolis: Fortress,
1
However, my concern is limited to the visions and angelic discourses

because of their unique ability to foreground a symbolized form of the
world as distinct from the realm of the concrete. Thus, this investigation
will focus on the portrayal of divine power in Dan 7, 8, 9, and 1012.
Moreover, I include in my study an examination of Dan 2:3145, which
preserves a report and an interpretation of Nebuchadnezzars dream.
Although not classied as an apocalypse, Nebuchadnezzars dream shares
formal and stylistic elements typical of the symbolic dreams in Dan 7
and 8. It also shares eschatological content. Indeed, the dream of Dan 2 is
clearly foundational to the other visions and their traditions of portraying
divine power and history. Those chapters cannot be fully appreciated
without an understanding of Nebuchadnezzars dream.
3. Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel:

Issues in the Recent History of Critical Interpretation
It is necessary at this point to ground some of my initial claims in the
larger context of Daniel interpretation. There is a persistent tendency
within critical scholarship to read the depiction of the deity, particularly
that offered in Dan 2 and 7, as reective of the communitys condence
in divine power. The comments of Goldingay in the conclusion to his
commentary capture well this view of the book as maintaining a con-
dent portrayal of the deity. He writes, The book suggests varying
perspectives on Gods relationships with people and his involvement in
the world. It does this against the background of a consistent portrait of
1990), has argued that chs. 16 are actually legends rather than tales, but it is not
clear that his argument on that particular point has claimed the day. The apocalypses
actually are comprised of a number of literary forms. Chapter 2 is a dream oracle,
chs. 7 and 8 are symbolic visions, while chs. 9 and 1012 are classied by Collins as
angelic discourses or epiphanies. Despite this classication, I will, for the sake of
convenience, refer to the four separate revelations in chs. 712 as visions, and beg
forgiveness from form critics everywhere later. This will not create any real
confusion with respect to the chapters content, setting in life, or function.
There continues to be debate around the assertion argued by Collins, A. Lacocque
(The Book of Daniel [trans. D. Pellauer; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979], 810), and
others that the composition and development of the book centered around the formal
differences between tales and apocalypses, so that chs. 16 developed separately and
were later conjoined with a corpus consisting of the apocalyptic materials. German
scholarship, however, has largely viewed the composition to have taken shape
around the distinction between the Aramaic chs. 27 and the Hebrew chs. 1, 812.
A summary of the issues may be found in R. Albertz, The Social Setting of the
Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel, in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of
Daniel, 1:17591.
1
God as powerful, sovereign, and almighty15 According to this state-

ment, though the book presents the reader with multiple visions, the
depiction of God is marked by continuity. Similarly, Seow remarks that
there is a substantial coherence in the characterization of the rule of
God as powerful and empowering of the lowly community, even giving
power to oppressive kings.16
The understanding of this sovereign power has beneted considerably
from tradition-historical studies, which have located some of the books
background in mythic materials. Since H. Gunkel,17 the visions of Daniel,
especially that of ch. 7, have been scrutinized for evidence of their
tradition-historical evolution. Within this approach, John Collins18 has
been the leading voice, but he has been joined by others, including Susan
Niditch,19 John Day,20 and Paul Mosca.21 The focus of these scholars on
mythological referents has not been motivated by theological interests,
but has nevertheless yielded signicant insights about the symbol system
of sovereignty within the visions, that is, the hair and garments of the
Ancient of Days, the divine court, the cloud chariot of the humanlike one,
the chaotic seas, and so on.22 The attention to mythic symbols, which are
frequently vertical-spatial in kind,23 and also the attention to the mythic
pattern of Chaoskampf, has established the sovereignty of Yahweh in
Daniel as that of cosmic king and judge positioned above the earth on the
clouds; a king who subdues, through the execution of cosmic justice, the
chaotic military and political forces that threaten the world.
The horizontal-chronological axis of the apocalyptic visions that
involves the depiction of history and time has also been the locus for
15. Goldingay, The Book of Daniel, 32930.

16. Seow, The Rule of God, 246.
17. H. Gunkel, Schpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religions-
geschichtliche Untersuchung ber Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1895), ET Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton
(trans. K. W. Whitney, Jr.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).
18. John J. Collinss work on the topic is enormous; his rst full-edged dis-
cussion of myth in the book of Daniel is to be found in The Apocalyptic Vision of the
Book of Daniel (HSM; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977).
19. S. Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition (HSM 30; Chico:
Scholars Press, 1983).
20. J. Day, Gods Conict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite
Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
21. P. Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7: A Missing Link, Bib 67 (1986): 496517.
22. See, for instance, J. A. Emerton, The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery,
JTS 9 (1958): 22542; O. Eissfeldt, Yahweh and El, JSS 1 (1956): 2537.
1
23. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision, 175.
talking about divine power.24 Once again, these discussions saw in

Daniels depiction of time powerful assertions of sovereignty. The work
of D. Rssler,25 H. H. Rowley,26 D. S. Russell,27 Bruce W. Jones,28 among
others, emphasized the way in which the visions, with their historical
rsumsreviews of history that are vaticinia ex eventuconsistently
demonstrate Gods power to unify history and predetermine its unfolding
and outcome. Indeed, Gods power is such that the deity is able to plan
future events even to the minutest degree.29 As Jones has written,
much of the determinism is actually an overwhelming condence in
Gods ability to save Israel.30
While some commentators have struggled with the theological value
of the apocalyptic depiction of history in general,31 and what was often
termed apocalyptic (pre-)determinism,32 the character of Gods power
and the forces driving that depiction have not been in contention. There
is general agreement that these materials depict Gods power to know
history and thus determine it. The disputes have to do with other issues.
These include: the shape of history in Daniels vision (Is the future open-
ended or closed to further developments?); the authors valuation of that
24. So, for example, James Montgomery, Daniel (ICC; New York: Scribners,
1927), 7287; H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (London: Athlone,
1954); David S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadel-
phia: Westminster, 1964), 22021; Norman Porteous, Daniel (OTL: Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1965), 21; Bruce W. Jones, Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel
(Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, 1972); W. Sibley Towner,
Daniel (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1984), 4; Goldingay, Daniel, 32930;
Klaus Koch, Gottes Herrschaft ber das Reich des Menschen: Daniel 4 im Licht
neuer Funde, in van der Woude, ed., The Book of Daniel, 77119.
25. D. Rssler, Gesetz und Geschichte, Untersuchungen zur Theologie der
judischen Apokalyptic und der pharisaischen Orthodoxie (WMANT 3; Neukirchen
Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1960), 5559.
26. Rowley, Relevance of Apocalyptic, 15155.
27. Russell, Method and Message, 22021.
28. Jones, Ideas of History, 277.
29. Philip R. Davies, Daniel (Old Testament Guides; Shefeld: JSOT, 1985), 87.
30. Jones, Ideas of History, 277.
31. Joness unpublished dissertation, Ideas of History, discusses at length the
apocalyptic depiction of history, in Daniel and in apocalyptic literature more
generally, as it is understood by Gerhard von Rad, Martin Noth, Stanley B. Frost,
and others.
32. As far as I can tell, the language of determinism and predeterminism, which
are used interchangeably within the secondary literature to denote Gods direct
causation of human events and actions and outcomes before they take place, arises
rst in the work of R. H. Charles.
1
history (Is history a meaningful arena for human activity or not?);33

Gods control of human history (Does God predetermine history before
and beyond the connes of temporal succession or does the divine act
providentially within temporal succession?);34 and, nally, the issue of
human action within historical events (Is human agency free or con-
strained?). The idea of a closed, non-contingent, predetermined history
was bothersome to von Rad and to Stanley Frost35 and others because of
its implications concerning human freedom and human history. The
visions depiction of history seemed to rob human history and experience
of any value and meaning.36 Despite his dislike of this presentation of
historical events, von Rad avers that such depictions of Gods control
over history represent the solution to the writers historical experiences
of Antiochus IV. In so far as the visions reveal that God has determined
the end of history, and this ending is imminent, the visions console a
persecuted community.37
a. Theodicy and the Powerful God

Critical scholarship has often connected the portrayal of divine sover-
eignty with the understanding of the visions function. R. H. Charles,38
Rowley,39 George Nickelsburg,40 Philip R. Davies,41 Daniel Harrington,42
and Holger Gzella43 have argued that the visions function as theodicies
33. Jones, Ideas of History, 439, points to the basic problem of multiple
denitions for history along with the problem of multiple and often contradictory
evaluations of that history.
34. Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 263, and
idem, Old Testament Theology (2 vols; New York: HarperCollins, 1965), 2:303.
35. Stanley B. Frost, Apocalyptic and History, in The Bible in Modern
Scholarship (ed. P. Hyatt; Nashville: Abingdon, 1965), 98113.
36. See also, Towner, Daniel, 175.
37. Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 274.
38. R. H. Charles, Eschatology: The Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, Judaism,
and Christianity (2d ed.; New York; Schocken, 1963), 2056.
39. Rowley, Relevance of Apocalyptic, 15862, 168.
40. George Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in
Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 26; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1972), 1219.
41. Davies, Daniel, 11920.
42. Daniel J. Harrington, The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 712, in Society of
Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (SBLSP 38; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999),
54051.
43. Holger Gzella, Cosmic Battle and Political Conict: Studies in Verbal Syntax
and Contextual Interpretation of Daniel 8 (BO 47; Rome: Pontico Editrice Istituto
Biblico, 2003), 158.
1
that respond to the unjust suffering of the faithful community under

Antiochus IVs religious persecution when the temple was desecrated,
Torah observance was outlawed, and the land was occupied by a foreign
government. Within this formulation, the experience of history is the
experience of evil in the form of Antiochus IVs rule. The visions both
reect and respond to the evil of religious persecution and undeserved
suffering with the assertion of divine ultimate control over history and
the imminent arrival of historys end, when Gods power will trium-
phantly intervene and eradicate Seleucid evil. So sovereignty, and a
historiography that reveals Gods predetermining power, become the
answer to the problems posed by historical experience. But not only does
it try to resolve this problem intellectually with proof of the ends
nearness,44 the book also offers consolation and encouragement to the
community in the interim.45
This view of Daniels visions has enjoyed signicant popularity, but
the view is not without its difculties. One notices that commentators
have rarely detailed the difculty at the root of the theodicy in Daniel.
Many commentators understand the problem according to the classical
sense of theodicy, in which Gods righteousness and Gods power exist
in tension or outright contradiction in the face of evil.46 Thus Charles,
Nickelsburg, Davies, and Harrington all indicate that the eschatological
vision of the end is an attempt to justify the ways of God to men.47
Such a reading understands the experience of the faithful community
alluded to in Dan 12:13 or the question of How long? in Dan 8:13 and
12:6 to be evidence of the communitys concern for divine righteous-
ness. Yet these commentators do not fully develop an argument for the
44. Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 274, argues for the quality of the rsums as
proofs for the reader.
45. Jonathan Z. Smith, Wisdom and Apocalyptic, in Religious Syncretism in
Antiquity (ed. B. Pearson; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975), 149, has termed this
formulation the lachrymose theory of apocalypticism, and argues that it assumes
that apocalyptic literature and its charting of historical events emerge from and
respond to religious crises and persecutions.
46. The traditional conception of theodicy and its contradiction is the work of
G. W. Leibniz. Leibniz and those who followed in his footsteps understood this
contradiction to be a rational one requiring a rational solution. It is the attempt at
rational solutions that has been questioned and deemed a failure in recent discus-
sions. See further, R. Green, Theodicy, ER 16:43041; W. Brueggemann, Some
Aspects of Theodicy in Old Testament Faith, PRS 26 (1999): 24151; and Terrence
W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1991).
47. Charles, Eschatology, 206, roots the answer in the determinism of Daniels
eschatological vision, while Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 19; Davies, Daniel, 119; and
Harrington, Ideology, 543, locate it in resurrection.
1
communitys perception of a contradiction between divine power and

divine righteousness. It is just this perception, and the attempt to resolve
that contradiction, that is at the heart of the classical formulation of
theodicy. However, it is not clear that Harrington does think that there is
a contradiction at work for the community; if he does, he does not
articulate at which level it exists. He asserts that for the reading and
writing community of Dan 712, there is no question of Gods righteous-
ness, really. He writes, That God will remain faithful to his promises is
certain.48 It may be that theodicy is a category that works somewhat
more loosely than the strict classical formulation for many commentators.
In this loose use, the visions are theodicies simply because they seem to
respond to the disproportionate suffering of the faithful community.49
Stephen OLeary has given extensive attention to the theodic character
of contemporary apocalyptic language.50 He examines the way in which
this discourse uses the topoi of time, evil, and authority to resolve the
problem of suffering in ways that provide morally sufcient reasons
for God permitting the presence of evil. OLearys insights on the proc-
ess and strategies by which the community achieves resolution are very
valuable, especially those regarding timeand to these I will return
later. Nevertheless, OLearys thesis of apocalyptic theodicy is not
entirely satisfactory.
Because OLearys study is rooted in contemporary apocalyptic dis-
course, his assumptions about theodicy cannot adequately account for
biblical presentations of divine power. Though commentators such as
Paul Redditt51 and Daniel Harrington52 have applied his insights to
Daniel, OLearys work focuses on post-biblical apocalyptic utterances
48. Harrington, Ideology, 543.

49. On this loose or typical use of theodicy, as opposed to the classical formula-
tion, see D. Nelson Duke, Theodicy at the Turn of Another Century, an Intro-
duction, PRS 26 (1999): 24151. Part of this loose usage involves seeing theodicy
as an enterprise that may be practical rather than strictly rational. Duke outlines the
contours of some practical resolutions of theodicy. Brueggemann, Some Aspects,
25368, outlines some biblical models of theodic crises that are fundamentally rela-
tional in character, rather than rational. These revolve around the individuals
relationship to Yahweh and the options for the placing of blame, such as blaming a
third party or blaming Yahweh for unfair outcomes.
50. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 3444. Although OLeary develops the
classical formula, he rejects the classical solutions to theodicy that are grounded in
rational explanations. He instead argues that apocalyptic literature constitutes a
mythological and dramatic enactment of the solution.
51. Paul L. Redditt, Daniel (NCBC; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1999),
3639.
1
52. Harrington, The Ideology of Rule, 55051.
such as those of Joachim of Fiore, the Millerites, and Hal Lindsey. He

does not develop his theory with reference to the biblical utterances or
the communities who produced them. And though he occasionally refers
to New Testament apocalyptic texts and their inuence on the post-bibli-
cal tradition, OLeary does not discuss Daniel. His discussion, rooted as
it is in the classical formulation of theodicy instead of in biblical texts,
takes the character of divine sovereignty for granted. He speaks simply
of the omniscience and omnipotence of God.53 Yet these categories in
themselves do not illuminate the rhetoric of sovereignty in Daniel, which
has little use for generalized abstractions. Indeed, the way in which the
Hebrew Bible frames responses to evil does not hold a great deal in
common with the Enlightenment assumptions of classical theodicy.54
These considerations, along with others, raise serious questions con-
cerning the theodic function Daniels visions. It has not been clearly
established that the visions are wrestling with the theodic contradiction,
classically construed, between divine omnipotence, divine righteousness,
and human suffering. Indeed, most Daniel commentators who invoke the
term, whether in its classical formulation or in a looser one, use it to
argue that the depiction of divine power is the answer to the problem,
rather than part of the problem.
In this regard, scholars arguing for theodicy often make a basic con-
nection between the visions and the historical crisis. It has been argued
both explicitly and implicitly that the visions depict a powerful view of
God because they are responding to a period of real crisis.55 That is,
sovereignty is the answer to the crises that create anguish for commu-
nities or individuals. In this case, the crises are either identied as the
inroads of Hellenism into Judean life or the desolation of the temple and
outlawing of Judaism by Antiochus IV. Yet this argument cannot explain
the function of Nebuchadnezzars dream vision in Dan 2:3145, which
53. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 35, 39.

54. This point has been discussed by Kent Richards (Int 33 [1979]: 3047) in his
insightful review of two treatments of theodicy and evilone by W. Sibley Towner,
How God Deals with Evil (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), a work which addresses
theodicy from a biblical perspective, and one by David R. Grifn, God, Power, Evil:
A Process Theodicy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), which addresses the issue in
the context of Western philosophical and theological traditions.
55. The view of apocalyptic literature as crisis literature may be seen in most of
the standard treatments of Daniel from the rst part of the twentieth century. Russell,
Method and Message, 1535, is fairly representative. See further S. L. Cook,
Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1995), 4446, for an examination and critique of the view of apocalyptic discourse
as the literature of a crisis situation.
1
all scholars date to a period well before the time of Antiochus IV.56 The
vision, which is so foundational to the remaining visions, appears to
emerge from an ongoing experience of subordination and cannot be
linked to a particular situation of religious or cultural crisis. Nor does it
reect one well-dened, signicant political crisis. Thus, theodicy or
theodic crisis is inadequate for explaining the needs to which the dream
of Dan 2 responds.
It may also be that theodicy is a contemporary construct that does not
adequately reect the concerns of ancient readers and writers. The
visions may well be responding to events that the community perceives
as evil, but the fact that the vocabulary of evil and wickedness occurs
only in Dan 9:5, 15 and 12:4, while the language of ruling power and
kingdoms occurs seventy times,57 might suggest that the primary issue is
not so much a theological contradiction concerning the experience of evil
and suffering as it is an issue of ruling power. Moreover, it may be that
the problem of disproportionate suffering is, in this case, the concern of
the contemporary reader rather than that of the ancient writers.
b. The Ideology of Rule and the Political Functions of the Text

Not all commentators understand Daniels visions to be theodicies. An
important alternative understanding of the dreams and visions views
them as resistance literature and thus shifts the focus away from religious
and emotional concerns toward the fundamentally political and ideologi-
cal function of the text. This view understands Daniel as expressing and
developing opposition to foreign rule. This is the position articulated by
J. W. Swain,58 Samuel K. Eddy,59 Jonathan Z. Smith,60 John Collins,61 Erin
Addison,62 and Daniel Smith-Christopher,63 among others. These scholars
have demonstrated how particular elements, conventions, and traditions
56. See further the discussion in Chapter 2, which discusses the dating and levels
of redaction at work in Nebuchadnezzars dream.
57. Seow, The Rule of God in the Book of Daniel, 219.
58. J. W. Swain, The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under
the Roman Empire, Classical Philologist 35 (1940): 121.
59. Samuel K. Eddy, The King is Dead: Studies in Near Eastern Resistance to
Hellenism 33431 B.C. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961).
60. Smith, Wisdom and Apocalyptic, 14856.
61. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision, 191215.
62. Erin Addison, When History Fails: Apocalypticism in the Ancient Medi-
terranean World (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992).
63. Daniel Smith-Christopher, Prayer and Dreams: Power and Diaspora
Identities in the Social Setting of the Daniel Tales, in Collins and Flint, eds., The
Book of Daniel, 1:26689.
1
from the books use of mantic historiography, in which the future history
of the fall of empire is ostensibly revealed to the seer through a heavenly
agent or dream, function to oppose the political claims of the dominant
power. Such elements include the propagandistic schema of the four
kingdoms, the convention of vaticinium ex eventu, and the subversive
character of dream reports themselves. All of these suggest that the
history revealed in Daniels dreams and visions serve political purposes
or are counter-histories.64 These counter-histories may serve to resolve
contested ways of knowing, to renegotiate group identity, and/or
empower a minority group while de-legitimating the dominant power.65
This view of Daniels function sees the writing and reading com-
munitys political subordination as a key factor in the composition of the
dreams and visions.66 As a consequence of this political and cultural real-
ity, the ideological character of the text and the sociology of the group
are also a key focus of concern. Yet this concern is not necessarily tied to
a social situation of deprivation or crisis. Rather, commentators have
suggested more complex social situations and catalysts for the visions.
Jonathan Z. Smith, for example, was early to argue that apocalyptic
literature in general is tied to the work of elite scribal classes wrestling
with the ongoing loss of native kingship rather than to a religious crisis
among the general populace.67 Smith-Christopher has argued that the
emergence of Daniels tales and visions, especially Dan 2, takes place in
a situation of forced inter-cultural contact in which the community is
wrestling with a complex dynamic involving both fear of and fascination
with the dominant culture.68 Similarly, Collins and Davies have both
noted the way in which the visions, in the process of opposing the king,
also serve to reect the complexity of the communitys own political
ambitions.69
64. Addison, When History Fails, 109; Smith-Christopher, Prayers and

Dreams, 270.
65. Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 26670.
66. While Daniels dreams and visions all come from a group that has been
dominated, one should note that this does not mean that all apocalypses emerge from
dominated groups. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism, 5584, has argued that the
sociological matrix for apocalyptic groups includes those who have not experienced
forced inter-cultural contact and those that may be dominant or colonizers rather than
subordinate and colonized. See further OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 13471.
67. Smith, Wisdom and Apocalyptic, 149.
69. John J. Collins, Daniel and his Social World, Int 39 (1985): 13143; Philip
R. Davies, The Scribal School of Daniel, in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of
Daniel, 1:24765; see also Albertz, Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew
Book of Daniel, 171204.
1
Approaching the work and function of the visions with a focus on

political ideology and the interests of the writing community has
provided important insights concerning divine sovereignty in Daniel. It
has suggested the connection between the ideological interests of the
community, the political and cultural challenges to that community, and
the theological construction of divine power. At this intersection, for
instance, Davies has pointed to the way in which the writing and reading
community of the visions translates its own political experiences and
ambitions vis--vis foreign rule into a characterization of the divine.70
One of the ways in which this happens is through divine epithets, which
he argues reects an ideology of either accommodation to outsiders or
rejection of outsiders. Thus, when the community wishes to excel in a
foreign context, such as in Dan 2, the text refers to God using universal
terms such as Most High God and the God of Heaven. These are
terms of compromise, according to Davies, that make the deity accessi-
ble to both Jews and gentiles (cf. Num 24:16; Gen 14:18).71 However,
when the community nds itself in opposition to foreign kings, Davies
argues, the designations shift to more particular collocations, usually
involving a possessive, that is, God of my fathers (2:2023), our
God (9:17), and their God (11:32).72
Davies shows that language about Gods sovereignty is not static or
simply assumed in the text. The writers of the visions frame their depic-
tions of the deity to reect and address their own political circumstances,
needs, and concerns, or, to restate, theological statements inform and
reect ideological concerns. However, one should note that though
Daviess ideological concerns begin to open up some theological ten-
sions at work in Daniel, he does not develop these tensions further in his
own investigations. His distinction between an ideology of accomo-
dationism and one of opposition may be too simplistic to describe the
system of relationships between the divine, the king, and the community
at work in the visions, especially in chs. 2 and 7, where God both accom-
modates kings and opposes them at the same time.
Indeed, the ideology of rule in Daniels visions is territory not quite
charted in critical scholarship. The issue is still subject to differing
assessments. For example, while Davies sees a basis for accommodation,
70. See especially Davies, Daniel, 8188. It is interesting that although Davies
argues that Daniel is a theodicy in function, his approach to the materials in most of
his published work on Daniel is on the sociological context and ideological function
of the text.
71. Ibid., 82.
1
72. Ibid., 8183.
Matthias Henze argues that Daniel and the kings each represent a form
of authority which are in principle incompatible with each other and
which consistently clash in the stories.73 Yet even a casual reading of
Nebuchadnezzars dream might call Henzes conclusion into question.
Similarly, Harringtons treatment of the subject in Daniels visions sim-
ply equates the visions ideology of rule with the concern for theodicy,
which he argues is at the heart of their representation of the divine.
c. Sovereignty as a Problem in Daniel

To this point, I have argued that much of critical scholarship has seen the
book as emphasizing the mightiness of divine rule, through the
representation of the divine as knowing and determining history on the
horizontal-chronological axis, or through the symbolic representation of
divine power on the vertical-spatial axis. The image of Ancient of Days
and the one like a human being in Dan 7 usually command the attention
of commentators in this regard. Indeed, Dan 7 has exercised tremendous
gravity for scholars working with the book. Not only is it the structural
center of the book, but many also treat its vision of the Ancient of Days
as the theological center and summary of the books message concerning
divine power. The stone that crushes the statue in Dan 2:34, 45 is also a
signicant representation of divine might. Moreover, I have argued that
Daniel scholarship has typically viewed these assertions of sovereignty
as a way of responding to problematic social situations of political or
religious crisis.
Yet one should note that scholarship has on occasion recognized that,
despite the visual and temporal depictions of divine rule and the recur-
ring references to divine rule throughout the book, the character of God
disappears in the later chapters.74 This disappearance is not always
deemed problematic, especially for Christian interpreters who view it in
the context of a developing angelology. Goldingay, for example, recog-
nizes and dismisses the problem at the same time by saying of this
disappearance that myriads of heavenly aides fulll and reveal his
[Gods] will in the world. There is no need to infer that this makes him
remote.75
73. Matthias Henze, The Ideology of Rule in the Narrative Frame of Daniel
(Daniel 16), in SBL Seminar Papers, 1999, 537 (emphasis original).
74. See further Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 247; Towner, Daniel, 11718; M. Fish-
bane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 5089.
75. Goldingay, Daniel, 330; similarly, Montgomery, Daniel, 82; Towner, Daniel,
118.
1
Danna N. Fewell,76 however, has argued that the disappearance of God

is problematic. Using a literary-critical methodology, she notes that the
deity is usually off-stage and behind the scenes. It is not that the deity is
absent, but God is an untouchable, unobservable presence.77 It is this
unseen presence, or invisibility, that drives the conict that one nds in
the tales, according to Fewell. This conict is one about who is truly
sovereign.78 The conict arises in the narratives because not all of the
characters come with the same grounding conviction of Gods power. In
the narratives, the kings need to be convinced. Fewell writes,
In order for people to believe in divine sovereignty, the divine sovereign
has to have high visibility. It does not count to simply whisk the heroes
away, to deliver them to another world, so to speak. It does not count to
depose kings without an explanation of why they are being deposed and
who is bringing this about. In order to be effective, Gods action must
have witnessesand the more politically prestigious the witness, the
more wonderful the sign, the more signicant the wonder.79
The visibility of Gods powerwhether that visibility is accomplished

through direct manifestations of the divine or through attestations of
divine power by other charactersis the chief means by which God is
known. Moreover, Fewell seems to argue that the degree of Gods power
depends on the degree to which God is known. Fewell argues that the
book demonstrates divine power by depicting the recognition of that
power by those who initially dismiss it. Thus it becomes problematic that
in the midst of the books conict between God and king, with its extra-
ordinary visual displays of power in Dan 2 and 7, that the protagonist
(God, rather than Daniel80) is often absent from view.
While Fewell is, I think, correct in noting the importance of visibility
in the portrayal of divine power, her study does not constitute an exten-
sive examination of this question in visions. She treats all of Dan 712 in
one chapter and devotes most of her time and attention to the tales of chs.
16. In connection with that, I am not convinced that divine visibility is
the only driving force in the visions depiction of how one knows Gods
power. Fewell does not address how the historiography within the dreams
76. Danna N. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty: Plotting Politics in the Book of

Daniel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991).
77. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 131.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid., 132.
80. Fewell argues the point that the sovereigns, especially the human ones, are
the central characters of the book.
1
and visionsthe reviews of history in chs. 2, 7, 8, 9, and 1012

succeeds in asserting divine power. Also, the visible character of God
varies signicantly throughout the visions. Furthermore, what is visible
(features, form, and mode of appearance) may have important ideologi-
cal and theological signicance. Indeed, recent studies of Gods appear-
ance have demonstrated the signicance of Gods anthropomorphic form
for royal ideologies.81 Such insights may also produce important results
for understanding Daniels portrayal of divine sovereignty and its
connection to human sovereignty.
Finally, Fewells narrative methodology is not able to address the
audiences and the writers social setting to which these visions respond.
As an exercise in narrative criticism, Fewells treatment does not attend
to such issues as the books composition and the context of its writers.
Thus she considers only the impact on its stated or ctive audience, that
is, Nebuchadnezzar and the other kings who receive the visions or omens.
Historically, Daniels visions and narratives were insider literature
written and edited by the scribal circles for their own consumption.82
Even though they go to great lengths to illustrate Gods visible sover-
eignty over foreign kings, they were not really supposed to persuade the
outsider of Gods power. This consideration presses the following
question: To what insider needs are these signicant displays of power
responding, whether intentionally or unintentionally?
Jon Levenson83 argues that the depiction of divine power, especially
that of Dan 7, responds to a profound experience of dissonance at the
root of which is Gods mastery itself. Levenson avers that,
81. See, for example, Bernard F. Batto, The Divine Sovereign: The Image of
God in the Priestly Creation Account, in Batto and Roberts, eds., David and Zion,
14386; John Kutsko, Ezekiels Anthropology and Its Ethical Implications, in The
Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives (ed. M. S. Odell and
J. T. Strong; Atlanta: SBL, 2000), 12535.
82. Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 357, points out that in a largely
illiterate culture such as that in the second-century B.C.E. Judea, books were not for
public consumption. Books were written to re-inforce the world-view of insiders
and not to persuade outsiders. This is further underscored by Daniels interest in
secret knowledge, which works, sociologically, to dene a certain group of
insiders, those who have access to the knowledge. In Daniels case, this group does
not show marks of a strict sociological dualism indicative of a sectarian identity.
Rather, the use of the language is consistent with the language and conventions
broadly used in scribal circles.
83. Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of
Divine Sovereignty (New York: Harper Collins, 1988).
1
the absolute sovereignty of the God of Israel is not a simple given in the
Hebrew Bible Instead, YHWHs mastery is often fragile, in continual
need of reactivation and reassertion, and at times, as in the laments, pain-
fully distant from ordinary experience, a memory and a hope rather than a
current reality.84
Levensons argument is not a discussion of Daniel as such. Instead, he is

responding to the idea that the Hebrew Bible as a whole is unequivocally
convinced of Gods potency. Levenson argues that, on the contrary, the
perseverance of chaos is evidence of creations fragility and divine
masterys failure. This failure is vocalized rst and foremost in the
lament psalms and their use of the Chaoskampf tradition.
For Levenson, a particular literary form, the lament, and a particular
tradition, the Chaoskampf myth, indicate the lack of triumphant divine
power and a corresponding experience of dissonance. He understands
this dissonance to be the writers experience of intellectual and experi-
ential contradiction between several corresponding sets of dichotomies:
between faith and realism, between liturgy and reality, between remem-
brance of Gods past sovereignty and the present perception of divine
absence, between myth and history.85 Not only evident in the writings of
the sixth century B.C.E., such as Isa 2427, this dissonance is also found
in Dan 7. He writes,
And thus in a time like that of the Seleucid persecution, when Antiochus
IV sought to destroy the traditional Jerusalem cult (167164 B.C.E.), the
old myth is again heard, as a horric beast from the sea is killed, its body
buried, and eternal kingship is given to an angelic savior.86
Levenson argues that the tensions evident in these materials are mediated
by means of the lament, or liturgy. Within the laments of Pss 89 and 74,
the psalmist both declares Yahwehs mastery, very often through the
cosmic battle motif, and reproaches Yahweh for being absent. This
reproach, however, calls upon God to close the gap between his repu-
tation and his current behavior.87 Moreover, through the projection of a
victorious cosmic battle onto a future ending, which Levenson claims
that apocalyptic literature and the laments have in common, these
materials succeed in resolving the dissonance by acknowledging the
reality of present historical experience while afrming that Yahwehs
power will be reactivated in the future.88 Thus the contradictions between
84. Ibid., 47.

85. Ibid., 1425.
86. Ibid., 32.
87. Ibid., 24.
1
88. Ibid., 32.
expectation and experience exist in a dialectical relationship within the

biblical vision and give rise to an eschatological resolution.
Many aspects of Levensons thesis are important to the present
discussion. First and foremost is his attempt to claim the dynamic
character of sovereignty in the Hebrew Bible and, by extension, the book
of Daniel. Even if one is not in agreement with Levensons premise that
the biblical tradition of Chaoskampf views divine power as truly fragile
rather than, say, limited or at times reserved and remote, Levenson does
show that the construction of sovereignty is a dramatic one. Rather than a
proposition, the afrmation of sovereignty is a process. This afrmation
works its way through a narrative pattern that unfolds and builds to crisis
and then must be resolved before it can be asserted. Moreover, Levenson
argues that the afrmation of sovereignty is a process of knowing and
experiencing that is born out of genuine confusion about history and
Gods power. Unlike the theological investigations of an earlier genera-
tion, Levenson does not reduce this afrmation, or the human process
that produces it, to a simple balm for troubling times.
Despite its insights, Levensons work is too limited for the purposes of
Daniel study. His thesis only addresses the Chaoskampf tradition as a
mode of knowing, and thus deals only with Dan 7. Despite the centrality
of this vision in Daniel studies, one may argue that its use of mytho-
logical symbolism and patterns is atypical within the visions as a whole,
most of which rely on more explicitly historical materials that only
secondarily adopt mythic motifs. Thus the question arises: If Dan 7 gives
evidence of dissonance concerning divine sovereignty, do the other
visions and their historical rsums also indicate dissonance? And if so,
how do those rsums express that dissonance and work through the
process of achieving consonance and thereby afrming divine power?
4. A New Investigation of Sovereignty and the Visions:

Preliminary Considerations
The present study of the visions seeks to elucidate the portrayal of divine
power, in relation to kings as well as to the scribal community, and the
logic that informs this portrayal. This will have to involve a considera-
tion of how human power is constructed as well, taking into account the
way in which the texts legitimate and de-legitimate human power. It also
needs to develop a means for discerning when the text hints at contra-
diction and the processes by which the community resolves them. This
must consider not just the vertical-spatial symbolism, but also the
visions depiction of time and history in relation to sovereignty. Indeed,
1
the historical rsum is a key feature that all ve revelations have in
common and is a preferred means for the visions to speak about sover-
eignty. To approach them rhetorically, as constructs designed to persuade
an audience concerning divine power, instead of reading them for
evidence of doctrines, may dismantle the older notion of apocalyptic
determinism.
In what follows, I will map out the elements and assumptions that
form the theoretical framework for this study of sovereignty in the
apocalyptic rsums of Daniel. The order and character of these elements
reects the process that I understand to be the work of the visions in
helping the reading and writing community of Daniel work through their
experience and reections on divine sovereignty. This process is one of
experience, perception or reection on sovereignty, dissonance, resolu-
tion, and new experience, which often starts the cycle over.
5. The Experience of Subordination and the Social Context

of the Scribal Community
a. Social and Political Tensions in Second-Century B.C.E. Judea

I began this chapter by asking about the needs that generated the visions
concern for sovereignty. There is general agreement that the narratives
and historical rsums of Dan 2:3145; 7; 8; 9; and 1012 emerged out
of a scribal context in which the third- and second-century B.C.E. pro-
ducers, though elite by virtue of their abilities and occupations as retain-
ers and clerks,89 were nevertheless subordinate to the priestly hierarchy
and the foreign imperial governments that may have employed them.
This social location involved the scribal circles that edited Dan 2 and
produced Dan 712 in what Davies has described as a cosmopolitan
social setting.90 They would have had access (though limited) to the
cultural materials (i.e. language and writings) and the structures of
Jewish aristocracy and Hellenistic bureaucracy even though they were
part of a dominated people.
This social location creates the potential for social and political ten-
sions and, indeed, some of these may be witnessed in the Daniel corpus,
especially in the tales and in the rst vision. The scribal communities in
89. See Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period

(JSOTSup 291; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1998), 30921; Redditt,
Daniel 11, 46374; and Davies, Scribal School of Daniel, 257.
90. Philip R. Davies, The Social World of Apocalyptic Writings, in The World
of Ancient Israel (ed. Ronald E. Clements; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 261.
1
the third and second centuries nd themselves socially elevated but
politically subordinated (2:4649),91 aspiring to participate in cosmopoli-
tan culture while committed to traditional Jewish faith and practices (cf.
Dan 3 and 6),92 mavens of foreign knowledge but also guardians of
Jewish traditions (Dan 1:48).93 Although scribal aspirations and ability
to participate in Hellenistic bureaucracies may have been recalibrated
during the Seleucid persecutions of 167164 B.C.E.,94 nevertheless, there
remains a strong interest in foreign learning and wisdom that may be
seen in Dan 2s manticism, which evidences Mesopotamian inuences,95
and in the Greek historiographical materials that abound in Dan 11.96
The earliest vision gives indications of a social setting in which the
tensions between Jewish tradition and foreign cultural dominance were
especially signicant for the emergence of contradictions concerning
divine sovereignty. Written in the eastern diaspora during the Persian
period and redacted during the Hellenistic period,97 Dan 2:3145 bespeaks
a community negotiating its experience of foreign dominance. While it
has been commonplace to understand this experience positively, as
reective of a social setting in which Daniels advancement in the kings
91. Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 27180, has emphasized that

ones notion of the social location of these producers should not be overly positive.
The available evidence does not support the idea that scribes or the Jewish commu-
nity in general in the third and second centuries B.C.E. enjoyed great or widespread
social privilege as subjects of other nations. See also R. Horsley, The Politics of
Cultural Production in Second Temple Judea: Historical Context and Religious-
Political Relations of the Scribes Who Produced 1 Enoch, Sirach, and Daniel, in
Conicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (ed. Benjamin Wright III and
Lawrence Willis; Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 14145.
92. Davies, Scribal School of Daniel, 261.
93. Ibid., 257.
94. Ibid., 258, and Redditt, Sociohistorical Setting, 46374, both argue that the
scribal community represented in chs. 8 and 11 aspire to work in the local Seleucid
bureaucracy but have been disenfranchised by Seleucid practices. They are thus a
falling elite.
95. J. Lawson, The God Who Reveals Secrets: The Mesopotamian Back-
ground to Daniel 2.47, JSOT 74 (1997): 6176.
96. On this point, see especially, Uriel Rappaport, Apocalyptic Vision and
Preservation of Historical Memory, JSJ 23 (1992): 21726, and Lester Grabbe, A
Dan(iel) for All Seasons: For Whom Was Daniel Important?, in Collins and Flint,
eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:22946, who argue for the writers internationalist
perspective, which may have led him to borrow Greek historiographical materials
for Dan 11.
97. The writing and redaction of Nebuchadnezzars dream will be discussed in
further detail in Chapter 2.
1
court becomes a model for other Jews,98 Smith-Christopher argues that

the experience was much more complex. The subordinated community
struggles with both attraction to foreign culture and also fear of it; with
communal difference and also assimilation into the dominant culture.99
b. Divine Sovereignty and Its Theological Tensions

For the scribal community, the conditions of subordination and minority
status, whether one is in diaspora or in Judea, necessarily raise questions
of theology and ideology. Cultural and religious traditions typically tied
the power and the reputation of the national god to the fortunes of the
nation.100 Thus the subordination of the people may suggest that the deity
was impotent to protect them. But even if impotence were not in view, it
would be difcult for the community to make Gods power visible under
conditions of dominance. On the other hand, a subordinated people
might be so because their god had chosen to abandon or punish them.101
The community is thus faced with two basic explanatory systems for
subordinationdivine impotence vis--vis other gods or divine retribu-
tion. Additionally, the subordinated community is faced with the
challenge of understanding its place among the dominant other and the
others role relative to Gods power and purposes. The community must
assert its own importance and place in the culture even as it determines
whether the foreign king is Gods agent or perhaps Gods adversary.102
The difculty in adjudicating expectations and experiences of divine
activity stems in part from potential tensions inherent in the traditions of
sovereignty that the Daniel visions draw upon from earlier Israelite
traditions, especially the prophetic corpus. It will be necessary to outline
98. W. L. Humphreyss inuential article, A Lifestyle for the Diaspora: A Study

of the Tales of Esther and Daniel, JBL 92 (1973): 21123.
100. David Glatt-Gilad, Yahwehs Honor at Stake: A Divine Conundrum,
JSOT 98 (2002): 6466, discusses this conviction as it is expressed in Ps 48:11 and
Ps 79:910, where God is asked to intervene to preserve Israel in order to salvage
Gods own reputation. Glatt-Gilad traces the idea to the holy war ideology of ancient
Israel and the ancient Near East where Gods demonstration of his military power
goes hand in hand with the enhancement or preservation of his reputation (p. 66).
101. Daniel A. Block, Divine Abandonment: Ezekiels Adaptation of an
Ancient Near Eastern Motif, in Odell and Strong, eds., The Book of Ezekiel, 1542,
provides extensive citations of this motif and its occurrences in Ezekiel, on which
Daniels visions are quite dependent, as well as in the Hebrew Bible and ancient
Near Eastern culture more generally.
102. See especially Eric Gruen, Jewish Perspective on Greek Culture and
Ethnicity, in Hellenism in the Land of Israel (ed. John J. Collins and G. E. Sterling;
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 6293.
1
these conceptions briey. The tensive understanding of sovereignty

includes not only the divine impotencedivine retribution polarity, but
also the polarity of divine transcendencedistance and divine imma-
nenceproximity that encompasses the divine character and activity
throughout the biblical tradition.103 These polarities also nd expression
in Daniel at various points in the visions. Divine transcendence, argues
Werner Lemke, relies on the metaphor of spatial or temporal distance. It
may refer to Gods distance as one who dwells in heaven (1 Kgs 8:27; Ps
11:4) and may also be connected to esoteric knowledge that Yahweh
possesses, by virtue of the deitys heavenly dwelling.104 This concept is
attested in Dan 2:11 when the magicians assert that no one can reveal the
dream except the gods who do not dwell with humanity. Daniel afrms
the transcendence of the divine and the esoteric quality of divine
knowledge when he reveals the dream has been disclosed to him by a
God in the heavens who reveals secrets. Another aspect of divine
transcendence that is apparent in the traditions that the visions have
inherited is the notion of incomparability. Divine incomparability relies
not on Gods spatial or temporal distance from humans, but rather on
Yahwehs substantial difference from other gods, kings, and humans,
even when Yahweh is described using humanistic metaphors.105 Thus
Yahweh may be described in terms of a warriora metaphor that likens
God to human warriors. At the same time, Gods warrior qualities are
unique, sinceunlike human soldiersYahweh cannot be killed and
always wins in battle. Comparative formulas about God may be found in
the Chaoskampf scenes that one nds in Pss 46 and 83, 74 and 89.106
Divine incomparability is thus a trait of Yahweh as the cosmic creator,
king, and judge who is unequaled and who rules over other gods (Ps
89:7) and kings.
On the other side of the polarity, Daniels understanding of God also
encompasses Gods relational and benecial activity with Gods chosen
community in history.107 Lemke connects this notion of Gods activity
103. On this tension, see especially Samuel Terrien, Elusive Presence: Toward a
New Biblical Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1978), 22, 470; Walter Bruegge-
mann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1997), 400403, 492518.
104. Werner Lemke, The Near and the Distant God: A Study of Jer 23:2324
in Its Biblical Theological Context, JBL 100 (1981): 549.
105. C. J. Labuschagne, The Incomparability of Yahweh in the Old Testament
(Leiden: Brill, 1966). See also Marc Brettler, Images of YHWH the Warrior in the
Psalms, Semeia 61 (1993): 13565.
106. Labuschagne, Incomparability, 6465.
1
107. Terrien, Elusive Presence, 1821.
with temporal and spatial nearness and calls it salvic nearness.108 This
aspect of divine activity often emerges in biblical texts in terms of Gods
election of the Israelites and the Jewish community. The biblical
tradition often perceives that in Gods liberating activity God draws near
to the people, entering into space as well as time to act for them.109 This
powerful presence can be expressed using humanistic metaphors that
capture different modes of divine activity, such as the mighty hand or
arm of God (rescuing), the divine ears (listening), and the face of God
(bestowing favor).110 Conversely, the deity is deemed absent when God
hides Gods face (Ezek 39:23, 24, 29) or turns the ears away or when
there is no liberating activity. Thus Isa 63:11b wonders, Where is the
one who caused the arm of his splendor to proceed at Moses right
hand? (cf. Jer 2:6; Judg 6:1124).111
Divine presence or nearness is most consistently expressed through
the institutions of Israelite and Judahite society. Naturally, this would
include cultic and sacred settings, where the divine presence was main-
tained through sacrices and the ministrations of the priests. Generally,
the divine presence in visible form is hidden from the view of the
average person, though it is occasionally visible to the patriarchs and
exceptional prophets such as in Ezek 13 and Isa 6.112 Signicantly,
Ezekiel indicates that when this theophany involves a vision of the
heavenly throne, it can happen outside of the earthly temple, which may
be incapable of maintaining the divine because of its corruption.
Theophany uses the rare visibility of the divine to communicate
proximity and immanence (Exod 3:1214).113 Theophanies in the Hebrew
Bible are typically anthropomorphic, equating the immanence of divine
power in the community with formal continuity. For Terrien and Barr,
this continuity does not thereby undermine the sovereign transcendence
and set-apartness of Yahweh, but can in fact highlight it.114
108. Lemke, Near and Distant God, 544.

109. Joel Burnett, The Question of Divine Absence in West Semitic and
Ancient Israelite Religion, CBQ 67 (2005): 221. Burnett contends that these saving
actions are often connected to sacred settings where God is expected to be present.
110. James Barr, Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,
in Congress Volume, Oxford 1959 (VTSup 7; Leiden: Brill, 1959), 31. Samuel
Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 32.
111. Burnett, Divine Absence, 21819.
112. Barr, Theophany, 3234.
1
114. Barr, Theophany, 3637; Terrien, Elusive Presence, 24950.
Because theophany is occasional and exceptional, Israelite and post-

exilic society depended upon its social institutions and practices to
maintain the presence of God for the community. The institutions of
temple, king, and Torah, in so far as they reect and mimic the structures
of the cosmos, maintain the invisible presence of God through proxy or
through praxis: the temple does this through its maintenance of sacred
space and time in its sacricial and liturgical practices; the king does this
in so far as he rules by divine appointment and executes divine justice
and power (cf. Isa 9:69);115 and the Torah mediates Yahwehs presence
to the people through its ordering of a right relationship between the two
and through its remembrance of Yahwehs past acts as now made present
again.116
Divine transcendence and Gods providential immanence need not be
contradictory. They can and often do function to serve the others pur-
pose. This is especially illustrated in the theophanies of the prophets on
which Daniel draws. Theophany is an event that holds in creative tension
both divine incomparability and immanence.117 Arguably, this creative
tension is maintained through the rare visibility of God. Theophany
afrms the deitys nearness to humanity. Yet the infrequent occurrence
of theophany means that humanity may not always have visual access to
the divine, even though Yahweh may otherwise be present.
The possibility for uncreative tension, or incoherence, arises in the
experience of divine invisibility and absence. The absence of God can
have a disastrous effect on people and nation. How this absence is
understood by biblical texts is fairly complex. Divine absence can take
different forms, meaning that the absence of salvic nearness or contin-
ued subordination might be understood to be Gods absence from
history. Yet absence can also be institutional rather than historical. This
absence is what results when the institutions that formally maintained
divine presencetemple, kingship, and Torahare disrupted.
Interpreting the reasons for divine absence is difcult. It may indicate
divine impotence, which goes to the heart of divine incomparability. It
may indicate a failure of Gods relationship with the community through
divine neglect. It may also indicate Gods response to a faithless com-
munity. In this case, the priestly and the prophetic traditions understand
that Gods transcendence and holiness can threaten the deitys provi-
dential care when the communitys sin threatens the integrity of God.
Finally, Samuel Balentine and Joel Burnett both indicate that though the
115. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 600621.

116. Ibid., 57899.
1
experience of divine absence may be personally disastrous, it may, at the

same time, be used as a theologically positive statement of Gods
power.118 That is, divine absence may be understood as an afrmation of
divine freedom and holiness quite apart from any culpability on the part
of the community.
The visions and rsums of Daniel struggle with the calculus that these
possibilities raise. How is the community to interpret their experience of
political and cultural and even social subordination? Is it a problem of
divine power in the face of the other? Is it a problem of divine neglect of
the community? Is it a problem of divine absence in response to com-
munity culpability? One of the tasks in the following analysis will be to
pinpoint that calculus as the texts portray it. But regardless of which
calculus is at work, when the experience of divine absence puts stress on
the equation, the communitys perception of divine incomparability and
divine immanence may become contradictory and cause signicant
dissonance. This dissonance, in turn, will demand resolution. In Daniel,
the resolution will involve new solutions to the relationship between
divine power and presence.
6. Knowing God in Daniels Rsums and Apocalyptic Visions

a. Cognitive Dissonance and Failed Prophecy
The language of dissonance used in the context of biblical studies has a
specic history that needs comment. Earlier, I pointed to Jon Levensons
use of dissonance in terms of the contradictions between myth and reality
and between experience and expectation. Levensons ideas about disso-
nance and its role in the creation of apocalyptic eschatology derive from
Robert P. Carrolls work When Prophecy Failed: Cognitive Dissonance
in the Prophetic Traditions of the Old Testament.119 In this important
work, Carroll, in turn, applies the insights of Leon Festingers theory of
cognitive dissonance to biblical prophecy,120 especially the reinterpreta-
tion of Second Isaiahs prophecies. In the movement from prophetic
predictions of a glorious restoration, to the so-called failure of those
predictions in the early post-exilic period, to the reinterpretation of those
in the second century B.C.E., Carroll nds the dynamic of dissonance and
118. Balentine, Hidden God, 17375; Burnett, Divine Absence, 235.

119. Robert P. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Cognitive Dissonance in the
Prophetic Traditions of the Old Testament (New York: Seabury, 1979).
120. Festingers theories are set forth in two of his early works: A Theory of
Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), and L. Festinger
et al., When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956).
1
dissonance reduction. He asserts that this textual dynamic, with its

attendant social conditions, can account for the origin of apocalyptic
thinking and the surprising endurance of compromised prophecies.
Carroll denes cognitive dissonance as the noxious experience that
arises when an individual or group recognizes that it has committed itself
to non-tting or contradictory cognitions. Cognition refers to what
people know, believe or feelthe term is loosely used in the general
theoryso cognitive dissonance arises when two cognitions are incon-
sistent with one another. Where cognitions are consistent or compatible
the relationship is one of consonance.121 The dissonance may arise from
any number of sources: logical inconsistencies, the conict between
behavior and cultural mores, or the contradiction between past experi-
ences and a present discrete experience. According to Festingers theory,
the human brain normally desires coherence and consonance. The experi-
ence of inconsistency or contradiction is therefore noxious or unpleasant.
Dissonance thus motivates the group or individual to attempt to regain
consonance through one or more of three general strategies, or reduction
techniques.122
Jon Levensons use of dissonance marks a divergence from Carrolls
use in a social-scientic context. Carrolls use of the thesis is primarily
limited to accounting for the origins of apocalyptic literature, which he
locates in the proto-apocalyptic materials of Zechariah. As such, he
does not actually apply it to Daniels visions themselves, with the
exception of Dan 9s reuse of Jer 29 and the 70 years prophecy. Leven-
sons interest, however, is not in social-scientic theory or the reuse of
prophecy. Instead of adopting the theorys assumptions concerning
prophecy and its failure,123 he uses the language loosely as a heuristic
121. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed, 87.

122. These are: (1) the avoidance or denial of dissonance producing informa-
tion, (2) the creation of explanatory systems or hermeneutics, and (3) social support.
See further, ibid., 93.
123. Theories of cognitive dissonance, both within and outside of biblical stud-
ies, have recently come under much criticism for their assumptions about the nature
of prophecy and prophetic utterances. Stephen OLeary, When Prophecy Fails and
When It Succeeds: Apocalyptic Prediction and the Re-Entry into Ordinary Time, in
Apocalyptic Time (ed. Albert Baumgarten; Boston: Brill, 2000), 342, has argued that
the theorys view of predictive statements has contributed to a poor evaluation of
apocalyptic discourse. Festinger, Carroll, and other scholarly observers of apoca-
lyptic discourse have tended to single out the predictions as the primary evidence of
cognitive processes and then view these predictive statements very reductively.
Rather than viewing them as rhetorical or perhaps performative speech, scholars
view the statements in scientic terms, as tests of theory, and hencesubject to
1
move that illuminates how the tension between divine power in the past
and the complaint of divine inactivity in the present appears to be
resolved in the lament.124 Levensons use of the language highlights the
problem of how these texts create meaningful knowledge of God, that is,
a knowledge that coheres with community experiences and theological
expectations of the deity.
Michael Fishbane is notable in this context for his far more thorough
application of dissonance theory to Daniels visions.125 Fishbane puts the
process of dissonance resolution in the context of mantic reinterpreta-
tion of older oracles, a process in which overt oracles became covert and
esoteric. He attributes the cause of dissonance to the obscurity, con-
fusion, and unrealizability of the prophetic prediction, to which the
community responded by positing divinely controlled frameworks of
meaning.126
Without denying that Daniels visions reinterpret older prophecies or
recalculate failed prophetic calculations to create a new hermeneutic,
I propose that Daniels apocalyptic revelations primarily reect and
resolve cognitive dissonance through means other than those proposed
by Carroll. While Carroll locates dissonance and its resolution in the
rigorous standards of proof; when they are falsied, the rational cognitive response
is to abandon the theory.
Perhaps more troubling, for the purposes of this study, is the connection between
dissonance and deprivation theory that Carroll and Paul Hanson assert is the
causative matrix for apocalyptic forms. Hanson argues in The Dawn of Apocalyptic:
The Historical and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology (rev. ed.;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), that apocalyptic texts are the work of lower class,
deprived visionary communities who have been alienated and displaced by the
dominant and powerful priestly circles. Carroll and then Hanson, in his later article
on apocalypticism (Apocalypticism, IDBSup, 2831), both argue that it is this
experience of socio-political conict and alienation that supposedly gives rise to
cognitive dissonance among the visionary circles. The dissonance is, in turn, reduced
through the use of mythological discourse and a corresponding abandonment of his-
torical discourse, which nally achieves the literary forms of apocalyptic literature
(see also Hanson, Dawn, 2031). Of course, the extensive use of the historical
rsum in Daniel patently contradicts this hypothesis.
124. On the validity of such heuristic uses of cognitive dissonance theory, see
Cyril Rodd, On Applying a Sociological Theory to Biblical Studies, JSOT 19
(1981): 95106.
125. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 46585, 50924.
126. Ibid., 50910. Fishbane understands the strategies of dissonance resolution
in a way that differs only slightly from the position taken by Carroll. Strategies for
dissonance reduction include, respecifying imprecise prophecies (p. 465), reusing,
and revising prophecies (p. 467).
1
prophecies whose failures give rise to a new hermeneutic, Daniel uses

mantic historiography and its strategies as a way of adjudicating the
conicts and tensions emergent in divine sovereignty. Thus the catalyst
for dissonance, as I understand it, is both experiential and conceptual. It
is usually sparked by the experience of historical conditions that come
into conict with well-established expectations and conceptions of divine
power and presence within the community. These are then addressed by
the historiography in a way that resolves them on the literary and tem-
poral level. That is, the events are narrativized and provided with an
ending that re-establishes coherence. But because this historiography is
indeed mantic, it often comes in the context of symbolic dreams and
visions or in equally graphic revelations.127 Thus it is necessary to main-
tain attention to how symbolic features and the spatial-vertical axis of
imagery, along with the temporal features of these materials, work
together to create consonance concerning divine power and presence.
b. Historiography as a Way of Knowing

In attending to the narrative features of mantic historiography, this study
proceeds from a different starting point than Carrolls discussion of
cognitive dissonance. This approach utilizes the observation that the
process of human knowing has a strong literary or narrative character.128
Mark Turner writes, Story is a basic principle of mind. Most of our
experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories.129
Cognitive theorists have argued that the human mind makes sense of
what would otherwise be a mass of chaotic events by imposing onto
them a narrative form with a beginning, middle, and end and thereby
endowing them with coherence.130
In this articulation of cognition and narrative, there is a connection
between the basic process of narrative thinking and historiography.
When the process of narrativizing is performed by one attempting to
represent real experiences of time, historiography is the result.131 Yet it is
127. Carol Newsom, Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Rsum in Israelite
and Early Jewish Thought, in Congress Volume Leiden 2004 (ed. A. Lemaire;
Boston: Brill, 2006), 227.
128. Mark Turner, The Literary Mind (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996).
129. Ibid., v (emphasis original).
130. Hayden White, The Narrativization of Real Events, Critical Inquiry 7
(1991): 795; Jameson, Political Unconscious, 13.
131. This understanding of historiography runs along rails that diverge some-
what from the historiographical principle used by J. Huizinga and biblical scholars
such as John Van Seters. Huizinga dened historiography as the intellectual form in
1
the process by which these events are made meaningful or achieve

coherence that is important for my purposes. In this, emplotment and
conguration are central to the narratives ability to achieve conso-
nance.132 Historical narratives do not just catalog experiences as uncon-
nected phenomena in a simple chronological succession. Instead, the
historical narrative endows events with a plot, already pregured in the
actual events, that gives their temporal motion a particular meaning. The
historical narrative connects these events into a seemingly linear narra-
tive from beginning to end. At the same time, the historian endows them
with a unifying thought or gure so that time may be grasped as one
temporal whole.133 Ricoeur calls the work of emplotting real events
according to a particular theme conguration.134
For Ricoeur, the congured narrative establishes coherence and
consonance to the human experience of temporality itself, which would
otherwise be endlessly episodic, corrosive, and tragic.135 A chief means
of supplying the experience of time with meaning is by supplying it with
the sense of an ending.136 Kermode and Ricoeur have argued that the
end is cognitively signicant in so far as it brings together the beginning
and the middle of a narrative in a way that makes sense of ones past and
present experiences. In the event of conicting or contradictory experi-
ences between the past and the present, one inevitably looks to the
which a civilization renders account to itself of its past (quoted in T.L. Thompson,
Historiography [Israelite], ABD 3:207). In other words, historiography is for
Huizinga the process of self-understanding. The principle of historiography used by
Van Seters understands historiography to include a range of genres in which history
is interpreted, but not items such as chronicles, annals, or king-lists, which fall under
the category of record-keeping. Ricoeur also distinguishes between annals and his-
toriography on the basis of their types of temporalityone is episodic with the
events being unconnected, the other congures events as a whole.
132. My understanding of emplotment and consonance relies on the work of the
following scholars: F. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of
Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 331; Paul Ricoeur, Time and
Narrative (trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer; 3 vols.; Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), 1:187; Hayden White, The Metaphysics of Narrativity:
Time and Symbol in Ricoeurs Philosophy of History, in On Paul Ricoeur:
Narrative and Interpretation (ed. D. Wood; New York: Routledge, 1991), 14059;
idem, The Narrativization of Real Events, 79398; and Newsom, The Historical
Rsum, 21533.
133. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:66; Newsom, Historical Rsum, 218.
134. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:3843, 6668.
135. Ibid., 1:7173; Newsom, Historical Rsum, 232; White, Metaphysics
of Narrativity, 14344.
1
136. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending; Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:67.
resolution of that conict within the future, or within the realm of antici-
pation. As Kermode writes, Men in the middest make considerable
imaginative investments in coherent patterns which, by the provision of
an end, make possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with
the middle.137 For Kermode, the ending is the point at which contradic-
tions emerging in the narrative are often resolved and loose ends tidied
up. From this point, one may look back on the narrative or the experience
and view it as an intelligible whole.
Daniels historical rsums constitute congured time. As such, the
rsums should be read as having the same abilities to establish conso-
nance and coherence. The problem for Daniel is not quite the same as
it is for Ricoeur, who sees temporal experience itself as the problem
needing resolution. The coherence that Daniels rsums seek has to do
with the fundamental problem of sovereignty in time. The scribal groups
experience of time from where they stand in the middest often
obscures Gods power and presence, and without some sense of Gods
actions, history truly would be meaningless. While calculations and
recalculations of the end can create some coherence between expecta-
tions and the actual experience of the end of imperial rule, Daniels
visions do most of that cognitive work by knitting together a narrative of
imperial history which brings to the fore the subtle interactions between
divine power, imperial power, and the community. Through this narra-
tive, its readers come to envision an end that can account for and mediate
the present experience of divine absence and invisibility in history.
The apocalyptic ending is, as Kermode noticed four decades ago, not
just about narrative ending or closure, though these are certainly impor-
tant in attaining literary coherence. The apocalyptic ending is about
ultimate endingsthe end of the foreign monarch, foreign domination,
and even history itself. Apocalyptic narratives use ultimate endings as
a strategy of transcendence.138 Eschatology is an attempt at the tem-
porizing of essence, according to Kenneth Burke, in which an ending is
a formal way of proclaiming [somethings] essence or nature.139 In
seeing the end to which the foreign monarch is brought, in seeing that
subordination does end, mantic historiography reveals that the present
experience is not ultimate and does not dene the meaning of time. Thus,
the experiences of subordination in the present are reweighted.
Yet it would be a mistake to make the ending the only carrier of
cognitive consonance in Daniels rsums. The eschatological ending is
137. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 17.

138. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 25.
1
139. K. Burke, quoted in OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 2526.
an imagined future, a prediction, but this kind of prediction is made

possible in the rsums through attention to the past and how the past
determines the future.140 This determining is not about the divine
predetermination of history. It refers instead to the conviction that the
apocalyptists, just as other biblical writers, were interested in the way
that past patterns replay themselves in the future.141 Scrutiny of the past
in order to predict the future was a principle of the Mesopotamian mantic
historiography that the scribal community had inherited.142 It rested on
the notion of the repeatability and thus the predictability of history.143
This scrutiny is the conceptual work that ex eventu prophecy allows.
Under the guise of a vaticinium ex eventu, the author takes up the retell-
ing of history from a spot at the beginning of the period rather than in its
middle.144 It is in fact an attempt to do more than simply recount the
events of history, but rather to reshape them according to their implicit
conguration and thereby make explicit the meaning of world history as
it impacts Judah and the scribal community. This conguration of time,
which allows the prediction of the future or the end, involves the discern-
ment of recurring patterns. Very often, these patterns of imperial power
in history are taken from traditions that may be either biblical or foreign
in origin. Examples of these traditions include the four-kingdom schema
or the priestly sabbath structure of time. But the rsums also make use
of mythic and cosmic patterns in which the divine activity of raising up
and deposing kings within the divine council is superimposed upon
world-historical events.
One last aspect of historical narratives ability to congure history,
and thus the apocalyptic rsums ability, needs to be noted. This has to
do with the narratives ability to bend time, to bring past and present
140. G. I. Davies, Apocalyptic and Historiography, JSOT 5 (1978): 1528.

141. Ibid., 20.
142. On mantic historiography and Daniel, see S. A. Kaufman, Prediction,
Prophecy and Apocalypse in the Light of New Akkadian Texts, in Proceedings of
the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (ed. A. Shenan; Jerusalem: World Union
of Jewish Studies, 1977), 22128, and J. J. Finkelstein, Mesopotamian Histori-
ography, in Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization: Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 107 (1963): 46172. Ironically, though Kaufman
rejects the classication of the Uruk prophecy and the Dynastic prophecy as
Akkadian apocalypses, termed by A. K. Grayson and W. G. Lambert, Kaufman
succeeds in showing how closely related Daniels historiographical conventions are
to those same texts.
143. Finkelstein, Mesopotamian Historiography, 463.
144. Addison, When History Fails, 242 n. 9, Newsom, Historical Rsum,
22829.
1
together. For Ricoeur, narrative temporality forms a circle in which the

arrow of time may be inverted.145 This feature is especially apparent
when one reads or recollects the story more than once. When this hap-
pens, one may discern the ending in the beginning and the beginning in
the ending.146 Through this quality, the beginning and ending of a narra-
tive bracket all the events of the middle into a single envelope of mean-
ing. This quality of narrative especially impacts Daniels depiction of
Gods activity before, during, and after imperial succession.
In these congurations, the temporal axis is clearly privileged as the
means for understanding divine activity and power. Yet the symbolism
of divine and human sovereignty, which often relies on spatial refer-
ences, is also signicant in adjudicating the communitys need to assert
both divine incomparability and also divine immanence.
c. Incoherence, Dissonance, and Narrative

To this point, I have yet to answer the question implicit in the above
discussion: How does one discern when or if dissonance is at work in the
apocalyptic rsum? Levenson has already argued that the Chaoskampf
tradition provides one place in which dissonance is being expressed or,
perhaps, repressed. When the rsum is functioning the way that it
should, the problem of contradiction and dissonance is nearly invisible in
the text itself. Yet that contradiction may be implicit in the texts logic or
part of the texts unconscious. One discerns these contradictions through
extrinsic means, by paying attention to the social and cultural setting of
the texts producers, as well as the events and cultural conceptions in
which they lived. Moreover, texts that were written during the time of
Daniels dreams and visions, such as the Wisdom of Ben Sira, may also
be solicited to reveal points of conict.
Ideological criticism also discerns contradiction through intrinsic
meansespecially in the way in which a text attempts to silence or
suppress certain voices or views. These are often revealed in the gaps
created by the logic of a text. In the case of the apocalyptic rsum, I
propose that the gaps in the text that reveal contradiction are often con-
nected to the historiographical strategies of the rsum and the narrative
traditions they employ to characterize divine activity. With respect to
historiographical strategies, one must attend to the rsums endings.
Endings that fail to resolve the tensions of the beginnings and middles
adequately but remain untidy and conicted signal ongoing dissonance.
145. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:6768; Newsom, Historical Rsum,

22829.
1
146. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:68.
But even within the rsum, disruptions in the expected patterning of

history, such as details withheld or familiar patterns interrupted, may
signal contradiction.147 Since the rsums are fairly clear in their use of
patterns, disruptions are not especially difcult to spot.
Finally, dissonance is sometimes apparent in the revoicing and reuse
of the older traditions and conventions that disappoint readerly expecta-
tions. Older traditions such as the rebellious subordinate and Chaos-
kampf tradition, for example, already engender certain expectations for
the reader concerning the plot of divine mastery. They also bring their
own assumptions about the power and role of such heavenly agencies as
the divine court or the heavenly host. The rsums subversion or dis-
appointment of readerly expectations points to an unarticulated or
unconscious dissonance.
d. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty

In the chapters that follow, I propose to read each of Daniels apocalyptic
rsums, attending to the cognitive character of their historiography and
symbolic visions as well as to their ideological character as arguments
that seek to resolve contradictions that are often invisible and suppressed.
Yet this reading also understands these rsums to yield an argument and
a knowledge that is fundamentally symbolic action.148 As the historical
narratives take the world into the text and study and congure it using
language, the language enacts a resolution to the problem of sovereignty
that is both real and also symbolic. This action is dramatic and dynamic.
It pulls the reader into the story of Gods interaction with foreign powers,
creating the crisis of sovereignty for the reader in a certain way which it
then resolves by offering an alternative construction of divine power in
its relationship to subsidiary powers. This drama not only can overcome
incoherence with respect to subordination and foreign power, it can also
enact resistance to foreign rule, create symbolic deliverance from that
rule, and also legitimate alternative institutional models for divine power
and presence.
And yet the apocalyptic rsums in Daniel offer one last problem for
consideration. This problem has to do with the fact there are multiple
rsums, not just one. Since these rsums have much in common yet do
147. Robert G. Hall, Revealed Histories: Techniques for Ancient Jewish and
Christian Historiography (JSPSup 6; Shefeld: JSOT, 1991), 8594.
148. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 2063; Jameson, The Political Uncon-
scious, 7984. OLeary and Jameson develop the idea of symbolic action from
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969).
1
not simply repeat each other, how are they to be taken as a whole? John
Collins argues that the visions in chs. 8, 9, and 1012 are intended to be
recapitulations of Dan 7 told in different ways. There is a principle of
redundance at work in this. If a message has to be communicated in
the face of distractions, or noise, then the communicatormust repeat
the message several times in slightly different ways. In this way the basic
structure which the different formulations have in common get through.149
This view of the visions depends upon a compositional theory in which
the visions developed under roughly the same hand (perhaps an editors)
over the period between 167 and 163 B.C.E. Yet some scholars recognize
them as the work of different scribal authors, over a longer period of
time, which were then edited in the nal version of the book in a very
short period of time soon after the death of Antiochus IV in 163 B.C.E.150
I am in agreement with this second view. As such, I read each vision as
part of ongoing dialogue within the scribal community. It is clear that
some of the visions were catalyzed by different historical events, which
then needed to be addressed.151 Can one then detect a developing depic-
tion or plot to divine sovereignty as each successive vision responds to
historical events? If so, then it will call into question Collinss notion of
redundancy. Beyond this, one must consider the possibility that the
editing of the book involved some consideration concerning the order of
the chapters. This ordering need not represent the order in which they
were written, though I am inclined to think that they do. They may also
reect the desire to juxtapose episodes of imperial history in such a way
that they create a larger plot whose unfolding happens within each
episode and builds toward its nal climax, the oracle of resurrection in
Dan 12:14. If this is the case, it becomes necessary to understand the
work of each episode in this unfolding larger plot.
149. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 117.

150. Those who recognize that the visions come from different hands include:
H. L. Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1948);
L. Hartman and A. DiLella, The Book of Daniel (AB 23; Garden City: Doubleday,
1978), 14, 230; Niditch, The Symbolic Vision, 22426; B. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in
der Bedrngnis: Eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Dan 8 and 1012 (Mnchener
Universittsschriften; St. Ottilien: EOS, 1977); and Reinhard Kratz, The Visions of
Daniel, in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:91113. I do not neces-
sarily accept the hypothetical reconstructions of multiple redactional insertions that
characterize the thinking of much German scholarship, such as Kratzs, but I do
agree with the assertions that these come from different hands.
1
151. Kratz, Visions of Daniel, 91113.
Chapter 2
THE SHAPE OF SOVEREIGNTY

IN NEBUCHADNEZZARS DREAM
(DANIEL 2:3145)
1. Introduction
The enigmatic description of history in Nebuchadnezzars dream presents
many interpretive difculties. Chief among these is its presentation of
history as four foreign kingdoms that will be supplanted by a nal unend-
ing one. Though the identication of these kingdoms is not especially
perplexing for critical scholarship, the character of this history is. Some
scholars lament its divergence from the typically Israelite ways of
narrating history found in the Deuteronomistic History or the Torah. For
many scholars, the dreams use of vaticinium ex eventu, which seems to
present historical events as predetermined by God and thus devoid of
divine activity within historical events, is a theological stumbling block
that mars the chapters theology. For others, it presents a strong theologi-
cal afrmation of the rule of God. The present study will move in a
different direction in order to consider what the presentation of foreign
history reveals about the Jewish experience of subordination and also
what it does for its early Seleucid-period readers. I argue that Nebuchad-
nezzars dream in its Seleucid context reveals that the traditional Israelite
ways of narrating divine power and presence in history are no longer able
to account for the experience of foreign domination and thus undergo
reorientation in the dream. The ensuing narrative of history developed in
the interpretation of the dream allows the Jewish community to negotiate
some fundamental contradictions concerning Gods visibility and Gods
relationship to foreign kings.
In order to puzzle out the mediating work of the narrative, it will be
necessary to consider the historical and social contexts of the dream and
its interpretation. In this task, I nd the work of Jesus ben Sira especially
helpful in elucidating the contradictions of divine power and presence
1
2. The Shape of Sovereignty 37
emerging in the early second century B.C.E., the time at which the dream
undergoes redaction and updating. First, however, attention will need to
be given to the redactional layers of this text and its various audiences.
2. Redaction and the Changing Intentions

in Nebuchadnezzars Dream
To speak of the audience for whom this dream is intended, that is, the
scribal audience that identied itself with Daniel, is a tricky matter.
Daniel 2 and the dream embedded within it had different audiences
during the process of the chapters and the books development. It is
necessary to identify these layers of composition and the changing
function of each.
Three compositional layers, and thus audiences, may be distinguished.
The rst of these audiences probably consisted of Babylonian Jews
located in Mesopotamia during the late Babylonian period or early
Persian period.1 This is suggested not only by the court setting of the
story as a focus of attention,2 but also by the linguistic evidence, which
has a distinctive eastern and Mesopotamian stamp,3 and also by its
signicant thematic parallels with Second Isaiah.4 Moreover, because of
the simultaneous destruction of all four metals in the vision report and
the clearly inappropriate characterization of the Persian empire in the
interpretation, it has been argued that at the rst level of composition the
statues destruction represented not the end of four kingdoms but the end
of a dynasty of four Babylonian kingseach metal representing the
reigns of Nebuchadnezzars successors.5 The declining value of the
1. Philip R. Davies, Daniel Chapter Two, JTS 27 (1976): 396, 400; F. Polak,
The Daniel Tales in their Aramaic Literary Milieu, in van der Woude, ed., The
Book of Daniel, 24960; Ida Frhlich, Time and Times and Half a Time: Historical
Consciousness in the Jewish Literature of the Persian and Hellenistic Eras (JSPSup
19; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1996), 2627.
2. John J. Collins, The Court-Tales in Daniel and the Development of Apoca-
lyptic, JBL 94 (1975): 220, notes that the court setting indicates a Babylonian
period origin since the Persians used satrapies rather than the royal court to
administer the kingdom.
3. Polak, Aramaic Literary Milieu, 25860.
4. Peter von der Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhaltnis zu Prophetie
und Weisheit (Theologische Existenz Heute 157; Munich: Kaiser, 1969), 1822; and
Frhlich, Time and Times and Half a Time, 1148.
5. The analysis dates back to B. D. Eerdmans, Origin and Meaning of the
Aramaic Part of Daniel, Actes du XVIIIe congrs international des orientalistes
(1932): 198202. It was harshly critiqued by H. H. Rowley in Darius the Mede and
the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel: A Historical Study of Contemporary
1
metals ts with the declining power of these kings and their reigns, the
worst of these being Nabonidus. At this level of composition, the dream
appears to be an anti-Babylonian oracle pitting the God of Daniel against
the gods of the Babylonian king and wise men. It does this by showing
the knowledge of Daniel and his God as superior to that of the Chaldeans
in revealing the future. It thus recalls Second Isaiahs idol polemics (cf.
Dan 2:2728; Isa 41:2223; 43:9; 48:56).6 The imagery of the statue
and its disintegration into chaff also uses Second Isaiah (Isa 41:1516;
46:1) in order to assert the power of God over the Babylonians.7 It is not
clear when the stone was added. Collins argues that it was not added
until the Hellenistic period.8 However, Frhlich and Redditt argue that it
was part of the original and represented Cyrus and his defeat of Baby-
lon.9 Seows argument is most convincing, namely, that the stone from
the mountain refers back to Second Isaiahs admonition to the exiles that
they recall the stone from which they were hewn (cf. Dan 2:45; Isa
51:12). As such, it probably refers to the Jewish exilic community,
rather than the Persian king. Seow writes, Thus, just as Deutero-Isaiah
promised that the Jewish exiles in Babylon would in some sense render
the powerful nations as nothing, so Daniel afrms that the exiles will
annihilate all the foreign powers.10
At the second level of redaction, during the early Hellenistic period,
the dream was reworked and the four kings became the four kingdoms of
Babylon, Media, Persia, and Macedonia, creating a four-kingdom
schema. The schema appears to be adapted from one of Persian origin
that included Assyria, Media, and Persia.11 At this stage of redaction, the
Theories (Cardiff: University of Wales Press Board, 1959), but has since gained
numerous adherents including Davies, Polak, Frhlich, C. L. Seow, and others.
6. Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik, 1823; Collins, The Court-Tales; Seow,
From Mountain to Mountain: The Reign of God in Daniel 2, in A God So Near:
Essays on Old Testament Theology (ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen;
Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 359.
7. Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik, 22; Collins, The Court Tales, 223;
Newsom, Rhyme and Reason, 35960.
8. John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 169.
9. Frhlich, Time and Times and Half a Time, 3233; Robert B. Kruschwitz and
Paul L. Redditt, Nebuchadnezzar as the Head of Gold: Politics and History in the
Theology of the Book of Daniel, Perspectives in Religious Studies 24 (1997): 402.
10. Seow, From Mountain to Mountain, 370.
11. The original three-kingdom order was recorded by Herodotus (ca. 450425
B.C.E.) and Ctesias (ca. 399375 B.C.E.). See further David Flusser, The Four
Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel, IOS 2 (1972): 15559. The
eastern, Persian origin of the four-kingdom schema has been documented by Swain,
The Theory of the Four Monarchies, 121; Eddy, The King is Dead, 330; and
1
interpretation in vv. 3645 seems to have been added in order to reinter-

pret the elements of the statue.12 Nebuchadnezzar becomes an idealized
gure, the head of gold, and contrasts with the brutal fourth kingdom of
Macedonia, symbolized by the feet. The dream at this stage becomes
anti-Hellenistic oppositional literature, as the stones destructive work is
now aimed at the feet.13 At this point, the stone is now a kingdom of
divine origin, and the mountain may represent Mt. Zion.14 Finally, in the
early Seleucid period, the oracle was updated with the reference to the
Diadochoi (the toes) and Seleucid and Ptolemaic intermarriages (the
mixing of the clay and the metal), in vv. 4143.15 The dream shows no
signs of being updated to reect Antiochus IV and his actions in
Jerusalem.16
Flusser, The Four Empires, 14875, and is widely accepted. This view has not
been without its critics, however. For example, Gerhard F. Hasel, The Four World
Empires of Daniel 2 Against Its Near Eastern Environment, JSOT 12 (1979): 17
30, sees a closer connection between the Babylonian Dynastic Oracle and Dan 2.
Doron Mendels, The Five Empires: A Note on a Propagandistic Topos, AJP 102
(1981): 33037, has challenged Swains argument on the origin, dating, and
distribution of the four-kingdom schema. For response to his critiques, see Collins,
Daniel, 16670. Flusser, The Four Empires, 15562, contends that the tradition
developed in two different waysas a three and then four-kingdom schema in the
east, where it functioned as opposition literature, and as a ve-kingdom schema in
the west where it was pro-Roman.
12. Davies, Daniel Chapter Two, 39899.
13. Flusser, The Four Empires, 15657; Collins, Daniel, 169.
14. Seow, From Mountain to Mountain, 370, argues that the stone/mountain is
an intentional reference to Zion, but I am not convinced. Certainly, however, the
image was multivalent and could carry many different meanings.
15. Many commentators place either the writing or the redaction of the dream in
the period between 240193 B.C.E. based on the reference to the toes in v. 43, which
is not in the vision report and refers to the mixed marriage between the Seleucids
and the Ptolemies. Most commentators see 2:43 as a reference to the rst Seleucid
Ptolemaic intermarriage in 252 B.C.E., between Antiochus II and Bernice, instead of
the 193 B.C.E. marriage between Cleopatra and Ptolemy V. See further Ginsberg,
Studies in Daniel, 8; Montgomery, Daniel, 96; Polak, Aramaic Literary Milieu,
26364; Davies, Daniel Chapter Two, 39798. Reinhard Kratz, Translatio
Imperii: Untersuchungen zu den Aramaischen Danielerzahlungen und ihrem theolo-
giegeschichtlichen Umfeld (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener, 1991), 7172, adopts
the idea of the third-century redaction but understands the toes to be a Maccabean
insertion. In slight contrast to the scholars just mentioned, Collins, Apocalyptic
Vision, 44, and Towner, Daniel, 3435, understand the bulk of the vision to have
originated during the third century B.C.E.
16. Collins, Daniel, 3537. The view of Kratz, Translatio Imperii, 3543, 7172,
that the toes are a Maccabean period insertion is not convincing.
1
The present examination of the dream is primarily interested in under-

standing the vision in its late third-century setting, between 252190
B.C.E. It is the suasive interactions between audience and text or between
the communitys concerns and visions argument that occupies the
present study. It is this interaction, to the extent that it can be ascertained
through both extrinsic and intrinsic means, that informs my understand-
ing of what the vision is doing for its readers, but it is also this interac-
tion that will be foundational to understanding the later vision of Dan 7,
whose work brings together audiences from the period of Antiochus III
and also the period of Antiochus IV.
The audience for whom the dream was important in the third century
most likely resembles the audience who read, edited, and expanded the
Daniel collection in the period of Antiochuss rule over Judea in 167
164 B.C.E. Indeed, Philip Davies and Paul Redditt both argue that the
court narratives of chs. 16 and the visions of chs. 712 come from the
same group, though the group returned to Judea from the diaspora before
the visions were written (perhaps at the beginning of Seleucid rule).17
Both the editors and readers of Dan 2 in the third century B.C.E. belonged
to a group of well-educated scribes.18 It may be that these scribes came to
be identied as the scribal circles of the period of Antiochus IVs reign,
the maklm or wise ones (Dan 11:33).19
3. The Problem of Foreign Power in Hellenistic Judea

Sirach and Daniel 2
This early Seleucid setting is also the same period in which Jesus ben
Sira was at work.20 Because of the relatively transparent character of
Sirachs forms of writing, that is, he does not claim a ctive exilic setting
for his characters and he does not utilize either vaticinium ex eventu or
genuine prediction to describe the present, one may helpfully use Sirach
to discern the outlines of those social, cultural, and theological issues
faced by the well-educated Jewish scribal community during this period
of time.
17. Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35257; Redditt, Daniel 11, 468.
18. On the scribe as part of a well-educated retainer class employed by the
wealthy and aristocratic classes and also by the local governing bureaucracies, see
Schams, Jewish Scribes; Davies, The Scribal School of Daniel; Horsley, The
Politics of Cultural Production, 12348.
19. Redditt, Daniel, 2829.
20. Benjamin Wright III, Put the Nations in Fear of You: Ben Sira and the
Problem of Foreign Rule, in SBL Seminar Papers 1999, 7780, helpfully describes
this period in the late third and early second centuries B.C.E.
1
Differences between these two types of scribal wisdom have been

noted. Richard Horsley has demonstrated that Sirach disapproved of the
kind of mantic wisdom, dreams, and visions that the community of
Daniel practiced (Sir 34:18)21 and understood himself to be a teacher
and public gure (Sir 24:3233; 33:18; 37:23), while the Daniel com-
munity produced materials not for general public consumption.22
Nevertheless, Sir 36:12223 recommends itself as a conversation
partner to Dan 2:3145, and the historical rsums of Daniel in general,
because of their various points of contact. These include the concern for
divine power. The kings refuse to recognize the Jewish God as the only
god ((E=HK )J9= *J, Sir 36:5) and the God of all (=<9 J9H=, Sir
36:1; *J9= 9=, Dan 2:47). Instead, the speaker ascribes to the kings the
claim that they are autonomous and that their power is absolute. The
claim, There is no one except me (JE=HK *J, v. 12), speaks of a hubris
that is attributed to the Ptolemies and the Seleucids in the last part of the
third century B.C.E.24 But this claim is also startlingly similar to the claims
attributed to the last king of the north (Antiochus IV) in Dan 11:33.
Sirach 36 and Dan 2:3145 both envision a similar general plot to
foreign power that is characterized by a future end or decisive turning
point at which their present experience of subordination will be
21. Horsley, Politics of Cultural Production, 13334.

22. Ibid., 134, 142. While I accept many of the differences outlined by Horsley,
I take issue with the distinctions he draws between Sirach and the Daniel group with
respect to public gure vs. self-centered group and teacher vs. carriers of secret
manticism. Horsley dismisses Dan 11:35 and 12:3s statements about the groups
relationship to the many (rabbm) in order to arrive at this polarization.
23. This citation is according to the Hebrew versication. The Greek versi-
cation is 33:113a; 36:16b22. The authenticity of the prayer has been questioned.
The following commentators argue for its authenticity: P. W. Skehan and A. A.
DiLella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AB 39; New York: Doubleday, 1987), 420;
J. Marbck, Das Gebet um die Rettung Zions Sir 36, 122 (G:33, 113a; 36, 16b
22) im Zusammenhang der Geschichtsschau ben Siras, in Memoria Jerusalem.
Freundesgabe Franz Sauer (ed. J. B. Bauer and J. Marbck; Graz, Austria:
Akademisches Druck-u. Verlaganstalt, 1977), 1034; and Wright, Put the Nations
in Fear of You, 83. Burton Mack, Sirach: Introduction and Notes, in The Harper
Collins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha and Deutero-
canonical Books (ed. W. A. Meeks; New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 1586, how-
ever, views the prayer as a surprise within the wisdom book and argues for its
secondary nature. I accept the view of those who argue for its authenticity.
24. Andr Caquot, Ben Sira et le Messianisme, Semitica 16 (1966): 49; Martin
Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the
Early Hellenistic Period (trans. John Bowden; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974),
1:153, and Skehan and DiLella, Ben Sira, 422.
1
resolved.25 The Hebrew text of 36:1012 envisions the destruction of the

gentile overlords at the appointed time (5H> 5HBA) of the end (#B).
This is the equivalent of the Aramaic AHD,26 the verbal form of which is
used in Dan 2:44 (cf. Dan 8:19, #B 5H>=).27 And much as in Dan 2:31
45, the end of foreign kings in Sir 36:1019 will bring with it the return
of a glorious divine rule and the elevation of the chosen people.
Unlike Nebuchadnezzars dream, however, Sirachs lament, precisely
because it is a lament, is able to reveal the speakers profound disorienta-
tion concerning present events. This disorientation is linked to Sirachs
own embrace of deuteronomistic theology and its understanding of
national catastrophe and subordination to be the result of faithlessness on
the part of the people and their leaders (Sir 51:112). Yet Sirachs own
experience of subordination is somehow not adequately addressed by
deuteronomistic theology in the lament. As Benjamin Wright argues,
When foreigners succeed against Israel, it is because the rulers and the
people have abandoned the Law. But how does ben Sira apply this think-
ing to his own contemporary situation and how can this theology help to
make sense of it? The answer to this question presents something of a
problem.
It seems clear that ben Sira has a fundamental difculty with foreigners
ruling over Gods people at any time; such a situation is simply not the
natural order of things. Israel is Gods own possession that he created at
the beginningYet, ben Sira himself has known no other reality than
foreigners having political and military domination over Israel, and the
various comments about the nations in his book, I think, reveal his
dissatisfaction with that contemporary situation.28
One of the indicators of Sirachs disconnect with the deuteronomistic

theology is apparent in what he leaves out of the lament. Wright notes
that the lament does not attribute subordination to the peoples faith-
lessness (36:4) or to the wealth of the rich. There is no mention of either,
25. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:152. Similarly, James Crenshaw, The
Problem of Theodicy in Sirach: On Human Bondage, JBL 94 (1975): 56, notes that
Sirach and apocalypticism both emerge out of the same historical context but
eventually diverge.
26. John J. Collins, The Meaning of the End in the Book of Daniel, in Of
Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism and
Christian Origins Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birth-
day (ed. H. W. Attridge et al.; New York: University Press of America, 1990), 92.
27. Sirachs particular language of the end also parallels the appointed end in
Dan 11:35, which is further evidence of Sirachs and Daniels intellectual proximity.
Such eschatological language and phraseology were fairly uncommon.
1
28. Wright, Put the Nations in Fear of You, 90.
in contrast to 51:112, which is otherwise a partner piece to the lament.29

Moreover, Sirach does not ask for forgiveness or confess penitence.
Most striking is the laments willingness to admit that the present situ-
ation of subordination brings into question the incomparability and the
honor of God. In its covenantal relationship to God, Judeas fortunes in
history are supposed to manifest the divine glory and honor, whether in
triumph (Exod 15:3; 2 Sam 7:9, 23; Pss 44:6; 48:11; 76:24) or in defeat
(Jer 7:1014; 25:29; 44:26).30 This is the case even in Israels subjugation
by a foreign power. In these circumstances, deuteronomistic theology
understands the kings as servants and instruments of the Jewish God (2
Kgs 24:120; Jer 27:56; 28:14). In Sirach, however, the foreign kings
deny outright the incomparability of God (Sir 36:5, 12) and do not
recognize Gods power to move history. They understand themselves
alone to be the agents of historical events. Yahweh has no visible role in
historys unfolding narrative. The Jewish faithful are no longer witnesses
of Gods glory but are objects of history and of foreign power, un-
empowered and easily manipulated.
In an attempt to reassert both God and the Jews as visible in history,
the lament asks that God be revealed through those same means that
characterized Gods strength in the Exodus traditions and the Deuterono-
mistic History, that is, in the direct shaping of historical events.31 The
assumption of the lament is that history should display Gods power.32
Signicantly, it is not just the object of the knowledge that is important
to Sirach. The scribe is also concerned with the recipient of the knowl-
edge. So the pleas are not just about manifesting Gods power to the
gentile nations so that they will know and recognize him, though this is
very important. The pleas are also about making God visible to the
chosen people.
The lament gives evidence of the peoples own deep-seated concerns
regarding divine invisibility in history and the means through which God
will be known. To this end, Sirach notes that even the prophets have
suffered a loss of credibility. Now understood as having a primarily
predictive function, the prophets require vindication concerning their
ability to speak about historical outcomes (Sir 36:21).33 Crenshaw
remarks, perhaps a bit too dramatically, that Sirach speaks to those
29. Ibid., 92.

30. See further Glatt-Gilad, Yahwehs Honor at Stake, 6374.
31. Skehan and DiLella, Ben Sira, 42223.
32. The presence of the kvd in the temple is also one of the laments concerns,
but even this appears to be connected to Yahwehs intervention into the temporal
realm.
1
33. Cf. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 142.
whose faith has been shattered by the vicissitudes of history.34 While it

may be overstating the case to claim that their faith has been shattered,
Sirach does lament on behalf of those who perceive their God, and the
systems by which their God was known, to be invisible within the larger
context of Hellenistic politics and culture. As such, the lament desires
Gods glory to be visible to both the kings and the Jews: Even as you
have been made holy in their eyes through us, then become glorious in
our eyes through them (36:4). The community itself is struggling with
how they know God in history.
Within the pleas for divine vengeance and restoration, then, one may
discern the contradiction concerning history that drives the lament. In the
rst place, the laments concern for the prophets and their failing predic-
tive abilities hints at the kind of dissonance that Robert Carroll outlines
in his classic study of the subject.35 Yet this concern is clearly secondary
to the laments larger concern that history is supposed to be the result of
Gods active work. Historical events should showcase divine sovereignty
through political, cultic, and national occurrences. However, Yahwehs
current absence from history has not only allowed gentile rulers to make
claims of absolute power (vv. 13), it has also kept the temple empty of
the kvd (vv. 1819), and has distanced the people from their inheri-
tance (vv. 1317).36
Sirachs deuteronomistic theology of history is no longer able to
provide a meaningful or coherent way of knowing and asserting Gods
power. Instead of direct actions and signs and wonders, Crenshaw
notes that divine activity in Sirach tends to be limited to the marginal
situations of life, particularly sleep, fantasy, and death.37 Moreover,
whereas Sirach would be expected to attribute subordination to the
peoples sins and thus ask for repentance, he does not. Thus, the lament
expresses the perception of contradiction between the past acts of Gods
lordship and power over history and the present experience of divine
marginality, absence, and invisibility.38 This contradiction creates the
34. James Crenshaw, The Problem of Theodicy in Sirach: On Human

Bondage, JBL 94 (1975): 51.
35. Robert P. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Reactions and Responses to Fail-
ure in the Old Testament Prophet Traditions (London: SCM, 1979).
36. Crenshaw, Theodicy, 60, argues that historical experience is no longer the
ground of all knowledge in Sirach. Instead, divine activity is revealed in marginal
situations such as sleep, fantasy, and moments of the end. Although Crenshaw
takes the end to refer to human death, in the lament, it is political and national, not
individual and existential.
37. Ibid., 60.
1
38. Ibid., 54.
dissonance that Sirach pleads will be resolved through future evidence of

deeds of old that will bring an end of foreign sovereignty (vv. 1112)
and the exaltation of the people (vv. 2021). That is, he continues to
appeal to a deuteronomistic resolution, even in the face of its apparent
inadequacy.
Signicantly, there appears to be no single political catalyst that gives
rise to these perceptions. Sirach lived during a period of ongoing politi-
cal tumult, a time when Judea was often the center of conict between
the Ptolemies and Seleucids. Traditionally, commentators have faulted
the Seleucids and/or the Ptolemies for the laments outlook, ascribing to
them some terrible act of Hellenistic oppression or hubris.39 However, the
exact act cannot be pinpointed, as subordination had been an ongoing
reality within Judea. To the contrary, the Charter of Jerusalem issued by
Antiochus III near the beginning of his governance of Judea indicates an
attempt to reassert native religious traditions (for his own political
reasons no doubt).40 Moreover, Sirach speaks glowingly of Simon the
Just, who negotiated the Charter with Antiochus III.41 Although it is not
clear how Sirach viewed Simons positive relationship with the Seleu-
cids, it does indicate a signicant degree of complexity and ambivalence
in Sirachs overall attitude toward Judeas interactions with Hellenistic
culture.42 According to T. Rajak, Sirachs encomium of Simon the Just
may indicate not a dualistic antagonism between traditional Judaism and
liberal Hellenism, but a conuence between reinvented traditional
Judaism and Seleucid Hellenism.43 If Rajak is correct, this cooperation
39. So Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:153, and Skehan and DiLella, Ben
Sira, 422, who fault the Seleucids for this act of hubris. Neither references a primary
source document to support this but Hengel attributes the outcry to the Seleucids
obligatory ruler cult. Caquot, Ben Sira, 49, attributes this same act to the Ptolemies
instead of Antiochus III, but this conclusion is deduced from circumstantial evidence.
40. The Charter is described by Josephus in Ant. 12.142. An extensive discus-
sion of the Charter appears in E. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History
(2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1980). See also A. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish
Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (New York: Brill, 1997), 8082.
41. Wright, Put the Nations in Fear of You, 79, 9091, discusses the irony or
inconsistency at work that Sirach would express so much admiration for Simon the
Just even in his accommodation of Antiochus III, who as a foreign king was the
target of Sirachs critique.
42. Wright, Put the Nations in Fear of You, agrees with Marbck, Das Gebet,
106, that the prayer may reect an emerging reaction to new developments in the
dealings with the kings.
43. T. Rajak, Hasmonean Kingship and the Invention of Tradition, in Aspects
of Hellenistic Kingship (ed. P. Bilde et al.; Studies in Hellenistic Civilization 7;
Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1996), 1013.
1
may mark a Judaism in transition to new ways of thinking about how its
political and cultural systems were connected to other cultural systems.44
The lament and the hymn taken together indicate that this transition is
sometimes creative and sometimes a conictual undertaking.45
Sirachs lament and the reuse of Nebuchadnezzars dream grow out
of the communitys creative wrestling with another, more powerful,
cultural and political system. Using the insights of post-colonial theory,
Daniel Smith-Christopher has argued that such uses of wisdom literature
are the work of a minority community trying to negotiate a situation of
forced inter-cultural contact.46 In such circumstances, subordinated
communities maintain their identities and convictions by negotiating
with the dominant culture from the margins. This negotiation is complex.
For the subordinated community, it is not always simply a matter of
rejecting the values of the dominant culture. Instead, the community
often experiences both fascination and threat in the face of the other.47
The minority community will often choose to create a hybrid identity.
In so doing, the community uses its traditions even while creatively
adapting them under conditions of contingency and contradictoriness.48
44. Ibid., 101, countering Hengel. The issue of the intersection between Judaism
and Hellenism in Judah during the third and second centuries B.C.E. is a notoriously
contested one. Martin Hengels thesis in Judaism and Hellenism, 1:104, of a wide-
spread Hellenism within Judea by the middle of the third century B.C.E. that was
disrupted by a nationalistic backlash during the second century but then resumed in
the rst centuries B.C.E. and C.E. has been enormously inuential. Yet it has also
been questioned stridently by Louis Feldman. A summary of his position may be
found in How Much Hellenism in the Land of Israel?, JSJ 33 (2002): 290313.
Hengels thesis has been moderated but not rejected. The most important re-arti-
culations of it are found in J. J. Collins, Cult and Culture: The Limits of Helleni-
zation in Judea, in Collins and Sterling, eds., Hellenism in the Land of Israel, 3861.
45. Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 268. There seems to be evidence
of a high degree of compatibility between Hellenistic culture and Jewish culture
during the third and second centuries B.C.E. Nevertheless, as Collins notes in Cult
and Culture, 42, there were occasions on which Jews were confronted with a
decision as to how much Hellenism was acceptable, or how far traditional practices
could be abandoned. Various Jews might draw the line at different points and
customs. See also Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Sects in the Maccabean Era,
8190, with respect to the slightly later period of the Hasmoneans and their
interactions with Seleucids and Hellenistic culture that he argues gave rise to the
ourishing of sectarianism.
47. Ibid., 266.
48. H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 2, quoted in
Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 268.
1
At the same time, the community can choose to remain differentiated

from the culture, which may take the form of resistance and opposition,
either culturally or religiously.
Sirach 36:122 and Dan 2:3145 both constitute complex responses to
the dominant culture and their kings. Both clearly bear the marks of
hybrid cultural identitiesthey both creatively weave foreign knowledge
and an attraction to things foreign into their Israelite heritage. So Sirach
delights in his role in foreign governments, serving before rulers (Sir
6:34; 7:14; 15:5, 21:17; 38:33, 39:4), even as he espouses deuterono-
mistic theology and the wisdom of the ancients from Israels past.49 For
its part, Dan 2 in its late third-century setting gives abundant evidence of
a scribal community that has also creatively used foreign materials such
as Mesopotamian manticism50 and Persian historiography,51 learned in
the diaspora but then brought back to Judea,52 to talk about the Jewish
God.
The redaction and reuse of Dan 2:3145 may be seen as a response to
the kind of questions and difculties raised by Sirachs lament. I do not
mean that this is an intentional response, but rather one that emerges
more obliquely and indirectly within the scribal communities of the third
and second centuries with their differing ways of knowing.53 If deuterono-
mistic ways of knowing God no longer preserve divine incomparability
and honor, what will? Indeed, as Sirach pleads for an eschatological end
to the nations, Nebuchadnezzars dream provides a vision of precisely
that. And yet it is as if the reader only gets to hear half of the conver-
sation at any given time. Sirach speaks what Dan 2:3145 does not.
49. Horsley, The Politics of Production, 127; Hengels discussion (Judaism

and Hellenism, 13153) of Sirachs controversy with Hellenistic Liberalism,
which shows how Sirach both accepted and critiqued various aspects of Hellenistic
and foreign culture, should be read in light of Smith-Christophers argument that
oppositional language can itself be part of the work of creating a hybrid minority
identity.
50. On the Mesopotamian background of the tales, see Lawson, The God Who
Reveals Secrets, JSOT 74 (1997): 6176; Karel van der Toorn, Scholars at the
Oriental Court: The Figure of Daniel Against Its Mesopotamian Background, in
Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:3753.
51. I refer here to the four-kingdom schema, widely recognized to be of eastern
or Persian origin. See Flusser, The Four Empires, 14875; Collins, Daniel, 16670.
52. Davies, Scribal School of Daniel, 257, suggests that the maklm may have
brought the earlier Daniel materials in Dan 26 with them into Judea after returning
from the diaspora not too long before the events of the late third century.
53. Horsley, Politics of Cultural Production, 133, suggests that Sirach circles
and Daniel circles may have been engaged in conict, but I think he is referring
more generally to contrasting ways of doing wisdom rather than gang-ghts.
1
Conversely, what Dan 2:3145 can afrm Sirach cannot. Sirachs lament
expresses dissonance, but it cannot fully bring itself to afrm Gods
power over kings and Gods presence with the community.
I take Dan 2s utter silence on the possibility of divine impotence and
absence to be more than accidental. As with Sirachs gaps and silences
around deuteronomistic theology, I read Dan 2s silence as a strategy of
containmentan attempt to eliminate and repress those things that
contradict the solution being offered.54 Gale Yee elucidates this dynamic
in the following way:
As Marxist literary critic Pierre Macherey states, In order to say any-
thing, there are other things which must not be said. In trying to articu-
late what it regards as the truth, the text cannot express things that will
contradict that truth. In these silences, in the texts gaps and absences,
the presence of ideology is most tangibly perceived.55
The contradiction that propels the writing of the text in the rst place,
and yet remains unspoken, constitutes the absent real. Daniel 2:3145
does not give explicit evidence of the dissonance, yet provides an alter-
native way of knowing that emerges in the kings recognition that the
Jewish God is indeed God of gods and Lord of kings (2:47). In this
broken conversation, Sirach articulates the issue that constitutes the
absent real in Nebuchadnezzars dream, that God is not only invisible,
but also impotent. The third-century reading of Nebuchadnezzars dream
resolves this contradiction, not through deuteronomistic frameworks of
knowing God in history, but by adopting foreign frameworks of history
and creatively adapting them to understand Gods power in new ways.56
4. Translation of Daniel 2:3145

(31) You, O king, were watching, and see! A vast image! That image was
huge and its brightness was excessive. It rose before you and its appear-
ance was terrible.
(32)
As for that statue, its head was of good gold, its breast and arms were
of silver, its belly and thighs were of bronze, (33) its lower legs were of
iron, its feet were partly of iron and partly of clay. (34) You were watching
as a stone was broken off, not by human hands. It struck the image upon
54. This method and its assumptions here have been explored by Jameson, The
Political Unconscious, 74102, which, unfortunately, is practically unreadable. For
something more readable, see R. Boer, Jameson and Jeroboam (SBL Semeia Series;
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 49, and also Yee, Ideological Criticism, 15152.
55. Yee, Ideological Criticism, 151 (emphasis in the quote from Pierre
Macherey are his).
1
56. Newsom, The Historical Rsum, 22628.
its feet of iron and clay and it crushed them. (35) Then the iron, clay,
bronze, silver, and the gold were crushed altogether and became like
chaff from the threshing oors of summer. Then the wind carried them
away and no place for them was found.57 But the stone that struck the
image became a huge mountain58 and it lled the whole earth.
(36)
This is the dream. Now, we will declare its interpretation before the
king.
(37)
You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given
the kingdom, the power, the might, and the honor (38) and has given into
your handhumans, wherever they dwell,59 the beast of the eld, the bird
of heaven, and has made you ruler over all of themyou are the head of
gold. (39) After you, another kingdom will arise inferior to yours; then a
third kingdom, of bronze, that will rule over all the earth.
(40)
The fourth kingdom will be strong as iron, because of this the iron will
crush and grind everything. Like the iron, which crushes and grinds,60 it
will crush and grind all these things.61 (41) Whereas you saw the feet and
the toes, partly of potters clay and partly of ironthe kingdom will be
divided and it will not have the rmness of iron within it. Therefore, you
57. Jones, Ideas of History, 25657, argues that CE, though frequently

translated as trace based on Old South Arabic and Ethiopic, has a more immediate
spatial sense attested in Ezra 5:15 and 6:7. See also Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of
the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yershalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New
York: Judaica, 1971, 1996), 133, who equates CE and the Heb. )HB>. Theod also
translates it as UPQPK.
58. The lamed of CH= can be read as either an accusative, as taken above, or as a
genitive of sourcethe rock was of a great mountain. The verb E=> favors the
accusative reading.
59. The syntax of *JC5 is ambiguous. Does it refer to humans, beasts, and birds,
or just to humans? The MT punctuation and the LXX read it as pertaining to humans.
See Montgomery, Daniel, 17273; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 141.
60. On the text-critical problems here, see Collins, Daniel, 151 n. 101. The OG
omits the phrase, like the iron which crushes and grinds. J. Goldingay, Daniel
(WBC 30; Dallas: Word, 1989), 32, 35 n. 40c.c, preserves the double reading.
61. Collins, Daniel, 151, takes *J==< as the object of the preceding verb.
However, in order to complete the simile, it is the fourth kingdom, not the iron,
which should be crushing all things. See also Goldingay, Daniel, 32, 35 n. 49d.d.
4QDana preserves this idea: it will crush and grind the whole earth. See E. Ulrichs
critical reconstruction of the Daniel manuscripts in Daniel Manuscripts from
Qumran, Part I: A Preliminary Edition of 4QDana, BASOR 268 (1987): 27. Papyrus
967 gives a more complicated reading that mistakenly reads all these things as all
the trees but it does preserve the idea that the fourth kingdom will cut down all the
trees and that the whole earth will be shaken. For a critical reconstruction and dis-
cussion of this verse in Papyrus 967, see W. Hamm, The Septuaginta-Text des
Buches Daniel, Kap.12, Nach dem Koelner Teil des Papyrus 967 (Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1969), 25658.
1
saw the iron mixed with the clay. (42) And the toes of the feet, some of
iron and some of claypart of the end of the kingdom will be strong and
part of it will be broken in pieces. (43) Whereas you saw the iron mixed
with the clay, they will be mixed by means of human descendents but
they will not cling to one another, just as the iron did not mix with the
clay. (44) In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will establish a
kingdom that will be forever. It will not be destroyed and the kingdom
will not be left to another people. It will shatter and put an end to all of
these kingdoms but it will stand forever. (45) Therefore, you saw that from
the mountain62 a stone was broken off which was not by human hands
and it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold.
The great God has made known to the king what will be after this. The
dream is certain and its interpretation is trustworthy.
5. Nebuchadnezzars Dream and the Experience

of Hellenistic Rule
The early Seleucid reuse of Nebuchadnezzars dream represents an
attempt to reread the communitys present experience of subordination
in such a way that Gods visible power may be reasserted. The dream
does this by placing their experience of subordination into a historical
framework that can reconcile various tensive needs. Some of these needs
include showing how Gods power may be visibly manifested through
foreign kings even while shifting away from a retributional theology,
legitimating foreign power even while limiting it, or afrming Gods
world-historical power and Gods immanence with the Jewish com-
munity.
In order to explore how this passage maintains these tensions for the
early Seleucid period, I will begin toward the end of the story of foreign
kingship, at the point at which the scribal community reused Nebuchad-
nezzars dream to reect their perceptions and experiences of subordi-
nation. From there I will work backwards to examine how the dream in
its entirety helped them narrate a meaningful drama of Gods power at
work in history.
The Seleucid updating of the dream, which inserted vv. 4143, reects
the scribal communitys observations about foreign power. These verses
recall, in highly allusive and elliptical fashion, a brutal story emerging
from the Seleucid and Ptolemaic power struggle for Judea. This particu-
lar story seems to refer to one of two inter-dynastic marriages, also
62. A gloss to clarify the confusion in v. 35 regarding the CH=, according to

Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 141.
1
referred to in Dan 11:6 and 17. The rst marriage, which tends to be
accepted as the referent for vv. 4143, was between the Seleucid king
Antiochus II and Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in 252.63
The marriage was arranged by the Ptolemies, who had gained control
over Judea, but wished to maintain an alliance with the Seleucids. The
marriage ended tragically, as Antiochuss estranged rst wife, Laodice,
poisoned him and had Berenice and her infant son murdered as well.
Laodices sons could then be reinstated as his successors. This set in
motion further retaliations from the Ptolemies against the Seleucids
(11:7).64 The second marriage, between Ptolemy V and Cleopatra, daugh-
ter of Antiochus III, in 194 B.C.E. was not so bloody. Antiochus III, now
in control of Judea, had arranged the marriage with Ptolemy in order to
attain power over the Egyptian throne. However, the plan did not
succeed, as Cleopatra sided with the Ptolemies against her father.65
These verses reveal some measure of the historical conditions of bru-
tality and deceit that the realpolitik of Seleucid and Ptolemaic leadership
had created. The political maneuvering of the Diadochoi, coupled with a
brutal grab for power that resulted in death and the splintering of
alliances prompted the community to understand how God is at work in
such a history.
The redactors response is to insert this experience into the historical
framework already established earlier, one which had taken the guise of a
statue supposedly revealed in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar. By this time,
the dream report of the statue made of gold, silver, bronze, and iron
mixed with clay (Dan 2:3135) had already acquired its interpretation
(vv. 3640, 4445), which identied the four metals with the four world
empires. Several aspects of the dream and its interpretation need com-
ment. Nebuchadnezzars dream recounts history, but it does not do that
in a straightforward narrative account. Instead, the passage constitutes
mantic historiography or revealed history. It comes in the form of a
dream vision, which is typically broken into dream report and a divinely
inspired interpretation.66 The dream form relies on the use of symbolic
63. H. L. Ginsberg, The Composition of the Book of Daniel, VT 4 (1954): 250,

argues that only the rst marriage is in view because of its disastrous outcome.
Others, however, including Collins, Daniel, 170, and Redditt, Nebuchadnezzar,
402, maintain that it could conceivably refer to the second marriage as well.
64. Rowley, Darius the Mede, 9495.
65. Seow, Daniel, 175.
66. A. Leo Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East
with a Translation of an Assyrian Dream-Book (Philadelphia: The American
Philosophical Society, 1956), 206.
1
gures to convey meaning. This is the case here as well. The symbolic
gures presented in the dream report are signicant to the interpreta-
tions narration of history. Specically, the key to the interpretations
narration of history is the development of the parts of the statue as
opposed to the dream reports emphasis on the whole statue.
6. The Dream Report

The dream report presents the statue in its entirety in v. 31. Although it
describes the statues four metals, which elsewhere correspond to four
metallic ages,67 the dream report emphasizes synchronic timetime
taken as a whole.68 In this depiction, the emphasis is placed on the simple
opposition between king and God and Gods triumph. Several clues, both
literary and cultural in nature, suggest that the statue signals a royal
gure and his implicit claims to divine legitimacy. The text itself calls
the statue a >=4, which is a cognate of the Akkadian term for sculptures
of divine and royal gures. As Seow argues, it is likely that a royal statue
is intended here in a passage centrally concerned with kingship.69
Redditt notes that v. 31 emphasizes the statues extraordinary size
(3C *<5 >=4 J8 5I )=4 H=H, v. 31) and its impression on the viewer
as one that is terrifying and awesome (=JI5 9HCH (=3B= )B, v. 31).70
Scholars have often pointed to the colossal gures known from Rhodes,
67. A similar use of the four metallic ages may be seen in Hesiod, Works and
Days (1.109201), which dates from the eighth century B.C.E. Commentators gener-
ally argue that Dan 2 does not borrow from Hesiod but relies on perhaps a Persian
use of the four metallic ages that was commonly available in the diaspora. This
Persian tradition may have come from a source that Hesiod borrowed as well, since
Hesiod adapts the tradition himself. However, much of this reconstruction is hypo-
thetical. The Persian connection is largely made by means of the Bahman Yasht, a
Persian oracle concerning a tree with four branches of gold, silver, steel, and mixed
iron, which, however, dates to the ninth century C.E., though contains older tradi-
tions. See further, Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 3744, and idem, Daniel, 16263.
There has been debate concerning how this tradition came to the author of Dan 2.
Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 37; A. Hultgrd, Bahman Yasht: A Persian Apoca-
lypse, in Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala
Colloquium (ed. J. Collins and J. Charlesworth; JSPSup 9; Shefeld: JSOT, 1991),
117; and Hasel, The Four World Empires of Daniel 2, 21, all argue that the author
of Dan 2 was appropriating a tradition widely available in the east but was
epitomized in the Bahman Yasht.
1
70. Redditt, Daniel, 58.
Thebes, Assyria, and Persia as a possible inspiration for the dream.71

Certainly, such gures were part of diaspora life, as royal statues and
reliefs appeared throughout the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian
empires, and even into Egypt under Persian rule.72 Common to the
depiction of the king in all of these periods is the use of size and other
spatial dimensions to convey the power of the king.73 The propagandistic
function of size is illustrated well in items such as the colossal statue of
Darius I, almost nine feet tall, which was created to assert Dariuss
power over the Egyptian people.74 Similarly, the magnicent Behistun
relief, measuring approximately eighteen feet tall by nine feet wide and
looking down from a height of 250 feet, depicted Dariuss triumph over
and punishment of his political enemies.75 Art historians have noted the
effect that these items were supposed to have on viewers. Much like the
statues effect upon Nebuchadnezzar in v. 31, ancient Near Eastern
depictions of the king were designed to create fear and awe in the
viewer.76
Royal monumental art was so effective at representing and promoting
the kings claims to power that defacement and destruction became a
similarly effective means of opposition. Such tactics occurred in the
ancient Near East and also in the Hebrew Bible. Plutarch records the
story of Alexander the Great destroying a statue of Xerxes after the
Greeks defeated their longtime rival.77 For his own part, Xerxes is said to
71. E. Siegman, The Stone Hewn from the Mountain (Daniel 2), CBQ 18
(1956): 366; Redditt, Daniel, 58; Towner, Daniel, 36.
72. Persian monumental art and its accompanying ideology represent a common
cultural idiom in the ancient Near East during and even before the Persian and
Hellenistic periods. On Persias own use and reuse of Assyrian and Babylonian
styles and subjects in its art, see M. C. Root, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid
Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 2
39. Persia also borrowed ideas from and exported its imperial art to other places,
such as Elam and Egypt, during the sixth and fth centuries B.C.E.
73. See further G. Azarpay, Proportions in Ancient Near Eastern Art, CANE
4:2507; P. Albenda, Monumental Art of the Assyrian Empire: Dynamics of Compo-
sition Styles (MANE 3; Malibu: Undena, 1998), 30: J. Davis-Kimball, Proportions
in Achaemenid Art (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989);
M. Marcus, Art and Ideology in Ancient Western Asia, CANE 4:248792;
I. Winter, Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Neo-Assyrian Reliefs, Studies
in Visual Communication 7 (1981): 238.
74. Root, King and Kingship, 6872; Azarpay, Proportions, 4:2517.
75. Root, King and Kingship, 59, 18587.
76. Root, King and Kingship, 18994; Azarpay, Proportions, 4:2517.
77. From Plutarchs Alexander 37.3, recorded in Root, King and Kingship,
12930.
1
have participated in the regular defacing of Marduks statue in Babylon.

He allegedly removed the hands of the same statue on a regular basis as a
means of demonstrating his own sovereignty over Babylon and the
impotence of Marduk as Babylons national god.78 Similarly, 1 Sam 5:3
4 recounts the defacing of the statue of Dagon as a symbol of the defeat
of Philistine claims to power.79 Thus, when the stone destroys the statue
in v. 34, it is easily understood as opposition to the kings power. Not
only this, royal statues often invoke the gods and their support for the
kings reign. The stone in this passage, however, is the gure of divine
power (cf. Deut 32:18; Isa 44:8),80 and thus its destruction of the statue
signals Gods rejection of foreign rule. The dream report stresses that
foreign rule is categorically opposed to divine rule which will ultimately
gain ascendancy as the stone grows into a mountain and utterly displaces
the statue (v. 35). This categorical opposition to the king is leftover
residue from the late exilic-period resistance to Nabonidus. Later redac-
tors, however, invest the imagery of the dream with a somewhat different
view of Gods actions in history.
7. Making God Visible in History

a. The Manifestation of God through the King
The interpretation provides a different reading of the relationship between
God and history than that of the dream report. The interpretation makes
the four-kingdom schema of history explicit and focuses on the succes-
sion of empires.81 The temporal development offered in the interpretation
allows the simple opposition of the dream report to be developed into a
more complex outworking of Gods actions in history, especially with
respect to kings.
78. Discussed in Eddy, The King is Dead, 30.

79. See further P. Kyle McCarter, 1 Samuel (AB 8; New York: Doubleday,
1980), 12425.
80. Seow, Rule of God, 223.
81. There is precedent for this kind of technique in the ancient Near East. A
similar relationship between synchronicity and diachronicity may be found between
the relief and the inscription of the Behistun monument inscribed by Darius II.
While the relief shows Dariuss defeat of his enemies as a synchronic, highly
symbolized act, the historical narrative in the inscription reveals that the triumph was
the result of a series of battles. In depicting the culmination of these battles as a
singular moment, however, the monument visually maximizes Dariuss power and
allows the viewer to grasp as a unied whole the history of Dariuss military feats.
See further Root, King and Kingship, 18687.
1
The narration depicts Gods legitimation of Nebuchadnezzar. Indeed,

he is even idealized as the head of gold, evoking pictures of him as the
primal human.82 As the one who has divinely given authority over the
the beast of the eld and the bird of the heavens (2:38; cf. Jer 27:56;
28:14), Nebuchadnezzar would seem to reect the rst human in Gen
1:26 and 28 (cf. Ps 8:5, 9). And because the primal human is also made
in the image of God, one may hear the echoes of ancient Near Eastern
royal ideology in which the kings legitimacy, his reciprocal relationship
with the divine, could be rooted in his physical resemblance to the deity.
Divine approval of the king is registered in terms of physical continu-
ity with the king. Especially instructive in this regard is a letter to
Esarhaddon in which the writer tells the Assyrian king, The father of the
king, my lord, was the very image of Bel, and the king, my lord, is like-
wise the very image of Bel.83 The king enjoys the privilege of being the
image of the god. Yet this relationship is also reciprocal. As the kings
authority is validated in his bearing the image of the god, so too does the
king make Bel physically visible, not just metaphorically or politically
visible. In so far as Nebuchadnezzar is the head of the statue, described
as >=4, Nebuchadnezzar is also an image of God. The language of
image used in the Assyrian letter is a-lam, the cognate of the Aramaic
used to describe the statue in v. 31 and also the cognate to the Hebrew
word for image, used in reference to God, in Gen 1:26.84
The tale connects Nebuchadnezzars ability to image God, to make
God visible, with his ability to recognize the God of Daniel as the God of
gods (2:47). As Sirachs lament demonstrates, this is precisely what the
scribal community desiresthat God would be known to the gentiles
(Sir 36:5). Confessions of Gods power from outsiders were especially
valuable to the Jewish community. Such confessions may be seen in the
biblical tradition (e.g. Josh 2:911) and in Josephuss story of Alexander
the Greats visit to Jerusalem (Ant. 11.304). These confessions not only
reafrm divine power for the community, but they also make the
community itself visible and signicant in the Hellenistic world. Erich
Gruen speaks of this phenomenon in reference to the Josephus story con-
cerning Alexander the Greats arrival in Jerusalem and his subsequent
honoring of the Jewish God:
82. So Towner, Daniel, 37, and Seow, From Mountain to Mountain, 366.
Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 149, however, dismiss the connection.
83. Quoted in Kutsko, Ezekiels Anthropology and Its Ethical Implications,
127.
1
84. See also Seow, From Mountain to Mountain, 36466.
The story implied that Jews both of Palestine and of the Diaspora would
become an integral part of the Macedonian empireand that they would
hold a distinct and privileged position within it. The suzerains secular
power is clear and unequivocal. But that power itself derives from the
God of the Hebrew patriarchs whose authority Alexander openly and
publicly recognizes.85
Similarly, Nebuchadnezzar is strangely idealized, as he is shown con-

fessing the God of Daniel. Yet this confession afrms not only Gods
place in the foreigners world, but also the Jewish communitys place in
that world.
In its narration of history, the interpretation emphasizes only the rst
and last kingdoms, drawing a contrast between Nebuchadnezzar and the
Hellenistic kingdom.86 The fourth kingdom is comprised of iron mixed
with clay. It does not enjoy the same kind of reciprocity with the deity
that Nebuchadnezzar enjoys. Here the interpretation narrates for the com-
munity its own conict with Hellenistic power. It articulates the strength
and aggression that the community experiences using the imagery of the
crushing iron (v. 40). At the same time, the interpretation shows the
fragility of Hellenistic power through its reference to the divided toes
made of clay. Its militarism and aggression will in fact be repaid in kind
as the stone shatters it (BB5, v. 44), just as the fourth kingdom had
shattered (BB5, v. 40) previous kingdoms.
The passage evokes the royal ideology of the king as the image of God
at the beginning, but by the end of this history it has established that
divine power does not in fact resemble the king. Divine power comes in
the form of the stone, not in the anthropomorphic representation of the
statue. The nal kingdom comes into being without the use of hands
(vv. 34, 45). Though the interpretation emphasizes Gods active power
in bringing this situation about (J> 9= )JBJ, v. 44), the Hithpeel form
of the verb cut (ECK8E/9) that is used in vv. 34 and 45 begins to
disguise the doer of the action. Gods activity will ultimately not be
visible through human kings.
This conicting view of kingship should be read in terms of the
rsums attempt to adjudicate two important afrmations for the scribal
community. In so far as kings successfully arise and rule in history, their
power is derived from the God of heaven (2:37; note the universalizing
epithet for the divine).87 They are instruments of divine purposes.88 The
85. E. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Re-Invention of Jewish Tradition

(Berkeley: UCLA, 1998), 198.
86. Goldingay, Daniel, 49.
87. Davies, Daniel, 83, argues that such generic and universalizing epithets for
Yahweh indicate Gods cooperation or accommodation to the king.
1
rsum here adopts Jeremiahs view of the king as the servant of God
(Jer 27:56; 28:14). Yet the destruction of imperial history at the time of
the end also argues that the king does not have a reciprocal relationship
with God. The king does not enjoy the privilege of validating God, repre-
senting divine agency, or ruling according to divine purposes. The kings
power over history is limited and will be subject to ultimate judgment by
the God of heaven (2:44). Daniel 2 here rejects the Judean ideology of
rule from the Persian period in which the king is Gods messiah (Isa
44:2845:1), the one who actualizes Gods will in history.89 God does not
simply accommodate or cooperate with kings according to Dan 2.90
Indeed, the dream may well be attempting to adjudicate a shifting
ideology of rule taking place within the story cycle of Dan 26 as a
whole. As the realities of Hellenistic rule question deuteronomistic
frameworks for history, they also challenge the older ideologies of rule
that legitimated gentile rule. Within the larger story cycle, Nebuchad-
nezzars dream provides a narrative resolution wherein gentile kingship
may be tolerated for a time, even as it remains subject to suspicion.
The rsum indicates the initial validation of kings and then their
ultimate rejection even as it also afrms that God is both powerful in
history and present with the community. The experience of subordination
is authored by God, according to 2:38, but that does not thereby indicate
Gods unequivocal investment in the foreign king or Gods abandonment
of the people. The strategy of transcendence afforded by the vision of the
end (2:34, 45) shows that the experience of domination will be ended and
the fortunes of the community reversed. Moreover, Gods power will
become most visibly present as it ultimately abides with the community
in the nal kingdom.
b. God as a Force in Foreign History

Whereas the dream report depicts divine activity as entering imperial
history only at its ending, the interpretation rereads the dream report in
such a way that God is inserted as a force that propels all of history. The

89. S. Japhet, Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel: Against the Background of the
Historical and Religious Tendencies of EzraNehemiah, ZAW 94 (1982): 108.
90. Contra Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 358, who argues that in the
tales, the kingdoms of human kings and God are simultaneous if not identical [A]
good king expresses and exercises the sovereignty of God. In the visions, on the
other hand, the two are in principle incompatible, and the sovereignty of God
remains something to be manifested in the endi.e., not simultaneously but
successively. In fact, neither of these statements accurately describes the ideology
of rule exhibited by Dan 2:3145.
1
interpretation reworks the beginning and the ending of the schema in

order to highlight divine activity as that which ultimately shapes the
course of imperial succession. The interpretation accomplishes this
through the imagery of the hand. In v. 38, God inaugurates this history
of empire and also the communitys exile by giving all things into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar ((5J3 39J). Notably, this inauguration contrasts
with the deuteronomistic portrayal of exile as the result of faithlessness
(2 Kgs 2425). Both here and in Dan 1:2, Gods giving of power to
Nebuchadnezzar is not explained in terms of the communitys culpabil-
ity. The focus of this historical presentation is primarily on Gods inter-
action, not with the community, but with the kings and empires. This
history displays Gods incomparability by revealing the deitys interac-
tions with these world-historical powers. Similarly, God brings history to
its end, but this is done without hands (*J5J3=, v. 45).
Commentators have noted that though divine activity brackets this
history, God is not active within it. Gerhard von Rad, who judged Dan-
iels presentation of history according to the salvation history of the
earlier Israelite traditions, leveled this as a critique against the perceived
weakness of the rsums view of divine activity.91 And indeed, this
depiction of Gods activity in history does diverge from Sirachs own
plea that God would raise your hand against the foreign folk (v. 3) and
show forth the splendor of your right hand and arm (v. 7).92 Sirachs
requests reect his own attachment to deuteronomistic convictions of
history and how it should reveal divine power; convictions that had
become the source of dissonance in the face of subordination.
The dream interpretation in Dan 2 uses bracketing to adjudicate the
contradictions at the root of this dissonance. In placing Gods actions at
the beginning and ending of history, the rsum shows that God is the
one who propels history even when not directly intervening with the
right hand and arm. The causative or Haphel form of the verb rule
(=) in 2:38 marks Yahwehs inauguration of imperial history. It
emphasizes Yahwehs deliverance, according to the divine prerogative
alone, of all creatures and humans into the power of Nebuchadnezzar.
Similarly, Yahwehs activity will also bring the end of imperial history,
emphasized by the use of another causative verb ()HB, v. 44). Recalling
Ricoeurs principle of narrative circularity, one sees here that the ending
91. Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:3036; Davies, Daniel, 8687.
92. Translations are those of Stephan Reif, Prayer in Ben Sira, Qumran and
Second Temple Judaism: A Comparative Overview, in Ben Siras God: Proceed-
ings of the International Ben Sira Conference, Durham, Upshaw College, 2001
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 332.
1
bends around to the beginning, so that Gods power envelopes all of the
historical narrative.93 This construction of divine activity thus afrms
what had been contradictory for Sirach, that God remains the ultimate
power over history even in the absence of Gods salvic nearness.
c. Patterns of History as a Means of Knowing

This historical narrative abandons typical Israelite historiographical
traditions and patterns, such as the deuteronomistic pattern of apostasy,
oppression, crying out, and deliverance.94 So, too, does this narrative
abandon the notion of salvation history, or Gods liberating activity
with the ancestors and at the exodus. The narrative depends, instead, on
foreign historiographical traditions which reorient divine power.
The passage comprises an unusual technique of historiography in so
far as it is a vaticinium ex eventu. Commentators have often judged
prophecy after the fact to be a device designed to boost the credibility of
the dreams actual prophecies by prefacing them with past events pre-
sented as future.95 However, G. I. Davies has argued that the convention
itself marks a particular way of thinking about history that involves
studying the past to discern recurring patterns that may make sense of the
present and even determine the future.96 The framework of four king-
doms and four metallic ages allows the community to predict and impose
an ending to imperial history. It appears to do this through the number
four, which contains in itself a sense of wholeness or completion.97 Carol
Newsom argues that the use of four allows the community to project
completeness onto time and events. Thus to organize thinking about
kingdoms into a sequence of four suggests completion. After that, what-
ever happens is discontinuous.98

94. The pattern of the Deuteronomistic History propounded by Hans W. Wolff,
The Kerygma of the Deuteronomic Historical Work, in The Vitality of Old
Testament Traditions (ed. Walter Brueggemann and Hans W. Wolff; Atlanta: John
Knox, 1982), 83100; repr. from ZAW 73 (1961): 17186.
95. So, for example, this is the view expressed by J. J. Collins, Pseudonymity,
Historical Reviews, and the Genre of the Revelation of John, CBQ 39 (1977):
32943.
96. Davies, Apocalyptic and Historiography, 1528; see also, C. Newsom,
Past as Revelation: History in Apocalyptic Literature, QR 4 (1984): 4053.
97. Martin Noth, The Understanding of History in Old Testament Apocalyptic,
in The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies (trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas;
Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966), 206; C. Lattey, The Book of Daniel (Dublin:
Browne & Nolan, 1948), 63.
1
The four-kingdom schema provides the community with a meaning-

ful framework in which to understand their history. It frames their
experience of subordination with some accuracy and thus provides
coherence on that account. But, signicantly, it does not trap them into a
history of subordination in which Gods mighty deeds are always in
the past and never realized in the present, which is the problem present in
Sir 36:20. The rsums use of the schema works to establish the com-
munity and their God in relation to the foreign powers in such a way that
they can imagine the transcendence of that experience by projecting a
point at which the pattern will be disrupted permanently and foreign
power replaced permanently by native rule.99
8. Conclusion
The challenges posed by life under Hellenistic rule, and especially the
rule of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, have rendered both God and the
Jewish community invisible. Who or what will make God visible? How
will God be known in history? These are questions with which Sirach
openly wrestles and with which the third century audience of Dan 2 is
implicitly wrestling. In response, the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzars
dream provides the community with the means to answer these questions
and to make God visible in history as a world historical power. As the
gentile king acknowledges and manifests God, the community is able to
reclaim divine power and also construct their own place as a minority
community among a dominant other. At the same time, the dream and its
interpretation recognize the harshness of the experience of gentile rule
and turn to a new pattern of history that will allow them to embrace the
imminent end of that rule and the hope for not only their own return to
power at the end, but also Gods manifestation through them.
1
99. Ibid., 228.
Chapter 3
VISIBLE TENSIONS:
DIVINE POWER AND PRESENCE IN DANIEL 7
1. Daniel 7 as the Structural and Theological Hinge

Daniel 7 occupies a pivotal position within a book divided by style,
form, and language, a point that others have noted.1 From its position at
the actual center of the book, the chapter provides various links between
the two halves.2 In language and thematic content it completes the sym-
metry of the Aramaic half of the book, creating an outer ring with ch. 2s
vision of four world kingdoms that encloses the next concentric rings
formed by chs. 3 and 6 and chs. 4 and 5.3 Moreover, ch. 7s form as
symbolic vision and its historical rsum connects Nebuchadnezzars
dream in 2:3145, embedded within the court-tale, with the visions and
rsums of chs. 812. In all of these things, ch. 7 acts as a hinge for the
book of Daniel structurally, thematically, formally, as it mediates two
sometimes very disparate halves.
1. See, for instance, Raymond Hammer, The Book of Daniel (CBC; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1976), 74; Davies, Daniel, 58; Goldingay, Daniel, 159;
Towner, Daniel, 91.
2. Dan 7s position between two halves of a book divided in one way by
language (Aramaic 27; Hebrew 1, 812) and in another way by form (16; 712)
has been central to the long-running discussion between scholars on Daniels devel-
opment. Adrien Lenglet, La Structure Littraire de Daniel 27, Bib 53 (1972):
16990; Albertz, Social Setting, 1:171204; and Kratz, Visions of Daniel, 1:91
113, have supported a theory of development in which ch. 7 belongs to the rst half
of the book with chs. 26. This is based on linguistic considerations and also on the
overarching narrative structure of these chapters, which form a chiasm. However,
Lacocque, The Book of Daniel, 810, 122, 138; Collins, Daniel with an Introduction
to Apocalyptic Literature, 2739, inter alia, have instead placed Dan 7 in the second
half of the book with chs. 810 because of its formal character as vision.
1
3. Lenglet, La Structure, 18490.
Daniel 7 is central to the book theologically as well as structurally.

This is largely due to its graphic depiction of divine power as that which
triumphs over and above the four beasts. The theophany of Dan 7 is
visually powerful and its details have long attracted the attention of
scholars who have been fascinated not only by the portrayal of God, but
also by the portrayal of the enigmatic one in human form (i.e. one like
a Son of Man). If, as Fewell remarks, divine invisibility is the chief
problem of sovereignty in the book, Dan 7 seems to triumph over that
issue splendidly. God is nowhere more visible in the horizon of the book
than here. Indeed, God is hardly more visible in the rest of the Hebrew
Bible, with the exception of Ezek 13 and 810 and perhaps Isa 6.
The depiction of God makes the chapter a theological center of gravity
that seems to pull the entire book together around the triumph of divine
sovereignty. As Fewell notes,
The world of Daniel contains an ironic circle of sovereignty. God may
establish kings and kingdoms and allow them to pass awaybut when
they pass away God must start again the struggle to gain recognition
At least Daniel 7 discerns the maddening circle. Daniels rst vision is a
vision of a world in which the cycle will be broken. A kingdom will
nally be established in which the sovereignty of God is not dependent
upon the attitudes of human monarchs, but is immediately recognized by
everyone. The one who is ancient of days will become a visible pres-
ence. A kingdom will be established that really does have legislative
authority.4
Yet the force of this gravity, much like a hinge, has the ability to hold
together things that might otherwise pull away from each other. In this
case, the vision holds together a number of tensions emerging in the
Jewish communitys experience of power in history. These tensions are
reected in the very structure and redaction of the chapter. Formally, it is
a symbolic vision that is expected to break into two roughly symmetrical
partsone part containing the vision report and the other part the
interpretation.5 However, the chapter contains not one but two cycles of
vision and interpretation that are divided by style, focus, and time of
writing. These two cycles give evidence of a fault line within the chapter
that spells experiential and cognitive rupture for the community, as the
rise of the little horn challenges an older ideology of power.

1
5. Oppenheim, Interpretation of Dreams, 208.
3. Visible Tensions 63
2. Translation of Daniel 7
(1)
In the rst year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream
and visions in his head as he was sleeping. Then he wrote down the
dream:6 (2) I was watching in my vision during the night7 and, see! four
winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea. (3) Four great beasts came
up from the sea, each one different from the other. (4) The rst was like a
lion but it had the wings of an eagle. I was watching as its wings were
plucked off and it was lifted from the ground. It was made to stand upon
feet, like a human. A human mind8 was given to it. (5) Then, see! another
beast,9 like a bear. It was lifted up10 on one side and three ribs were in its
mouth between its teeth.11 It was commanded thus, Arise! Devour much
esh! (6) After this, I was watching and, see! another one, like a leopard.
It had four wings of a bird upon its back and the beast had four heads.
Dominion was given to it. (7) After this, I was watching in the visions of
the night12 and, see! a fourth beast, fearful and terrible and exceedingly
mighty. It had large iron teeth that devoured and shattered. The remainder
it crushed with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were
before it. It had ten horns. (8) As I was considering the beast with the
horns, look! another little horn came up among them and three of the
former horns were rooted up from before it. Look! Eyes like the eyes of a
human were in this horn and a mouth was speaking arrogantly.13
6. The MT inserts C> *J=> C at this point, but this is missing from Theod.
Ulrich, Daniel Manuscripts from Qumran, Part 2, 13, argues that because of the
vacat and the position of 3E<, there was not enough room for the phrase in 4QDanb.
The MT also preserves at the beginning of v. 2, C>H =J?5 9?, missing in Theod,
which preserves instead F@HX@ %BOJIM.
7. This phrase is missing in Theod, but see 4QDanb, which preserves the reading.
8. Literally: heart.
9. The MT reads another beast, the second was like, which appears to be a
conation of the OG, which preserves another beast, and Theod, which preserves
second but not another. See Sharon P. Jeansonne, The Old Greek Translation of
Daniel 712 (CBQMS 19; Washington, D.C.: CBA, 1988), 6667, and Collins,
Daniel, 274.
10. While the MT points the verb )HB as active, Montgomery, Daniel, 288, argues
that this is incorrect and emends it to a passive. The LXX reads passive FTUBRI.
11. Between its teeth is found in Theod and the MT, but missing in the OG. The
OG omission appears to be a haplography. The MT reading seems to be original and
is preserved in 4QDana. See Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 79, and Collins,
Daniel, 274.
12. In the visions of the night is missing in Theod but preserved in the OG.
Collins omits it, seeing it as anticipating the original reading at v. 13. Ulrich, Daniel
Manuscripts from Qumran, Part I: A Preliminary Edition of 4QDan, BASOR 268
(1987): 33, however, reads it as preserved (though badly damaged) in 4QDana.
13. The negative connotation of speaking great things is reected in Ps 12:4, in
which a tongue that speaks great things is put in parallelism with attering
speech. See Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 181.
1
(9)
I was watching as thrones were placed
and one who was an ancient of days14 was seated.
His garment was like white snow,
and the hair of his head was like pure wool.15
His throne was ames of re,
its wheels were burning re.
(10)
A river of re owed
and went forth from before him.
A thousand thousands were ministering to him
and a myriad of myriads were standing before him.
The court was seated and books were opened.
(11)
I was watching from the time of the sound of the great words, which
the horn was speaking,16 until the beast was killed and its body destroyed
and given to the burning re. (12) As for the rest of the beasts, their
dominion was taken away but a prolonging of life was given to them for
an appointed time. (13) I was watching in the visions of the night, and see!
one like a human came with17 the clouds of heaven and he reached the
Ancient of Days and was brought before him. (14) He was given dominion,
honor,18 and a kingdom. All the peoples, nations, and languages will
serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass
away and his kingdom will not be destroyed.
14. In this verse, the epithet for Yahweh is *J>HJ BJE, that is, not emphatic as it
is in vv. 13 and 22.
15. Michael Sokoloff, !imar nq, Lambs wool (Dan 7:9), JBL 95 (1976):
27779, argues that lambs wool rather than pure wool is the correct reading of
the verse based on the Syriac. Collins, Daniel, 275, follows him. However, I have
maintained pure because the phrase is parallel to CHI 8=E<, a color phrase evoking
whiteness and purity. See Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament
(JSOTSup 21; Shefeld: JSOT, 1982), 91, 133, 169. Brenner also argues that C>
itself can evoke white *3=/CHI. So, both the context and the semantic range of the
noun that B? modies suggest that it is the color, rather than the source, of the wool
that counts. Furthermore, Sokoloff does admit that pure is part of the semantic
range of this root, which can appear as an adjective or a verb meaning to cleanse.
16. MT has a second, I was watching, which is missing in the OG and Theod.
Luc Dequeker, The Saints of the Most High in Qumran and Daniel, OTS 18
(1973): 120, argues that this is not a textual problem but a redactional one created
when v. 11a was awkwardly inserted after the rst I was watching. The second
was then repeated to resume the ow of the vision in v. 11b, which is the original
follow-up to v. 7. For the sake of smoothness, I have removed the repetition.
17. Theod reads NFUB while the OG reads FQJ. Regarding, the latter, Jeansonne,
Old Greek Translation, 10917, argues that it was an attempt to accurately translate
the Aramaic ) and should not be read as evidence of a particular theological
tendency within the OG.
18. Honor is missing from Papyrus 967, though it is retained in Theod and two
other ancient witnesses. Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 80, argues that this is an
accidental deletion by the OG translator.
1
(15)
As for me, Daniel, my spirit was distressed on account of this19 and
the visions of my head alarmed me. (16) I approached one of those who
was standing there and I asked him the truth concerning all of this. He
spoke to me and revealed the interpretation of the matters. (17) As for
these four great beasts, four kingdoms will be established on the earth.
(18)
But the holy ones of the Most High20 will receive the kingdom and
they will possess the kingdom forever and ever.
(19)
Then I wanted to make certain concerning the fourth beast, which was
different from all of the others. It was exceedingly terrible. Its teeth were
of iron and its claws of bronze. It was devouring and crushing and
trampling the rest with its feet. I wanted to make certain concerning the
ten horns that were in its head, and the other that came up and the three
that fell out before it, (20) and also concerning that horn with the eyes, and
a mouth that was speaking arrogantly. Its appearance was greater than its
companions. (21) I was watching and that horn was making war with the
holy ones. It was prevailing against them (22) until the Ancient of Days
arrived and judgment was given to the holy ones of the Most High. The
time arrived and the holy ones took possession of the kingdom.
(23)
Thus he said, Concerning the fourth beast, the fourth kingdom, which
will be different from all of the kingdoms, will rule over the earth. It will
devour the whole earth and will trample and crush it. (24) As for the ten
horns, ten kings will arise from its kingdom and another will arise after
them. But he will be different from the former ones and he will bring
down three kings. (25) He will speak words against the Most High and he
will wear out the Holy ones of the Most High. He will think to alter the
appointed seasons and laws. They will be given into his hand for a time,
two times, and a half time. (26) But the court will sit and his dominion will
be removed for destruction and obliteration forever. (27) The kingdom and
the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under all the skies will
be given to the people of the Holy ones of the Most High. Its kingdom is
an eternal kingdom and all of the dominions will revere and obey it.
(28)
Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly
disturbed me and my face was downcast but I kept the matter in mind.
19. Emending the MT to read 95? *J83. See BDB, *J8, 1086, as well as Mont-
gomery, Daniel, 306, and Collins, Daniel, 275. OG and Papyrus 967 read FO UPVUPJK.
20. The phrase *J?HJ= JJ5B poses some difculties for translation. One possibil-
ity is to take *J?HJ= as an indeterminate epexegetical plural of J=, as Goldingay,
Daniel, 146, does. He translates the phrase most high holy ones. However, others
argue for its translation as the holy ones of the Most High, a substantive, denite,
plural of *HJ=. The plural here may be the plural of majesty. See Montgomery,
Daniel, 308; Martin Noth, The Holy Ones of the Most High, in The Laws in the
Apocrypha, Pentateuch and Other Studies (trans. D. R. Ap- Thomas; Edinburgh:
Oliver & Boyd, 1968), 21819; and Collins, Daniel, 31213.
1
3. Form, Structure, and Redaction:

The Seam in the Fabric
Daniel 7 initially presents itself as a vision report more or less typical of
the symbolic vision genre.21 The vision report follows the expectations of
the form as they are established in 2:3145.22 That is, both vision reports
indicate the occurrence of a dream vision (2:31; 7:12), both provide a
description of the dream (2:3135; 7:214); and both follow the descrip-
tion with an interpretation (2:3645; 7:1718). However, during the
course of the interpretation the visions formal expectations are suddenly
disrupted by Daniels ongoing dialogue with the angel.23 As the angel
gives an extremely concise interpretation of the vision, Daniel inquires
for more details. Yet the inquiry itself in vv. 1922 is, in fact, another
vision report. It reiterates vv. 714 and includes expansions and added
details focusing on the fourth beast and the little horn.24 Although the
interpretation resumes in v. 23, the interruption disturbs the expected
symmetry of vision and interpretation and makes visible a tension
between what Daniel sees and what the angel interprets.
The materials in vv. 1922 challenge not only the angels interpre-
tation but also the initial vision report of vv. 214. In his revisioning,
Daniel gives renewed attention to the fourth beast and inserts new details
concerning the little horn. Interpreters have long noticed the way in
which this expanded attention to the fourth beast and the little horn snags
the fabric of the visions style and content. Structure and narrative style
begin to fray and narrative pacing comes to a near standstill, rather
clumsily, as the seer opens up the text to insert details on the little horn
and fourth beast.25 Up to this point, the little horn has been at best a
21. On the generic expectations of the apocalyptic symbolic vision, see Niditch,
Symbolic Vision, 177241, who argues that Dan 7 and 8 represent baroque ver-
sions of the prophetic symbolic vision. See also Klaus Koch, Vom Profetischen
zum Apokalyptischen Visionsbericht, in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean
World and the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on
the Apocalypticism Uppsala, August 1217, 1979 (ed. David Hellholm; Tbingen:
Mohr, 1983), 41346.
22. Koch, Vom Profetischen zum Apokalyptischen Visionsbericht, 44445.
23. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 18485, argues that the seers question becomes
typical of the symbolic vision with Zechariahs fth vision. In Dan 7, however, the
questioning has a very different character and function than that of Zech 4:4, where
the seers question initiates the interpretation of the vision in the rst place.
24. So also John J. Collins, The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in
the Book of Daniel, JBL 93 (1974): 54.
25. In v. 8, where the little horn is introduced for the rst time, the narrator opts
for =< (consider) rather than 9KI (watch), which had been used consistently
1
secondary character, appearing only in the vision report in vv. 8 and 11a.
And yet, even these verses indicate the secondary character of the little
horn, since in v. 11a the focus of the punishment is on the beast rather
than the horn, while in v. 8 the reference to an eleventh horn appears to
be tacked on to the description of the ten horns.26
These differences create a literary seam that runs through the chapter.
This seam is due to the redaction of the chapter in 167 B.C.E. to reect
the outlawing of Torah observance by Antiochus IV.27 The result of this
redactional activity is two sets or cycles of vision and interpretation. The
rst vision and interpretation cycle (vv. 218), focuses primarily on the
four beasts and their relationship to the divine. The second vision and
interpretation cycle (vv. 1927) emphasizes the little horn. On either
side, one may discern a scribal community working the threads of divine
presence and power within the fabric of imperial history.
4. Emplotting Sovereignty in the First Vision Cycle

(Daniel 7:118)
a. The Narrative Pattern of Gods Conict with Chaos and History
The rst vision cycle forms something of a bookend to Nebuchad-
nezzars dream in ch. 2 and may even date from the same time as ch. 2s
redaction.28 As such, the rst vision cycle performs the same kind of
before this. Also, the text uses the particle H= instead of the otherwise preferred
HC. The particle is also followed by a verb in the perfect form rather than a partici-
ple as in vv. 2, 3, 5, 7. These observations are found in the work of Dequeker, The
Saints of the Most High, 11424. For succinct summaries, see Collins, Daniel,
27879, and Davies, Daniel, 5960.
26. Dequeker, The Saints of the Most High, 120; Davies, Daniel, 59.
27. Gustav Hlscher, Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel, ThStK 92 (1919):
11338, was an early voice arguing for this redactional seam or embellishment. He
has been followed, with variations, by Martin Noth, Zur Komposition des Buches
Daniel, ThStK 98/99 (1926): 14363; Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel, 520; idem,
The Composition of the Book of Daniel, 24675; Louis F. Hartman and Alexander
A. DiLella, The Book of Daniel (AB 23; Garden City: Doubleday, 1978), 209;
Dequeker, The Saints of the Most High, 10887; John Gammie, The Classi-
cation, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel, JBL 95
(1976): 195; and more recently, Kratz, Visions, 9899; idem, Translatio Imperii,
7172. By contrast, the unity of the chapter has been upheld by Montgomery,
Daniel, 9596; H. H. Rowley, The Unity of the Book of Daniel, HUCA 23 (1951):
23373 (as part of his well-known and public debate with H. L. Ginsberg); Gold-
ingay, Daniel, 15657; Collins, Daniel, 27879; Redditt, Daniel, 26.
28. A number of commentators date much of the rst half of the chapter to the
period during or before Antiochus IIIs rule, that is, the late third or early second
1
symbolic work as Nebuchadnezzars dream. It uses foreign historio-

graphical traditions in order to create meaningful knowledge of Gods
power and presence in the face of subordination, which might otherwise
call those things into question.
In keeping with Dan 2s radical reinvention of historiography, the
rst vision cycle adopts the four-kingdom schema as a way of placing
Judeas experience into world-historical context. Yet, unlike ch. 2, the
rst cycle combines this foreign schema with tropes and symbols of
power that originate a little closer to home. Instead of the four metals/
ages and the image of the statue, the rst cycle re-inscribes native tradi-
tions of the great sea and the chaos monster,29 perhaps originating in
Canaanite myths but also more generally available through the biblical
tradition,30 and blends them with the animal imagery of the prophetic
century. See especially Albertz, Social Setting, 188. Further citations are given
below in the discussion to follow.
29. For an extended discussion of the Chaoskampf tradition in the Hebrew Bible
and the ancient Near East, see Day, Gods Conict. Days work is unfortunately
marred by the adoption of Emertons speculative thesis that the Ugaritic Chaoskampf
came to Jerusalem through a Jebusite enthronement festival.
30. Early proponents of a Canaanite mythological connection include Aage
Bentzen, Daniel (HAT 19; Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1937), 34; Eissfeldt, El and
Yahweh, 2537; Emerton, Son of Man Imagery, 22542; and Carsten Colpe, P
VJ
P=K UPV_ BORSXQPV, TDNT 8:40823; Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and
Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 1617. The most
sustained articulation of this thesis is that of Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 95105;
idem, Daniel, 28693; idem, Stirring Up the Great Sea: The Religio-Historical
Background of Daniel 7, in van der Woude, ed., The Book of Daniel, 12136.
In maintaining that the vision depicts mythological conict, it is not necessary to
assert that Dan 7 is drawing directly on the Canaanite material itself or that the
vision is making use of just one cosmogonic myth. Daniel 7 utilizes many of the
images found in various cosmogonies, such as the winds of Gen 1:2, the threatening
sea of Gen 1:2; Job 26:12; Pss 24:2; 74:13a; 89:10, and the hostile dragons origi-
nating from the sea of Job 26:13; Ps 89:11; Isa 27:1, and Ezek 32:2. The writer does
engage in promiscuous borrowing, as Davies, Daniel, 74, argues, but then, contra
Davies, weds these images into a Chaoskampf plot.
There are three models for understanding how these materials and plots were
available to the writers. Those arguing for a creative reuse of materials via Judean
cults include: Bentzen, Daniel, 34; Eissfeldt, El and Yahweh, 2537; Emerton,
Son of Man Imagery, 22542, all of whom argue for the borrowing of materials
via an annual enthronement festival. More recently, Rollin Kearns, Vorfragen zur
Christologie (3 vols.; Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Siebeck], 197882), 3:382, under-
stands the point of borrowing to be from an ongoing cult of Ba!al Haddu, but this
argument is extraordinarily speculative. See Collins, Daniel, 291, for further dis-
cussion. The second model understands the mythic materials, especially those
1
literature to depict not only the succession of foreign empiresBabylon,

Media, Persia, Macedoniabut also their nature as predatory and aggres-
sive entities.31 The visions use of these images evokes the Chaoskampf
plot and thus congures sovereign history in terms of cosmic conict
between God and sea monsters that will ultimately result in Gods
eradication of them.32 At the heart of this conguration of history are the
ideas of threat and judgment.
concerning the one like a human to be generally available within the second
century B.C.E. culture. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 101, and idem, Daniel, 28693,
has made this argument. A third model stipulates a mythic pattern mediated through
the Hebrew Bible itself. Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 496517, adopts this posi-
tion. He provides a detailed list of the use of images common to Dan 7 and the rest
of the biblical writings, and points to a recurring mythic pattern that was ultimately
nurtured in the Davidic court and reected in Ps 89. Moscas argument in favor of a
Davidic Sitz is not convincing in the context of Dan 7. However, his theory that the
connection between mythological motifs and Daniel is the Hebrew Bible itself is
persuasive. It is not necessary to posit a Sitz im Leben for the transmission of these
materials outside of Daniels scribal circles and their utilization of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
31. The order of the beastslion, bear, leopard, and a fourth unspecied wild
animalnd their closest analog in Hos 13:78. See Kratz, Visions, 95; Day,
Gods Conict, 157; Collins, Daniel, 296; and Emerton, Son of Man Imagery,
227.
32. In the Hebrew Bible, the proclamation of Yahwehs kingship and power is
often connected to the victory over chaos. This is especially evident in Job 9:59;
26:114; Pss 29:10; 65:78; 74:1217; 89:915; 93:15; 104:59. See further Day,
Gods Conict, 2125, 35, 5758. A. Lacocque, Allusions to Creation in Daniel 7,
in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 118, outlines the mythic pattern of
Dan 7 slightly differently, positing an order of battle/victory/kingship/judgment/
recreation. Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 50910, argues for a mythic pattern con-
sisting of: the incomparability of Yahweh among the divine beings, control over the
swelling of the sea, defeat of Rahab and other enemies, establishment of world
(including reference to Zaphon and temple building), a description of the divine
throne, and the reaction of Yahwehs people. Levenson, Creation and the Persis-
tence of Evil, 12, 32, sums up the Chaoskampf pattern this way: when Antiochus IV
sought to destroy the traditional Jerusalem cult (167164 B.C.E.), the old myth is
again heard, as a horric beast from the sea is killed, its body buried, and eternal
kingship is given to an angelic savior.
While these mythic patterns diverge from each other, all of them stress the cosmic
opposition and conict between the deity and the forces of chaos, the subsequent
triumph of the deity and containment or judgment of the chaotic forces, and the
proclamation of kingship or governance as a creative process that brings into being
and maintains a sustainable order of life.
1
b. Threat and Judgment in Verses 48

The vision of the beasts and the Ancient of Days asserts divine power
over human history by creating a dynamic tension between the utilization
of foreign power and its rejection. Divine authorization is explicitly
stated in the case of the second and third beasts and graphically demon-
strated through the humanization of the rst beast, in keeping with Dan
4:3033.33 The imagery of chaotic threat and opposition thus anticipates
the moment of judgment upon the beasts that comes in vv. 914. Never-
theless, up until the judgment scene that brings nal rejection of the rst
three beasts, the symbolism of the rst vision cycle maintains the
oppositional character of the beasts in tension with the divine utilization
of them.
Within the unfolding drama of imperial threat in vv. 46, the deity and
the divine council are at work commissioning, commanding, and giving.
The text repeatedly uses the verbs 39J (to give, vv. 4, 6) and )HB (to
stand, establish, vv. 4, 5) to communicate this activity with respect to
the beasts. The repeated use of these two verbs captures well the dynamic
of divine prerogative and imperial will that often duel with each other in
chs. 16.34 In the tension between divine and royal wills, these verbs
signal a battle over who has the power to move history. The vision cycle
does not deny the royal power of the rst three beasts, but it does limit it
by showing such power to be derived from, and relative to, the divine
prerogative.
The use of the passive voice has an important effect on the portrayal
of divine activity and the readers perception of it. The narrations use of
the divinum passivum in vv. 46, which separates the subject of the verb
from the doer of the action, renders the divine grammatically invisible as
33. Timothy J. Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel: A Literary

Comparison (JSOTSup 198; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1995), 23839;
Matthias Henze, The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar: The Ancient Near Eastern
Origins and Early History of the Interpretation of Daniel 4 (JSJSup; Boston: Brill,
1999), 9799. This position stands in contrast to Collins, Daniel, 297, who reads this
process of humanization as a loss of power. It also differs from the redactional argu-
ment of Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 209, who assert that the description of the lion
standing upright in v. 4 actually belongs to the bear.
34. The language of divine giving and handing over (Aramaic 39J; Hebrew *E?)
may be found in Dan 1:2, 9, 17; 2:21, 37, 38; 5:18, 19, 28. The language of divine
establishing or raising up ()HB) may be found in 2:21, 44; 4:14; 5:21. Note especially
the use of this word pair in Dan 2:21. See further Seow, Rule of God, 12. The use
of these verbs to indicate the imperial prerogative, usually in contrast to the divine
prerogative, may be seen in Dan 2:32; 3:1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 12, etc.; 5:11; 6:2, 8, 9, 16
()HB), and in 2:48; 5:17 (39J); so Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 289.
1
the doer of the action and thus somewhat elusive as an agent within
human history.35 What is grammatically visible to the reader in vv. 46
are those characters who appear to be the agents of history, that is,
human political actors. However, the visions use of the divine passive
subtly recongures the role of those characters for the reader.
Though the text reects what is visible to the community in its experi-
ence of subordination, namely, the stubborn similarities of ancient
imperial designs toward power and control,36 the rsum insists, through
the use of the passive voice, that those kings are not the true subjects of
historys action. The text renders the beasts as the objects of the deitys
work in moving history. The vision report subtly constrains their activity
through its narration, which never depicts the animals as active agents.37
Thus, though invisible to observation in the pregured experience of
historical events, in the conguration of history presented by the rsum,
the divine is now subtly discernible as the one who governs the action
and brings about subordination.38
In this history, the rst three beasts and kingdoms form a predictable,
but as yet unnished, pattern of imperial power. The pattern of threat and
judgment that characterizes each of the rst three beasts shapes history as
an experience of imperial succession which, though hostile and aggres-
sive, is nevertheless measurable and repeatable. The rising and falling of
each of these three kingdoms follows a course that can be anticipated, in
part, because the pattern has already been congured for the reader by
the statue of Nebuchadnezzars dream. Though the rst beast receives
more attention than the second or third, the pattern does not depict either
an escalation or devolution of power within these rst three kingdoms.
35. Concerning the use of the divine passive, see further Hall, Revealed His-
tories, 8386. The use of the divine passive is an established grammatical style
characteristic of Aramaic; so Montgomery, Daniel, 288. However, Dan 7 exploits
this convention fully, as Kratz, Visions, 96, has argued. Indeed, Dan 7s use of the
divine passive contrasts signicantly with Dan 2:3145, which narrates divine
activity using the active voice (vv. 37, 38, 44) as well as the passive voice (vv. 34,
44, 45). See also Dequeker, The Saints of the Most High, 11718, who argues
that the use of the passive in Dan 7:460 and 14 stresses the mysterious character of
what happens.
37. The vision narrates that the lion is made to stand; it does not do so of its own
accord. Though commanded to act, the bear and leopard are not actually shown as
doing so. Their roles as predatory and threatening forces are signaled by their visible
features and their connection with the chaotic waters, not by the narration of their
actions, which are kept narratively offstage.
38. Cf. Kratz, Visions, 96, who notes the use of the divine passive to imply
cooperation with the beasts.
1
All three are kept in check by the invisible work of divine agency to give
and establish power to each beast in its turn.
Out of this unnished pattern of judgment emerges the fourth beast,
whose description and actions disrupt the pattern almost entirely. The
vision report notes that the beast differs from the other three (v. 7). Its
unprecedented character is emphasized by the lack of a simile. The
vision has no wild animal to which it will liken the monster but instead
highlights particular features of teeth, feet, and horns.39 Unlike the previ-
ous beasts, this beast is the subject of several active verbal constructions,
all of which illustrate its aggressive and predatory behavior. Its teeth,
which are like the iron of Dan 2s fourth kingdom, devour and shatter
(9=< and 9B5>, v. 7) all that is around it. Its feet crush (9DAC, v. 7) the
remnants of the previous kings and kingdoms. The opposite of the previ-
ous beasts, this beast is threatening through its actions, as well as through
the visible features of its form.
While the fourth beast is part of the sequence of the four kingdoms, its
actions suggest that it dees the pattern of the rst three beasts. It displays
its militarism without restraint and attempts to assert its own autonomy,
unbidden by the divine. Divine activity is noticeably absent with respect
to the fourth beast, as there is no use of the divine passive. The deity
does not commission or direct the beasts actions and at no point is the
fourth beast the object of divine activity, as the previous animals had
been. Instead, the beast directs all of the activity in v. 7. The beast dees
divine utilization and subjugation.
The fourth beast escalates the pattern of threat and judgment. Its acts
of devouring and crushing signal an extravagant predation that requires a
similar response. The enormity of the beasts threat mandates against the
hidden agency that the Most High exhibited with the rst three. Indeed,
the emergence of this beast fundamentally challenges divine sovereignty,
at least in the form that sovereignty takes in vv. 46. Judgment upon the
fourth beast requires a response that matches the unprecedented degree
of threat. This threat motivates the theophany of the Ancient of Days in
vv. 912 and the empowering of the humanlike one in vv. 1314.
39. For this reason, I nd the speculations regarding the fourth beasts form
to be unsatisfactory. See, in particular, Urs Staub, Das Tier mit den Hoernen, in
Hellenismus und Judentum: Vier Studien zu Daniel 7 und zur Religionsnot unter
Antiochus IV (ed. Othmar Keel and Urs Staub; Fribourg, Schweiz: Universitts-
verlag, 2000), 7085, who argues that the fourth beast is a war elephant, an animal
particularly symbolic of Hellenistic power. Staub argues that the elephant was
mostly unknown in the biblical tradition, except by 1 and 2 Maccabees, and that that
is why there is no description given by Dan 7. On the difculties with this thesis, see
Day, Gods Conict, 157, and also Collins, Daniel, 299 nn. 193, 194.
1
c. The Shape of Divine Justice in Verses 914

The features of the divine, along with his surroundings, show the Ancient
of Days to be an embodiment and executor of justice. Instead of follow-
ing the expected Chaoskampf plot in which the Divine Warrior does
battle against the chaos monster, Dan 7:914 depicts a heavenly court-
room scene.40 The deity subjugates the beasts not through battle, but
through juridical and scribal processes in which the books are consulted
and judgment is then renderedall of which emphasize divine authority
to render judgment.41
The vision gives considerable detail regarding the Ancient of Days
physical appearance as an aged, white-haired, anthropomorphic deity
(vv. 910). This depiction echoes the Ugaritic mythic materials in a
striking way. El, as an old and experienced deity, is wise (CTA 4.4.41),42
40. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 105, and Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 202, both
argue that this is not a battle scene. Although angelic attendants are mentioned, these
are not functioning in the role of the heavenly army, for which the word 34 is
generally used (cf. Dan 8:10, 11). Instead, they serve as functionaries in the
courtroom, setting out the thrones and waiting on the Ancient of Days (vv. 910;
cf. 2 Kgs 22:19; Isa 6:12). Many commentators have noted the undifferentiated
character of heavenly councils roles and activities. Thus, courtier, messenger, and
soldier all appear to be interchangeable functions within the council, which acts at
one moment as a tribunal and another moment as an army. Patrick D. Miller, The
Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973),
6769, has argued that within the divine council traditions to which ancient Israel
subscribed, the differences between the angelic host and the angelic court are of
function, not of essence. Similarly, see Theodore Mullen, The Divine Council in
Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (HSM 24; Chico: Scholars Press, 1980),
and Cross, Canaanite Myth, 27475. Nevertheless, a comparison of Dan 7 with Dan
8 suggests that, in these visions, these differing functions carry differing theological
and ideological implications.
41. As Seow, The Rule of God, 18, argues, The fate of the cosmos [in Dan 7]
depends not on the result of a protracted battle among the gods, as Canaanite
mythology would have it, but on the unilateral judgment of the one enthroned as
supreme ruler in the divine council. By contrast [with El], there is no evidence of
divine indecisiveness in Daniels vision, no hint of the possibility of surrender, no
protracted battle between the forces of good and evil. Rather, there is only a brief
allusion to divine judgment The absolute rule of God is, thus, pointedly estab-
lished.
42. The ancient character of both El and the Ancient of Days is clear, but some
commentators have seen a further parallel in their epithets. Collins, Daniel, 290, and
others, have viewed the Ugaritic phrase for El, ab nm, as a parallel to Ancient of
Days, translating the epithet as Father of Years. This, however, is grammatically
problematic. One would normally expect Father of Years to be ab nt, that is, the
feminine plural rather than the masculine plural. Even Colpe, P
VJ
P=K, 417, who
1
a quality that is explicitly demonstrated by the physical feature of the

gray hair/beard.43 On this, commentators have pointed to the distinction
between Els gray hair and the Ancient of Days white hair.44 The hair of
the Most High is described as being like pure wool (B? C>, v. 9),
which evokes whiteness.45 This, in turn, parallels the phrase like white
snow (CHI 8=E<), describing his clothing. Whiteness in Isa 1:18 and
Zech 3:47 signals justice, righteousness, and purity.46 So Paul Mosca
argues that in 7:9, God has white clothing and hair not because he is
ancient (which he is), but because his judgments are just. 47
Daniels description of the Ancient of Days signals incomparable
honor, glory, and power. Daniel clearly borrows from Ezek 1:2628
where the description of the deity emphasizes Yahwehs holiness and
glory, which is seated on a mobile throne and surrounded by hybrid
creatures.48 Moreover, one nds in the vision cycle Ezekiels language of
supports the theory of Canaanite inuence, rejects the connection between the two
titles on this basis.
43. So Asherah says to El in the Ba!al Cycle, Art great indeed, O El, and wise, /
Thy beards gray hair instructs thee (CTA 4.5.6566; trans. H. L. Ginsberg). See
further, Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 1617; Collins, Daniel, 290.
44. Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 501.
45. Brenner, Colour Terms, 169; Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 501.
46. Compare Dan 7:9 with Isa 1:18, in which 8=<, the Hebrew equivalent of
8=E< and C>4, eece, the Hebrew cognate to the Aramaic C>, are used to describe
the cleansing of Israels sins. Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 501 n. 26, notes that in
Isa 1:18, the reversion to a state of whiteness follows immediately upon a call to
seek justice For its part, Zech 3:45 reinforces the role of whiteness in juridical
affairs through the heavenly trial of Joshua. In the course of this symbolic vision, the
satan presents Joshuas lthy clothes as evidence against his cultic purity. Joshua,
however, is vindicated by Yahweh who then makes his clothes white. Joshua is
thereafter granted the right to participate in the heavenly council. See Paul Redditt,
Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi (NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 6465. In
Zechariah, whiteness is forensic evidence of righteousness and signals alignment
with divine purposes and heavenly agencies. It is an open question whether Dan 7:9,
in making use of this juxtaposition of juridical and cultic traditions, shares Zecha-
riahs interest in cultic purity. Certainly Daniel echoes with brief but signicant
references to such matters (1:8; 9:27; 11:31; 12:1011). Primarily, however, juridical
purity/righteousness seems to predominate in Dan 7:9 over cultic purity.
48. Indeed, Daniels beasts appear as mirror images of Ezekiels theophany in
some respects. The repetition of the number four in Daniels visionfour beasts,
four wings on the four-headed leopard (though the four heads of the leopard may be
due to scribal error rather than authorial intent, as Collins, Daniel, 302, contends)
create a perverse caricature of the four four-winged cherubim described in Ezek 1:5
25 and 10:15. The evoking of Ezekiels cherubim is strengthened when one notices
1
brilliant light, re, and the wheeled throne (Ezek 1:15, 2728//Dan 7:9
10).49 But the anthropomorphism of the deity signals divine transcen-
dence in and of itself (cf. 1 Kgs 22:1920; Isa 6:14).50 Not only does
Ezek 1 create an interconnecting web of human and divine features, but
some commentators argue that it is also closely connected to Gen 1:26
28,51 in which the human form resembles the divine and is also connected
to ruling power.52 Indeed, all three passages situate divine anthropomor-
phic features in a hierarchy of bodily forms in which the human form
resides at the pinnacle and signals dominion over the beasts of air, land,
and sea.53
Divine anthropomorphism and its opposite, human theomorphism, are
signicant rhetorical tools of political validation and legitimacy in the
ancient Near East. Thus, in the royal ideology of Mesopotamia, the king
was often said to be in the image of the god.54 John Kutsko argues that
Ezekiels use of anthropomorphism in Ezek 13 engages this royal ideol-
ogy and tries to subvert its claims for the exiled community. Conversely,
the appearance of Yahweh in a form resembling a human indicates that
the divine is present with the exiles and the divine power is with them as
well, through their reection of the divine image. This image is not
that the cherubim are actually identied as beasts or living creatures, EHJI, in Ezek 1,
which is the Hebrew equivalent of the Aramaic, *HJI, which is used to designate the
beasts in Daniel. As throne bearers, the cherubims extraordinary animal features
symbolize divine power. See Othmar Keel, Jahwe-Visionen und Siegelkunst: Eine
neue Bedeutung der Majestatschilder-unden in Jes 6, Ez 1 und 10, und Sach 4
(Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), 3335.
50. Collins, Daniel, 300.
51. On the connection between Gen 1:2628 and Ezekiel, see the recent treat-
ment by Kutsko, Ezekiels Anthropology, 12832, and David Petersens rejoinder,
Creation in Ezekiel: Methodological Perspectives and Theological Prospects, in
SBLSP, 1999 (2 vols.; SBLSP 38; Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 1:490500. On the divine
image as a reference to anthropomorphism, see Barr, Theophany and Anthropo-
morphism, and, more recently, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Problem of the
Body for the People of the Book, in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies (ed. T. K. Beal
and D. Gunn; London: Routledge, 1997) on the nature of human likeness to the
divine.
52. Kutsko cites Phyllis Bird, Male and Female He Created Them: Gen 1:27b
in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation, HTR 74 (1981): 12959 (143).
J. Maxwell Miller also supports this position in In the Image and Likeness of God,
JBL 91 (1972): 289304.
53. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 120: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (AB 22; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 5456.
1
54. Kutsko, Ezekiels Anthropology, 12628.
located in kings, but is instead democratized by its relocation within the

exilic community.55 In Ezekiel, the formal continuity between Yahweh
and the exiles signal divine immanence.
Taking its cue from Ezekiel, Dan 7 makes the subversion of ancient
Near Eastern and Hellenistic royal ideology even more explicit through
its strategy of contrasting anthropomorphism and theriomorphism.56
Though 7:4 emphasizes divine alignment with the king through the
humanization of the winged lion, the judgment upon it shows the ulti-
mate rejection of this alignment. In contrast to Dan 2:37, in which Nebu-
chadnezzar was at least one king who made divine power visible, 7:12
asserts that foreign kings do not possess the image of God and will no
longer mediate divine presence and agency. Instead, the vision asserts
that agents who are more closely aligned with divine righteousness will
assume the mediation of these things. Within the visions hierarchy of
human and beastly forms, the righteous mediator of divine sovereign
power is necessarily a gure who has anthropomorphic features.
The humanlike one (? C3<, v. 13) is visually aligned with divine
righteous rule through his shape.57 His description as resembling an ?
specically calls attention to his anthropomorphism, even as the
repetition of ? in v. 4 emphasizes the anthropomorphic features of the
rst beast.58 Yet the humanlike one poses an obvious contrast with the
misshapen forms of the beasts, who are described, as he is, with a simile
marked by the preposition < (vv. 4, 6).59 Unlike the rst beast, who must
be made humanlike in a process that is never completed, this gure
possesses the divine image from the beginning.
55. Ibid., 128.

56. Commentators have already noted how Daniel and other apocalyptic texts
such as the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch use a code of representation in which
divine beings are human gures and the humans are animals; see Collins, Son of
Man, 61; Patrick Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of 1Enoch (EJL
4; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); Goldingay, Daniel, 171; and Hall, Revealed
Histories, 8485.
57. See Collins, Son of Man, 61 n. 52; Seow, The Rule of God in the Book of
Daniel, 18. The tendency to render the phrase as the determinate one like the Son
of Man, as Collinss early article does, is an unfortunate one, since it obscures the
grammatical indeterminance of the phrase as well as the phrases use of the simile.
58. So also Colpe, P
VJ
P=K, 419; A. A. DiLella, The One in Human Likeness
and the Holy ones of the Most High in Daniel 7, CBQ 39 (1977): 3.
59. Collins, Son of Man, 61; Seow, Rule of God, 18; Colpe, P
VJ
P=K, 421.
Though the second beast is not described using the preposition, the text signals the
simile through the use of the word 9J>5. The use of the similes in the description of
the ? C3< and the beasts tries to capture the distinction between outward appear-
ance and actual reality, as in Ezek 1.
1
As the deity bestows (3J9J) on the humanlike one dominion and glory
(Aramaic CBJ; Hebrew 53<), divine prerogative becomes visible. Though
the passive voice obscuresgrammatically speakingdivine activity,
the humanlike one brings to full visibility, in the sight of the nations, the
glory of the Most High. It is in the humanlike one that the reader encoun-
ters the language of honor or glory that was notably missing from the use
of Ezek 1 to speak of the Ancient of Days. Ironically, the humanlike one,
as the undistorted embodiment of divine glory, one who is totally depend-
ent upon the divine, underscores the incomparability of the divine.
The humanlike one is functionally equivalent to the holy ones of the
Most High.60 Though there is signicant debate concerning the referent
of the humanlike one (collective symbol of the heavenly host or a
particular angelic gure)61 and also of the holy ones (angelic beings or
the faithful Jewish community),62 the parallelism between vision and
60. See for example, DiLella, The One in Human Likeness, 1.

61. Collins, Son of Man, 50, provides a concise summary of the interpretive
issues. Those arguing that the humanlike one is a symbol of the holy ones and not an
individual entity of any kind include Montgomery, Daniel, 323, and more recently
Goldingay, Daniel, 16869. On whether the humanlike one is a collective symbol of
the heavenly host or a specic leader, the text itself remains ambiguous (against
Collins, Daniel, 309). However, in his role as a leadership gure or a divine agent, it
matters little since ruling gures are often corporate symbols, representing their
people. Although the later visions of Daniel appear to have interpreted this gure
with ever-increasing specicity, rst as a prince of the host (8:10) and then as
Michael (Dan 10:21; 12:1), contra Collins, Son of Man, 6365, this interpretation
cannot simply be projected back on Dan 7. Indeed, Collinss method of reading Dan
7 through the lens of later texts such as Dan 1012 and the Qumran material does
not take into account the developing traditions within these texts.
62. The contextual uses of the term that clearly refer to angels includes Dan 8:13;
Ps 89:68; Job 15:15. Although the conversation has slowed considerably since the
late 1980s and early 1990s, it is not clear that scholars have reached consensus
concerning the referent of holy ones of the Most High. Rather, it appears that an
exhaustion with the debate has emerged. Those arguing that the holy ones are angels
include O. Procksch, Noth, Coppens, Colpe, Dequeker, Collins. Those arguing that
the holy ones are humans include DiLella, Poythress, Brekelmans, Hasel, Davies.
Goldingay, Daniel, 178, sits on the fence, but leans toward angels. Oppenheim, The
Interpretation of Dreams, 198, notes that symbolic dreams typically possess a unity
of scene, actors, and actions. Most of the actors (with the exception of the visionary)
are clearly divine gures or cosmic gures of some sort, with no evidence of a
human crowd envisioned. The action in Dan 7:114 takes place in the heavensa
reasonable assumption given its depiction of the divine council (cf. Zech 3 where
Zechariah participates in the assembly of the divine council, which takes place in
heaven). Some argue that the appearance takes place on earth, comparable to Joel
4:12, where the prophet relays Gods pronouncement of a divine judgment over the
1
interpretation suggest the similar function of the two entities in question.

Both exercise governance over the indestructible kingdomthe human-
like one is given an eternal kingdom (v. 14) and the holy ones receive
and take possession of it (v. 18). Moreover, the principle of homology is
clearly at work within the vision as a whole, equating heavenly gures
with earthly counterparts. As such, the Jewish community must be seen
as the earthly homologue of the holy ones and the heavenly community.63
The vision does not single out a clearly identiable ofce (i.e. king,
archangel, priest) to inform this gure.64 Neither does it indicate a par-
ticular individual (Davidic king or archangel Michael) who corresponds
to the symbol.65 The vision remains vague on this countit is either not
an important distinction to the author or it is a deliberate choice to main-
tain ambiguity. Instead, the chapter as a whole, from the rst to the
second vision cycle, depicts authority moving from the humanlike one to
the holy ones of the Most High and then to the people of the holy ones.66
Such a movement marks a grammatically and semantically widening
circle for the exercise of power. Within this dynamic, the divine does not
simply relegate power to a new king or priest, but subverts the entire
imperial order by giving it to the faithful Jewish community. The refer-
ences to the holy ones and the people of the holy ones taking possession
of the kingdom and ruling it attest to a political vision in which power is
exercised corporately and sovereignty is democratized.67
d. The Ideology of Rule in the First Vision Cycle

The rst vision cycle constructs divine sovereignty and the ideology of
rule in a way that both re-inscribes yet also nuances ch. 2s vision. The
vision and interpretation of 2:3145 congured divine sovereignty over
history by inserting the Most High at the beginning and ending of the
nations on earth. However, the use of cloud imagery and the spatial descriptions
seem to indicate that the visionary is witnessing a heavenly scene rather than an
earthly one.
63. Collins, Son of Man, 62; M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The
Nature of Religion (trans. W. R. Trask; New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957),
16680; Miller, Divine Warrior, 106, 15657; and idem, Cosmology and World
Order in the Old Testament, HBT 9 (1987): 58.
64. Contra Lacocque, Daniel, 12425, who views the humanlike one as the
heavenly high priest.
65. Contra Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 51112, Dan 7 does not share with Ps
89 the ideals of the Davidic covenant.
66. Colpe, P
VJ
P=K, 41922.
67. So also Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 17; Collins, Apocalyptic
Vision, 16675; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 20912.
1
drama of imperial succession, while ch. 7 inserts the Most High within
the engine of cosmic succession of powers.68 Divine prerogative within
the unfolding drama of imperial history is invisible and indirect yet
absolute in its work of both subjugating and utilizing human kings and
kingdoms. Yet, as imperial power pushes beyond the limits of past
powers, divine power visibly emerges to contain and constrain it. The
rst vision cycle, borrowing ch. 2s pattern of imperial power, weds this
pattern to mythic and prophetic traditions that create ongoing opposition
as well as cooperation between the divine and human sovereign. This
tension is not eliminated until the emergence of the fourth beast and
the conferring of enduring power upon the holy ones. These traditions
create a scene of unilateral cosmic jurisprudence exercised over all
nations. Cosmic sovereignty nds its fulllment in the agency of the
righteous scribal community, which is aligned with the holy ones of the
Most High.
The epithets for Yahweh that one nds throughout the rst vision
cycle reect this complex dynamic of cosmic power. The tetragram-
maton is not used in Dan 2 or 7 because it speaks of the particularity of
the deitys relationship to Judea. Instead, the text uses Most High, a
term that could be used by both Jew and gentile to speak of Yahweh, as
it is in Gen 14:18 and Num 24:16.69 While P. R. Davies has argued that
this is a term of compromise that signals an ideology of cooperation, the
principle that appears to guide its use is actually that of universality vs.
particularity.70 The vision cycle uses it to assert Yahwehs universal
power over foreign kings, whether for cooperation or for judgment, so
that in v. 18 it is used for judgment. In much the same way, the epithet
Ancient of Days also universalizes Yahwehs sovereignty by depicting
the deity in temporal terms, as one who is not only of old but also one
whose rule plays out in time. As such, Yahwehs rule continues to unfold
and can undermine quotidian structures. The Ancient of Days epithet
also makes a tting complement to the spatial term of the Most High.
These terms show Yahweh to be a cosmic and eternal deity whom all can
comprehend as having ultimate power by virtue of the deitys temporal
priority and cosmic superiority.
The recognition of the Jewish Gods power is a crucial one for the
community, in part because when Yahweh becomes visible within the
story of imperial history, so too does the Jewish community recognize its
68. Cf. Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35758.

69. Davies, Daniel, 82.
1
70. Ibid., 8188.
own role and importance in that history. Not only does Yahwehs inter-
national sovereignty resolve for the community the problem of foreign
dominance and its stubborn designs toward the suppression of the right-
eous community, but the community also becomes visible in the history
that had been foreign. It is able to present itself as an agent of divine
power. As the earthly homologues of the holy ones and the humanlike
one, the community makes exoteric the once esoteric power of the Most
High. This narrative of reoriented power serves to foster opposition to
Hellenistic rule, but it also revisions political life for the Jewish com-
munity in an international world. Though that revisioning may never
become concrete, the vision cycle nevertheless provides the symbolic
means of adjudicating the reality of Jewish subordination and Jewish
aspirations to manifest Gods power.
5. The Second Vision Cycle (Daniel 7:1927): Disruption

and Dissonance after the Rise of the Little Horn
a. Triumph of the Holy Ones
The rst vision cycle ends in vv. 1718 with a bare-bones explanation in
which the cosmic symbols of the vision are given a neat earthly frame-
work. The interpretation emphasizes the future expectation of the holy
ones and the durability of their kingdom, in contrast to the beasts who are
now interpreted as political kings and kingdoms (an interpretation that
establishes an homology between heaven and earth). Yet these beastly
threats give way completely to their containment and the subsequent
triumph of the holy ones. This is done so concisely and effortlessly that
Fewell argues that the angel under-reads the vision.71 The interpretation
presents the beasts as defanged and declawed; it says nothing about their
militarism, their legitimacy, or their appearance. Through the emphasis
on containment, the angels overly concise interpretation attempts to
bring closure to the history of empire. The angel indicates that the pattern
of imperial predation that had characterized human history is at an end.
Divine power is now present eternally through the active agency of the
holy ones.
b. Resisting Closure
Daniels interruption, however, reveals that he is not satised with the
angels conguration of the present or the future. His questioning resists
the angels neat closure of imperial history and reopens the pattern.
1
Structurally, this interruption begins the second cycle of vision and inter-
pretation, much of which, but probably not all, dates from 167 B.C.E.,
prior to the desecration of the temple.72
Within this reopening of imperial history by Daniel, one may see a
reworking and expansion of the rst vision cycle culminating in a
noticeably revised historical rsum. The second vision cycle, along with
vv. 8 and 11a, reveal the second-century communitys perception of
Antiochus IV as aggressive and strong though illegitimate. Though the
text describes him as a little horn in v. 8, in comparison with the
Diadochoi, little may well pertain to Antiochuss illegitimate ascension
to the throne rather than his power.73 His power is, in fact, wielded
against God and against other kings according to the vision materials of
vv. 1922. In vv. 11a and 20, the text characterizes him as blasphemous.
The interpretation in v. 25 elaborates this blasphemy as his outlawing of
Torah observance, nothing less than an attempt to assert his prerogative
over Gods by altering liturgical time itself (seasons and laws, v. 25;
cf. 2:21). The little horn is also greater in appearance and stronger than
his own companions (vv. 20, 24), three of whom he displaces in order
to establish his own positionperhaps yet another reference to his
suspicious rise to power.74
The vision report indicates the communitys perception of Antiochus
as aggressive against the holy ones (v. 21) as well as against his compan-
ions. As with the kings, the little horn enjoys the winning position in his
advance against the holy ones. In the rst vision cycle, the unprecedented
power of the fourth beast brings divine judgment. In this vision, Anti-
ochuss predation appears even more extravagant. Aggression against
other kings is expected and not unusual, but the holy ones are clearly
vulnerable. Indeed, in the homology of this vision, these holy ones are
not a well-armed military host, but rather the angelic version of the
72. Admittedly, there is no complete agreement on which of these verses are pre-
Maccabean or Maccabean. However, Noth, Holy Ones, 227; Ginsberg, Composi-
tion of the Book of Daniel, 2025; Dequeker The Saints of the Most High,
12530; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 209; Kratz, Translatio Imperii, 7172; and
Gammie, The Classication, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions, 202, are
all agreed that at least vv. 2021, 22b, 24b, 25 along with vv. 8 and 11a, come from
the Maccabean updating of the vision.
73. On his rise to power, see Otto Mrkholm, Antiochus IV of Syria (Classica et
Medievalia Dissertationes 8; Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1966), 3850.
74. The reference to three kings is elusive. It may refer to Seleucus IV and his
two sons, Antiochus and Demetrius, who were rightful heirs to the throne ahead of
Antiochus IV. Or it may be a congured number that was constructed for the present
passage. For a concise discussion of the options, see Collins, Daniel, 321.
1
disadvantaged community.75 Not mentioned as a target in the rst vision

cycle, they are now subject to the little horns aggression. It is plainly not
a fair ght. It is this aggression, rather than those acts against the divine
and the other kings, that brings about the intervention of the Ancient of
Days (v. 22) in the second cycle. The despoliation of the holy ones
appears to be the catalyst for the little horns eradication.
c. The Threat to the Holy Ones

Interestingly, the vision depicts the judgment and the empowering of the
holy ones as ensuing immediately after this event, with little elaboration.
The narrative is briskly paced, suggesting immediate remediation of the
holy ones plight and containment of the little horn. Moreover, the
moment of the holy ones accession to power follows directly afterwards.
In v. 22, the time for their empowerment arrives without further delay.
The quick pace of the narrative and the reiteration of the word give
(39J, v. 22) also underscore the absolute prerogative of the Ancient of
Days. The little horn presents no obstacles for the execution of justice,
despite the horns advantage over his peers and over the holy ones.
The interpretation (vv. 2325) of the little horns activity maintains a
close parallelism with the vision materials of vv. 1922 until v. 25d. At
this point, the interpretation diverges from the vision with respect to the
holy ones subordination. In v. 20, no duration is given and the rapid
succession of events in vv. 2022 only begins to hint at the temporal
framework and duration for these happenings. This hint is in the
reference to the Holy ones taking possession of the kingdom, which is
said to have its own time. Yet even here, the possibility of the exten-
sion or delay of this time is not in view as the Ancient of Days enters to
75. One argument against the angelic interpretation of holy ones, offered by
V. S. Poythress (The Holy Ones of the Most High in Daniel VII, VT 26 [1976]:
20813 [209]), concerns the novelty of an angelic kingdom suffering duress. How-
ever, the possibility of such an occurrence was not completely foreign to the scrip-
tural worldview. Indeed, in the divine warrior traditions, divine council traditions,
and the attendant cosmology of the ancient Near East, earthly battles were a reec-
tion of heavenly battles, thus guaranteeing that one host would suffer defeat.
Moreover, Second Isaiah and Ezekiel both seem to respond to the notion that the
destruction of Jerusalem signals the possibility that the deity has suffered defeat. See
Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy in Crisis: The Call of Ezekiel, in Interpreting the
Prophets (ed. James Luther Mays and Paul J. Achtemeier; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1987), 161. What is novel in Dan 7:21 is that the angelic equivalent of the righteous
community is suffering instead of the unrighteous community. So, while the idea of
angelic defeat is not wholly new to the vision, nevertheless, a new element of
vulnerability does become visible in the divine council traditions of Dan 7.
1
deliver them. However, in v. 25d, the holy ones subordination takes on a

somewhat extended period of time through the introduction of the phrase
time, times, and a half time. Daniel now discovers that the Holy ones
will be subject to the little horn for a period of three and a half years (cf.
4:16)76 before they can expect divine intervention.
This presentation of Antiochus IVs rule marks a divergence from the
rst vision cycle and from the vision of Dan 2. In that vision, the statue is
destroyed because the small stone exploits the structural (= political)
weakness of the fourth kingdoms weak ankles and feet. The description
of the fourth kingdom as iron mixed with clay constantly emphasizes its
brittleness as well as it aggressiveness and thus allowed for the expecta-
tion of its disintegration by the otherwise disadvantaged community.
Though the language of the rock gives way to the imagery of the human-
like one and the holy ones, the rst vision cycle in Dan 7 nevertheless
adopts and builds on the expectation of the fourth kingdoms defeat. The
angels concise and triumphalist interpretation of the vision in vv. 1718
is meaningfully coherent with such expectations.
Roland Boer argues that narrative closure tries to eliminate and
contain ideologies of power pertaining to the text. Yet the inability to
bring a narrative to closure indicates an inability to deal with the ideo-
logical forces unleashed in the text.77 The second vision cycle reveals
that the force unleashed in the text is the perception of Antiochuss
strength and aggression. It has no hint of the fragility of ch. 2s statue.
Additionally, the end of Hellenistic rule which 2:3145 had depicted as
imminent in the third century has been manifestly contradicted by the
little horns rise to power and success in suppressing Judean Judaism.
Furthermore, 7:1718s triumphalist reading of the empires end is at
stark odds with the experience of the little horns on-going aggression
against the Most High, other kings, and even the holy ones. In contrast to
Jon Levensons argument, discussed in the Introduction, which would
locate dissonance in the use of the Chaoskampf tradition itself, I would
argue that it is the chapters resistance to closure that most clearly con-
veys contradiction. Daniels interruption of vv. 1718 and his subsequent
reopening of the pattern of history mark the struggle with this contra-
diction and its experiential dissonance.
76. So Montgomery, Daniel, 314; Lacocque, Daniel, 154; Collins, Daniel, 322;
but compare Seow, Daniel, 112, who thinks that reading the phrase as three and a
half years is a stretch.
1
77. Boer, Jameson and Jeroboam, 49.
d. The Paradox of Giving

The tragedy created by the little horns suppression of Torah observance
requires a more nuanced construction of divine activity vis--vis
Hellenistic power than that provided by the rst vision cycle or the
vision of Dan 2. This reconstruction begins with the contentious question
of Antiochuss legitimacy to act as the representative of divine power.
The redactional insertion of vv. 8 and 11a in the rst vision cycle asserts
that the little horn is, along with the fourth beast, unauthorized in its
actions. This assertion may be a response to Antiochuss own claims to
be the manifestation of God.78 The exact nature and extent of these
claims are not entirely known, as his use of epithets on his coinage was
inconsistent.79 However, the coins suggest at minimum that Antiochus
was proclaiming himself to be an agent of Zeus Olympius, in addition to
claiming some kind of divine prestige for himself. Understandably, the
scribal community in vv. 8, 11a, and 20 perceives such claims as attempts
to grasp for divine legitimacy and glory. The little horns human eyes
and mouth are noteworthy in this context. Whereas the humanization of
the rst beast in v. 4 signaled Nebuchadnezzars legitimacy, the little
horns human features signify its over-reaching, its misbegotten attempt
to grasp after divine power.
But if the little horn is not legitimate, the question then logically arises
about the origin and the extent of its power. Is the little horns power
self-derived and thus exercised autonomously, subject to none? In much
of the second cycle, this appears to be the case. The little horn is the sub-
ject of many active verbal forms and is engaged in the acts of speaking
(==>, vv. 20, 25), waging war (53, v. 21), conquering (EA, v. 24),
wearing out (=3, v. 25), and intending (C3D, v. 25). The striking num-
ber of active verbal forms sits in contrast to the activity of the rst three
beasts, the holy ones, and the humanlike one who, as subjects of the
divine, are rarely, or never, the doers of action. The little horns activities
in most of the second vision cycle arise from his own prerogative in a
way that clearly challenge divine prerogative (7:8, 11a, 20, 25a, c). This
challenge goes even beyond the threat of the fourth beast.
78. This claim appears on coins which he minted in 17372 B.C.E. containing the
inscription #"4*-&84 "/5*0906 2&06 &1*'"/06. For a concise summary
of the numismatic evidence, see Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:285, and Mrk-
holm, Antiochus IV, 133. An extensive discussion is found in Otto Mrkholm,
Studies in the Coinage of Antiochus IV of Syria (Historisk-Filososke Meddelser
utgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 40/3; Copenhagen: Ejnar
Munksgaard, 1963).
79. Mrkholm, Antiochus IV, 13031, refutes earlier arguments that the inscrip-
tions represent a much more extensive claim to divine status.
1
It is in this challenge to divine sovereignty, most clearly articulated in

the interpretation of the second cycle (vv. 2327), that the language of
handing over (39J, v. 25d) once again emerges, even as it did in Dan 2,
as the solution to the problem of divine power. The self-propelled
activities of the little horn dominate the interpretation in vv. 2326 where
divine activity is absent. However, in v. 25d the divine passive returns in
the enigmatic phrase, they will be given into his hand for a time, two
times, and a half time. That is, the Most High will give the holy ones
and their earthly homologue, the faithful community, into the power of
Antiochus IV.
This use of the divine passive creates a complex reworking of divine
and imperial opposition and alignment. The phrase itself echoes Dan
2:3738, in which Daniel declares that God has given all things into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar (note that 39J in 2:37 is in the active voice).
However, in Dan 2, this phrase comes in the context of an ideology of
rule in which the Most High initially authorizes Nebuchadnezzars king-
ship, only to reject the hand of the king by the end of the vision (2:45).
This same movement from alignment to rejection is evident in the rst
vision cycle of ch. 7. Yet the divine use of the little horn in the present
verse creates a conundrum, in so far as the Most High has not commis-
sioned the little horn and remains opposed to it. The statement also impli-
cates the Most High, who is clearly aligned with the holy ones, in the
communitys experience of tragedy. Nonetheless, the Most Highs action
of handing over the community reasserts divine sovereignty by under-
mining the little horns presumptions to autonomous and ultimate power
without legitimating its activities. The divine passive makes the divine
the catalyst for history (though an invisible one) and reveals to the read-
ing community that the little horns autonomy is more apparent than real.
Paradoxically, the communitys experience of being handed over
signals the containment of the little horns power. When the Most High
hands over the holy ones to him, the text establishes Antiochuss power
as derived from the Most High and thus subject to divine power. Once
again, the anatomy of power comes back into play through the use of the
polyvalent word 5J. Much as in Dan 2:3738, where Nebuchadnezzar
receives power into his hands (5J) from the deity, so too is the little horn
now receiving the holy ones with his hands from the deity.
As another way of indicating the containment of the little horn, the
text asserts that Antiochuss power, and thus the communitys tragedy, is
a matter of time. The interpretation limits and structures the communitys
oppression through the phrase time, two times, and a half time. This
phrase is fraught with ambivalence, for, in comparison with the vision
materials in vv. 2122, it suggests that the community cannot expect an
1
immediate intervention from the Ancient of Days. Instead, the phrase

indicates that the community will endure subjugation and must wait for
the visible presence and power of the deity. Yet the phrase also circum-
scribes the little horns power and gives it an end. This ending stands in
direct contrast to the punishment that the little horn will endure once
intervention does take place. At that point, his dominion is sentenced to
eternal destruction (v. 26).
The divine ability to contain the little horn is thus accomplished in
time through the paradox and reversals of divine deliverance. The divine
delivers the holy ones into the hands of the little horn (95J3 *H39JE9H,
v. 25d), thereby undermining his claims to autonomous power. Then the
divine and the heavenly council deliver (E3J9JH, v. 11b) the little horn to
nal destruction. At the same time, the council delivers a perpetual king-
dom ()= EH<=>, v. 27c) to the people of the holy ones (E3J9J, v. 27b).
Through this series of deliverances, the community is able to construct
its claim of ultimate power over the work of Antiochus IV and divine
presence with the community, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.
Of course, in doing so, the conundrum of divine presence is resolved
with a contradiction: the Most High is not juridically complicit with the
fourth beast, but the Most High does hand the holy ones into his power.
However, this contradiction appears to be unproblematic, if its survival
in this form is any indication. The writing community in 167 B.C.E.,
based on what it understood as theologically and cognitively satisfactory,
judged that the tragedy may be endured if it is part of the divine plan for
cosmic history. What, apparently, is not to be broached is the assertion of
Antiochuss autonomy.
If the rst vision cycle established Yahwehs international sovereignty
through assertions of the deitys heavenly power exercised over and
above the beasts and chaotic seas, this construction of divine sovereignty
resolves the communitys dissonance through the assertion of divine
power in the unfolding of time. The mythic pattern of the chapter imposes
cosmic origins and endings on the communitys experience of mundane
enmeshment. Such origins and endings are in themselves strategies of
transcendence in so far as they make sense of the chaotic middle in
which the community lives by making it an experience that is temporary
and proximate to an ultimate and permanent good. To be in the middle of
difculty with no sense of ending creates confusion and incoherence,
because it appears to be an end in itself. However, the conditions that
create dissonance, such as subordination, can be cognitively and experi-
entially tolerated if one knows that they have a temporary quality.80 In
1
the narrative of history in ch. 7, times passage brings not only the pass-
ing away of the little horn and his atrocities, it also brings the ultimate
end, the eschaton. From the perspective of such an ultimate end, the
weight and signicance of the communitys oppression diminishes by
virtue of its insignicant duration.
This cosmic temporality does not try to achieve consonance through
an explanation that might justify the experience as something deserved,
that is, retribution. Such an explanatory scheme would have had limited
effectiveness in so far as it could not have accounted for the obvious
righteousness of the community, a problem already apparent in Sirachs
lament (Sir 36:122). Instead, the second vision cycle provides conso-
nance by providing resolutions that emphasize, as Ricoeur points out, the
ending of the tragedy and the cessation of a history that erodes mean-
ing.81
The temporal resolution in the second vision cycle also has a predic-
tive quality, though this is not strictly necessary for the work of conso-
nance. The attempt at prediction using the phrase a time, two times, and
a half time may well be using the liturgical number seven. In this case,
half a sabbatical period constitutes the period of tragedy.82 For the
community, such a schematic number might signal an important irony,
namely, that the very liturgical time that Antiochus IV had attempted to
alter and abolish will ultimately govern his ending.
The vision concludes, quite signicantly, with the statement of the
enduring power, not of the Most High, but of the people of the Most
High. Endings, as well as beginnings, are centrally revelatory of a narra-
tives convictions. Not only do they frame what is crucially relevant to
the writer, they also have the power in such a cosmic narrative to tempo-
rize the essence of something or someone. As Kenneth Burke has argued,
a historys end is a formal way of proclaiming its essence or nature [I]f
there is this ultimate of beginnings, whereby theological or metaphysical
systems may state the essence of mankind in terms of a divine parenthood
or an originating natural ground, there is also an ultimate of endings,
whereby the essence of a thing can be dened narratively in terms of its
fulllment or fruition.83

82. See also Jonathan Goldstein, Peoples of an Almighty God: Competing Relig-
ions in the Ancient World (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 2002), 440.
83. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1969), 13, quoted in OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 25 (emphasis in the
quote from Kenneth Burke are his).
1
In this case, the nature of sovereignty is the subject of temporizing. The

end of imperial history reveals the essence of Antiochus IVs power as
limited, fragile, and penultimate. And yet this is not the end of the histori-
cal narrative. The rsum distinguishes imperial time from the unending
time of the holy ones rule. This governance, however, does not revolve
around the brilliance of the Ancient of Days, who has all-but disappeared
by v. 27. The divine once again recedes into invisible and passive action,
giving the kingdom (E3J9J, v. 27) into the hands of others. Instead, the
righteous rule that was visibly present in the theophany of the Ancient of
Days is now made visible through the work of the community.
6. Conclusion
The brilliant light of theophany in vv. 914 can easily blind one to the
contradictions of divine power and presence with which the community
is wrestling. However, the redactional and literary structure of the
chapter reveals that even as the revelation swings back and forth between
vision and interpretation, so too does divine sovereignty swing back and
forth between visible power and invisible action. Moreover, this glory,
whether hidden in the sweep of history or revealed in the heights of the
cosmos, is one that sometimes offers deliverance into the hand of the
enemy and at another time offers triumph over the enemy. Though this
may appear to be the work of an otiose and vacillating deity, these undu-
lations and tensions are indicators of a complex and sometimes contra-
dictory perception of divine sovereignty.
For the writers of the rst vision cycle and redaction, the tension
between divine visibility and invisibility highlights the glory of God
throughout a history that would be inscrutable if not for the privileged
knowledge of their manticism. It is an afrmation that, though at times
obscured by the larger-than-life gure of the emperor, Yahweh never-
theless is at work, giving power and withholding it. But even this seem-
ingly opaque history promises to become translucent when the divine
radiance shines upon it. At those moments, notably times of imperial
climax and closure, divine power reveals itself as highly visible, rst
through the manifestation of heavenly judgment on wayward govern-
ance, and then through the work of the community belonging to God.
Indeed, the very appearance of the Ancient of Days undermines received
notions of royal legitimacy and democratizes divine power.
Yet these formulations of divine power and presence, dating from the
late third century, are subjected to disconrmation in the harsh light of
Antiochus IVs decrees. The experience of dissonance is signaled by the
1
resistance to the closure offered in vv. 1718, driving the reopening of

this history in the second part of ch. 7. The second vision cycle responds
to the potential crisis of the little horns claims to autonomy and success
in his oppressive rule by positing the invisible power of the Most High at
work, signaled through the divine passive. Though the holy ones are to
be handed over by the Most High, the vision nevertheless brings in vari-
ous strategies of transcendence that tame the experience of Antiochuss
actions. The predictive element circumscribes the time of tragedy while
the cosmic pattern of the vision establishes that imperial sovereignty is
nally fragile. The ending of the narrative reveals imperial power to be
temporary and derived from the Most High at the same time that it shows
the Jewish community to be the means by which divine power becomes
visible permanently.
1
Chapter 4
DANIEL 8 AND THE CRISIS OF DIVINE ABSENCE
1. Sequel or Remake?
When turning from the drama of Dan 7 to the vision that follows, one
might ask whether the vision of ch. 8 is a sequel to Dan 7 or a remake. 1
On the apocalyptic silver screen, does the vision of the ram and the goat
offer a new episode in an ongoing serial, one that furthers a particular
storyline or theme? Or is it better viewed as the kind of remake that,
while updating an older classic by changing some particulars of scenery
and setting, mostly just recapitulates the plot conicts and resolutions of
the original? Of course, how viewers answers that question will affect
their expectations of what they will see in considerable ways.
The similarities between Dan 7 and Dan 8, such as the use of animal
imagery, the horn symbolism, the recurring character of the little horn,
and the four-kingdom schema all suggest that Dan 8 might just be a
remake of a classic creature feature.2 In his important introduction to
apocalyptic literature, The Apocalyptic Imagination, John Collins seems
to characterize the vision as such when he says that Dan 7 is comple-
mented by three parallel revelations that go over the same events in
slightly different ways.3
Of course, the term remake is not sufciently nuanced to describe
accurately the relationship between the two visions and account for their
similarities and differences. It is meant to be playful and heuristic rather
than technical. Nevertheless, it does get to the idea voiced by Collins,
and other commentators, that Dan 8 essentially says the same thing as
Dan 7, only in different ways. John Goldingay and Reinhard Kratz both
1. See also Goldingay, Daniel in the Context, 2:642, who suggestively talks
about the relationship between the visions in terms of sitcom or mini-series.
2. On the shared features of the two visions, see the following: Hartman and
DiLella, Daniel, 230; Collins, Daniel, 3738; Stephen B. Reid, Enoch and Daniel
(Berkeley: BIBAL, 1989), 103; Gzella, Cosmic Battle, 79.
3. John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish
Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 85.
1
4. Daniel 8 and the Crisis of Divine Absence 91
prefer the word midrash to describe the heart of the relationship.4

According to this argument, the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem
shortly after the writing of Dan 7 made it necessary to update the earlier
vision and ll in some of the gaps raised by that chapter.5 C. L. Seow
does not use the term midrash, but, like Goldingay and Kratz, seems to
view the vision of the ram and the goat as a further reworking of the ch.
7. He describes Dan 8s relationship to ch. 7 as being complementary
and contextualizing. He writes:
Daniel 7 is cosmic and implicit, while Daniel 8 is nationalistic and
explicit. The difference is such that one might think of the latter as esh-
ing out the former. The vision of Daniel 8 may, indeed, be viewed as a sort
of contextualization of the dream vision in chapter 7, which is itself, a
reworking of the account of Nebuchadnezzars dream vision in chapter 2.6
When viewed as a remake or reworking of Dan 7, Dan 8 is not expected

to introduce signicantly new formulations of divine power and pres-
ence. Indeed, commentators often assume that Dan 8 shares the con-
victions of sovereign power articulated in Dan 7. The later vision simply
articulates the triumph of divine glory post-desecration, albeit in a way
that lacks the literary, aesthetic, and symbolic depth of the antecedent
vision.7
4. Goldingay, Daniel, 202. Goldingay, Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,

642, concludes that the visions are more like sitcoms than mini-series; they do not
develop any kind of ongoing plot line. See also Kratz, The Visions of Daniel,
1:94, 111.
5. Scholarly consensus holds the occasion for its authorship to be soon after the
delement of the Jerusalem temple by Antiochus IV in December 167 B.C.E. So,
inter alia, Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 232, and Collins, The Meaning of The
End, 97.
7. Montgomery, Daniel, 325; Porteous, Daniel, 119; Niditch, Symbolic Vision,
216; and Goldingay, Daniel, 201, all comment on the inferior quality of ch. 8s
language and style in comparison to that of Dan 7. There is some general agreement
that the authorship of Dan 8 is probably different from that of Dan 7, and certainly
later. On this, see Collins, Daniel, 3738; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 14, 230; and
Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 22426; and Hasslberger,
Hoffnung in der Bedrngnis, 411. By contrast, Rowley, The Unity of the Book,
23373, has been the most important proponent of the authorial unity of chs. 712.
He is followed by Porteous, Daniel, 120. Although I am in agreement with those
who contend, on the basis of style and subtle differences in worldview, that Dan 8
was authored by a different person than Dan 7, I cannot agree with the elaborate
redactional history that Ginsberg posits and Hartman and DiLella follow with
respect to Dan 8. On the issue of redaction, see the helpful discussions in Lacocque,
Daniel, 16465, and Redditt, Daniel, 2034. Even though the chapters come from
1
I nd this way of reading Dan 8 to be unnecessarily harmonistic. A

careful examination of the emplotment and imagery in ch. 8 reveals
important divergences from the earlier vision. These divergences indicate
an experience of the divine that is signicantly discordant with the com-
munitys expectations established in Dan 7, rather than in tune with them.
Trying to reclaim coherence around Gods power and the emperors end
using temporal, spatial, and mantic strategies, Dan 8 provides a sequel to
Dan 7s vision of sovereignty rather than a midrashic reworking. This
dramatic sequel furthers the plotline of sovereignty by depicting the
emerging crisis of divine absence taking shape in the winter of 167 B.C.E.
The desecration of the temple necessitates a new ideology of rule and a
new attempt to bring divine presence out of a profound experience of
divine absence.
(1)
In the third year of the rule of Belshazzar, the king, a vision appeared
to me, yes, to me Daniel, after that which appeared to me at rst. (2) I saw
in the visionwhen I saw it I was in the fortress of Susa, which is the
province of Elam,8 and I was on the banks of the Ulai canal. (3) I lifted my
different hands, Dan 8s reading and writing community were nevertheless part of
the same community of scribal elites in Judea that read and shared Dan 7 as well as
Dan 2:3145. I understand the reading and writing community of Dan 8 to be an
informal and somewhat permeable grouping of scribes who valued literacy and
manticism. They were somewhat conservative in their loyalty to the Jewish tradition
and were united in their hostility toward Antiochus IV and his interference in
Jerusalems religious and political affairs. In speaking of the reading and writing
community, I do not sharply distinguish between producers and consumers of Dan 8.
Moreover, critical scholarship is largely in agreement that the visions of chs. 712
(with some scholars excepting ch. 9) were composed serially, even though earlier
chapters may have undergone redaction subsequent to these later chapters. This is
true even for scholars holding otherwise divergent views on the specics of Daniels
composition and redaction. See, for instance, Montgomery, Daniel, 96; Gammie,
Classication, Stages of Growth, 2024; and Kratz, Visions of Daniel, 91113.
As the book developed, writers and redactors of subsequent chapters read and
responded to earlier chapters. This dialogical process may have emerged out of a
social network in which members had access to each others work. However, it is
not necessary to stipulate social gatherings and circles. The community in question
may have been even more loosely gathered than this, connected to one another
through the sharing of manuscripts, literary conventions, and ideological convic-
tions.
8. The MT and 4QDana add a second I saw in the vision at this point, which is
not found in Theod or Origen. Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 4950, views this
as an early Hebrew duplication of the rst I saw.
1
eyes and looked, see! a ram was standing in front of the canal. It had two
horns and they9 were high. One was loftier than the other with the higher
one rising up behind the rst. (4) I watched the ram charge toward the west
and toward the north and toward the south. None of the beasts could stand
before it. There was no one to deliver from its hand. He did whatever he
wished and became mighty.
(5)
I was thinking about this and look! a he-goat came over the entire10
earth from the west and it did not touch the ground. The goat had a
conspicuous11 horn between its eyes. (6) He went to the ram who had the
horns who I saw standing by the canal and he ran toward him with the
fury of his strength. (7) I saw him approach the ram. He was enraged
against him and hit the ram. He shattered his two horns. There was no
strength in the ram to stand against him. He threw him down to earth and
trampled him. There was no one to deliver the ram from his hand.
(8) The he-goat became great, exceedingly so, but in his mightiness the
great horn was broken. Four conspicuous12 ones grew up in its place,
according to the four winds of the heavens. (9) From one of them a little
horn grew out and it grew exceedingly great toward the south and the east
and toward the beautiful land.13 (10) It became as great as the host of the
heavens and made some of the host and some of the stars fall to the earth
where it trampled them. (11) He became as great as the prince of the host,
from whom the daily sacrice was taken away and whose sanctuary was
degraded. (12) A host was handed over, along with the daily sacrice, in
the course of transgression.14 The horn threw truth to the earth and in
everything it did, it prospered.
9. The MT reads )J?CB9H, as does 4QDana, b, but this is not found in Origen or in
Theod. Collins, Daniel, 325, retains it.
10. So Theod and the MT. The OG does not have entire.
11. Not attested in Theod. Origen reads one, probably EI. EHKI is maintained
as the difcult reading, so Collins, Daniel, 325.
12. Not attested in Theod or the Vg. Origen has others (EHCI). Montgomery,
Daniel, 338, and Collins, Daniel, 325, omit it as either a misplaced gloss or a corrup-
tion of EHCI from v. 5. It is retained here as the difcult reading, as in v. 5, follow-
ing Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 225, who read EHJKI for EHKI; so also Lacocque,
Daniel, 157.
13. All versions omit land but it is supplied here according to Dan 11:16, 41.
So also Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 225; Lacocque, Daniel, 157; and Collins,
Daniel, 32526.
14. The Hebrew is unclear here. The difcult issues include: (1) To what does
34 refer? Does it refer to the enemy army of Antiochus IV or the angelic army?
Although the use of the term host in v. 12 is indenite, as opposed to the use in
v. 11 in reference to the angelic army, this inconsistency does not guarantee that 34
in this verse refers to the enemy army. Indeed, at no other place in the chapter is
there a reference to an enemy host; the little horn is always portrayed as acting alone
1
(13)
I heard one of the holy ones speaking. Then one holy one said to
whomever it was who was speaking, How long are the events of the
vision to lastthe daily sacrice and the appalling transgression, the
handing over of the host and sanctuary for trampling?15 (14) He said to
him,16 For 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary will be
made righteous.
(15)
When I was watching the vision, I, Daniel, was trying to understand
and, see!, standing before me was one who looked liked a man. (16) I
heard a human voice between the banks of the Ulai. He called, saying,
Gabriel, give this one an understanding of the vision. (17) He came near
to where I was standing and when he came I was terried and I fell on my
face. He said to me, Understand, mortal, that the vision concerns the
time of the end. (18) When he spoke to me, I fell into a heavy sleep on my
face on the ground. But he touched me and made me stand.
(19) He said, See! I am informing you about that which is to happen at the
end of the period of wrath, for it concerns the appointed time of the end.
(20)
The ram that you saw, which had the two horns, represents the
kingdoms of Media and Persia. (21) The goat, the he-goat, is the king of
Greece and the tall horn that was between its eyes is its greatest king. (22)
Concerning the horn that was broken and the four that came up in its
place, four gentile kingdoms will arise but without his strength. (23) After
their kingdoms have come to an end, when their transgressions are
complete,17 a king will arise, erce-faced and skilled in double-dealing.18
in ch. 8. (2) What is the sense of the preposition =? This is determined according to
how one understands host. If it is a reference to the angelic host, then the preposi-
tion will have the sense of addition. On this, see BDB, 755a (II.4.c), and also
Collins, Daniel, 326. Yet if the host is hostile, then the use of the preposition as
over and against the daily offering would be more appropriate. (3) What is the
sense of *E?? Is it appointed or handed over? Again, this issue depends upon
how one understands the host. The angelic host, in context, is clearly handed over.
Here, the sense of *E? as the Hebrew parallel to Aramaic 39J in Dan 7:25b is quite
tting. See also Collins, Daniel, 326, and Johan Lust, Cult and Sacrice in Daniel:
The Tamid and the Abomination of Desolation, in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book
of Daniel, 2:680.
15. Following Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 226.
16. The MT reads to me but Origen, Theod, and Papyrus 967 preserve to him
(HJ=). Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 16, argues that the original Hebrew was
most likely to him, H= using a defective orthography in which the waw was later
mistaken for a yod.
17. The Hebrew here is very difcult. While the MT reads sinners, all of the
Greek versions read sins and take the verb as a passive, )9JA9 )9<. See further
Montgomery, Daniel, 349, 353, and Collins, Daniel, 327.
18. Following A. A. Bevans translation from A Short Commentary on the Book
of Daniel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892), quoted in BDB, 295b.
1
(24)
His strength will be vast19 and he will cause immense destruction,20
succeeding in what he does. He will ruin the powerful and the holy ones.
(25) In his cunning,21 he will advance deceit with his hand and in his mind
he will become great. Quietly, he will ruin many22 and will even stand up
against the chief of chiefs. But without a hand he will be broken.
(26)
The vision of the evening and the morning that has been revealed is
true. As for you, keep secret the vision, for it concerns the future.
(27)
I, Daniel, was undone23 and sick for days. Then I arose and did the
kings work, but I was deeply disturbed because of the vision and had no
understanding of it.
3. A Matter of Time and Space:

The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 8
As in the vision of ch. 7, the vision report of 8:11224 presents the prob-
lem of foreign rule and its relationship to divine sovereignty by means of
19. The MT inserts not through his own strength, which is missing from Theod
and Papyrus 967. Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 88, argues that this addition
stems from the same phrase in v. 22, and occurred after the recension of Theod.
Later, the phrase was also added to the OG, to bring it into conformity with the MT,
accounting for why it is missing from Papyrus 967 but present in 88-Syh. It is
possible that the insertion also made sense in context for the later scribe who under-
stood the phrase as a limiting of the little horns power.
20. Many commentators emend cause destruction to read he will utter
monstrous things, to complete the parallel with 11:36, so Lacocque, Daniel, 167.
However, the present reading is contextually more appropriate than the emendation,
as the surrounding phrases are concerned with the little horns strength wielded
against mortals rather than his speech wielded against the divine.
21. Jeansonne, Old Greek Translation, 8889, explores the difculties of this
phrase, which is a hapax legomenon in the Hebrew. The Greek versions, however,
are not in agreement about this verse either. Collins, Daniel, 34041, follows the OG.
22. JPS translates he will make great plans, taking the verb to ruin as a
corruption of 3I. It also does this with the verb in v. 24.
23. The Hebrew word JEJJ9? makes no sense here. Collins, Daniel, 328, takes it
as a form of ruin. The OG reads it as to be weak, which Jeansonne, Old Greek
Translation, 74, understands as a translation of 9=I. None of the Versions agree.
24. The chapter is often structured in two sections with most scholars arguing
that vv. 114 constitute the vision report and vv. 1526 the interpretation. However,
I divide the chapter slightly differently. The vision report proper clearly ends at v.
12. The dialogue with the angels in vv. 1314 begins the process of interpretation
and is not strictly speaking part of the review of history that constitutes the vision
report. The chapter concludes with a brief narrative epilogue in 8:27 reporting the
visionarys confusion.
1
a vaticinium ex eventu and the symbolic vision form. The conuence of

these conventionsthe review of history provided by vaticinium com-
bined with concrete symbolic representationsmean that the chapters
ideology of rule embeds itself not only in time but also in symbolic
spaces and objects. But this chapter renders this time and place in far
more mundane and transparently earthly terms than does Dan 7.25 Instead
of the wild and mythological beasts situated in a cosmic setting, ch. 8
opts for domestic animals situated on the earthly plane. Nevertheless,
such domestic animals were no less able to convey social and political
might for Judean readers.26 Daniels community of readers would have
been familiar with the ram as symbolic of political leaders, dignitaries,
military leaders, and advisors (Exod 15:15; 2 Kgs 24:15; Ezek 31:11;
34:17).27 In much the same way, the he-goat ()JK9 CJA4 and the related
term )J5HE) would have been an image of kingship familiar from the
prophetic books (Isa 14:9; Jer 50:8; Ezek 34:17; and Zech 10:3).28
The narrative of history in ch. 8 is, like those of Dan 2 and 7, framed
by the four-kingdom schema.29 Indeed, the emphasis in Dan 8 on the
mundane, instead of the cosmic and universal, has the effect of privileg-
ing the temporal realities of human history that the older historiographi-
cal pattern had tried to communicate in ch. 2. The chapters successive
presentation of the animals and their horns explicitly adopts the succes-
sion of Media, Persia, and Greece, though it drops the Babylonian king-
dom. Indeed, the telescoping effect at work here and in the subsequent
visions,30 in which the rsums focus ever more closely on the period of
time closest to the writers, is already hinted at in the dating formula of
8:1. The formula locates Daniel in a particular imperial time, namely,
the third year of Belshazzar (or Bel-shar-usur, Naboniduss son and
25. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 22628.

26. See Patrick D. Miller, Animal Names as Designations in Ugaritic and
Hebrew, UF 2 (1970): 17786; and Goldingay, Daniel, 209; Gzella, Cosmic Battle,
13338.
27. Miller, Animal Names, 11, 18182.
28. Ibid., 184 (contra Goldingay, Daniel, 203); Daniel L. Smith-Christopher,
Daniel: Introduction, Commentary, and Reections, NIB 7:113; and Seow, Daniel,
120, all follow F. Cumont and A. Caquot, Quatre Btes, Semitica 5 (1955): 613,
in seeing these symbols as astrological in origin. On the goat as a king and leader-
ship gure, Ezek 34:1731 is particularly on point as an oracle addressed to both
rams and goats as leaders of the people. I do not nd convincing Gzellas suggestion
(Cosmic Battle, 13038) that the goat imagery pertains to goat-demonology. Goat
imagery as a metaphor for leadership is well-attested in the Hebrew Bible, whereas
goat-demonology is not.
29. This schema was discussed at length in Chapter 2.
1
30. Rappaport, Apocalyptic Vision, 219.
co-regent)31 toward the end of the Babylonian kingdom (cf. ch. 5).32 It
also locates the seer in a particular imperial placethe capital of the
Median province of Elam, Susa. In fact, Susa represents a unique meet-
ing ground of the empires. It housed a dilapidated provincial fortress of
the Babylonians,33 the Elamite capital of the Medians, and, later, the
winter residence of Darius I.34 In this context, the time and location of
Daniels vision converge to highlight imminent political change.35
Together they signal the movement of imperial history from the rst to
the second and third kingdoms.
As the vision reports historical focus zooms in on these later
kingdoms, it brings their escalating strength into focus.36 This is accom-
plished through the phrase, there was no one to deliver from its power
(vv. 4, 7). The phrase rst signals the premiere might of the ram over all
31. J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 42829.
32. The depiction of Belshazzar in ch. 5 represents a turning point in the
depiction of sovereignty that foreshadows chs. 712. For Belshazzar, alone among
the kings in the tales, does not repent, and does not recognize the sovereignty of the
divine over his rule. If the tales on the whole depict how kings should respond to
divine sovereignty, Belshazzar becomes paradigmatic of the recalcitrance that
Antiochus IV re-enacts on a much more devastating scale. This may explain why the
visions link themselves chronologically with ch. 5, taking on a setting during the
reign of Belshazzar. Belshazzars judgment and mysterious death in ch. 5 also fore-
shadow the imminent end of human empire that the visions hold up for Antiochuss
rule. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 12223, shows a number of the literary links that
connect Belshazzar with the little horn of Dan 8.
34. Ibid. Indeed, given that the authors of Daniels tales and visions have mis-
takenly rendered Darius I as a Mede who preceded Cyrus (see Rowley, Darius the
Mede, 5459), the vision may well have made the same mistake with Susa, thinking
of it in its Persian glory, though locating it here in the late Neo-Babylonian regime.
36. There remains considerable debate around the meaning of history in Daniels
visions, especially whether that history represents devolution or some other dynamic,
such as escalating aggression. The case for both has been made with respect to Dan
2s statue and its metals. Those who put emphasis on devolution include, inter alia,
Towner, Daniel, 3537, and Collins, Daniel, 165, 170; those who do not necessarily
see devolution at work in the passage include Noth, Understanding of History,
2045; Goldingay, Daniel, 49; and Seow, From Mountain to Mountain, 367. This
controversy is rooted in the text itself; the vision report gives evidence of decline in
its use of the metals, but the interpretation re-accents the character of history and puts
the emphasis on the growing power of the kingdoms, culminating in the unmatched
aggression of the kingdoms of iron mixed with clay. However, Dan 8 does not
possess the same kind of ambivalence. It does not picture a golden age of empire
and so is not tempted to present history as the degradation from that beatic rst age.
1
of the other implied animals or kingdoms when he emerges on the scene

in vv. 34. But its repetition in v. 7, when the goat enters the picture and
defeats the ram, establishes a pattern of escalating aggression. Each
successive kingdom is stronger than the one before it.
The horns of the animals further emphasize historical patterns of
escalating beastly aggression.37 The horns are graphic embodiments of
power in time, signaling the emergence of individual kingdoms or kings
as episodes of imperial history. The height of the horns also charts the
relative military and political character of those agents. Thus the horn
that symbolizes Persia rises up higher than that of Media, which never
exercised the dominion of Persia (v. 3). And the little horn grows greater
than the other horns, rising even up to heavenly heights (vv. 910) in its
dominance of the other preceding kingdoms.38 This is not to say that the
depictions of relative power in the vision are intended to be an objective
accounting of ancient Near Eastern political power. It is not the case that
Antiochus IV ever held sway over all of the empire of Alexander. Instead,
the intent of the rsum is to communicate the reality of Antiochuss
power as it is perceived from the point of view of one living in Judea.39
From that vantage point, the little horn is the climax of imperial power,
triumphant over all the previous empires, and even over the Diadochoi
who competed with the Seleucids for Judea.
37. For a thorough discussion of the horns as an image of power in Daniel and in
Daniel scholarship, see J. Eggler, Inuences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of
Daniel 7:214: The Research History from the End of the 19th Century to the
Present (OBO 177; Gttingen: University Press Fribourg, 2000), 4854; idem,
Iconographic Motifs from Palestine/Israel and Daniel 7:214 (Ph.D. diss., The
University of Stellenbosch, 1998), 197243, 295. See also Day, Gods Conict, 156;
Jean Steinmann, Daniel (Temoins de Dieu 12; Paris: Cerf, 1950), 110.
38. That the most notorious and over-reaching of the horns is named the little
horn needs noting. No doubt, the moniker intends not to refer to the extent of its
destructive force, which is great from the writers perspective, but to the ironic
character of Antiochuss rule. Chapter 8 carries the epithet over from Dan 7 where it
highlights the illegitimacy of Antiochus IVs path to the throne. In ch. 8, the little
horn no doubt provides an ironic contrast with the great horn of the goat, which
represents Alexander the Great.
39. This is true despite the fact that the four-kingdom schema at the heart of the
rsum was probably composed to reect an eastern and/or Persian outlook, hence
the inclusion of Media. However, when adopted by Jewish scribes, perhaps living
in the diaspora, for Dan 2, and then reused by Judean maklm for ch. 8, aspects of
the original historiographical schema were adapted to reect that perspective. See
the work of Swain, Theory of the Four Monarchies, 121, and Flusser, Four
Empires, 14675.
1
But just as the horns, in their ascendancy, embody the rise of political
might, they also, in their shattering, signal the downfall of political
power. There is something distinctly ironic in this, for the horns of the
ram and the great horn of the goat all break at the moment of their
greatest power (vv. 78).40 The rams horns appear to attract the goats
challenge, but the goats great horn seems to break on its own. This may
be read as a reection of Alexanders own ironic death from physical
illness at the height of his military strength, when he had succeeded in
defeating all external threats.
The visions use of vaticinium emerges from a careful study of past
history.41 In this study, the writing community has spotted particular
events such as Persias defeat at the hands of the Greeks and Alexanders
death from illness as examples of larger recurring trends. On the basis of
this, the community congures history as an escalating series of imperial
powers, with each following a similar life-cycle marked by ascent, over-
coming of previously invincible successors, self-exaltation, and defeat.42
At the heart of this pattern, the thematic dynamic of aggression and
imminent containment is the unifying motion of history.43
In this construction of imperial history, divine activity is not visibly or
directly causative, and the work of the ram and the goat appear to be self-
propelled. Unlike the beasts of Dan 7, these beasts are not under divine
commission. History in vv. 312 appears to obey its own rhythms,
unmoved and unhindered by signicant divine causation. Even the ironic
containment of imperial aggression in vv. 78 is largely part of historys
own internal causes and effects.
Daniel 8s rendering of imperial chronology adapts ch. 7 and ch. 2s
ideology of rule even further. With the excision of the Babylonian
kingdom (which Dan 2:3738 and 7:4 remembered as an agent of divine
authority), and with the depiction of Median and Persian kingship as
self-propelling, Dan 8 completes the shift away from any model of
divine authorization and commission of kings. Daniel 2 and 7 depicted a
certain, though limited, degree of legitimacy for the foreign king by
showing the Most Highs appointment of Nebuchadnezzar, Media, and
Persia. Yet Dan 8 cannot entertain even a qualied authorization for
kings, not even in Judeas past.
40. Newsom, Rhyme and Reason, 22.

41. See already Newsom, The Past as Revelation, 4053, and Hall, Revealed
Histories, 8283.
42. Goldingay, Daniel, 204; Hall, Revealed Histories, 88.
43. Richard J. Clifford, History and Myth in Daniel 10, BASOR 220 (1975):
24, and Newsom, The Historical Rsum, 230.
1
The visions use of horns, in as much as they concretize imperial time,

need further comment. These horns, much like the statue of Dan 2, work
by visually mapping power and time onto space. Central to this mapping
is the visions play on the motifs of exaltation and degradation. This play
begins with the irony of the little horn, who, though possessing a diminu-
tive name, becomes the greatest of the horns, causing himself (=589,
Hiphil) to become as great or as high as the heavens (v. 10). In the depic-
tion of the little horns aggression, Gzella notes the addition of a vertical
dimension to the previously horizontal description of the little horns
might.44 In v. 9, the horn lashes out toward the south, the east and the
beautiful land (Jerusalem, in the west). But with vv. 1012, the goat and
the little horn become vertical. Exalting itself to the heavens, the horn
casts the heavenly host to the ground and tramples on them (v. 10). The
vision describes the horns removal or abolition of the tmd (the daily
sacrice at the Jerusalem temple) using the root that, rather ironically,
means exalt in the active binyanim ()HC). Finally, v. 11 reports that the
temple was literally cast down ((=9). The image of the temples dese-
cration is that of physical descent, of being thrown from the heights,
from the holiness of the heavens above, to the earth, even as the truth is
thrown to the earth in v. 12 (94C E> (=EH) and the host fall to the
earth in v. 10 (94C =AEH).
The language of the little horns attack on the temple in vv. 812 sees
the otherwise mundane and nationalistic imagery of the vision turn
cosmic and mythic. Not only is the attack on the temple pictured in terms
of cosmic warfare using divine warrior traditions,45 it also contains echoes
of the rebellious subordinate motif, apparently borrowed from Isa 14:4b
20 and Ezek 28:119.46 The motif is characterized by hubristic thinking
that leads the king to elevate himself to the clouds of heaven, even up to
the divine throne, and thereby claim for himself divine power.47
44. Gzella, Cosmic Battle, 115.

45. See the extensive discussion in Gzellas Cosmic Battle.
46. On Daniels use of the rebellious subordinate, see further Niditch, Symbolic
Vision, 22829; Goldingay, Daniel, 202; and Seow, Daniel, 122. There is signicant
overlap in language and thematic motifs between Dan 8 and Isa 14:4b20. Both
passages use the term goat to refer to earthly leaders (cf. Isa 14:9 and Dan 8:58).
Both share the language and motif of hubristic thinking: =J58J H33=3H (Dan 8:25) //
9= )J>9 (33=3 EC> 9E (Isa 14:13a-b); both employ the concept of self-
exaltation up to the host and the stars: )J>9 345 =58EH (Dan 8:10) //
JD< )JC =J3<H<= =>> (Isa 14:13c-d); both utilize the motif of casting down to
the earth: 94C =AEH (Dan 8:10b) and 94C E> (=E (Dan 8:12b) // Isa 14:12:
#C= E58?)J>> E=A?.
47. Hugh Page, The Myth of Cosmic Rebellion: A Study of Its Reexes in
Ugaritic and Biblical Literature (VTSup 65; New York: Brill, 1996), outlines in
1
This mythic motif highlights the vertical and spatial symbolism of

sovereign power. In all three biblical passages the means by which the
king claims divine power is through the metaphor of ascent from the
earth to the clouds and the cosmos. Placing oneself in the heavenly
sphere is, in the logic of the myth, a claim to divine status.48 In Isa 14 and
Ezek 28, these attempts lead inevitably to the defeat and fall of the king
from the heights of heaven to the earth, even to the pit of Sheol, where he
suffers an ignoble death (Isa 14:1516; Ezek 28:810).
The rebellious subordinate is a character who violates the derived and
limited conditions of his kingship. In ancient Israelite and Mesopota-
mian royal ideology, the king mediates between God and humanity and
between the heavenly domain and the earthly.49 Persian royal iconogra-
phy depicts this relationship graphically in the Behistun relief where the
kings power is expressed through his height relative to his courtiers and
his enemies. He is the tallest. His gure graphically lls the visual eld
between the ground and the depiction of the god Ahura Mazda, who
hovers directly over the kings head.50 Closer to home, Dan 4 depicts the
kings sovereignty in similar graphic terms as Nebuchadnezzar dreams of
himself as a tree whose top reached to heaven (v. 11). Such spatial
congurations reinforce through visual means the claim that the kings
power comes to him as an extension of divine power; it is proximate to
and derived from the deitys ultimate power.51 Yet the rebellious
subordinate is one who forgets this ordering of the universe and attempts
to stake his claims to power by disregarding his own place in the cosmic
order and attempting to reorder cosmic spaces.
depth the elements of a narrative pattern that he argues goes back to ancient Ugaritic
myth. He does not include Dan 8 as one of the biblical reexes. Pages study of
these components is valuable even if one is not willing to accept his argument that a
number of biblical passages may be traced back to a now lost Ur-myth of a rebellion
among the divine council that led to the ouster of certain angels. See especially his
discussion of Isa 14 (pp. 12140).
48. Ibid., 132.
49. Cf. 2 Sam 7:14; 1 Chr 17:13; Pss 2; 18:44; 72:8; 144:2. See Bertil Albrekt-
son, History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine
Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (CBOTS 1; Lund: Gleerup,
1967), 4245, 51; Keith Whitelam, King and Kingship, ABD 4:44.
50. Margaret C. Root, Art and Archaeology of the Achaemenid Empire, CANE
4:261537.
51. See also Bernard Battos discussion of the representation of divine
sovereignty and royal ideology in the ancient Near East in his Divine Sovereign,
14386.
1
The apocalyptists depiction of Antiochus IV is of one who disrupts

the order of the cosmos. The little horn transverses the earthly sphere and
enters into the heavenly. It thereby violates the boundary between heaven
and earth. It also tries to insinuate itself into the position of the Most
High and even casts some of the angelic host to the ground. According to
Ps 82:67, however, any attempt to change the spatial position of the
heavenly host is the prerogative of the Most High alone.52 Such literary
images may well be a reection of the kings own projected image at the
time. Antiochus IV minted coins during this period that showed his head
reaching up to the stars.53 Moreover, 2 Macc 9:10 remembers him as one
who thought he could touch the stars of heaven.54
In this subversion of traditional royal ideology, the little horns hubris
does more than create conict with the heavenly host. It also creates a
crisis in the institutional means of divine presence. In second temple
Judea, divine power and presence were typically mediated through three
chief means: the social and political structures of the emperor (cf. Isa
44:28),55 the temple and cult, and the structures and customs of Torah
observance.56 Antiochuss actions, according to the vision report, damage
all of these religio-political structures. The kings illegitimate accession
to the throne and his self-deication has usurped legitimate governance,
severing the royal connection between the divine realm and the human
realm. His attack on and desecration of the temple completely disrupts
the cultic means of divine presence. Finally, the little horn has cast Torah
observance to the ground (v. 12),57 a reection of Antiochuss evil laws
abolishing Jewish practices. These, of course, do not exhaust the possible
means by which the divine may be present with the people, but these acts
do create a real national tragedy for those who understand that the cultic
and political absence of God will have dire consequences for them as a
people.58

53. The denitive work on Antiochus IVs coinage comes from Mrkholm,
Studies in the Coinage of Antiochus IV in Syria, 6874, while Seow, Daniel, 12324,
provides a useful and concise discussion of the evidence.
54. Collins, Daniel, 333; Seow, Daniel, 124.
55. Lemke, Near and the Distant God, 54155; Keith Whitelam, Israelite
Kingship: The Royal Ideology and its Opponents, in Clements, ed., The World of
Ancient Israel, 12836.
56. See especially Peter T. Vogt, Deuteronomic Theology and the Signicance of
Torah: A Reappraisal (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 11359.
57. Most likely what the text means by the truth (E>), according to Lacocque,
Daniel, 163.
58. On Gods absence understood in terms of institutions as well as actions, see
Joel S. Burnett, The Question of Divine Absence in Israelite and West Semitic
1
4. The Crisis of Divine Power and Presence

Apocalyptic vision reports lend themselves to cinematic comparisons, for
good reason.59 With their emphasis on visually concrete symbols that
provide a compact but briskly paced narrative momentum, vision reports
often convey high drama. Moreover, the vision reports of Daniel follow
the typical expectations for dramatic movementleading the reader
through a tension that is building toward climax, followed by denoue-
ment at which time the central dramatic problem is resolved.
The eschatological dramas of 2:3145 and ch. 7 show how these
vision reports are suffused by the tensions involving divine manifestation
and power. In Nebuchadnezzars dream, the dramatic action evolves
slowly, moving methodically through the description of the statue, which
nevertheless impresses the reader/viewer with a certain awe and dread of
the seemingly invincible monument to imperial power (2:3132). The
drama builds as the description registers the structural and material aw
in the statues ankles and feet (2:33). Having led the reader to expect that
the aw would be exploited, the narrative then introduces the stone
(2:34), the symbol of divine rule, which brings the story to a climax. The
utter destruction of the statue by the stone brings about dramatic rever-
salthe awesome statue is destroyed by the small stone, which then
grows to extraordinary proportions, never to be destroyed (2:35, 44). The
kingdom belonging to the Most High and his people, once overshadowed
by imperial might, emerges as the sole and uncontested power of the
land.
In Dan 7, dramatic tension unfolds much more quickly with the imme-
diate introduction of the four beasts. This tension is much more complex
than that of ch. 8, the beasts being threatening and repugnant, but also, in
the case of the rst three, Gods instruments (7:46). Moreover, the
drama undulates as the vision report stops and then starts again. Finally,
it builds toward climax with the insults of the little horn against the Most
High. The entrance of the Ancient of Days (7:9), the one in human form
(7:1314), and the people of the holy ones of the Most High, bring about
resolution, afrming the visible power and glory of the divine (7:27).
Religion, CBQ 67 (2005): 21535. Samuel Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding
of the Face of God in the Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press,
1983), 3233, describes the dire consequences that result from Gods absence and
hiddenness.
59. See, for example, Towners analysis of Dan 2 in his Daniel, 2940. Niditch,
Symbolic Vision, 23241, notes that the dramatic quality of the apocalyptic symbolic
vision is due to the development of the symbolic vision form toward a stronger
narrative style.
1
Daniel 2 and 7 establish important readerly expectations with respect

to this divine drama. One expectation involves the visibility of divine
power, either through theophany or through non-anthropomorphic sym-
bols such as the stone. The reader also expects the divine to contain the
aggression of the insubordinate king and inaugurate reversals of power.
Such reversals are part of a well-articulated sense of ending in which the
previous narrative of imperial history is brought to closure, while the
possibility of a future history of righteous rule is reopened for the com-
munity. When one begins to read Dan 8, these expectations are in play.
And yet, Dan 8 disappoints readerly expectations when the vision report
brings the dramatic tension to its highest level without the expected
divine manifestation and denouement. In doing so, it reects a profoundly
dissonantal clash between expectation and experience. In this clash the
problem of divine absence is brought to the fore as a political, cultic, and
military problem.
Chapter 8 builds dramatic tension through the repetition of the verb
=58. The verbs description of the horns unfolds the pattern of each
kingdoms ascending aggression. Its repetition also creates rhetorical
momentum for the reader. It begins at a slow pace in v. 4 but then recurs
more often, quickening the pace, as the reader moves closer to the heart
of the vision:
=J589=J9
the rambecame mighty. (v. 4)
9=H589 *CB9 9C3? H>4<H 5> 5 =J589 )JK9 CJA4H

the he-goat became great, exceedingly so, but in his mightiness his great
horn was broken. (v. 8)
CEJ=58E
[the little horn] became very great. (v. 9)
)J>9 345 =58EH

And it became as great as the host of the heavens. (v. 10)
=J589 349 C 5H
And he made himself as great as the chief of the host (v. 11)
1
As Goldingay points out, the repetition of =58 in vv. 811 builds toward
a rhetorical climax.60 It brings the aggression of the little horn to its
pinnacle in a confrontation with the chief of the heavenly host himself,
the archangel Michael.61
The narrative builds tension in other ways too. In this respect, the
repetition of the phrase there was no one to deliver (8:4b) is notable.
This phrase initially speaks of the rams invincibility in the face of other
competitors. But when the vision introduces the goat, who succeeds in
overcoming the ram, the reader learns that the rams power over its
adversaries had, in fact, been relative rather than absolute. When Daniel
asserts the same regarding the goat (8:7b), that no one could withstand its
power, the reader is no longer convinced of the goats invincibility, but
expects a stronger power to emerge and contain its wrath.62 This expecta-
tion works in tandem with the generic expectations that Dan 2 and 7 had
already established concerning the drama. The reader anticipates that
60. Goldingay, Daniel, 197 n. 8.aa.

61. Many commentators identify the chief of the host as God; so Collins, Daniel,
333; Goldingay, Daniel, 210; Redditt, Daniel, 140; and Seow, Daniel, 123.
Lacocque, Daniel, 162, however, maintains that the chief of the host is the angel
Michael. I would agree that the identication of Michael is to be preferred in light of
Dan 12:1, where he is identied as the great chief (=H589 C9). So also, Daniel
Smith-Christopher, Daniel: Commentary and Reections, in the New Interpreters
Bible (ed. Leander Keck; 12 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 7:113. Collins cites
Dan 8:25, in which the king stands up against the chief of chiefs as an unequivocal
reference to God and the interpretive parallel to v. 11. While I would agree that the
identity of the chief of chiefs in v. 25 is indeed the Most High, I do not agree that
the chief of the host is strictly grammatically parallel to the construct chain chief
of chiefs. The former is, according to Bruce Waltke and Michael OConnor, An
Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990),
240 n. 6, a unique appellative with parallels in 1 Sam 17:55; 2 Sam 2:8; 19:4; and 1
Kgs 16:16. In each of these cases, the 349 C is a technical term for the kings
commander. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 229, points out that the phrase is also found
in Josh 5:14, where Joshua is confronted by his cosmic counterpart. Joshuas
counterpart is not the Most High but the angelic commander of the heavenly army,
who is identied in Dan 12:1 as Michael, contra Seow, Daniel, 123. )JCC, how-
ever, is a superlative genitive (so Waltke and OConnor, Syntax, 154), which may
suggest a distinction in rank from the 349 C. Furthermore, contra Collins, it is not
necessary to postulate a strict correspondence between symbol and explanation, or
vision and interpretation, given that the interpretation does not hesitate to add new
details. Indeed, gaps between symbol and interpretation are not unknown in mantic
and literary predictive texts. On this point, see Maria deJong Ellis, Observations on
Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic Texts; Literary and Historiographic Consid-
erations, JCS 41 (1989): 15464.
1
62. So also Goldingay, Daniel, 204.
when the opposing power has achieved the height of its destructive force,
the divine will intervene in a manifestation of glory.
Daniel 8, however, builds the tension even higher in vv. 1012,
exploring the fragility and absence of divine power in the face of the
little horns success. The visions imagery of cosmic warfare between the
horn and the host emphasizes the power of Antiochuss military strength
in ways Dan 7 does not. There is a discernible shift here from the juridi-
cal conict of Dan 7 to the martial conict of Dan 8. A courtroom scene
implies the power of the prosecuting body (the divine court) to try the
defendant, while a battle scene indicates that the claims of both sides
have yet to be determined.63 Although it is true that in 7:21 and again in
7:25b, the holy ones are engaged in a battle with the little horn, this
battle is penultimate, as the divine council steps in to render judgment in
7:22 and 7:26. Indeed, in every capitulation of the narrative in Dan 7, the
divine councils power and authority over the little horn is graphically
asserted (7:11, 22, 26). Yet Dan 8 provides no language of juridical
process or intervention. In the vision report, God does not even intervene
at all.
The absence of divine power may be discerned in other ways as well.
In the rst place, the vision report (vv. 112) provides no theophany, no
visible manifestation of divine power in any way. Not only this, the little
horn succeeds in doing to the host in v. 10 what the goat did to the ram in
v. 7.64 The rhetorical pattern in vv. 38 had created the anticipation of
containment for the goat and the little horn. Yet the lack of divine juridi-
cal intervention disappoints this expectation and even openly contradicts
it as the horn overthrows the stars, the temple, and even the Torah.
In building up the drama of divine and Seleucid conict, the visions
defeat of the heavenly forces also disrupts the formal and readerly
expectations of the rebellious subordinate motif. In Isa 14:13, the king
aspires to raise his throne up to the heavens, above the stars, to make
himself like the Most High, but the Lord fells him and casts him to the
63. On the martial nature of this scene, see also Seow, Daniel, 12223. Miller,
Divine Warrior, 26, 213 n. 19, does not see a sharp distinction between the judicial
and military roles within the tradition. He argues, on the basis of the Ugaritic texts,
that the language of the divine council traditions shifts easily between assembly and
host, thus encompassing both roles. It is possible that the book of Daniel represents
an innovation in the divine council tradition on this point. In so far as specialization
of the divine council, occurring late in Israels history, has been argued by Mullen,
Divine Council, 27476, one may argue that Dan 712 reveals not just a speciali-
zation with respect to individual names and characters within the council, but also
with respect to agencies within the council.
1
ground (v. 12). In Dan 8:1012, the king, now in the guise of the little
horn, once again aspires to exalt himself (v. 11) to the heavens, above the
stars, and up to the chief of the host. This time, however, he is success-
ful, and it is the stars that fall from heaven to the ground, and it is the
sanctuary that is cast down.65 At the end of the vision, v. 12 reports that
the little horn prospered, unchecked, in all that it did.
The direct contrast in the emplotment of these two visions, along with
the assertion of the little horns success in v. 12, reveals the contradiction
between the communitys experience and their expectations of divine
power. In ch. 8, the divine realm is under military attack with no hint of
the divine warriors intervention. It is not possible to harmonize the
vision at this point with Dan 7s theophany and thereby read the conict
between the warring forces as being under control in the perception of
the community.66 The cosmic warfare traditions in Dan 8 imply that,
despite the visions of divine manifestation and judgment in Dan 7, Anti-
ochus IV remains undeterred and uncontained. He is a growing threat to
his subjects, to the heavenly host, and to the divine. As C. L. Seow
writes, even though the issue in Dan 8 is the encroachment upon Mount
Zion, the text presents the event as a challenge to the hegemony of the
deity in the divine council.67 Antiochuss actions since the redaction of
Dan 7 have justiably altered the writing communitys perception of
him, giving rise to these perceptions. At the same time, these events have
created a situation in which there is no divine response to the emperors
aggression and no conventional means of bridging the gap between the
heavenly and the earthly to make the divine present with the community.
Divine governance, power, and presence are unaccounted for in the
vision report. Instead of resolving the tensions around divine sover-
eignty, the vision has escalated them.
5. Resolving the Tragedy

Yet there is another issue that emerges in the drama, even if it is more
implicit than explicit. The corollary to divine absence, when one is
speaking of the ideology of rule, is the problem of imperial autonomy.
That is, given the absence of divine sovereignty and the feebleness of the
65. Another play on the theme of exaltation may be found in the difcult verbal
form )CH9 in v. 11 which refers to the usurpation of the daily offering. The verb is
from the root )HC, to exalt, which is the same root in Isa 14:13, though in the
Hophal this verb is usually rendered in the sense of taken away. This translation in
its own right creates a parallel with the imagery of given over in v. 12.
66. As does Goldingay, Daniel, 201.
1
67. Seow, Rule of God, 240.
heavenly host in the vision report, the questions that need answering are,
in the rst instance, ones concerning the restoration of divine presence
and power, and in the second instance, questions of the kings freedom
and power to act. The possibility of the little horns autonomy, his free-
dom to act without respect to divine command or containment, was a
concern already in Dan 7. This possibility is also implicit in the rebellious
subordinate motif, as the subordinate refuses to recognize his dependence
upon God. Finally, Dan 8:12s assertion that the horn goes about his
work unchecked brings added urgency to the question.
a. Resolution as a Matter of Time

As the vision report ends, Daniel just happens to overhear a conversation
between messengers, heretofore absent. This conversation, in v. 13,
reveals information critical to the resolution of the drama:
For how long a period is the vision concerning the daily sacrice and the
appointing of the appalling transgression and the trampling of the host
and the sanctuary? He said to him, For 2,300 evenings and mornings;
then the sanctuary will be made righteous.
That this information seems to come accidentally to Daniel through his

mantic eavesdropping heightens the suspense momentarily. The infor-
mation leads the reader to see that there is more to the drama than meets
the eye, but Daniel does not yet see the angels or understand how their
information pertains to the vision.
In Dan 8, the movement from contradiction to resolution mirrors the
formal movement of the chapter from vision to interpretation.68 The
vision report builds crisis by highlighting divine absence and invisibility,
while the interpretation attempts to resolve that dissonance through the
mantic revelation of history. In doing this, the interpretation brings new
emphases to the visions review of history, focusing almost exclusively
on the time of the fourth kingdom and the little horn. It also adds and
selectively expands the details that change the emplotment of the vision,
bringing a sense of ending that will answer the questions of divine
presence and Seleucid power.
Initially, the interpretation frames the problem in cultic terms. The
angel declares that the end to the tragedy of divine absence will take
place in the restoration of the sanctuary. This marks a divergence from
Dan 7:25, which frames the ending in terms of the subjection of the holy
68. In doing so, this movement also dees the expected symmetry between vision
and interpretation, if the principle of lemmata and atomizing recitation is main-
tained as a central feature of Daniels mantological visions, as Fishbane, Biblical
Interpretation, 44748, argues.
1
ones and the judgment upon the little horn. And yet, for both chapters,
restoration is once again a matter of time. While ch. 7 invokes the period
of, a time, two times, and a half time, which may be based on the
sabbatical number seven, 8:14 marks the ending according to the lost
celebrations of the tmd: 2300 celebrations over 1150 days, just short
of three and a half years.69
Though the two numerical predictions differ, Dan 8 being more
precise than Dan 7 (and hence subject to disconrmation), they never-
theless function in similar ways. Both are efforts to assert and circum-
scribe the limits of the little horns power, which had at the end of v. 12
escalated without hindrance. They do this by simply predicting its end in
the near future.70
Moreover, these predictions function as extensions of the larger
temporal work of apocalyptic narratives. This work imagines and estab-
lishes narrative endings (which happen to be both political and cosmic)
in order to make the story meaningful for the one experiencing it. With
the prediction, the reader learns that the tragic experience of divine
absence, the desecration of the temple and the triumph of the godless
emperor, will not endure. Such assertions establish an ending to the
tragic narrative of imperial time. This ending, in turn, not only contains
the little horn, it contains the corrosive power of time,71 or, one should
say, the corrosive power of imperial time. In the knowledge that this
corrosive time will not endure, the weightiness of the crisis undergoes
recalculation. When the vision frames the crisis as being proximate to a
permanent goodthe establishment of righteous rulethe crisis has less
power to create terror and chaos.72 This prediction of containment gives
69. Collins, Daniel, 336, argues that the discrepancy between the two chapters
may have to do with the fact that Dan 8 was written after Dan 7, and is therefore
taking into account time already passed. Note also Seow, Daniel, 125, who argues
that this is not a mantological exegesis of a time, two times, and a half time from
Dan 7:25. In his view this statement refers literally to 2300 days, or roughly seven
years, thus locating the beginning of the perceived crisis in 171 B.C.E. with the
murder of Onias III by counting backward from the rededication of the temple in
164 B.C.E. Seows argument must assume that the text already knows of the
rededication of the temple, otherwise the beginning point of 171 B.C.E. could not be
calculated. However, Collins, The End, 9394, has convincingly argued that this
formula is indeed a genuine prediction calculated according to the morning and
evening daily offering with the beginning point of 167 B.C.E., the time of the texts
composition and a point before the rededication of the temple, which, he argues, the
text has no knowledge of yet.
70. So also, Smith-Christopher, Daniel, 114.
71. White, Metaphysics of Narrativity, 153.
1
closure to imperial history even as it arises out of the patterns of that

history. The interpretation understands that it will come, because past
empires have already shown themselves to rise and fall.
The previous chapter of this study noted the important cognitive
power of narrative temporality. OLeary has argued that tragic experi-
ences, which may not be meaningful for those enmeshed in them, may
become comprehensible with the passage of time, that is, once the event
has come to an end.73 The apocalyptic vision makes use of this power by
narrativizing experiences and then allowing the readers to watch time
pass before their eyes as they view the conclusion of that narrative.
Signicantly, this means of creating consonance for the reader does not
require a rational explanation for the cause of the tragedy, such causes
usually being unavailable or unsatisfactory to begin with.74 So, Dan 7
does little to explain why God hands over the saints; there is no attempt
to view the little horns power as a legitimate form of divine retribution.75
The emphasis is instead on envisioning its end. Having said that, how-
ever, one might note that Dan 8 is strikingly reticent about envisioning
the end. The cultic terms used to frame the calculation of the end suggest
temple restoration, but the chapter withholds any further narrative
imagining of the events of the end. This is a problem that requires further
comment. It is, indeed, one of many lingering tensions in this chapter
that will be addressed further below.
In addition to the calculation of the end, the idea of the period of
wrath (8:19) is another temporal strategy that the chapter uses for
making sense of imperial power and divine invisibility in the rsum.
It functions by putting emphasis on the closing of events and the com-
ing intervention of the divine instead of trying to account for the origins
of the communitys experience. In this respect, the strategy does not
work in the way that the concept of divine wrath works in the prophetic
or psalmic literature. Very often wrath in those texts functions as a
theodicy settlement.76 It is the appropriate expression of anger against a
73. Ibid.
74. Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell (Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further
Investigations into Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1977), 32, quoted in OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 41) argue that, Since expla-
nations offer reasons, and evil turns on the lack of reasons, some form other than a
causal explanation must be called for. The only form which can exhibit an action
without pretending to explain it isnarrative.
75. So also Hall, Revealed Histories, 86.
76. Brueggemann, Some Aspects of Theodicy, 253 (emphasis original),
denes theodicy settlement as something of a consensus in the community about
the kinds of actions that produce (and deserve) good outcomes (according to Gods
1
disobedient people. Typically, God is the subject of )K and the Israelite

community is its object. This is how it is used in Dan 9:16 (cf. Isa 10:5;
Zech 1:12; Pss 69:25; 102:11).77 Sometimes foreign nations or kings are
the object of this wrath (cf. Isa 10:25); sometimes they are the means of
inicting the wrath on others (Isa 10:5). Yet foreign nations can be the
subject of wrath as well, as in Dan 11:30 and 36, where the wrath
belongs to Antiochus IV.78 In Dan 8:19, however, wrath does not have a
clear subject and object. It is not an expression of anger but describes
instead a period of time. This period of time equals the imperial history
beginning with the Babylonian exile, while the end of the wrath
appears to be synonymous with the temporal term the time of the end
(8:17, 19). These correspondences, however, do not indicate the causes
for wrath, as, for example, Zech 1:12 does.79
During this period, the faithful community is clearly the object of
tyranny, while the relationship between God and that tyranny is not
explicit or causal. Daniel Smith-Christopher argues that the writer intends
it to be a period of punishment by Yahweh that leads to salvation,80
though the logic of the vision does not support this. Daniel 8 does not
attribute the wrath to the communitys sins. Moreover, one expects that
the community would be able to exercise control over the duration of the
wrath if it were intended by God as retributive. Thus, in the deuterono-
mistic theology of retribution (cf. 1 Kgs 8:3334, 4650) and also in 2
Macc 6:14 and 7:38, the acts of the communityrepentance, crying out,
martyrdomhave the power to abate the divine wrath toward the Jewish
community.81 In the present context, however, the duration of the period
is tied to the fulllment of imperial transgressions (v. 23) as well as to
the prior determination of God.82 It is not dependent upon the fulllment
of the communitys transgressions, nor can it be shortened by the com-
munitys repentance. The concept of the period of wrath does not seem
good pleasure) and bad outcomes (according to Gods displeasure). It is an

agreement about who gets what.
77. Smith-Christopher, Daniel, 11516.
78. Collins, Daniel, 338, argues that Dan 8:19 shares this view. See also Gold-
ingay, Daniel, 215.
79. Goldingay, Daniel, 217; Collins, Daniel, 338.
81. See further J. Goldstein, II Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction
and Commentary (AB 41A; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 303.
82. The logic behind the idea of completing transgressions before rendering
judgments is found in Gen 15:16. 2 Macc 6:1316 seems to provide an explanation
for this logic. However, I do not agree with Seow, Daniel, 130, that this is the same
rationale for the period of wrath in Dan 8 and 11.
1
to function in reference to the communitys culpability. The period of

wrath appears to signify the communitys experience of imperial power
as a result of the deitys remoteness; it does not signify Gods intention
for the community to suffer.
Yet Smith-Christopher is surely correct when he argues that the idea
of the period of wrath also functions as a way to deny victory to foreign
armies.83 It ironically limits the little horn by showing that he does not
exercise power over time. Although he attempts to change times and
laws (Dan 7:25), his tyranny over the people is subject to the constraints
of time. This time is, in turn, ordered by the divine (2:21). Though the
little horn succeeds, it is only because the deity has allowed it by
ordering time in this fashion.
Divine activity and the deitys remoteness are at the heart of the logic
and function of the period of wrath. On the one hand, the period of wrath
signals the time of Gods remoteness from the community. The com-
munity understands that God is not exercising power locally; Gods
benecial presence is at work within the community. This does not
mean, however, that God intends to be an oppressive presence via the
little horn (as a retributive theology would argue). Instead, the period of
wrath signals that Gods power is working on the world-historical level
to shape the contours of the imperial pattern of time and thereby limit
tyranny. It emphasizes the time that must pass, that has indeed already
passed, before the divine intervenes to bring to completion the ruptured
pattern of imperial history. At that time, the divine will indeed be a
benecial presence to the community. Thus the period of wrath mediates,
using time, between the present experience of divine absence and the
assertion of divine power over history.
b. From Theophany to Hierophany: Resolution as a Matter of Manticism

Within the interpretation, the problem of divine presence and power is a
matter to be resolved in time. The previous section argued this by
asserting its truth on different levels. On one level, the statement refers to
the way in which the interpretation simply predicts the restoration of the
temple and with it the cultic presence of God. On another level, it refers
to the way in which such predictions, as extensions of narrative endings,
create a sense of ending that bring consonance to the contradictions of
tragic experience. But there is still a third sense in which the interpreta-
tion resolves the problem of divine absence in time. That is, in revealing
tragic history to be xed or planned by the deity in the rst place, the
interpretation afrms divine sovereignty over historical events, even in
1
the midst of the deitys political, cultic, and theophanic absence. And yet,
this resolution is also a matter of mantic revelation. Manticism provides
yet another means by which the community renegotiates the character of
divine activity and presence both world-historically and locally.
In complete divergence from ch. 7, ch. 8 never manifests the deity in
directly visible terms. Daniel 7 highlighted divine power through a
hierarchy of embodied forms in which the divines anthropomorphic
appearanceas well as that of the human-like onecontrasted starkly
with the misshapen beasts.84 Daniel 8, however, demurs with respect to
this embodiment of righteous ruling power, even picking up 2:36s
formulation that the little horn will be broken without a hand (8:25).85
This formulation points to the elusive character of divine activity (cf. Job
34:20), capable of working without a human agentin Dan 2:36 it means
without the kings agencyand/or more generally, without anthropo-
morphic embodiment.86
The absence of anthropomorphic depictions is one way to articulate
divine incomparability. This was the case in Dan 2:34, 45 where the text
rejects embodied or humanistic terms for describing divine activity. In
these references, the text establishes two contrasts. The rst of these
compares divine power to cut and move the stone with the power of the
human-shaped statue ()=4, 2:31). In an earlier stage of composition this
contrast probably served as an idol polemic, marking the incomparability
of God through negative images (without human hands, 2:34). The
second contrast in the text, perhaps emerging in a later stage of compo-
sition and adaptation, is made between divine power, which is without
84. Discussed at length in the previous chapter of this study.

85. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 121, suggests that this phrase refers back to
Dan 5:24, where God pronounces judgment on Belshazzar, through a hand writing
on the wall. Granted that the image of the hand is common to both, the hand in 5:24
is clearly an emissary for the divine (see also Collins, Daniel, 250) rather than a
divine anthropomorphism, which is, at any rate, rejected by 8:25. In 5:24, the hand is
sent ((=) by the divine, evoking the same language of the angelic emissary in Dan
10:11, who is, much as in this chapter, described in fully humanistic terms, taking on
the features that at other times are used for the divine.
86. Daniel 8:25 appears to reject ch. 7s model of divine power and presence
expressed through anthropomorphic theophany and to embrace the model of divine
power implicit in 2:3145. In Nebuchadnezzars dream the contrast is between the
stone, cut without human hands, and the manufactured statue. When the stone
destroys the statue, the message is that God rejects the power of kings and empires
as legitimate representatives of the divine. Moreover, the hand of Nebuchadnezzar
strikes a contrast with the stone cut without hands. In 2:38, God gives all things into
the hand or 5J of Nebuchadnezzar. The hand thus signals his derived power, whereas
Gods ability to act without hands is the mark of absolute power.
1
hands (2:45), and the power of the king whose power is connected to
his hand (5J, 2:36). In both contrasts, divine power is established as that
which is incomparable in power to idols and human kings. This incom-
parability turns precisely on the lack of continuity between Gods activ-
ity and idols or between Gods activity and human kings. It also suggests
a lack of continuity physicallyYahweh is manifested in the rock, not in
the human-shaped idol. Yahweh does not require human hands, but
Nebuchadnezzar does.
When 8:25 adopts the phrase without hands, it too signals the lack
of continuity between God and human agents. The verse asserts that
Gods mode of acting with respect to history is incomparable to that of
human agents, most especially that of the little horn. But it also signals
more generally the unfamiliarity of the divine, which has consequences
for divine immanence with the community.87 While divine disembodi-
ment allows the community to disassociate divine power from royal
power, it cannot signal divine presence or continuity with the faithful
community. In refusing anthropomorphic or humanistic descriptions, the
text sacrices one means of establishing divine alignment with the
maklm.
The deitys activities are also grammatically invisible in ch. 8. Divine
activity is consistently depicted using the divine passive, which obscures
God as the agent of the action. Thus v. 12 says that a host, together with
the daily offering, was given over in the course of transgression, utiliz-
ing the circumlocution for divine activity from 7:25.88 The divine passive
appears again in 8:25, where the interpretation states that Antiochus IV
will be broken without a hand (C3J 5J DA3H), a reference to divine
activity borrowed from 2:34. But whereas the previous visions put the
divine passive in tension with visible manifestations of divine rule (i.e.
the rock from the mountain and the Ancient of Days), 8:25 does not.
What is visible in Dan 8 is unrighteous rule. In place of theophany, the
interpretation provides an anatomy of Antiochus IVs rulehis erce
face (v. 23), his perverse imagination and schemes (vv. 2425), and his
might or his hand (5J, v. 24). In the laundry list of activities (vv. 2325),
that his hand and perverse imagination accomplish, he devises extraordi-
nary things, prospers himself, ruins the powerful, plots against the holy
ones, advances deceit, ruins many, and confronts God. All of these verbs
87. John Kutsko discusses the way in which Ezekiels anthropomorphic theo-
phanies, on which Dan 7, 8, and 10 depend, established both the incomparability of
the divine (with respect to idols and kings) and Gods presence and continuity with
the community. See further his article, Ezekiels Anthropology, 11941.
1
88. The Aramaic verb 39J is the equivalent of the Hebrew verb *E?.
are Hiphils, emphasizing the causative agency of his 5J. Rhetorically,

this depiction is effective because it matches the experience of those
within the scribal community. For them, Antiochuss power appears
strong and invulnerable. While afrming these appearances, the inter-
pretation nevertheless undermines the little horns autonomy and invin-
cibility by depicting the indirect and invisible agency of God.
The interpretation reveals that the driving force of history is the
mysterious and disembodied power of the divine. In 8:25b, the hand is
the means by which the kings perverse agenda is accomplished. In
8:25d, however, it is the lack of the hand that nally fells the king. Gods
power here, as in 2:34 and 45, becomes apparent in the lack of a hand.
With this invisible power now silhouetted, visible only as a shadow, the
character of the history one nds in the vision may be reread. The
mysterious destruction of the great horn may have been due to Alexan-
ders illness, but it is now reread as the invisible and indirect work of
God which will, at long last, work to contain the little horn in the same
way.89
The interpretation makes divine power visible and active only secon-
darily. This happens, in part, through the angelic messengers. Although
the interpretation describes the angels in pointedly humanistic terms,90
these anthropomorphisms are also reections of the divine body revealed
in Gen 1:26; Isa 6:6; Ezek 1:268, and Dan 7:912.91 Similarly, the
description of the angel as resembling a man (C38 9C><, v. 15), echoes
the description of God in Ezek 1:26 ()5 9C><). Thus the angels are,
formally speaking, the connecting point between God and humans. The
angels carry human form and voice, which are the features previously
attributed to God in the anthropomorphic theophanies of Dan 7 and the
prophets, as well as the priestly creation story. This form signals more
than general anatomical congruence, it also signals divine immanence
and alignment with the visionary who resembles him.92
The angels also assume the mantic functions that had previously been
Yahwehs in earlier vision traditions. Daniels encounter with them in
vv. 1718 is part of a process of mantic revelation and cognition that
combines elements from various vision traditions in which the visionary
89. Hall, Revealed Histories, 88; Newsom, Historical Rsum, 22.

90. Or what Lacocque (Daniel, 16768) calls adamic terms. One angel speaks
with a human voice, )5=HB (v. 16), and Gabriels name means man of God,
(=JC38). It is notable that the prophet in the deuteronomistic tradition is often
referred to as a man of God ()J9= J); cf. 1 Kgs 12:22; 13:1, 4, 5, etc.
1
92. Ibid., 21214.
receives an oracular report from the divine through non-inductive

means.93 Typically, God did the work in these visions. Daniels collapse
at the approach of the angel who then raises him to his feet is, for
example, an echo of Ezek 1:28; 2:12, and 3:2324, in which Ezekiel
collapses and Yahweh raises the prophet to his feet. Yet the angel also
induces in Daniel a heavy sleep (JE>5C?, v. 18),94 of the kind produced
by God in Gen 2:21 and 15:12. Indeed, Diana Lipton argues that this
kind of sleep (root )5C) is almost always divinely given.95 Finally, the
angels interpret for Daniel the symbolic vision he has just seen. Susan
Niditch notes that in earlier uses of the symbolic vision the deity inter-
prets for the prophet (cf. Ezek 37; Amos 7:79; 8:13). In Dan 7,
consistent with the larger development of the symbolic vision form, an
angel interprets instead of God, though the divine remains in the back-
ground. Here, however, the deity has completely withdrawn and has left
the work for the divine council.96
The revelatory functions and theomorphic/anthropomorphic features
of the angel converge signicantly in Dan 8. It is as they are revealing
the sacred plan for history that the angels human/divine-like features are
made explicit. Quite unlike the heavenly host involved in the battle, these
angels are signicant in their attachment to the functions and content of
knowing. If the prophets took on many of the qualities of God and the
divine council from the earlier parts of the canon, including the messen-
ger function and the embodiment of the divine word,97 then the angels
93. See, for example, Josh 5:136:6; Job 4:13; Ezek 1:282:2; 3:2223; Zech
4:1. On the distinction between inductive and non-inductive methods of divination
within prophecy, see M. Nissinen, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources
(SAA 3; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998), 7.
94. On sleep as a medium for conveying wisdom or knowledge, see 1 Kgs 3:5.
On sleep as part of the form of the symbolic vision, see Niditch, Symbolic Vision,
22324.
95. Diana Lipton, Revisions of the Night: Politics and Promises in the Patriar-
chal Dreams of Genesis (JSOTSup 228; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1999),
191.
96. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 247; Mullen, Divine Council, 27475.
97. Terence Fretheim, Christology and the Old Testament, in Who Do You Say
That I Am? Essays on Christology (ed. Mark Powell and D. Bauer; Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1999), 21112, writes: From a canonical perspective,
prophets appear at about the time that the messenger of God ceases to appear. Note-
worthy are the signicant continuities between them (human form; man of God
and messenger identication; use of rst-person singular and similar genres;
membership in the divine council). Yet there are new developmentsso that they
are called to function, in effect, as ongoing theophanies. See also von Rad, Old
Testament Theology, 2:9192.
1
here resume these roles and become mantic revelations eneshed. For
Dan 8, God becomes present in the way in which the angels embody
both divine form and the divine plan of power. Thus, divine presence
through theophany, at work in Dan 7, gives way in this chapter to hiero-
phany, the appearance of sacred (embodied) knowledge.98
As the angels interpret the vision for Daniel, they do not just reveal the
plans of God, they also reveal Gods power to be a knower and a planner.
The manticism of this passage moves divine activity away from that of
direct intervention and action in the historical realm to the activity of
knowing and planning. Whereas in Dan 7 divine action for the com-
munity is highly visible in the theophany of the Ancient of Days and his
actions against the little horn, in Dan 8 the divine remains elusive,
hidden, and disembodied in his actions against the little horn (8:25). The
Most Highs presence with the maklm is mediated through his revealed
plans, through the messengers who echo the divine form and the divine
knowledge.
In the revelation of mantic secrets, the deity, through angelic agents, is
actively engaged in creating knowledge. The angels reveal knowledge,
create understanding (*39, vv. 16, 17), and declare ((J5H>, v. 19) to
Daniel what will happen. Each of these commands and statements uses
forms of the Hiphil, stressing the causative and active nature of creating
knowledge and grasping it. Moreover, this knowledge opposes the little
horns own plans and activity. The little horns distorted cognition
imagined his own power to be autonomous, unlimited, and ultimate, but
the divine plans for history confront and oppose this hubris and assert
that Antiochuss power is derived, temporary, and proximate.
The interpretation, because it reects the process of knowing, is the
point at which the reading and writing community become active as
well. Since Daniel, through his watching and through his dialogue with
the angels, mediates heavenly secrets to the reading community,99 his
98. Reid, Enoch and Daniel, 94.

99. On the visionary stance and its ability to mediate between prophet and
audience, see Fox, The Valley of the Dry Bones, 115. Fox notes that Ezekiels
stance creates visual alignment with the people as well as an alignment of faith. In
seeing the vision as he sees it, the exiles are persuaded to believe in Gods power
even as Ezekiel is persuaded. Yet, while the author of Dan 7 borrows much from
Ezekiels visionary tradition, his manticism, which studies the past to predict the
future, means that there is a misalignment between the ctive setting in the sixth
century B.C.E. and the location of the readers in the second century B.C.E. The gure
of Daniel spans this gap through his professed misunderstanding of the visions
future application.
1
participation in the language and rituals of cognition locate the readers

in the process of knowing. Although his stance as visionary and narrator
creates a visual alignment for the readers, it is interesting to note that it
does not necessarily create an alignment of knowledge. In fact, in v. 15,
when Daniel professes a lack of understanding (9?J?3 9B3) about the
events he has seen, he creates a misalignment between himself and the
implied readers, who most certainly understood that the desolating
abomination referred to the events of their own time.100 Yet this mis-
alignment proves to be fruitful because it invites the community to par-
ticipate in the process of cognition in the context of the interpretation.
Daniels confusion empowers their knowing.
The maklm become active as knowers, as fellow sharers in Daniels
mantic wisdom. In so far as divine knowing is now the means by which
the divine is active, powerful, and present with the community, the com-
munitys knowledge of the plan of God becomes a means for resolving
dissonance. God is elusive and invisible but nevertheless active in shap-
ing the course of history. And just as history brought about the contain-
ment of the rams power and the shattering of the tall horn (Alexander),
God has shaped history ultimately to bring about the containment of the
little horn. The community must wait for it at the appointed time, but this
waiting is not simple passivity. For the community of readers, their
knowing and understanding constitute a symbolic, but nevertheless
active, resistance to the little horns claims.101
100. This technique is not unlike the kind of pedagogy that the television show
Sesame Street often uses in the interaction between its muppet characters and its
implied viewers, the children. Whereas the muppet Grover is chronically, though
humorously, obtuse as he learns along with the children, his confusion not only
goads the children into understanding, it also helps them see that they understand on
a level that not everyone can share. The effect for children is to empower their
learning.
101. Jameson, Political Unconscious, 7985, follows C. Lvi-Strauss by arguing
that narratives are formal and imaginary resolutions to unresolvable contradictions.
That is, narratives do not concretely or logically resolve the contradictions that
people experience in the world, but in so far as narratives take the world into the
text, they can accomplish resistance and change to a social institution that they
would otherwise be unable to change. Jameson is aware that such symbolic acts have
an ambiguous nature. One the one hand, the discourse or artwork is a real act; on the
other hand, it is registered as an act which is merely symbolic, its resolutions
imaginary ones that leave the real untouched (81). On the structures of knowl-
edge as a means to resolving contradiction in second temple Judaism, see Newsom,
Knowing as Doing, 14950.
1
6. Loose Ends and Lingering Tensions

The eschatological end of an apocalyptic drama is not unlike the end of
any narrative. Its function is, Frank Kermode has argued, to create conso-
nance with the origins and with the middle for those who are stuck in
the middest, that is, all of us.102 Apocalyptic dramas fashion their ends
on a larger scale than typical narratives by making them ends of imperial
or even cosmic history.103 Nevertheless, as an attempt to bring literary
consonance, the ending wraps up loose ends, comforts us with the
resolution of deep and disturbing conict, and thereby achieves a satis-
fying closure.104
Narrative critics often assert that because endings function in this
manner, they must be carefully studied to see if they fulll their purpose.
Indeed, endings are not obligated to do all these things. Endings can also
choose to avoid closure.105 Since literary consonance brings with it
theological consonance in Daniels visions, the question of endings and
closures is a signicant one. The interpretation in Dan 8 attempts to give
closure to the visions noticeably open-ended depiction of the little horn
in v. 12. As a result, the little horn does nally meet his fate at the narra-
tive and historiographical end of Dan 8. However, a close scrutiny of
Dan 8s end reveals lingering tensions.
Henry James comically described narrative endings as a distribution
at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended
paragraphs and cheerful remarks.106 To some degree this is also true of
the eschatological and narrative endings in Dan 2 and 7. Though apoca-
lyptic closure promises nothing so intimate and familial as babies,
husbands, and wives, there are prizes to be had. Those prizes have to do
with sovereignty, not only the reassertion of divine sovereignty in some
visible and imperturbable form, but also the sovereignty of the commu-
nitythe permanent establishment of the visible glory of Gods people.
Yet the interpretation in ch. 8 fails to distribute any prizes, so to speak.
The ending is overly brief, using only three Hebrew words to speak of
the future end, and those deal exclusively with the demise of the little
horn. Quite unlike the previous visions, this vision is reluctant to make
statements concerning the future (that is, the future from the perspective
102. Kermode, Sense of an Ending, 7, 17.

104. Lapsley, Doors Thrown Open, 143.
105. Ibid.
1
106. Quoted in Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 22.
of the writing community).107 The containment of the little horn does not
inaugurate a new period of glory for God or for the people, and it never
even envisions the restoration of the cultic presence of God. Though it
initially framed the resolution in those terms, it actually ends with an
exclusive focus on the little horn.
If the interpretation made the resolution of divine power and presence
a matter of time and space, it is not entirely successful in accomplishing
this rhetorically. As far as being the temporal means of resolution, the
mantic historiography of vision and interpretation is so narrowly
congured around Antiochus IV that his power threatens to eclipse,
textually speaking, even that of the divine. What is more, the eschato-
logical ending, although it brings imperial time to an end, does not
succeed in reopening future time for the faithful community. Daniel 7
opened up the possibility of a future time entirely centered around the
righteous rule of the saints of the holy ones of the Most High. Similarly,
Dan 2:45 pictured a future kingdom comprised of the descendents of
Abraham and Sarah that lls the entire earth and will not pass away.
While neither vision species who should lead, both visions seem to
indicate in rather broad terms that the faithful community itself is the
legitimate center of righteous power. Yet Dan 8s eschatological out-
come fails to complete the task of legitimating an alternative form of
leadership to Antiochus IV. Of course, the appearance of the angels to
Daniel begins to authorize the scribal community, for which the vision-
ary gure is an ideal representative.108 However, there is no envisioning
of the extent of this power and the institutions over which they might
have authority. Because of this lack, Dan 8 is never quite able to resolve
the problem of the institutional absence of divine power. Not surpris-
ingly, this institutional deciency is reected in the spatial symbolism of
sovereignty. The interpretation never restores the ordering of the cosmos.
The eschatological outcome does not rectify the positions of the
heavenly host and holy place which had all been cast from the heights by
the little horn.
107. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 216. Collins, The Son of Man, 55, provides a
helpful schematic that puts into parallelism the historical rsums of chs. 712
according to: (A) Events prior to the career of Antiochus IV, (B) the Career of
Antiochus, and (C) Eschatological Outcome. Collinss schematic points up the fact
that, alone among the four rsums, Dan 8 is missing an eschatological outcome.
108. Goldingay, Daniel, 21214. So also Collins, Daniel and His Social
World, 13839.
1
The lack of a future vision of restoration bespeaks ongoing tension as

well as exhaustion around the question of divine power and absence.
When the containment of the little horn does come, after a signicant
delay in the expected intervention, the lack of energy dedicated to its
depiction mitigates the effect. The nal statement of the little horns
containment fails to command the textual time or energy of the inter-
pretation. While this may be due to some kind of conscious shift in the
communitys goals from the clear political assertions of Dan 7 to some-
what more elusive political ambitions,109 textually the issue appears to be
an ambivalence emerging from exhaustion and loss of imagination by the
community. By contrast, the text spends a signicant amount of time
depicting the character and activities of the little horn (vv. 912, 2325),
showing him to be the opposite of Dan 7s humanlike one.110 It also gives
a disproportionately larger amount of its attention to the success of the
little horns career than to its containment. The brief statement of the
divines action against the little horn fails to exercise the gravity needed
to undermine fully the little horns success, rhetorically speaking. The
question of sovereignty remains a loose end.
7. Conclusion
The way in which Dan 8 expresses dissonance and attempts to resolve it
evinces a decided shift from 2:3145 and ch. 7 in several ways. In the
rst place, there is the shift away from the model of divine legitimation
of kingship. In no way is any imperial power aligned with divine power,
nor does it provide the means for securing divine presence.
Secondly, the crisis brought about by Antiochuss desecration of the
temple ultimately results in severing the connection between divine
power and divine visible presence. The theophany of the Ancient of Days
in Dan 7 held together divine transcendence and its cosmic governance
with Gods particular presence with the community. In Dan 8, however,
divine presence through anthropomorphic theophany is rejected in favor
of a model of divine power that is disembodied and active through
knowing and planning. Divine incomparability is asserted through the
109. Collins, Social World, 138, is followed by Albertz, Social Setting,

1:17576, who sees this as a function of the shift from the Aramaic Daniel to
Hebrew Daniel. See Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35961, who notes
tremendous ambivalence in the maklm with respect to their political ambitions.
110. Both the little horn and the humanlike one have human form; one is given
kingly agency by God and is seated on the clouds, the other tries to place himself on
the clouds and displace God in the act of claiming royal power.
1
divine ability to know and shape time and history. This allows the com-
munity to see God at work, ultimately limiting and containing Antiochus
IV. Because of this shift to the divine as knower, the communitys con-
nection with the heavenly realm is now maintained through manticism
rather than through the temple or theophany or even Torah.
Despite the visions attempts to mediate between divine power over
history (by means of Gods knowing and planning) and divine presence
locally (with the community through manticism), the institutional
presence of God is never fully regained in the shift. The plans of God,
which have been revealed by the embodied angels, attempt to mediate
divine presence, but the lack of an eschatological outcome means that
divine presence remains hidden from the community. Moreover, the
community is unable to make God present by means of an alternative
political and religious structure. While the vision begins to hint at the
importance of the scribal community in their mantic connection with the
angels, it does not fully develop the role of the maklm in representing
the divine. This elusive presence will continue to cause dissonance for
the visions, for as long as Antiochus IV remains the center of the narra-
tive and the end of history, divine power will remain as a shadow within
history.
1
Chapter 5
RESTORING THE SACRED IN DANIEL 9
1. Introduction: Daniel 9 as an Oddity

Daniel 9 is notably different in both form and theological content from
the previous chapters. It utilizes deuteronomistic language and theology,
which was not only missing from 2:3145, chs. 7 and 8, but which, it
could be argued, has been outright rejected by these earlier visions.1
Dropping the usual structure of vision report and interpretation, Dan 9
instead opens with a statement concerning the visionarys study of
Jeremiahs writings. This study prompts him to engage in prayer, which
is in turn answered by a hierophany of the angel Gabriel. The content and
style of the prayer in vv. 419 are so remarkably discontinuous with the
previous materials in Dan 7 and 8, and also, it seems, with the other parts
of the chapter itself, that many scholars have been convinced that it is
secondary in nature, the result of a later redaction.2 The commentaries of
James Montgomery, and Louis Hartman and Alexander DiLella, note the
seams at vv. 4a and 20 as the points at which the prayer has been
inserted, not always awlessly, into the chapter.3 Moreover, the prayer
uses good Hebrew liturgical style that may reect an existing prayer. The
1. So, for instance, Collins, Daniel, 60.

2. Those who have argued that the prayer was inserted after the oracle include
R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1929), 222; Bentzen, Daniel; Ginsberg, Daniel; Gammie,
Classication, Stages of Growth, 191204; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 246;
and, most recently, H. Rigger, Siebzig Siebener: Die Jahrwockenprophetie in
Daniel 9 (Trierer theologische Studien 57; Trier: Paulinus, 1997), who argues that
the chapter originally consisted of nine Hebrew lines to which were added, in two
separate redactions, the prayer. Paul L. Redditt, Daniel 9: Its Structure and Mean-
ing, CBQ 62 (2000): 23649, provides a concise and helpful summary of the
evidence as well as the recent scholarship on the issue.
1
3. Montgomery, Daniel, 362; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 246.
oracle, however, uses a Hebrew replete with Aramaisms instead.4 While

the prayer is deuteronomistic in content, the oracle is much more at home
with the mantic historiography of Dan 8. Also perplexing is the character
of the prayer. As a penitential prayer, it seems to be an odd response to
Daniels reading of Jeremiahs prophecy. The reader expects, on the
basis of vv. 23 and the oracle itself, a prayer for illumination.5
As a way of making sense of these irregularities, both within the
chapter and in the chapters relationship with the other visions, scholars
often deem Dan 9 to be a later insertion by a somewhat inept redactor.
However, when read within the framework of the visions ongoing
concern to make sense of Seleucid rule within the framework of divine
control over history and divine presence with the community, Dan 9 may
be seen as a response to the crisis of sacred power and presence that
erupted in ch. 8.
At the end of the previous chapter, I argued that Dan 8 presents a
crisis in the institutional presence of the divine within the Jerusalem
community, one which the vision of the ram and the goat never fully
resolve. In that vision, divine incomparability is emphasized at the
expense of the local presence of God in the community. Moreover, the
lack of an eschatological resolution in the previous chapter left the com-
munity with few means for overcoming the experience of that deso-
lationit is faced with the prospect of simply enduring the period of
wrath. This chapter argues that rather than posing a contradiction to the
theological concerns of the other rsums, Dan 9 provides a complemen-
tary response to the profound dissonance evident in ch. 8. Invoking the
deuteronomistic and cultic discourse of the Babylonian exile, Dan 9
reframes the events of temple desolation in terms of divine relationality
(even though that relationship may be punishing) and combines it with
mantic historiography. This unique response copes with the threat of
divine abandonment in a way that symbolically engages the community
in ending desolation, while still asserting the freedom of the divine
intention over history.
4. Charles, Daniel, 22223; Seow, Daniel, 136.

5. So Charles, Daniel, 226; and Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 245. But see
Porteous, Daniel, 136, who, in arguing for the unity of the chapter, dismisses the
notion of the stupid redactor/author. He writes, the author is not so inept that he
could not have composed a prayer for illumination if he had felt that one was needed
at this point. In fact the suggestion that the ineptness of the prayer for its presumed
purpose justies the conclusion that it is an interpolation has obscured the very good
reason why the author put it here
1
5. Restoring the Sacred in Daniel 9 125
(1)
In the rst year of Darius, son of Ahasuerus of Median descent, who
became king6 over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, (2)[ in the rst year of his
reign7] I, Daniel, was considering in the Books the number of the years
that were to fulll the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet con-
cerning the destruction of Jerusalem70 years. (3) Then I turned my face
to the Lord God to inquire with supplicating prayer in fasting, sackcloth
and ashes. (4) I prayed to Yahweh my God, and confessed and said, Ah,
my Lord, great and revered God, who keeps covenant faithfulness with
those who love him and keep his commandments. (5) We have sinned, done
wrong, and acted wickedly; and we have rebelled and turned aside from
your statutes and commandments. (6) We have not obeyed your servants
the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings, princes, our fathers,
and to all the people of the land. (7) Yours, O Lord, is righteousness and
ours is the shame, as it is to this day, on the Judean, and those who dwell
in Jerusalem, and to all of Israelthe ones who are near and those who are
far in all the lands to which you have scattered them on account of their
treachery against you. (8) Lord, shame belongs to us, to our kings, to our
princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.
(9)
To the Lord our God is mercy and pardon, because we have rebelled
against him. (10) We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God in
order to walk in his laws which he gave to us by the hand of his servants
the prophets. (11) All of Israel transgressed your laws and strayed so as not
to hear your voice. So the curse and the oath which were written in the
Laws of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us because
we sinned against him.8 (12) He has fullled his words which he had prom-
ised against us and against our judges who judged us, to bring upon us
great evil such as has not been done under all the heavens as it was done in
Jerusalem. (13) Just as it was written in the laws of Moses, all this evil came
upon us because we did not appease the face of the Lord our God to turn
from our sins and to become knowledgeable of your truth. (14) The Lord
watched over the evil and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is
righteous in all the he has done, but we did not obey his voice.
(15)
O Lord, our God, who brought up your people from the land of Egypt
with a mighty hand and made for yourself a name, as you have to this day,
we have sinned, we have acted wickedly. (16) O Lord, in all of your
righteousness, turn, we implore, your anger and wrath from your city of
6. Reading (=>9 as a Hiphil rather than a Hophal. The Hophal would represent
the only use of this form of (=> in the Hebrew Bible, so Hartman and DiLella,
Daniel, 240.
7. The phrase in the rst year is missing in Theod and may be a gloss; so ibid.,
241.
1
8. Some manuscripts read against you.
Jerusalem, your holy mountain; for in our sins and in the transgression of
our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all who
surround us. (17) Listen, now, our God, to the prayer of your servant, and to
his supplication and let your face shine upon your sanctuary, which is
desolate, for your own sake, O Lord.9 (18) Incline your ear, my God, and
open your eyes and see our desolation, and the city which is called by your
name, for it is not because of our righteousness that we are praying our
supplications before you, but on account of your great10 mercy. (19) O Lord,
hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord be attentive and act. Do not delay, for your
sake, my God, for your city and your people who are called by your name.
(20)
I spoke and prayed and confessed my sin and the sin of my people,
Israel, and poured out my supplication before the Lord my God, concern-
ing the holy mountain of my God. (21) And when I was speaking in the
prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I saw previously in a vision, approached
me, ying swiftly,11 at the time of the evening offering. (22) He instructed
me12 and spoke to me, saying, Daniel, now I have come out to give you
understanding and discernment. (23) From the beginning of your suppli-
cation the word went forth and I have come to declare it for you are a
beloved man.13 Understand the word, then, and comprehend the vision.14
(24)
Seventy weeks have been established concerning your people and
your holy city in order to complete the transgression, to bring sins to
completion, and to atone for iniquity and to bring eternal righteousness, to
seal a vision,15 and to anoint the holy of holies. (25) Know and understand,
that from the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem,
until the time of the anointed prince, there will be seven weeks. During
sixty-two weeks it will be restored and rebuilt, with streets and a moat, but
in distressing times. (26) After sixty-two weeks, the anointed one will be cut
down with no one to help16 him. The army of the prince who is to come
will destroy the city and the sanctuary,17 but his end will be in a ood, and
9. This reading follows Theod and the reading in v. 19 instead of the MT, which
reads, for the sake of my Lord. The Versions have various readings.
10. Lacking in the Greek but present in the MT and Theod.
11. Following the Versions. The MTs reading here, wearied with weariness, is
difcult.
12. The LXX and the Syriac have H3J, he came, while the MT, Theod, and the
Vg preserve *3J. I follow the MT and Theod because the verb 9?3 is a characteristic
verb in the exchanges between the angels and Daniel; see also 8:15, 16, 17; 10:11, 12.
13. J is supplied in Theod and the LXX; see also 10:11, 19.
14. Not in the OG, but possibly the MT and Theod add it from Dan 8:16.
15. The MT and Theod add and a prophet, which is missing in the OG.
16. Supplied from Dan 11:45.
17. The syntax here is ambiguous. Collins, Daniel, 346, takes the city and the
sanctuary as the object of destroy, as does Charles, Daniel, 382; Montgomery,
Daniel, 363; Porteous, Daniel, 132; Lacocque, Daniel, 187, and Seow, Daniel, 135.
1
until the end of the war desolations are decreed. (27) He will make a strong
covenant with the many for one week. For half a week he will suppress the
sacrice and the offering and in their place will be a desolating18 abomi-
nation until the decreed destruction is poured out upon the desolator.19
3. The Problem of Daniel 9s Duality

In assessing the function of Dan 9 for its second-century B.C.E. audiences,
one must necessarily attend to its authorial unity and its relationship
to the other visions of Daniel. The issue of authorial unity raises the
question of the unity between the reading and writing community of Dan
9, a unity that I have posited as central to rhetorical work of the other
visions. If the present form of the chapter attained its shape in a haphaz-
ard manner, then one cannot assume that the form reects an intentional
interaction between the writer(s) and readers concerning Antiochuss
decrees. So, two questions are raised from the outset: (1) Is there any evi-
dence that the prayer and the oracle are intentionally juxtaposed and
fundamentally linked with each other? And: (2) Can we nd in the
materials an intentional reection of the maklm as both the community
of readers and writers who are struggling with Seleucid persecution?
A consensus has emerged among scholars in recent years that Dan 9 is
an intentionally and carefully constructed whole.20 C. L. Seow argues
that the differences in style between the prayer and the oracle do not
necessarily indicate a fractured literary development. Similar prayers,
such as those found in Ezra 9 and Neh 9, also exhibit the same kinds of
differences in style with their surrounding materials without being
labeled as interpolations.21 And while the prayer makes use of traditional
deuteronomistic ideas and language and was possibly even adapted from
a sixth-century prayer,22 an emerging consensus of scholars argues that it
However, Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 240, and Goldingay, Daniel, 226, take city
and sanctuary as belonging to H= *J. They read it as describing the condition of the
anointed one when he is cut off.
18. Read as singular here, with the OG and with 11:31 and 12:11.
19. The OG has desolation.
20. To this consensus belong: Montgomery, Daniel, 362; Porteous, Daniel, 136;
Bruce W. Jones, The Prayer in Daniel IX, VT 18 (1968): 491; Gerald Wilson,
The Prayer of Daniel 9: Reection on Jeremiah 29, JSOT 48 (1990): 9199;
Lacocque, Daniel, 180; Goldingay, Daniel, 237; Collins, Daniel, 34748; Redditt,
Daniel 9, 236; Seow, Daniel, 136.
22. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 248, assert this to argue for its status as secon-
dary; but see also Lacocque, Daniel, 17880, and Collins, Daniel, 347, who argues
that the prayers liturgical quality indicates an earlier writing that was incorporated
1
is integral to the chapter as a whole. They all point to signicant linguis-

tic links between the introduction (vv. 13), the prayer (vv. 419), and
the oracle (vv. 2027) as evidence. These links include the references to
Jerusalem (vv. 2, 7, 12, 16) and supplication (vv. 3, 17, 18, 20, 23),
which are unique to this chapter within the book as a whole, as well as
the references to desolation ()>, vv. 1718, 27), Israels iniquities
(*H, vv. 1316, 24),23 knowing (=<, vv. 13, 22), and pouring out
((E?, v. 11, the pouring out of curses upon Israel, and v. 27, the pouring
out of destruction upon the desolator).24
These linguistic parallels forge historical connections as well. Speci-
cally, the use of the phrase desolating abomination ()>> )J4HB) in
v. 27, as a sarcastic play on the name for Baal Shamem in whose name
Antiochus IV profaned the temple, anchors the oracle quite solidly in the
Seleucid period.25 The use of )> in vv. 1718, though originally refer-
ring to the desolation of Solomons temple, has now become connected
with the event of 167 B.C.E. For the writer of Dan 9, the profanation of
the temple by Antiochus IV in some way repeats that earlier event and
is part of the same experience. Moreover, as Jones has pointed out, the
reference to desolation would hardly have been quite so meaningful to
readers after the restoration of the temple by the Maccabees in 164 B.C.E.
Thus, the prayer is most likely not an interpolation from after the time of
the gezirot.26
Further evidence of the integral connection between the oracle and the
prayer may be found in Jeremiah. Daniels use of Jeremiahs 70-year
prophecy (Jer 25:11/29:10) in vv. 2, 2427 is clear. Yet Jeremiahs
prophecy is also accompanied by the language of desolation (EH>>)
for sins ()?H) in Jer 25:12.27 This language is echoed as well by Dan
9:1617.28
The concern for the temples desolation is thus fundamental to both
parts of Dan 9. This central concern links the chapter to Dan 8 as well,
by the author of Dan 9. Goldingay, Daniel, 237, however, argues that the author of
Dan 9 composed the prayer.
24. Jones, Prayer, 491.
25. Ibid., from E. Nestle, Zu Daniel, ZAW 4 (1884): 24748.
27. Though it should be noted, contra Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 489,
that the desolation for sins in v. 12 is against the Babylonians, not the Israelites. The
earlier verses speak of desolation against the Israelites, without reference to that
particular.
28. Ibid., 489, connecting in this way Jer 25; Lev 26:3240, and Dan 9, via 2 Chr
36:2123.
1
which emerged from the same rhetorical situation, the delement of the
temple by Antiochus IV.29 Daniel 9, like Dan 8, is keenly interested in
the end of that delement, and both chapters utilize the predictive
schema of 31/2 years from Dan 7:25, articulated variously as a time, two
times, and a half time (7:25), 2300 evenings and mornings or 1150 days
(8:14), and a half- week of years (9:27), to formulate a response to that
delement.30
Other linguistic and thematic connections abound in Dan 8 and 9s
concern for the desolation of the temple. In Dan 9:24, Gabriel announces
that 70 weekswhich, in context, means that each week is equal to seven
yearsare necessary to nish the transgression (A9) and to bring sins
to completion ()E9=)31 so that the temple may be rededicated. These
verbal phrases form parallels to Dan 8, which speaks of the temples
profanation in the course of transgression (A3, v. 12) and the comple-
tion of transgressions ()JA9 )E9<, v. 23) before restoration can take
place.32 Signicantly, the only references in the book of Daniel to trans-
gression are found here.33
4. The Threat of Dissonance: Desolation and the Duration

of Divine Abandonment
a. Desolation, Exile, and Divine Abandonment in the Prayer and Oracle
Daniel 9 is a response to the same dissonance-causing experience
expressed in Dan 8, that is, the unhindered desolation of the temple by
Antiochus IV. Yet the experience is not framed in quite the same way by
both chapters. Daniel 8 frames the experience formally as one of vision
and interpretation in which the desolation is part of a cosmic conict
between the forces of the divine and the rebellious subordinate who
aspires to divine status. In that depiction, the use of spatial imagery is
29. Collins, The Meaning of The End, 9394.

30. Ginsberg, Studies, followed by Hartman and DiLella, makes sense of this
point by arguing that the author of Dan 9 inserted the schema of three and a half
years into Dan 7 and Dan 8. However, this theory of redaction has not been widely
accepted. Rowley raised a trenchant critique of Ginsbergs overly surgical approach
to Dan 712 in The Unity of the Book of Daniel, 23373.
31. Following the Qere reading, as does Montgomery, Daniel, 373; and Collins,
Daniel, 345. However, Seow, Daniel, 147, appears to follow the Kethib reading, but
links it also with Dan 8:23 and argues that these are the only two occurrences of this
verb in the Hebrew Bible. It is difcult to see how this can be so, since there is no
9/I confusion in the form of )>E in 8:23.
32. Montgomery, Daniel, 373.
1
important. The desolation, pictured as part of the emperors attack on the

divine realm and its forces, results in the reversal of positions. The little
horn is elevated, the host is thrown to the ground, and the temple is also
brought low. The Most High is absented from the scene altogether
unable to inhabit the temple and missing from the heavenly hosts battle
against the rebellious subordinate.
The temple as the mediating spot between earthly and heavenly realms
is at the heart of the spatial imagery that drives this depiction. With the
desolation of the temple, holy space is cast down, unable to bridge the
two realms and provide for the presence of the divine with the maklm.
Thus in Dan 8, the temples desolation signals the loss of divine cultic
presence.
Daniel 9 struggles with the cultic mediation of the sacred presence.
This struggle is carried by the prayers narrative of the desolated city and
sanctuary, borrowed from Lev 26.34 Clearly the community of Dan 9
saw in this narrative the elements of the communitys own experience,
including God liberating it from Egypt (Lev 26:13; Dan 9:15a), its
refusal to obey the commandments and statutes (Lev 26:1415; Dan 9:5,
14), its failure to keep the covenant in contrast with Gods faithfulness to
it (Lev 26:15, 42; Dan 9:411), and Yahwehs subsequent desolation of
the sanctuary and the city (Lev 26:3133; Dan 9:1718).
As the prayer of Dan 9 borrows the narrative of the desolated temple,
one can see the connection between sacred space and divine presence.
This is explicit in Lev 26:11: I will establish my dwelling among you
my presence will be with you. With the faithlessness of the community
comes the desolation of the temple and from that comes the perception of
divine abandonment.35
Traditions of divine abandonment are also present in the prayers use
of divine anthropomorphisms, which are intertwined with the narrative
of the desolated temple. Samuel Balentine has argued at length that the
hiddenness of the divine face, especially the turning away of the face, is
an expression of divine absence or aloofness.36 In Daniels prayer, the
hiddenness of God is a reality for the community in the delement of the
34. This chapters reliance on Lev 26 in combination with Jeremiahs oracle has
been argued convincingly by Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 488.
35. So also ibid., but somewhat against Paul J. Ray, Jr., The Abomination of
Desolation in Daniel 9:27 and Related Texts: Theology of Retributive Judgment, in
To Understand the Scriptures (ed. David Merling; Berrien Springs: Institute of
Archeology, 1997), 212, who argues that the loss of divine presence enables desola-
tion by a punishing third force, rather than seeing the desolation as the immediate
result of the communitys sin.
1
36. Balentine, Hidden God.
temple. In turning his own face, a phrase that suggests his physical
gesture toward the location of the temple and its cult,37 the visionary
confesses the communitys guilt in failing to appease the divine face
(9H9J J?A, Dan 9:13). Evoking the Aaronic blessing on Num 6:2426, he
implores that Yahweh turn his face back to the people and allow it to
shine upon the sanctuary (Dan 9:17)to bless it with his favorable
presence (Num 6:25).38 Concomitantly, the prayer implores that Yahweh
turn away the divine nose (,, Dan 9:16), the mark of divine anger. The
prayer equates Gods benecent cultic presence with the shining face and
divine absence with the divine anger, or nose.39
Along with the divine face, other anthropomorphisms are featured in
the prayer. The mighty hand of God is invoked (Dan 9:15) along with the
divine ears and eyes (v. 18) as the prayer solicits divine attention and
action on behalf of the people. The reference to Gods hand (5J) sharply
contrasts with the imagery of the hand in Dan 2:3145 and 8:25d, where
divine agency is executed without hands. Yet its use in this context
draws on the deuteronomistic tradition of Gods mighty hand or arm as
the liberating presence in Israels history (Deut 6:21; 9:26; Jer 32:21).
The plea for the restoration of the divine face, eyes, and ears also
overlaps with the language of the lament psalms (Pss 22:5; 88:3; 102:3),
where it indicates human separation from God. In that context, the divine
eyes and ears typify various modes of divine activity40 with individu-
als, particularly the activity of communication. As Balentine argues,
When God hides his face, or when he does not see, hear, or answer the
suppliant, it is tantamount to cutting off all contact with man. The conse-
quences of such a break in communicationmay be catastrophic in the
extreme.41
While the lament psalm presents itself as the experience of individual
piety, Daniels prayer applies the language to the communitys experi-
ence of God. The hiddenness of the divine face, the withdrawal of the
mighty hand of God, and the closing of the divine eyes and ears are
bound up with the experience of exile upon which the prayer and the
37. Towner, Daniel, 130.

38. But see also the opposite idea expressed in Dan 8:23, where divine absence is
connected to the oppressive presence of Antiochus IVs erce face.
39. A similar equation between divine wrath, divine abandonment, the desolation
of the temple, and the subsequent rededication of that temple after a prescribed
period of time can also be found in some Akkadian inscriptions as well, as Marti
Nissinen has argued in his References to Prophecy, 3840. See below for a further
discussion of these inscriptions.
40. Balentine, The Hidden God, 57.
1
41. Ibid.
oracle are built. The reality of exile in Daniel is not the geographic
dislocation of a minority community, since its second-century reading
and writing community were located in Judea. Yet the sense of disloca-
tion, which is at the root of exilic experience, is communicated in the
language of divine embodiment. In this case, the dislocation is separation
from the divine presence.42 The use of cultic traditions from Leviticus, as
well as the deuteronomistic and psalmic language, shows that this dis-
location concerns the cultic absence of the divine as well as the absence
of liberating activity for the community. Not only has this absence
created catastrophe for the community, but it threatens further catastro-
phe if the dislocation cannot be repaired and exile ended.
Nevertheless, the language here serves as an important response to the
language of divine absence found in ch. 8. Daniel 8 is haunted by the
lack of Gods theophanic presence, or appearance in any form. To
protect divine incomparability, the vision removed God altogether from
the action and makes the divine unfamiliar. At the same time, however,
8:2325 focused on the face and hands of Antiochus IV, so that his
adversive presence haunted the chapter. Daniel 9s anthropomorphisms,
however, displace Antiochus from the center of the texts energies.
Reclaiming the traditional language for Yahwehs saving activity, the
prayer reorients the reader to the divine face and hands, and, by exten-
sion, to the possibility that Gods salvic presence will be exercised for
the people.
It appears that the prayer and oracle construct the experience of
desolation in different ways. For the prayer, desolation is caused by
divine anger for the communitys sins and results in the loss of the divine
presence within the sacred space of the cult as well as in the loss of
Gods liberating actions with the people. For the oracle, however, the
crisis is characterized by the loss of those structures that would mediate
divine ruletemple and anointed high priest. Desolation is caused by
foreign political agents, working with members of the community
(vv. 2627) who dismantle the political and cultic institutions that medi-
ate the divine presence and will. While these divergent constructions
might appear to be contradictory readings of the experience of deso-
lation, in this context they take on a complementary aspect that succeeds
in describing more fully the experience of the community under Seleucid
rule. For the community did indeed know the culpability of its leaders,
and perhaps even of fellow scribes, in the events surrounding the dele-
ment of the temple. Indeed, the prayer and the oracle together claim that
the entire community is culpable for these events.
1
42. So also in 2 Kgs 24:20.
Divine absence, from the cult or from the historical sphere of liberat-
ing activity, as the cause of dissonance is well attested in the Hebrew
Bible. In the psalms it is indicated directly in the lament through the
recurring question Where is God? as well as through the motif of
divine hiddenness.43 In both of these, the remembrance of Gods past
presence with the individual or community and the expectation that God
should continue to act directly and immediately is sharply contrasted
with the present experience of divine elusiveness.44 This experience
becomes especially problematic, Balentine argues, when the community
perceives itself to be essentially righteous. He writes that, in the classical
prophetic interpretation,
righteousness ensures Gods presence and wickedness his absence.
However, this principle is not always applicable particularly when the
vicissitudes of life suggest that God has hidden himself from the righteous
without cause. This is the point where the hiddenness of God begins to
exceed the limits of comprehension and thus to evoke the lament and the
question Why? For Israel, this was the moment when faith was engulfed
by the presence of an absence.45
Yet the contrast between past power and present absence can be
registered even when the community recognizes its own guilt and sin in
the face of divine righteousness.46 The prayer of Dan 9 bespeaks this
experience through the traditional language of deuteronomistic piety,
which overlaps signicantly with the liturgical language of the psalms. In
remembering the exodus and the mighty hand of God, the prayer admits
its longing for a God who once was actively present but now has
abandoned the people. It feels the exile as the displacement from the
divine that both creates the desolation of the temple and results from the
loss of that cultic connection. It pleads for Yahwehs immediate response
and involvement to end the experience of divine abandonment, even
though it knows that abandonment is deserved.
b. Divine Absence and Intention in the Prayer and Oracle

What is not clearly evident in Dan 9 is whether the community has, in
fact, crossed over the point at which divine absence becomes engulng
or a source of dissonance. In Dan 8, it was possible to discern an over-
whelming sense of divine absence in the vision report through a study of
its emplotment. There I noted the way in which the plot of the vision
43. Burnett, Question of Divine Absence, 21535.

44. Balentine, The Hidden God, 153.
45. Ibid., 172 (emphasis added).
1
46. Glatt-Gilad, Yahwehs Honor, 6768.
report dramatically countered readerly expectations. Instead of building

the conict between the divine and the little horn to its climax and then
resolving it through judgment and containment of the little horns
aggression, the vision and the interpretation deferred the resolution until
the end of the interpretation. The focus on the little horns power and
success virtually eclipses all evidence of divine activity. The vision
nally asserts divine incomparability at the end of the chapter by depict-
ing the unfamiliarity of the deity, who is removed from historical agents
and institutions and who contains the little horn without human hands
(8:25d). However, the interpretation leaves too many loose ends divine
presence, especially Gods institutional presence, is never fully recap-
tured in this vision of the end.
Yet Dan 9 gives no evidence of the same kind of dramatic countering
of community expectations with regard to divine power. In fact, Dan 9
does not frame the problem of divine absence in terms of power at all. At
no point within the prayer or the oracle is divine power pitted against
imperial aggression, either through imagery or emplotment. Neither is
the question of proximate or ultimate power, or direct or indirect divine
agency, inherent in the narrative and liturgical equipment of Dan 9. The
absence of the divine in the prayer is not tied to the conict between
heavenly powers or even world historical powers, but is instead wrapped
up in the deuteronomistic cycle of historyapostasy, oppression, crying
out, and deliverance. This same narrative cycle is recounted and fore-
shadowed in other uses of the penitential prayer, such as 1 Kgs 8:4650.
In this emplotment, divine absence is understood by the prayer to be that
second element of the cycle. As such, abandonment is the righteous
response of Yahweh to the communitys culpability.
The threat of dissonance arises, however, with respect to the fourth
element of the deuteronomistic cycle. That is, within the penitential
prayer of Dan 9, the possibility exists that the people may indeed cry out
but that Yahweh will not necessarily feel obligated to answer with deliv-
erance. In such a circumstance, Yahwehs righteousness and Yahwehs
mercy are at odds.47 In 9:14, Daniel ascribes righteousness to Yahweh
because he punishes the people for their sins. Gods righteousness is, in
turn, linked to the divine honor,48 while the shame of the people is linked
to their failure to be righteous or, in this context, to keep the covenant.
Yahwehs honor does not obligate him to restore Israel within the
context of covenant relationships. Yet, the possibility that Yahweh will
act according to this righteousness and not restore the people is so
47. Ibid., 73.

1
48. Walter Harrelson, Honor, IDB 4:3056.
unsettling that the penitential prayer pleads with God to act in mercy.
Indeed, the prayer pleads that God consider Gods own reputation in this
matter. It even threatens that if God does not act in mercy for the people
who are called by the divine name (), Dan 9:19), then Gods image will
be irreparably damaged within the international scene (v. 16; cf. 1 Kgs
8:50).49
The prayer thus ponders the divine intention for restoring Israel and
takes steps to ensure that restoration in the face of its separation from
Yahweh. W. Sibley Towner argues that the intention of such a prayer
and plea is to tie Gods hands, as it were.50 It does this by urging God
to act for the sake of his own reputation among the nations and his own
announced intention to preserve that which has been declared inaliena-
bly Gods.51 By raising the conundrum of divine honor, the prayer tries
to affect Gods intentions.
c. Cognitive Dissonance and the 70-Year Prophecy

The most obvious evidence of dissonance is in the 70-year prediction
itself. The prolongation of the oracle may be viewed as a textbook
example of the way in which cognitive dissonance emerges due to failed
prophecy, which is then resolved through recalculation.52 In this view,
the community, living nearly 400 hundred years after the end of the fall
of Babylon, realizes that Jeremiahs oracle of 70 years of exile has not
been realized. Seow writes,
Simply put, the prophecy of Jeremiah has not been fullled in any
meaningful way for the audience of the book of Daniel during the reign of
Antiochus Epiphanes. Indeed, the exile seems not to have ended for them
at all after all these years. The narrator of Daniel thus begins with this
cognitive dissonance brought about by the apparent failure of prophecy.53
Wilson, however, disagrees with this view of the chapter. He nds no

sign that the experience of prolonged exile is the source of dissonance.
He writes, The prayer is not motivated out of perplexity over the delay
of the restoration. This would present no problem for Daniel who is
49. Glatt-Gilad, Yahwehs Honor, 68, discusses this recurring theme in Jer
14:7 and Deut 28:10. It should be noted that though Glatt-Gilad points to the con-
nection between this theme and the possibility of divine weakness in the face of
enemies, that motif is not raised in Dan 9.
51. Ibid.
52. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Carroll, When Prophecy
Failed; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 50811; Seow, Daniel, 139.
1
pictured as beginning his prayer toward the end of the seventy years
prophesied by Jeremiah (i.e. 538 B.C.E.).54 Wilson rightly raises the
point that, from the point of view of the narrator, who is located at the
end of the Babylonian exile, Jeremiahs prophecy has not yet failed.
As Wilson understands it, Jeremiahs prophecy is not the source of
anxiety but the key to immanent restoration as it spells out the means by
which exile can be ended.
Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether the 70-year prophecy is the
cause of cognitive dissonance or a response to experiential dissonance.
To pursue Wilsons argument further, one could add that not only is
Daniel located prior to the end of the exile, his audience is also located
three and a half years before the end of the extended period as well. The
emphasis of the oracle is on the relative immanence of exiles end rather
than on the passing of the date. From this perspective, it is possible to see
the 490 years not as a problem of failed prophecy, but rather as the
attempt to reframe a confusing experience by seeing it as part of a larger
and paradigmatic pattern of exile.55 By extending the prophecy, the
readers may then connect themselves to Daniels knowledge of exiles
immanent end and the divine plan for restoration. Naming the experience
of Seleucid domination as a prolongation of exile might be the diagnosis
that allows healing, so to speak, rather than the antigen that caused the
ailment in the rst place.
At the same time, however, even if the prophecy is not the source of
dissonance, the oracle still speaks of a perception within the community
of prolonged subordination. Jeremiahs oracle in its original context
conveyed the extraordinary length of the exile70 yearsin contrast to
the public expectation of a two-year exile. In comparison, the 70 year-
weeks must have registered as even more extraordinary to the commu-
nity as they began to view the entire sweep of recent history as a
continuation of exile. Even Wilson notes this problem when he writes,
As Jeremiah there disabused the hopes of his audience for an early restora-
tion and instead announced an unwelcome and unexpected delay, so the
angel confronts Daniel with the unexpected expansion of the period of
desolation. God is not bound by human expectations but remains free to
act in ways known only to himself.56
54. Wilson, The Prayer, 97.

55. On the way in which historical rsums function to reframe and reorganize
chaotic experiences to alleviate confusion, see Newsom, Past as Revelation, 40
53; Hall, Revealed Histories, 489511.
1
56. Wilson, The Prayer, 9798.
Even so, it is notable that the oracle does not counter the expectations of
the reading community in quite the same way that Jeremiahs oracle of
70 years did. Since the readers of ch. 9 are located at the end of the
period, instead of at the beginning of it where Jeremiahs readers were
located, the prolongation of the period of exile does not carry the doom
of having to endure 70 more years of suffering.
In short, Dan 9, while profoundly concerned with divine absence, does
not necessarily attest to a profound dissonance concerning that absence
as Dan 8 does. Chapter 8s framing of the desecration in terms of pro-
longed conict between the little horn and the heavenly host indicates
some signicant subversions of readerly expectations, which it fails to
resolve at the end of the vision. These subversions include: a conict in
which the Most High is remarkably inaccessible in comparison to Dan 7;
a disappointed expectation of eschatological resolution; the persistent
centrality of the little horn within the narrative; and the lack of restora-
tion of the temple. Daniel 9, however, displaces Antiochus as the cause
of the crisis, minimizes his role entirely, and frames the crisis using a
conventional theodic settlement. Its response to the crisis conforms to the
expectations of the deuteronomistic view of the world.
5. Reclaiming the Sacred and Overcoming Desolation

a. Blame, Shame, Absence, and Empowerment in the Prayer
The prayers retributive theology utilizes a self-blaming strategy in order
to account for divine absence.57 Such a strategy turns its attention inward
and searches for the causes of divine abandonment within the com-
munity. In the formal structure of the penitential prayer,58 these causes
are identied in the course of contrasting divine righteousness with
human transgression. The prayer understands that righteousness (B54)
belongs to Yahweh because he keeps the covenant (vv. 4, 7, 14, 16). His
righteousness is comprised of loyalty (5DI) and protection for those who
obey Yahwehs laws and punishment for those who disobey. Conversely,
57. Daniel Smith-Christopher, Reassessing the Historical and Sociological

Impact of the Babylonian Exile (597/587539 B.C.E.), in Exile: Old Testament,
Jewish, and Christian Conceptions (ed. James Scott; New York: Brill, 1997), 35;
idem, A Biblical Theology of Exile (OBT; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002),
11725.
58. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology, 117, briey describes the formal char-
acter of the penitential prayers as involving statements of shame, references to the
sins of the ancestors, mention of exile or oppression of which the people had been
warned, and an emphasis on the Mosaic law.
1
the shame (E3) of the people (vv. 7, 8) is in their failure to appease the
divine face and keep the covenant laws. The turning away of the divine
face from the people, resulting in their suffering and desolation, is not
only the result of the communitys shameful acts, but exemplies Gods
righteousness by showing his adherence to his word (C35) given in the
covenant (v. 12). With this strategy, the engulng sense of absence found
in the lament psalms is avoided by rejecting the possibility of a mis-
carriage of justice. Yahwehs punishment of the people is perceived to be
righteous.
The contrast between divine righteousness and human shame, as well
as the language of loyalty and reputation ()), indicate that the larger
social values of honor and shame drives the prayers construction of
penitence.59 In particular, the dynamic of shame in the prayer is a key
component and works to create what Smith-Christopher calls narrative
repair.60 In brief, narrative repair refers to the way in which the shame
of the community is invoked in order to heal the community of its
destructive values. The process works by reciting or narrating critically
the events of the past that are the source of the shame and, in doing so,
articulating an alternative set of values.
Smith-Christopher points out that the act of critical recitation in Dan 9
does not just simply pine for a change in status.61 While it expresses
sorrow over the current situation of desolation, the prayer also advocates
a way of life that is different from the previous one.62 Or, to articulate his
point somewhat differently, the work of the prayer is not to make the
community righteous and thereby overcome the contrast between divine
59. On the connection between covenant relations, denoted by the vocabulary of

B54, 5DI, and EJC3, and the social values of honor and shame, see Saul M. Olyan,
Honor, Shame, and Covenant Relations in Ancient Israel and Its Environment,
JBL 115 (1996): 20118. The connection between the appeal to Yahwehs name or
reputation in times of distress and the dynamics of honor and shame is discussed by
Glatt-Gilad, Yahwehs Honor at Stake, 6374.
60. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology, 121.
61. Ibid., 122.
62. I cannot agree with Smith-Christophers conclusion that, through the narra-
tive repair offered in the prayer, the community is attempting to repair and purge its
desire for political and cultural power. While confessing its past failures in exer-
cising power, the prayer and the chapter as a whole clearly desire the restoration of
righteous autonomous rule under divine leadership. Moreover, as I will demonstrate
in the remaining part of this chapter, the maklm nd ways in which to assert and
legitimize their own power as mediators of the divine will within the community.
This point has already been argued by Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically,
34561.
1
righteousness and human shame. The prayer makes clear that the com-
munitys righteousness is non-existent, and it is also deemed non- meri-
torious in any case (v. 18b; see also Deut 9:6). Instead, the contrast
between the honor status of Yahweh and humans is maintained through-
out the recitation. In doing this, the prayer not only offers up the worship
and recognition of honor that is required from the inferior party to the
deity according to the social dynamic of honor, it also works to inculcate
an ongoing sense of positive shame on the part of the community.
The prayer acknowledges the communitys experience of negative
shame, that is, of public humiliation and loss of honor through exile and
abandonment. Yet, the prayers assertion that this has happened through
the communitys own failure is also the basis of a positive shame. Since
positive shame is marked by the appropriate concern for ones status
with respect to a superior party, it necessarily involves a sensitivity for
ones potential and real failings with respect to Yahweh.63 Such sensitiv-
ity is not possible without awareness of Yahwehs covenant demands.
And indeed, in the prayers construction of shame, the communitys past
failures were inextricably tied to its lack of awareness (=<, v. 13). Thus,
narrative repair hinges on the way in which the prayer invokes and culti-
vates a shame that leads to knowledge.
The use of a self-blaming theology puts the onus of divine absence on
the community. While this may seem to be a strategy that might be
judged as intellectually and psychologically unsatisfactory by modern
standards because of the way in which it blames the victim,64 it does have
the advantage of allowing meaningful participation by the community in
undoing the absence, something that I argued is not possible in the notion
of the period of wrath in Dan 8:19. From the posture and experience of
shame, the community is now capable of seeking the absent God and,
according to the process outlined in Jer 29:1314,65 nding him. Because
that process of restoration is contingent upon the pious and penitential
activity of the community and not upon divine initiative, the engulng
63. The discussion of positive and negative shame is based upon B. J. Malina
and R. Rohrbaugh, eds. The Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
(2d ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 36972; Harrelson, Honor, IDB 4:3056;
and Jacqueline Lapsley, Shame and Self-Knowledge: The Positive Role of Shame
in Ezekiels View of the Moral Self, in Odell and Strong, eds., The Book of Ezekiel,
14373.
64. Jones rejects the strategy because it cannot account for Israels undeserved
suffering, Prayer, 492.
65. Wilson, Prayer of Daniel, 9497, argues that this was the intention of the
prayer, to effect restoration according to the process revealed in Jer 29.
1
experience of absence is diffused. So also does the self-blaming theology

avoid those questions of power and agency that inhabit the mythological
depictions of conict between God and imperial forces.
b. Experiencing the Divine in the Oracle

The revelation uses somewhat different strategies and tools for respond-
ing to the desolation of the temple than does the prayer. Moving from a
focus on the piety of the community, the oracle returns to the mantic
conventions and content witnessed in the earlier visions, in order to
address the problem of desolation, divine absence, and Yahwehs hidden
intentions. These traditions and conventions essentially work to sacralize
the events of desolation by showing them to be part of the divine inten-
tion. Moreover, the divine plan and the role of the maklm in mediating
the plan indicate that this sacralization effectively substitutes the temple
and its leadership with other structures of holiness.
A key tool in the oracles work of sacralizing the desolation is the
sabbatical theology inherent in the 70 year-weeks prophecy.66 As
Michael Fishbane and others have demonstrated, the oracle weaves
together a complex of traditions that understands the 70 year-weeks to be
a fulllment of the levitical idea of sabbaths that atone for iniquities,
though it has been mediated to Daniel through 2 Chr 36:21.67 The
number of years in the prophecy, 490, is now generally recognized to be
a calculation of ten jubilee periods or seventy sabbatical cycles rather
than a precise timetable.68
Through the lens of such sabbatical calculations, the bleak experience
of recent history is transformed into holy time. The cycles of sabbath and
jubilee years allow the sins of the people and the city, and presumably
the foreign prince, to be brought to their completion and atonement be
made. Much of the vocabulary of this verse comes from the legal and
cultic materials of the Pentateuch. This is especially the case with CA<, a
cultic term that is connected to propitiatory sacrice.69 It is notable that
66. According to W. Holladay, Jeremiah (2 vols.; Hermeneia; Philadelphia:

Fortress, 1986, 1989), 1:66869, the use of 70 years, instead of some other calcula-
tion of sabbatical cycles, in Jeremiah is tied to the notion, also found in Isa 23:15,
that that number of years is the appropriate amount of time for a city to lie desolate,
perhaps because it represents the lifespan of the king.
67. Montgomery, Daniel, 37374; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 48289;
Collins, Daniel, 35253.
68. Devorah Dimant, The Seventy Weeks Chronology (Daniel 9:2427) in the
Light of New Qumranic Texts, in van der Woude, ed., The Book of Daniel, 5776;
and Redditt, Daniel 9, 24244.
1
69. Montgomery, Daniel, 37374.
the temple, the holy space designated to sustain the process of atone-
ment, is not available to the people during this period. Nevertheless,
Gabriel asserts that the processes of atonement take place all the same,
sustained by the sabbatical cycles of exile. Thus, exile becomes holy
time itself and thereby a process of restoration, taking the place of the
sacrices conducted in holy space.
Moreover, the 70 year-weeks chronology structures the communitys
expectations in such a way as to provide concrete hope for restoration
even while maintaining the freedom of the divine intention. On the one
hand, the chronology uses the motif of the three and half years to signal
to the second-century audience that the restoration is reasonably near.
Devorah Dimant argues that Daniels use of the 70 year-weeks borrows
from a system of chronological and eschatological expectation that was
perhaps well-established in the second temple era (cf. 1 Macc 6:49).70
This restoration, much as it is depicted in the Uruk or Warka text, will
feature eternal righteousness ()J>= B54 J39=H, v. 24). Thus the
chronology, whose calendrical workings were accessible to the com-
munity, indicates the eschatological return of divinely ordained rule and
the reconstitution of political and religious structures (v. 26). On the
other hand, the period of that restoration, in half a year-week from the
desolation of the temple, is not immediate. As such, it preserves the
divine prerogative to act freely by refusing to create expectations of
immediate restoration.71
The oracle also uses vaticinium ex eventu as another piece of equip-
ment in the work of adjudicating divine absence. The effectiveness of this
particular tool is known through its use in the ancient Near East where
it was an established convention. Esarhaddons inscription from the
Black Stone is an excellent case in point, and Mark Leuchter goes so far
as to make the case that Jeremiah was familiar with it and intentionally
borrowed its tropes.72 This inscription describes Marduks command that
70. Dimant, Seventy Weeks Chronology, 62. Dimant points out that the
chronology is certainly attested in other contemporaneous and near contempora-
neous writings such as the Animal Apocalypse, Jubilees, Apocalypse of Weeks, and
11Q Melchizedek.
71. So Redditt, Daniel 9, 24344.
72. Mark Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy and the J>B 3=/( Atbash
Codes, Bib 85 (2004): 50322; and also Hector Avalos, Daniel 9:2425 and
Mesopotamian Temple Rededications, JBL 117 (1998): 50711. The text of the
inscription, from Leuchters translation, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 509, is as
follows: Before my time, in the reign of a previous king, in Sumer and Akkad there
were evil omens, The people who lived there only conversed (by) Yes! No! lying
words. They brought their hands to the furnishings of Esagila, Palace of the gods,
1
the temple in Babylon lie desolate for 70 years. Yet, after Marduks heart
was changed, he reduced the time of its desolation and commanded that
Esarhaddon rebuild it after eleven years. Another example of a vatici-
nium ex eventu concerning temple restoration is the inscription found on
the temple of Nanaya in Uruk,73 which the goddess abandoned, in her
anger, for 1365 years until the time of Assurbanipal, who had been
appointed to restore it.
Both of these inscriptions contain several elements similar to Dan
9:2427. The vaticinium in each case features a pattern of divine aliena-
tiondivine reconciliation74 that involves the desolation/abandonment
of the temple for a set number of years because of the gods anger with
the people. The period of desolation, which may be adjusted by divine
decree, is then followed by the restoration of the temple that was com-
manded by the divine word, apparently from of old.75 The rededication of
the temple allows the return of the god, an act that Marti Nissinen argues
manifests the reconciliation between the human and divine spheres.76
Reports of vaticinia regarding temple rededications are often tied to
oracles of encouragement. That is, the gods word of restoration is veri-
ed by the king through some kind of mantic activity (i.e. extispicy) that
the king takes to be a validation, not only of his efforts in restoration, but
more generally of his authority and political agenda.77 Even when not
and gold, silver, gems they turned over to Elam in commerce. Enlil of the gods,
Marudk was furious. He devised evil plans to devastate the land, to eliminate its
people. The Arahtu Canal, [] mighty high water, the likeness of a devastating
ood swept over the city of his dwelling, his chapel, and turned (it) to ruins. Gods
and goddesses who lived there went up to heaven. The people who lived there went,
appointed to the mob, into slavery. 70 years, the allotment for its abandonment, he
wrote, but compassionate Marduk, his heart quickly relented and he turned (it)
upside down. He declared its inhabitation in 11 years. See also the discussion by
Nissinen concerning Assurbanipals temple restorations in his References, 3541.
73. Text A vi 107124, quoted in Nissinen, References, 40, reads: Nanaya, who
1365 years (ago) became angry, went away and settled down in Elam in a place
unworthy of herin those days (already) she and the gods, her fathers, appointed me
to the kingship of the lands. She entrusted me with the returning of her godhead
(saying): Assurbanipal will take me away from the evil Elam and bring me back to
Eanna. (This) word, their divine command (amat qibit ilutisun), that they had
spoken since distant days, they now revealed to the coming generation
74. Nissinen, References, 40.
75. Ibid., 41.
76. Ibid., 38. The reference to the oracle of encouragement is also found in
Esarhaddons inscription.
77. Ibid., 38. This is certainly the case with Esarhaddons inscription, which, as
Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 50910, points out, dates from the second
1
specically tied to an oracle of encouragement, these vaticinia are

closely tied to various scribal personnel who assisted in the creation of
the inscriptions or who wrote literary predictive texts.78
The literary predictive text from Uruk,79 sometimes called the Warka
text, provides an interesting analogy to the mantic oracle. It too deals
with temple profanation and rededication, though without the motif of
divine anger. While this text shares a certain resemblance to Dan 11 in
particular, its signicance for Dan 9 lies in the way in which it uses
temple restoration in a vaticinium ex eventu for distinctly propagandistic
purposes. As Stephen Kaufman has demonstrated, the supposedly pre-
determined restoration of the temple by the unnamed king, and the
resulting renewal of Uruk, was clearly intended to support the kingship
of Awel-Marduk over and against others aspiring to the throne.80
These ex eventu prophecies dealing with temple abandonment and
restoration were used for legitimizing royal agendas. They did this by
revealing the divine intention or plan (Akkadian amat) that had sup-
posedly been determined in the past in which a particular king was
appointed to restore the temple at a particular time. That time, though
seemingly determined by the divine, was probably supplied by the scribal
or mantic groups responsible for the oracle or inscription. This is indi-
cated by the use of certain kinds of cuneiform play, such as the inversion
of numbers or the use of atbash codes in Esarhaddons inscription. These
could only have been created and perpetuated by those belonging to the
literary elite.81 So, in short, these vaticinia prescribe and support two
roles: that of the king, whose responsibility it was to restore and repair
the temple,82 and that of the scribal, mantic, or prophetic personnel,
whose responsibility it was to announce the divine intention.83
year of his reign when he was establishing new policies that diverged starkly from
those of his father.
78. Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 510. See also Ellis, Observations
on Mesopotamian Oracles, 157, 172, 185.
79. Kaufman, Prediction, Prophecy, and Apocalypse, 22128. Dating to the
time of Awel-Marduk (562560 B.C.E.), this text describes how a bad king arises
who removes a god from Uruks temple. The temple is subsequently rededicated to
another god. After several generations pass according to the text, a king will arise
who will rededicate the temple and return the original god to it.
80. Ibid., 22425.
81. So Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 508 n. 20, 510.
82. The kings or princes responsibility in temple restoration is not only part
of the rhetoric of the vaticinium, but is also attested in other inscriptions referring to
temple anointings. Avalos, Mesopotamian Temple, 50810, demonstrates this
responsibility and explores its relationship to Dan 9.
1
83. Nissinen, References, 41; Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 510.
Daniel 9s use of this equipment, borrowed from Jeremiah, closely

mirrors the ancient Near Eastern use of these texts. The vaticinium
functions to make known (5J89=, v. 23) the divine intention (C35, v. 23)
that had been apparently decreed from of old. Similarly, the 70 year-
weeks make visible the divine plan for desolation as well as restoration.
Even the manipulation of the numbers through word-play is consistent
with the previous use of the equipment, though one cannot on that basis
say that Dan 9 was aware of Esarhaddons inscription.84 Yet, in so far as
Dan 9 uses this tradition to critique the past native leadership,85 the
present Seleucid leadership, and the temple leadership of the priests after
Onias III,86 its function has shifted somewhat.
This shift is not entirely novel in Dan 9. Jeremiahs use of the
prophecy had already put a new spin on this equipment by using it to de-
legitimate the Davidic king in the face of Babylonian dominance.87 If, as
Leuchter argues, Jeremiahs purpose in using the 70-year prophecy was
to ght against the delusional perspective of the pro-David elite who
thought they could hold out against Babylonian power,88 then the oracle
intends to bring expectations into alignment with the reality of the time.
This is not quite dissonance resolution, but it certainly is dissonance
prevention! With both Jeremiah and Daniel, the vaticinium is no longer
a strategy of royal legitimation, but part of a mechanism for dissonance
resolution and prevention that places the emphasis on the free activity of
the divine intention.89
While it is true that the oracle does not function to support royal
agendas, it most certainly promotes the maklm. With the role of the
king as the instrument of divine intention now eliminated from the
oracle, the scribal role in propagating the divine plan for restoration is
enlarged. The maklm thus step into the position of intermediary of the
divine plan (C35), a role that had been played by priestly and prophetic
circles.
84. Slightly against Avalos, Mesopotamian Temple, 507.

85. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology, 12023.
86. This critique is subtly present in ch. 9 through the framing of historical and
political events in vv. 2427, in which legitimate temple leadership ends with the
murder of the anointed one, Onias III.
87. Leuchter, Jeremiahs 70-Year Prophecy, 517.
88. Ibid.
89. Wilson, Prayer of Jeremiah, 9598; D. Glatt-Gilad similarly argues that in
other parts of exilic prophecy, namely Ezekiel, one can spot the same emphasis on
the freedom of the divine intention in historical events (Yahwehs Honor, 7374).
1
The depiction of the maklm as the heirs of prophetic, priestly, and

political authority is made in various ways throughout the chapter, but
always through the gure of Daniel as the makl par excellence. In the
rst place, Daniels prayer that gives way to oracle is not only catalyzed
by Jeremiahs writings, but resembles the prophets roles as intercessor
(i.e. Jer 32:1625) and recipient of divine oracle (Jer 32:2644). More-
over, when Daniel utters the penitential prayer, he draws on the memory
of, and assumes a role that had previously been played by, Solomon
(1 Kgs 8:1553), Ezra (Ezra 9:615), and Nehemiah (Neh 9:637)
king, priest, and governor, respectively.
In the oracle, the maklm take on the role of mantic leadership for a
virtual temple. I have already noted the way in which sacred space gives
way to sacred time in the sabbatical theology of the 70 year-weeks.
When Daniel offers his prayers, he sets [his] face to the Lord (v. 3), in
an act that, as Towner notes, suggests a physical orientation toward the
temple itself.90 When he does this at the time of the evening offering,
he is observing and maintaining another part of sacred time, that of the
temples sacricial schedule. Daniels prayer is not simply offered in the
direction of the temple, but constitutes an extension of the sacred struc-
ture itself that replaces, or lls the gap of, the tmd sacrice.91 Daniel is,
in effect, the cultic personnel in a new structure of holiness. He offers
prayers as sacrices for his people and mediates the divine intention to
the community, all from the sacred locus of 70 year-weeks of exile.
In mediating knowledge of the divine plan, the maklm create a nal
substitution in the structure of holiness. This substitution is indicated by
the repeated and shifting use of the word C35 within the chapter. In the
rst part of the chapter, C35 is used in its conventional senses to indicate
the divine command or intention. Its use in the oracle, however, reshapes
the nature of that divine intention. In v. 2, C35 is used as part of the
technical phrase for prophecy, the word of the Lord,92 and Jeremiahs
prophecy in particular. Within the prayer, the prophetic sense is
maintained in the verbal use of the root in v. 6, where Daniel confesses
the people did not obey the prophets who spoke or prophesied in Gods
name. In v. 12, Daniel states that God has fullled his word (HC35) of
judgment against the people, just as God had promised (C35). The verbal
and nominal forms in v. 12 both conform to the prophetic sense as well.
Yet the divine word that was prophesied is also connected to the Mosaic
law. In v. 13, the prayer states, All of this evil came upon us just as

91. Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35961.
1
92. K. Bergman, K. Lutzmann, and W. H. Schmidt, C35, TDOT 3:109, 117.
it was written in the laws of Moses. The evil is a reference to the

retribution of the covenant stipulations of Deuteronomy, that is, the
retribution is what God had promised in v. 12.93 Thus, in this context,
C35 refers to part, if not all, of the Mosaic law.94
In the oracle, C35 appears three times as well. In that context, it
indicates the divine intention or plan for history quite apart from the
deuteronomistic and prophetic use of it:
(v. 23a) C353 *J3H 5J89= JE3 J?H C35 4J
(v. 25) )=HCJ EH?3=H 3J9= C35 4>*> =<EH 5EH
In the rst place, the plan appears to have its own active quality. While it
is the object of Gabriels declaration in v. 23b, in v. 23a it is the subject
of an active verb. The image is one of the word proceeding apart from
God to Gabriel. Indeed, the oracle makes no reference at all to the divine
agency behind the words going forth. W. H. Schmidt has noted that C35
does begin to take on certain aspects of an independent force in its later
usage.95 This case may be an instance of that phenomenon.
Aside from this, however, the use of C35 in vv. 23b and 25 overlaps
with the understanding of the word in the prayer, even while giving it an
esoteric emphasis. In v. 25, C35 parallels the use of the Akkadian word
amat in the inscription concerning the temple of Nanaya. Both refer to
the divine plan for temple restoration made in the past from the readers
point of view. C35, like amat, is also fundamentally connected with
manticism. It consists of esoteric wisdom concerning the future, medi-
ated by a skilled technician who has perhaps even induced the revela-
tion.96 This plan and the timetable that accompanies it do not appear to be
93. A phrase similar to vv. 1213 is found in Deut 9:5 and Neh 9:8 to indicate
the fulllment of Gods promise, this time of blessing rather than judgment, in
accordance with the Mosaic covenant.
94. Schmidt, TDOT 3:11617, notes that C35 is used for the entire Mosaic law in
Deut 4:2; 13:1, and 30:14.
95. Schmidt, TDOT 3:120.
96. The intention of the actions taken by Daniel in v. 3, to seek, pray, and
supplicate with fasting, sackcloth and ashes, is ambiguous. Although the phrase is a
ritual of penitence, as can be seen by the subsequent penitential prayer, it can also be
used as a ritual of mantic incubation, as is indicated in Dan 10:23, so Collins,
Daniel, 349. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 248, also note this ambiguity and adduce
Exod 34:28 as evidence for Daniels fasting as a mantic incubation rite. Revelation
is indeed received after the ritual, though scholars often comment on the fact that
the prayer expected before the revelation should therefore be a prayer of illumina-
tion. On mourning rituals as dream-incubation rites, see Oppenheim, Interpreta-
tion of Dreams, 188, 249, 252; Frances Flannery-Dailey, Dream Incubation and
1
contingent upon the communitys action.97 Rather, they are decreed by

the divine according to an agenda played out in the heavenly realm.
By reframing the Mosaic C35 as the mantic C35, the maklm
complete the process of sacralization. The reconstruction of the holy
features a locus for divine revelation and holy processes. That locus is
now sacred time, instead of sacred place. It has cultic personnel to
mediate the divine revelation, which is now the maklm instead of the
priestly leadership of the temple. And nally, it has a divinely revealed
code or teaching that allows for the encounter with the deity in the course
of human experience.
Yet, even while the maklm provide the symbolic means for interact-
ing with the divine, the divine remains persistently withdrawn. When
Daniel prays at the time of the evening offering, he is entering sacred
time and expecting to encounter the divine. Once again, as in Dan 8, the
encounter is with the messenger instead of with the deity. God continues
to be hidden behind the workings of the divine council and is not even
mentioned by name in vv. 2127. The C35, and one may argue Gabriel
himself as he takes on the divine function of revealing knowledge, is the
only representation of the divine within the oracle. Indeed, the depiction
of the C35 in v. 23a indicates that that knowledge or plan is indeed an
animated force, the divine activity itself. As such, it substitutes divine
presence and activity in the historical realm, the outstretched arm of God,
with Gods shaping knowledge of history. If the maklm provide a
virtual structure of holiness to substitute for the temple and its law, then
it is inhabited by a virtual God.
c. The Scribalization of Piety

The prayer and the oracle each bring their own generic equipment and
strategies for responding to the dissonance-causing events of Antiochus
IVs reign. The contrasting styles and emphasesfor example, deuter-
onomistic vs. mantic; penitence vs. predetermined restoration; communal
sinfulness vs. external evilhas led to questions concerning the rela-
tionship between the two parts in the overall function of the chapter.
Somewhat ironically, while pointing to evidence of linguistic parallelism
and balance and unity between the two halves, B. Jones has argued that
Apocalypticism in Second Temple Judaism: From Literature to Experience?

(unpublished paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature, Nashville, Tenn., 2001).
97. As Towner, Daniel, 129, writes, neither prayer nor piety nor wit of any kind
can thwartor, for that matter, hastenGods intention to save his people at the end
of seventy years
1
the two parts intentionally model opposite and contradictory worldviews.

He argues that the writer has juxtaposed the two as a way of dismissing
the retributional theology of the prayer.98 It is the second worldview, with
its deterministic philosophy of historical causation, which functions
satisfactorily for the ancient writer in answering the problem of suffer-
ing. The prayer serves little or no positive functional value. It is used
almost strictly as a means of moving to a more satisfactory explanatory
scheme.99
Jones is certainly not alone in viewing the two parts as contradictory.
Other scholars have also worked to understand how the two forms and
their differing worldviews cohered for ancient audiences.100 And yet,
looking at Jer 29 one nds an example of how the Israelite community
could reconcile quite easily deuteronomistic ideas of piety and the
oracular declaration of prescribed period of restoration. For the scribal
community, these two forms with their respective emphases on human
obedience and divine determination do not have to be viewed as mutu-
ally exclusive.101 Their compatibility lies in their respective demand for
and provision of knowledge.

99. For Jones, a major consideration leading to this conclusion is the tension he
perceived between the real righteousness of the faithful suffering under Antiochuss
suppression of Judaism and the prayers attribution of blame on the community.
Jones contends that, Israels suffering is undeserved. Yet it is signicant that at no
other place in this, or in the other visions of Daniel, does the writer express the
anguish of unfair suffering. Quite the contrary, Dan 7, 8, and 9 have variously
ascribed the suffering of the people as the work of God, either through the divine
commissioning of the king, or through passive deliverance of the people into the
power of an unauthorized king. This ascription has been the means for coming to
grips with their experience of suffering and divine absence. For its own part, the
depiction of the rabbm in Dan 9:27 indicates that even in the oracle there is a sense
of the larger communitys culpability. Moreover, Daniels identication with the
wise who bring the rabbm to righteousness (12:23) further elucidates the
mediating role he assumes through his prayer. The maklm depict themselves at
various moments as functioning on behalf those who are not entirely righteous.
100. So Towner, Daniel, 140, who argues that the prayer is a set piece, a pious
act in and of itself, but whose original intention is redirected by the apocalyptic
context into a demand for theodicy. Collins, Daniel, 360, appears to follow Towners
appraisal.
101. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 87, has argued that this is the case in
modern apocalyptic rhetoric as well. He writes, The determination of history
according to the divine plan does not render meaningful action impossible. Far from
precluding or discouraging action in the world, the historical pessimism of the tragic
Apocalypse gives such action a different weight and purpose. The predicted end of
1
The language of knowledge not only provides a thread in the chapters

linguistic unity, it forms the warp and woof of the chapters symbolic
work. Throughout prayer and oracle, knowing, seeking, and giving
knowledge is the work demonstrated by Daniel and Gabriel. Knowledge
is inextricably bound up with obedience to the C35. Daniel acknowl-
edges that the community experienced negative shame because it was
willfully ignorant of Yahwehs law or truth ((E>3 =J<9=H, v. 13).
Daniels penitential act not only demonstrates a knowledge or informed
concern for that truth, it is initiated by his learning or studying of
Jeremiahs prophecies ()JCAD3 JE?J3, v. 2). The response to Daniels
confession is Gabriels arrival and statement that his own work is to
make Daniel knowledgeable, a purpose that is repeated twice ((=J<9=
9?J3, v. 22; C353 *J3H, v. 23). This is followed by Gabriels statement in
v. 25, you shall know and understand (=<EH 5EH).
The complementary forms and theologies of the prayer and the oracle
work together to present knowing and seeking knowledge as the central
activities for the community.102 This knowing in the context of penitent-
tial prayer and mantic oracle forms a process that begins with the confes-
sion of willful ignorance. Penitence as an act of positive shame makes
further knowledge possible. Yet this knowledge is the oracular C35
(v. 23), the divine intention for eschatological restoration. Thus, the
deuteronomistic cycle of apostasy, handing over, crying out, and deliv-
erance, whose rst three elements are embedded within the prayers
narrative, is transformed by the maklm into the mantic process of
confessing ignorance and gaining wisdom. The apparent problem in the
formal coherence of the chapter, namely, that the oracle seems to expect
a prayer of illumination to precede it but instead nds a penitential
prayer, is resolved by the recognition that this deuteronomistic narrative
cycle has now assumed mantic functions. In this scribalization of deuter-
onomistic piety,103 penitential expressions no longer function as direct
cries for deliverance from oppression. They become cries for knowledge
instead. For it is in the work of knowing the divine plan, and seeking to
know it, that one is delivereddelivered from the threat of divine
absence and invisibility.
the world does not simply reduce people to passive spectators; the tragic drama of
Apocalypse offers not only a cathartic conclusion, but alsoa role in the cosmic
drama.
102. So also Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 489.
103. Davies, Scribal School, 255; idem, Reading Daniel Sociologically,
35961.
1
6. Conclusion
The evidence of the chapters literary unity, demonstrated by the lin-
guistic balance and parallelism that knits the prayer and the oracle
together, pushes for a re-evaluation of the functional unity of the chapter
as well. The prayer and the oracle are theologically as well as formally
complementary, rather than contradictory. This assessment is justied by
their unied concern for divine absence from the cult, from the historical
realm, and from the political leadership of Judea.
These two halves together create a response to threat of desolation by
engaging in the scribalization of deuteronomistic piety. In the mantic
re-appropriation of deuteronomistic materials, the penitential prayer
becomes an act of seeking knowledge that allows for Gabriels hiero-
phany. More than just the means of revealing heavenly secrets, however,
the prayer and the oracle together form a process in which divine absence
is addressed through the symbolic reconstitution of the holy. This pro-
cess involves the substitution of desolated sacred space with restorative
sacred time, the substitution of temple sacrice with scribal piety, and
the replacement of the illegitimate temple leadership with the mediating
work of the maklm, all built around the divine intention, or the C35, of
Yahweh, which is itself the nal substitution of divine presence and
activity with Yahwehs active knowing of history.
1
Chapter 6
RE-VISIONING SOVEREIGNTY IN DANIEL 1012
1. Introduction
The nal revelation in Dan 1012 has long attracted scholarly atten-
tion because of its depiction of resurrection. Many commentators have
been especially interested in the nature of this resurrection and how it
ts into the development of Jewish thinking on the topic. Aside from
these difcult questions, which have yet to be settled, many commen-
tators have tried to understand the function of resurrection as a kind of
eschatological ending. John Collinss argument that it constitutes the
transcendence of death, as a response to the problem of martyrdom
has won many adherents, especially those who view the work of
apocalyptic literature to be a response to questions of suffering in the
face of evil.1 As has been indicated on other occasions in this discus-
sion, there is something unsatisfactory about this explanation. It is not
that resurrection cannot answer the problem of death and suffering for
its second-century B.C.E. readers; rather, it is not clear that the deaths
of the faithful are the driving concern that motivates the nal revela-
tion. Indeed, the history offered by the angel in these chapters is far
more concerned with who exercises power and how they exercise it
than with the problem of the unjust death of the martyrs per se.
Given this concern for power, the following discussion will attend
to the part resurrection plays within a larger narrative of power and
politics, offering an alternative theory about the function of this kind
of deliverance for its audiences. The following examination of chs. 10
through 12 will argue that the ending of the story that resurrection
offers is one that plays principally to the concerns raised by ch. 8s
articulation of divine absence and foreign power. The exhaustion with
the narrative of history evidenced in that chapter gives way in Dan
1012 to a re-visioning of both divine and human sovereignty. In this
1. John J. Collins, Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death,

CBQ 36 (1974): 2443.
1
re-visioning, the oracle of resurrection does not simply respond to reli-

gious concerns about evil and death, it repairs the damaged narrative
of divine presence and power. Moreover, the nal apocalypse asserts
that divine presence will be mediated, not through political institutions
or historical experience, but through the scribal piety of the maklm.
2. Translation of Daniel 10:2012:4, 132

(10:20)
He said, Do you know why I have come to you? Now I must
return to ght against the prince of Persia but when I have departed,3
behold, the prince of Greece will come. (21) Nevertheless, I will declare
to you the things written in the book of truth. Not a single person has
supported me against these, except for Michael, your prince. (11:1) As for
me, in the rst year of Darius the Mede, I arose to strengthen and
protect him. (2) Now I will declare to you a truth. See, three kings will
yet arise out of Persia and the fourth one will grow far richer than all of
them. When he grows strong on account of his riches, he shall stir up all
against the kingdom of Greece. (3) Then a warrior king will arise, who
will rule over a great dominion and will do whatever he pleases. (4) But
as it is rising in power, his kingdom will be shattered and it will be
divided among the four winds of heavens. It will not go to his descen-
dents, nor will it continue to be as powerful as when he ruled, for his
kingdom will be plucked up and will go to others besides these.
(5)
Then the king of the south will grow strong; but one of his ofcers
will grow stronger than he and will rule over a kingdom larger than his.
(6)
After a time, they will unite and the daughter of the king of the south
will go to the king of the north in order to make an equitable arrange-
ment. But she will not be able to hold on to her power,4 nor will his
2. Due to the length of the nal revelation, the entire translation is not pre-
sented here. Instead, I have chosen to present the rsum and oracle of deliver-
ance, which are most central to the discussion in this chapter, plus v. 13, which
may have originally followed v. 4 as the original ending of the chapter and book.
3. This phrase, 4HJ J?H, creates translational difculties in this context for,
though it refers to Gabriels departure, the following phrase indicates that it is the
prince of Persia who must depart before the prince of Greece can come in. Thus,
Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 277, in accordance with their theory of an Aramaic
original, propose that the Hebrew translator misunderstood the Aramaic, which
referred to the prince of Persia, not to Gabriel. Thus they translate, And when he
departs. The NRSV simply emends the text to read, and when I am through with
him.
4. HCK9 may be a dittography with the following HCK and thus is often
deleted by translators; so Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 256, and Collins, Daniel,
363.
1
6. Re-Visioning Sovereignty in Daniel 1012 153
power5 endure. In time, she will be handed over, along with those who
came with her, her child, and the one who supported her.6
(7)But a sprout from her roots will arise in his place and will advance
against the army. He will enter the fortress of the king of the north and
will take action against them. He will prevail. (8) Their gods, along with
their idols and their precious vessels of silver and gold, he will take into
captivity in Egypt. But then he will back down from the king of the
north for some years. (9) Then the king of the north will enter the
kingdom of the king of the south, only to return to his own land.
(10)
His sons will wage war and will assemble waves of great forces
which will advance, ood, and overow, waging war as far as the
southern kings fortress. (11) Enraged, the king of the south shall go out
and battle against him, against the king of the north.7 The latter will
assemble another wave but these forces will be given into the hand of
the king of south. (12) After the force is carried off, the king of the south
will think highly of himself 8 and will bring low tens of thousands but
he will not prevail. (13) The king of the north will return and assemble a
force greater than the previous one. After a time, he will advance with
a large force and much equipment. (14) At that time, many will arise
against the king of the south and some contentious men of your people
will elevate themselves in order to fulll a vision. But they shall be
overthrown. (15) The king of the north will advance, building up siege
works, and will seize a fortied city. The forces of the south will not
stand, not even the elite among the troops; there will be no strength to
withstand. (16) The advancing one will to do to him as he pleases, no one
will be able to withstand him. He will occupy the beautiful land and all
of it will be in his power.
(17)
Determined to advance with the strength of his entire kingdom,9 he
will make an alliance with him [the king of the south] and will give to
5. The MT is supported by the OG in reading arm, but Montgomery, Daniel,

430, argues for Theods reading of seed or offspring.
6. The reference to 9BKI> is obscure, but may be translated as the one who
obtained her, that is, her husband, Antiochus II; so Montgomery, Daniel, 428;
Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 257; and Seow, Daniel, 171.
7. *HA49 (=> ) may be a gloss in the MT.
8. Literally, his heart will be exalted.
9. As Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 26768, point out, the Hebrew at this
point is quite ambiguous, making several translations possible. The kingdom may
be the king of the norths or the king of the souths. Kingdom may be in con-
struct with power, or it may be the object of enter. Hartman and DiLella and
also Collins take kingdom as the object, but I prefer Lacocques reading, Daniel,
219: Having (in fact) conceived a plan to intervene with all the strength of his
kingdom.
1
him his daughter10 as a wife in order to ruin him;11 but it will not prevail
and it will not succeed for him. (18) He will turn his face to the coast and
capture many, but a captain will put an end to his reproach and will turn
his reproach back onto him. (19) He will look to return to the safety of
his own land, but he will stumble and fall and will not be found.
(20)
One will arise in his place and he will send an ofcial of royal emi-
nence, but within a few days he shall be broken, though not in anger or
in battle. (21) In his place will arise a despicable man upon whom royal
splendor was not bestowed. He will advance stealthily and seize the
kingdom with smooth words. (22) Armies will be completely ooded and
broken before him and also the prince of the covenant. (23) After an alli-
ance is made with him, he shall act deceitfully and rise to power with a
small force. (24) Stealthily, he will advance into the wealthiest provinces
and do what his fathers and fathers fathers would not do: he will siphon
off spoil, booty, and plunder to his supporters.12 He will continue to
devise his plans against the fortied cities, but only for a time.13
(25)
Then he will rouse up his strength and set his mind14 against the king
of the south with a great army. The king of the south will go to war
with an even stronger army, but he will not prevail, for others15 shall
devise plans against him. (26) Those who eat from the royal portions will
break him. His army will be swept away16 in a ood and many will fall,
fatally wounded. (27) The two kingseach with a mind for evilwill sit
10. The MT and Theod read a daughter of women, while 4QDanc reads,
daughter of men; see Ulrich, Daniel Manuscripts, Part 2, 24. Neither makes a
great deal of sense in the present context. Generally, daughter of men would be
used to denote either a human woman, as opposed to an angelic woman (cf. Gen
6:4), or a particular ethnicity, such as a daughter from a man of the Canaanites
(Gen 38:2). However, neither of these senses seems to be at work here. Perhaps
instead of a genitive of relation, the phrase is an adjectival genitive, meaning a
womanly daughter, or a grown daughter.
11. Following 4QDanc; cf. Ulrich, Daniel Manuscripts, Part 2, 24. The MT
and Theod have the feminine sufx, which may in fact refer to Egypt rather than
to the daughter; so Lacocque, Daniel, 219.
12. Literally, them. It is not clear who is the referentthe provinces or the
group who supports him in v. 23. I take it to be the group in v. 23 and that this is
a reference to Antiochus IVs reputation for despoiling temples and cities; cf.
Montgomery, Daniel, 452.
13. BHS reads the phrase E5H as a dittography with CJH at the beginning
of v. 25. Collins, Daniel, 366, deletes it, but Montgomery, Daniel, 452, and many
others retain it.
14. Literally, he will rouse up his strength and his heart
15. Literally, they.
16. The MT reads this as active, but Collins, Daniel, 367, argues that this
should be repointed as a Niphal in accordance with 4QDanc and other Hebrew
MSS that read ,J.
1
at one table and speak lies. Yet it will not succeed, for there will be an
end at the appointed time. (28) He will return to his land with much spoil
and his mind set against the holy covenant. He will take measures, but
then return to his own land.
(29)
At the appointed time, he will turn and advance toward the south.
But this time it will not be like the rst time. (30) Ships from Kittim will
advance against him and he will be forced to back down and turn back.
He will rage against the holy covenant and lash out. Turning back, he
will give his attention to those who have abandoned the holy covenant.
(31)
His forces will assemble and dele the sanctuary of the fortress,17
disrupt the daily sacrice, and erect the desolating abomination. (32) The
violators of the covenant he will seduce with smooth words,18 but the
people who know their God will remain steadfast and will take action.
(33)
The wise ones of the people will instruct the many but they will be
brought down by sword, ame, by captivity, and plunder for many
days. (34) In their stumbling, they will be helped a little, but many will
join them insincerely, speaking smooth words. (35) Some of the wise
ones will stumble so that they may be rened, puried, and made white
until the time of the end, for the appointed time is still to come.
(36) The king will do as he pleases and he will exalt and elevate himself
above every god; he will speak unbelievable things against the God of
gods. But he will prosper until the period of wrath is completed, for
what is determined will take place. (37) He will not acknowledge the
gods of his father nor the gods adored by women. He will not acknowl-
edge any of the gods, for he will exalt himself above all. (38) Instead, he
will honor the god of fortresses; he will honor a god whom his fathers
did not know with gold, silver, and with precious stones, and nery. (39)
He will deal with the strongest fortresses19 with20 the help of a foreign
17. The MT simply puts sanctuary and fortress side by side. Collins, Daniel,
367, follows the OG and puts them in construct, while Hartman and DiLella,
Daniel, 259, argue that the original Aramaic had pious ones, which was con-
fused by the translator for the Aramaic word for fortress and rendered into
Hebrew as such. They further add a conjunction and come up with the reading,
they will dele the sanctuary and the pious ones. However, Hartman and
DiLellas reading does not quite make sense in context. In the visions of Daniel,
delement is almost exclusively a condition of the temple rather than individuals.
18. The OG reads the verb as plural and emends the wicked ones to read
the sins, which then becomes the subject. However, the context, in which the
violators are contrasted with the faithful, suggests that the MT is the better reading.
19. Following the NRSV. Goldingay, Daniel, 280, has the strongest fortress,
arguing that JC43>= is a plural of extension/amplication. Montgomery, Daniel,
463, and Collins, Daniel, 368, take it as a Piel participle meaning defenders.
20. Following Goldingay, Daniel, 280, who maintains a fairly literal trans-
lation of the Hebrew over and against those who would emend ), which reads as
with in the MT and the Greek versions, to read people.
1
god; those whom he regards, he will honor and will cause them to rule
over many people and divide the land for their wages.
(40)
At the time of the end, he will ght a battle with the king of the south
and the king of the north will storm against him with horses and riders
and many ships. And he will advance through the lands, overtaking
them like a ood. (41) He will enter the beautiful land and tens of
thousands will fall, but some will escape his powerEdom, Moab, and
the chiefs of the Ammonites. (42) He will also reach out his hand to other
regions and the land of Egypt will not be able to escape. (43) He will rule
over stores of gold, silver, and every precious item. Egypt, Libya, and
Ethiopia will be at his heel. (44) Rumors from the east will terrify him
and he will go out in a great rage to exterminate and destroy many. (45)
He will pitch his pavilion tents between the sea and the beautiful holy
mountain. There he will meet his end with no one to help him.
(12:1)
At that time, Michael, the great prince, will arise;
the one who protects your people.
It will be a time of distress such has not happened
since the gentiles came to be up to that time.
At that time, your people will be delivered;
all those who have been written in the book.
(2)
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake;
some to everlasting life,
some to reproach and everlasting abhorrence.21
(3)
But the wise ones will shine like the shining of the sky;
The ones who lead the many to righteousness will be like
the stars forever and ever.
(4)
But you, Daniel, stop up the words and seal up the book until the
time of the end. At that time, many will roam back and forth so that
knowledge22 may increase. (13) As for you, go to your end. Then you
will rest and you will rise to your reward at the end of the days.
21. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 19, notes that commentators beginning with

Charles, Daniel, 323, 328, have argued that *HC5=, which interrupts the perfect
parallelism of the verse, is a later gloss. However, the MT, the LXX, and Theod all
preserve the double reading. Nickelsburg excises it, but many commentators
retain it because of its connection with Isa 66:24. The Isaiah passage contains the
only other use of the word in the Hebrew Bible and provides important context
within which to read it.
22. Following the MT and Theod, which read E59, and against the OG,
which Collins, Daniel, 368, and Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 274, follow. The
OG appears to be drawing upon 1 Macc 1:9 and not Dan 12:4 in its translation of
this verse and so should not be given undue weight; see Jeansonne, Old Greek
Translation, 17. The MT reading makes more sense in context, where the vocabu-
lary of knowledge has been far more important than the vocabulary of evil; so
1
3. Loose Ends and the Function of the Final Rsum

In turning to Dan 1012, one might ask why, after three rehearsals of
ancient Near Eastern imperial history, the community felt compelled
to write yet another vaticinium ex eventu of the end time. What need
did this nal vision satisfy for the community that was not met by the
previous one? Generally, the function of the vision is understood to be
similar to that of previous visions or to update those visions in some
fashion. John Goldingay has suggested that chs. 1012 function as a
midrashic interpretation of ch. 7they are a situational midrash that
eshes out Dan 7. 23 John Collins has suggested that the additional
visions are needed in order to cut through the static that may have kept
audiences from hearing the message as it was rst communicated in
Dan 7. 24 The need for repetition to communicate effectively might
necessitate another vision. Both of these suggestions presuppose, how-
ever, that the visions subsequent to Dan 7 conform essentially to its
message, even if in a different idiom. And yet, as the earlier chapters
concerning Dan 8 and 9 in this study have shown, one cannot assume
that the visions are simple retellings of Dan 7.
This state of affairs is further emphasized by the fact that the mean-
ing of the end, the period of time with which the visions are concerned,
is never quite the same from one vision to another.25 Understanding the
meaning of the end is signicant in determining the individual needs
that gave rise the visions. As each vision imagines the end and brings
the story to its conclusion, the community experiences new perceptions
that disrupt or put pressure on the delicate consonance achieved by that
vision. Thus, the catalyzing perception of sovereignty that provokes
Dan 7 is the event of Antiochus IVs decree criminalizing Judaism.
This in turn creates the contradictory perception that Antiochus rules
also Montgomery, Daniel, 473; Lacocque, Daniel, 24043; Towner, Daniel, 169.
However, it is not clear what relationship the knowledge has to the running back
and forth. Montgomery thinks that this knowledge is vain knowledge that emerges
from the roaming, a parallel to Amos 8:12, where wandering back and forth to
seek a word of the Lord is futile. Lacocque and Towner, however, both see the
knowledge as true knowledge that emerges despite the faithless roamings of the
multitude. I follow Montgomery, though cautiously, and read the roamings of the
many as a contrast to the angels command to Daniel that he seal the book and go
to his rest. Truth is to be found in the book by those who have specialized knowl-
edge of it; it is not to be found by the many in the frantic search for guidance at
the end.
24. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 117.
1
25. This fact is the insight of Collins, The Meaning of The End, 9198.
with kingly power, but without the authorization that the deity has
granted to past kings and empires. As for chs. 8 and 9, these chapters
are both tied to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus IV. Yet
this event gives rise to two different perceptions. For Dan 8, the per-
ception of divine absence and Antiochuss success is acute enough to
undermine Dan 7s expectations of the end. Daniel 9, however, in
the context of explicit prayer and piety, perceives the desecration as
explicable and capable of remedy, and thus provides its own con-
guration of the events and their ending.
Daniel 1012 is unique within this cycle of visions because it has
no distinctive historical catalyst. By the time of this visions writing,
temple loss and Seleucid rule are not a new reality that should provoke
the community to another re-visioning of the end. Temple desolation,
Antiochuss outlawing of Judaism, his own self-deifying claims, and
threats to the faithful community remain somewhat constant between
the desecration of the temple in winter 167 B.C.E. and its rededication
in winter 164 B.C.E., shortly after the writing of the main portion of
this vision.
Given the lack of a distinctive historical catalyst, one might turn to
some aspect or experience of the Danielic vision narratives as a whole
to locate the trigger for the nal vision. Indeed, in the narrative move-
ment from chs. 8 to 9 to 10 through 12, one notices not only a
re-visioning of the end as a period of history, but also the frustrated
attempts of achieving the end in terms of narrative closure. Thus
Danna Fewell notes, As the visions recurwe cannot envision what
the end might look like. Their repetition prevents closure.26 For the
nal vision, then, the catalyst does not have to be the result of some
new historical experience; it may come from the experience of reading
the texts themselves. As the earlier visions produced loose endings
and lingering tensions, they created the necessity for further resolu-
tion. Thus the work of the last vision is to achieve an ending to all the
penultimate ends.
Literarily, Dan 1012 establishes closure to the project through its
manifold references to previous chapters. References to in the third
year, King Cyrus, and Daniels Babylonian name Belteshazzar
create an inclusio with the references in 1:1, 7, and 21.27 Indeed, within
the second half of the book, some of these items appear only here.
26. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 135. See also Newsom, Rhyme and
Reason, 21819.
27. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 18990; Goldingay, Daniel, 265; Seow,
Daniel, 15354. That some commentators believe ch. 1 to have been added after
1
Within this larger attempt at closure, Dan 1012 also brings com-
pletion to the last subsection of the book that began with Dan 8, which
registers a decisive turning point in the books depiction of divine
power. As I argued in Chapter 4, the vision of the ram and the goat
produces an especially fragile theological closure. It disappoints read-
erly and formal expectations concerning the end of empire and severs
the connection between divine power and divine immanence. Its con-
clusion is marked by loose endsa narrative ending and an eschato-
logical ending that fails to satisfy the readers need for a decisive
restatement of divine power and presence with the community. That
the nal revelation seeks to tie up those loose ends is indicated by the
fact that Dan 1012 echoes or reworks nearly every verse from Dan
8.28 None of the previous visions enjoy the same kind of presence in
this nal vision. The nal visions extensive reuse of the vision of the
ram and goat may be read as an attempt to bring to closure the entire
episodic structure of the visions through particular attention to the
dissonance of Dan 8s loose ending. This attempt at closure leads the
nal vision to reweave imperial history into a new conguration that
will ultimately repair and complete Dan 8s drama of divine power
chs. 10 through 12 does not invalidate this understanding of its function. For, if
ch. 1 was indeed the later addition, it was deliberately crafted to cohere with what
it recognized as the ending.
28. Goldingay, Daniel, 283, 309. Goldingay indicates that C. Boutower, In
and Around the Book of Daniel (New York: MacMillan, 1923), enumerates the
parallels, but I was not able to locate this enumeration in the material cited. The
connections between the two visions have also been noted by Hasslberger, Hoff-
nung in Bedrngnis, 19091; Collins, Daniel, 373404; Seow, Daniel, 158, and
others. These connections include verbal paraphrases, direct borrowings, and plot
parallels. These connections include: Daniel on the bank of the river (10:4//8:2);
Daniels posture and trance (10:810//8:1618); the description of angelic princes
and the heavenly host (10:13//8:11); the angels purpose to make known the
future end (10:14//8:17, 19); the angel touching Daniel (10:18//8:18); the shatter-
ing of Alexanders kingdom and the dispersion of his power (11:4//8:8); the
inability to stand against the power of a king (5>=) (11:15//8:4); the reference
to the beautiful land (11:16, 41//8:9); the description of Antiochus as acting
deceptively (9H=3) (11:24//8:25); the references to the end and the appointed
time (5H> and #B) (11:27, 35, 40//8:17, 19); the desolation of the 5B>9 and
the disruption of the 5J>E (11:31//8:11); Antiochus doing as he pleases (9H
H?H4C<) (11:36//8:11); Antiochus exalting himself (=58) even above the Most
High (11:3637//8:10, 11, 25); the reference to Antiochuss words and deeds as
wonders (EH=A?) (11:36; 12:6//8:24); a reference to the completion of the
wrath ()K) (11:36//8:19); the command to keep the words secret and seal the
book (12:4//8:26); the description of angelic gures (12:5//8:1314); the question
How long? (12:6//8:1314); Daniels failure to understand (12:8//8:27).
1
and presence. At the same time, the vision resists Antiochuss claims
to sovereignty by constructing an ironic counter-story of maklm
power.
4. Reconguring History and Sovereignty

a. The World-Historical Context for Divine Power
A consistent concern within the visions is to place divine power within
a world- historical framework. Such a framework serves to establish
the sovereignty of God as an international reality and not simply a
parochial one for the reading and writing community of Daniel. In
order to be truly incomparable, the divine must be recognized as the
God of all kingdoms, especially those kingdoms that exercise power
over Judea. God must also be the author of their history. The Jewish
writers of Dan 2, as well as those of Dan 7 and 8, secured this incom-
parability by using the very materials of those dominating empires.
Through the Persian four-kingdom schemaone that also made its
way into Hellenistic historiography 29the Jewish writers were able
insert themselves and their deity into foreign history and thus reframe
divine ruling activity, as well as Jewish power, in world historical
terms.30 The historical rsum in Dan 11 works within this framework
as well, though the telescoping effect in each successive vision means
that only the fourth kingdom commands the rsums attention.31
As the four-kingdom schema becomes less important, the nal
vision appears to adopt another piece of foreign historiography to
establish the incomparability of divine power. Recently, a number of
commentators have argued that the bulk of Dan 11s historical rsum
depends upon a Greek document that recounts Seleucid and Ptolemaic
interactions. 32 The authors of Dan 1012 skillfully use this foreign
29. See Swain, Theory of the Four Monarchies, 121; Flusser, The Four
Empires, 14875.
30. Newsom, Historical Rsum, 228.
31. On the telescoping effect at work in the rsums, see Rappaport, Apoca-
lyptic Vision, 21726. Seow, Daniel, 166, notes that Dan 11 devotes one verse
to 200 years of Persian history, two verses to Alexander the Greats career, 16
verses to 148 years of Seleucid and Ptolemaic history, and 25 verses to 10 years
of Antiochus IVs reign.
32. Rappaport, Apocalyptic Vision, 21726, notes the unique character of
the historical materials preserved in Daniel, which have no other parallels in
Jewish Hellenistic writing. He suggests the information may have come from a
Greek source, an idea that has been furthered by Redditt, Daniel 11, 470;
Grabbe, A Dan(iel) for All Seasons, 234; Newsom, Historical Rsum, 230;
1
knowledge, adapt it to undermine Hellenistic claims to dominance,

and use it to reassert the international signicance of their God and
their own history.
This means of establishing divine power over historys movement
appears to be somewhat ironic, given the character of the narrative.
The rsum contains no explicit evidence of divine participation in
any of these events that might provide theological meaning for the
community. Much of this material eschews the cosmic and the mytho-
logical, and even, to a large degree, symbolic representation, all of
which was used in previous visions to capture the over-determined
nature of historical events. Such means of representation allowed the
earlier visions to posit both the earthly character and the divinely
driven character of historical actors and acts. Yet this rsum opts
instead for a realpolitik perspective. The huge emphasis on the par-
ticularities of Seleucid politics gives the rsum a seemingly political,
mundane, and even chaotic character. History appears to be deter-
mined on earth by wars, political alliances, and intrigues.33 It seems
difcult to reconcile this material with a view of divine incomparable
activity.
Nevertheless, the scribal authors saw in the particularities of those
events the subtleties of divinely directed history and congured the
materials in order to reect them. The most obvious indication of this
character is the bracketing of the rsum with angelic activity.34 The
text presents the rsum as the mantic revelation of the angel Gabriel,
who is reporting to Daniel from the heavenly book of truth (10:21).35
The implication is, of course, that the divine knows, has even planned,
the events of Seleucid and Ptolemaic international relations as part of
the divine purposes for history, which were then recorded by heavenly
scribes in the sacred book.36 On the other side of these events, in the
future, the angel Michael will intervene to bring the events to a close
(12:1).
and Paul Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History: Herodotus and the
Book of Daniel (JSOTSup 396; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 43
46.
34. Davies, Daniel, 8687; Goldingay, Daniel, 292; Seow, Daniel, 167.
36. Shalom Paul, Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life, JANES 5 (1973):
34553, notes the resemblance between the book in ch. 10 and the ancient Near
Eastern conception of the book of life.
1
Not only is the divine inserted into the past and future of these
events, so that divine power is portrayed over and above present
historythe rsum also shows the silhouette of divine activity within
history. The divine passive appears in 11:11, 20, 35, 36, and 12:1 as
the nearly invisible agent that participates in the events themselves,
creating a discernible motion and ow to history.
It is the motion or ow of history that is perhaps the most signi-
cant and subtle expression of divine activity for the scribal authors.
Although the rsum generally abandons the symbolic representation
of power and is awash in particularity, it also suppresses certain par-
ticularities in order to highlight the paradigmatic features of historys
motion. Thus the rsum eliminates the individual names of kings in
order to emphasize the continuity between each king of the north. Even
Antiochus IVs individuality, stressed in chs. 7 and 8 through the
designation little horn, is here suppressed in his identication as the
king of the north. What comes to the fore in this motion is not the
successive rise and fall of four world kingdoms, but rather the ongoing
duel in the last of these world ages between two geographically and
politically opposed kingdoms, north and south.
The scribal community understands that the divine is at work in the
duel between north and south and maps this activity using the meta-
phor of ooding. The particular vocabulary used is ood (,E, Dan
11:10, 22, 26, 40; cf. Isa 8:8; 10:22, as both noun and verb), ow
past (C3, Dan 11:10, 40; cf. Isa 8:8; Prov 10:25; Hab 3:10; Job
6:15), roar or tumult (as of waves, but also having the sense of
crowd; *H>9, Dan 11:10, 12; cf. Jer 51:42), and storm (C, Dan
11:40; cf. Isa 28:2). Daniel 11 takes this metaphor from Isa 8:8, an
oracle concerning the king of Assyria, the original king of the north.37
In its rst use it prophesied the Assyrian kings ooding of Judah
according to divine decree. And just as God brings the ood under
control and brings Assyria to nothing when it imagines its power to be
autonomous (Isa 10:1218), so too will God bring the haughty king of
the north to naught. In this reuse of the prophecy, the oracle from
Isaiah takes on the character of a paradigmatic event that continues to
echo in Judean history until it is nally brought to closure.38
The metaphor of ooding organizes Seleucid history in terms of
surging power, the rupture of boundaries, and containment. Focusing
most of its attention on Antiochus III and Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
37. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 267; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 490.
38. On the paradigmatic use of material in apocalyptic literature, see Smith,
Wisdom and Apocalyptic, 13156; Newsom, Past as Revelation, 4053.
1
the rsum shows how the kings of Syria and Egypt regularly arise
(5>, Dan 11:2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21), in a surge of domi-
nance, ood enemy lands (11:10, 22, 26, 40) with their armies, and
attempt to gain dominance over their opponents. Yet these surges are
not without limits. At key moments, kingly power fails and falls at the
hands of another. The narrative shows the kings persistent inability
to effect a permanent rule by reason of their containment of each
other.39
This containment at the hands of the other kings keeps the paradig-
matic cycle repeating. Thus, in the battle between the Ptolemies and
Seleucids there is a regular alternation of power between the north and
south culminating in a stalemate (Dan 11:1012). The ongoing cycle
of aggression, containment, and stalemate are needed, in the logic of
the rsum, because the appointed time of climax has not yet arrived.40
When Antiochus III succeeds in breaking the stalemate with Egypt, he
nevertheless nds himself broken and reproached (,CI) by the power
of Rome (11:1819). Even the divine intervenes, though elusively, to
effect earthly containment in vv. 11 and 20. This intervention keeps
the cycle in motion until the determined time (11:27, 36). With the fall
of Antiochus III, a new wave of power rolls in and the paradigmatic
moment of kingly power is repeated with Antiochus IV (11:2122),
whose career emulates his predecessors.41
The nal king of the north, Antiochus IV, brings the cycle to its
completion. After conforming to the pattern of surge and containment
established by his predecessors, Antiochus IV breaks with tradition
(11:24, 27, 38) and decisively breaches all the boundaries. He pro-
fanes the Jerusalem temple (11:31), something that Antiochus III did
not even dare to do (cf. 11:16), and successfully storms Egypt in a
third (and ctional) campaign (11:40). 42 This escalation of imperial
39. Clifford, History and Myth, 24.

41. According to the rsum, Antiochus IV begins his career by cutting off
Onias III (v. 22) and overwhelming the armies of his opponents. Although he is
successful in sweeping away an army larger than his own in his rst campaign to
Egypt (vv. 2526), his scheme to form an uneven alliance with the Egyptian
prince is ultimately unsuccessful (v. 27). Signicantly, this move echoes the alli-
ance that Antiochus III attempts to broker through the marriage of his daughter
Cleopatra to Ptolemy V in v. 17, which also failed. A second campaign against
Egypt also fails as the Romans pull Antiochus IV up short (v. 30), much as they
had contained Antiochus III earlier (vv. 1819). See Clifford, History and
Myth, 24.
1
42. Ibid.
aggression reaches its zenith when Antiochus IVs ood overtakes

even Libya and Ethiopia (11:43).43 His military might also involves a
religious breach as he begins to think of his power as self-originating.
In doing this, the rsum shows the nal king of the north reenact-
ing the hubris of the Assyrian king (Isa 10:1215). The kings over-
weening pride brings the cycle to its climax and signals the
imminence of denitive containment.
As Antiochus IVs actions breach the levee, they bring about not
only his end but the end of the imperial currents altogether. That is, his
military aggression and self-deifying activities both close the pattern
of history and rupture it altogether. Antiochuss career signals the
eschatons unfolding in 11:27, 35, 36, and 40.44 His end in 11:45 is
juxtaposed with the eschaton itself in 12:1 when the angelic com-
mander Michael comes to effect deliverance of the people and judg-
ment upon the wicked.
b. The Local Context for Divine Power

The apocalyptic historical rsum creates theological coherence not
only in its portrayal of divine power over international history and
politics, but also in its ability to show how this international power
intersects with the particular locus of the faithful community. The
rsum does this in the rst place through the epithets king of the
north and king of the south. These epithets designate two geo-
graphically and politically opposed kingdoms whose interactions
sweep everything in between into a maelstrom of military activity. Yet
these epithets are also relative, reecting the perspective of the one
doing the naming. This perspective comes from one who occupies the
place between them. The designations are hinged around Judea and
Jerusalem. 45 Jerusalem is the center of the last king of the norths
activity and also the place where the power of the king (and all kings)
ends once and for all in 11:45.
As the international focus of the text zooms in on Jerusalem and
Antiochuss activities there, it highlights Antiochuss role in bringing
about the crisis of the institutional presence of the divine and the
maklms response. The rsum spends a signicant amount of time
describing the kings disruption of the institutional means of divine
presence with the people: the cult, its personnel, and Torah obser-
vance. It relates the ousting and death of the high priest Onias III
43. Newsom, Historical Rsum, 23031.

1
45. Redditt, Daniel 11, 471.
(11:22), the attack on Jerusalem in the aftermath of Antiochuss defeat

at the hands of the Romans (11:30), Antiochuss alliance with the
Jerusalem aristocrats (11:30), the desecration of the Jerusalem sanctu-
ary (11:31), the disruption of the tmd (11:31), and the resistance of
those who remain loyal to God (11:32).
The portrayal of Antiochus IV brings to the fore once again the
question of the kings autonomy and legitimacy. During the period
recounted in 11:3044, the rsum emphasizes that the last king of the
north does what he pleases and prospers without further hindrance
from any earthly force (11:36). Indeed, he even begins to think of
himself as completely autonomous. Instead of deferring to divine will,
he tries to choose his own gods (11:3738) and even exalt himself
over and against the God of gods (11:36). Yet the rsums use of the
period of wrath (11:36) makes it clear that Antiochuss power is, in
fact, derived from the divine plan and not self-originating. It is the
divine schema for history that contrasts with the kings futile scheming
(11:24, 25, 27, 28). The concept tries to establish two realities about
the nature of Antiochuss power. In the rst place, the period func-
tions to assert that his successes are not his own but are due to Gods
structuring of this period.46 In the second place, the period shows that
the divine is working to limit Antiochuss power in time (11:36).
The period of wrath does not signal that Antiochus IV is a retribu-
tive instrument of divine power. If this is not clear in Dan 8:19, then
ch. 11 makes it clear by depicting the faithfulness of the maklm,
who suffer death and captivity and betrayal by those who join them
insincerely (11:3235). In Dan 8 and 11, Gods use of history is now
much more complex than the deuteronomistic theology of retribution
will allow. Although the divine allows Antiochus to prosper, the king
is nevertheless not a legitimate servant or tool of divine power against
the people.
As historical forces align against the righteous community, history
fails to reward justice and display the righteousness and power of
God. This divine absence is not only institutional in nature; it is the
absence of divine power with and for the community in historical
events, the loss of salvic nearness.47 At the same time, the rsum
asserts that the divine is shaping these events; yet divine power will
not be fully displayed until the end of the period of wrath. The period
of wrath is the mediating point between the reality of this experience
and the conviction of divine power over history. In positing this
46. Smith-Christopher, Daniel, 7:113.

1
47. Lemke, Near and the Distant God, 544.
period as that time in which the community must endure the accumu-
lating transgressions and oppressions of foreign power, yet one that
will be concluded with the appropriate deliverance and divine display
of power, the revelation attempts to mediate the experiential and theo-
logical contradictions with which the community wrestles.48 Indeed, in
the anticipation of a future in which the ood of imperial power is
nally contained, the importance of the present experience of being
subject to foreign power is already re-weighted and subverted.
The anticipation of Antiochus IVs end is not enough, however, to
create full consonance for the community. A vision of the future capa-
ble of successfully mediating the present experience must create
coherence concerning the future of divine presence as well as the end
of imperial power. Daniel 8, with its primary attention on Antiochus
IV, was not able to imagine the reopening of future time after the
kings downfall. It failed to construct a positive eschatological vision
of divine sovereignty or community empowerment. In this it came
short of the goal of the rsum, already established in Dan 2:4445,
before the advent of Antiochus IV, to make permanently visible the
kingdom of the faithful community and the power of God over all
other kingdoms.
c. Re-Visioning the End

The preceding analysis reveals that the eschatological outcome in Dan
1112 must do several things in order to achieve literary consonance
and bring the cycle of visions, especially the vision of Dan 8, to an
end. In fact, all of these things can be summed up by the ideas of
narrative closure and narrative openness. Closure requires the com-
pletion of formal and readerly expectations of containment, those
established already in Dan 11 and also those disrupted in Dan 8. This
includes resuming the disrupted emplotment of the rebellious subordi-
nate from Dan 8 and reordering the cosmic spaces that the little horn
had disturbed. And yet, in addition to rectifying Dan 8s emplotment
of history, Dan 1112 must also establish what was missing in chs. 8
and 9, namely, a vision of the future in which time is reopened for the
faithful community and the institutional crisis of divine presence is
overcome. This openness is connected to the unfolding character of the
story from the point of view of the reading community.49 It involves
48. On this characteristic of temporal resolutions to dissonance, see further

OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 4142.
1
the sense of anticipation, the perception that there will be more to the
story after the end of Antiochus and Seleucid rule. Daniel 1112 must
therefore describe a future period that offers discontinuity from
imperial time and yet is continuous with the communitys expecta-
tions of righteous power and presence.
d. Completing the Pattern

It is through the completion of disrupted narrative patterns that the
vision provides the reading community with the necessary disconti-
nuity while also nurturing expectations for the future. In this regard,
there is a signicant reworking in 11:2112:4 of ch. 8s use of the
rebellious subordinate narrative.50 Daniel 11:2145, like Dan 8, frames
the career of Antiochus using the elements and language of the
rebellious subordinate available to the community from Isa 10:1219;
Isa 14:320, and Ezek 28:119.51 These shared elements include the
usurpers rise to power through illegitimate or unacceptable means
(Dan 8:23; 11:21);52 the perverse thought of the king (33=) that leads
to self-exaltation (=J58J, =58EJ, )>CEJ) up to the heavens and a con-
frontation with God (Dan 8:25; 11:36; cf. Isa 10:15; 14:13); and his
felling at the height of his power (Dan 8:25; 11:45; cf. Isa 10:16;
14:12, 15).53
While Dan 8 does indeed speak of the felling of the subordinate at
the very end of the vision, it does not fully complete the emplotment of
the rebellious subordinate. Antiochus IV disrupts the formula for con-
tainment that Dan 8 uses with respect to earlier kingdoms in vv. 4 and
7, rendered variously as H5J> =J4> *J (v. 4) and =J= =J4> 9J9=
H5J> (v. 7). The vision report should have reported his containment
using the formula. Even when 8:25d does assert divine intervention
against the little horn, it does not invoke the formula of 8:4 and 7 to

51. So also Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 15; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 22829;
Goldingay, Daniel, 202.
52. Page, Cosmic Rebellion, 14058, 193, 199. I nd convincing Pages
assertion that these passages stem from a discernible tradition with predictable
elements and distinctive vocabulary. However, I do not share his conclusion that
these stem from a now-lost Ugaritic Ur-myth. At this point it is necessary only to
point to the common tradition that is manifested in the biblical texts. Antiochuss
illegitimacy is emphasized in Dan 11:21 by the reference to him as the one who
is contemptible (9K3?) and the one to whom royal power has not been given.
This second phrase may refer to the historical reality of Antiochuss usurpation of
the crown from his nephew.
1
speak of Antiochuss end. Instead, 8:25d invokes the motif of with-

out hands borrowed from 2:34. 54 Moreover, the energy of the text
revolves around the work of the little horn in felling the angelic host,
who are trampled on the ground. While Antiochus IV is contained at
the end of the interpretation, his containment does not carry the full
weight of the visions energy, which never restores the angelic host,
the temple, and the Torah. The emplotment of the rebellious insub-
ordinate in Dan 8 is largely inverted.
The nal revelation asserts that Antiochus IV will meet the pun-
ishment appropriate to the rebellious subordinate. In the depiction of
his containment, Dan 11:45 resumes and completes the formula of 8:4,
7 (cf. 9:26) that signals the victims defeat by a superior power. The
king of the north nally falls victim to the superior power of the
divine, with no one to deliver or help him, H= CKH *JH.
The nal vision goes even further than this in asserting the divine
containment of the rebellious subordinate. In wedding the oracle of
deliverance in 12:14 to the historical rsum,55 the writer of the nal
vision links Antiochus IVs end to the battle and judgment scene in
vv. 14. Although this scene contains no explicit reference to Antio-
chus IV, the implication is that he shares in the fate of those who will
be raised to eternal disgrace. Indeed, in using ,CI, reproach, to
describe the resurrection of the wicked, 12:2 is resuming the language
of containment from 11:18 that described Antiochus IIIs fall at the
hands of the Romans. Just as Antiochus IV emulated Antiochus III in
life, he emulates him in death. The reproach of eternal abhorrence is
the ultimate containment for Antiochus IV. This scene of nal shame
and horror also invokes the pattern of judgment on other insubordi-
nates that was already established in Isa 66:24, from which Dan 12:2
picks up the term *HC5,56 and also in Isa 14:1620, where the rebel-
lious king will meet his death as the object of reproachful stares. 57
Images of the nal judgment show the true essence of Antiochus IV
though he promotes himself as invincible and divine-like, he is in fact
54. Pace Collins, Daniel, 389.

55. That the historical rsum began as a separate document that was later
inserted into a text that originally ran from roughly 10:20 or 21 directly into 12:1
has been argued persuasively by a number of scholars, including: A. Jepsen,
Bemerkungen zum Danielbuch VT 11 (1961): 38990; Gammie, Classi-
cation, Stages of Growth, 203; Davies, Daniel, 6365; Hasslberger, Hoffnung
in Bedrngnis, 13541; and Paul L. Redditt, Calculating the Times: Daniel
12:513, PRS 25 (1998): 375. Collins, Daniel, 37172, however, disagrees.
1
57. Page, Cosmic Rebellion, 13637.
vulnerable and impotent. His successes will be limited and subject

to the divine while the shamefulness of his death will be unlimited,
already casting a pall over his life.
That being said, it is striking that no king is actually named in Dan
12:14, much less the notorious king of the north. This absence is, in
part, the result of knitting together two originally quite different
writings, each containing its own center of focus: the rsum, with its
interest in shaping political details, and the oracle, with its juridical
interest in meting out future rewards and punishments to two general
but opposing groups. 58 But even if the seam between them is a bit
jagged, the result is still felicitous since it shifts the texts focus from
Antiochus to the work of Michael and the destiny of the maklm. It is
this shift that allows a transformative vision of the future.
Michaels work reverses the fortunes of the kings war on the
heavenly host and the maklm community. In Dan 12:1, Michael
arises (5>; cf. 11:21) as Antiochuss heavenly opposite, who regains
the heavenly balance of power that Dan 8 had tipped in the wrong
direction.59 While Dan 8 focused on Antiochus and his activities, the
58. A myriad of interpretive issues are connected with the oracle of deliver-
ance in 12:14. Nickelsburgs form-critical treatment in Resurrection, Immortal-
ity, and Eternal Life, which argues for the juridical and martial character of the
scene remains a classic discussion. Collins, Daniel, 39498, and more recently,
Andrew Chester, Resurrection and Transformation, in Auferstehung = Resur-
rection: The Fourth DurhamTbingen Research Symposium Resurrection,
Transguration, and Exaltation in Old Testament, Ancient Judaism and Early
Christianity (Tbingen, September, 1999) (ed. Frank Avemarie and H. Lichten-
berger; Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 4777, provide overviews of the emerg-
ing issues. These include: (1) The origins and sources of resurrection thinking
Is it foreign or home grown? (2) The extent of those resurrectedWho are the
many and who are the some? Are both good and wicked resurrected or only
the good? And, (3) the nature of resurrection within the history of religions, that
is, the assertion of astral immortality vs. metaphorical elevation (see further
below). I nd many of these questions fascinating and important, but must set
them aside for the present. My primary concern here is on the symbolic work of
resurrection within the world constructed by this particular story.
59. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 1114, argues that one should read 5> in
12:1 as indicating Michaels role as both a judicial and military defender of the
people. Its military sense is quite obvious from the context. Its judicial sense
invokes the concept of the angelic advocate in Zech 1:12 and Jub. 18:912 who
stands in court to give testimony. While there is juridical concept at work in this
passage, I am not convinced that Michaels leadership performs this role. In the
rst place, Dan 712 has specialized the angelic roles considerably so that one
sees a distinction between the heavenly armies or host under Michael (Dan 8:10
11; 10:13) and the angelic court that renders judgment (Dan 7:10d, 26). It is true
1
heavenly battle in 12:1 focuses on Michaels role, who is now the

subject and agent of the action. His title as prince (C) recalls the
title of the angelic leader who unsuccessfully battles the little horn in
8:11.60 And yet, in this nal intervention, he is no longer defeated, for
12:1 calls him the great prince. The text shifts the use of the root
=58 from Antiochus, where it designated his illegitimate self-dei-
cation (8:11; 11:36), to Michael, where it emphasizes his status as the
powerful heavenly commander. This shift is all the more signicant
when compared to the characterization of Michael offered in 10:13. In
that verse, he is called one of the princes of the rst rank (5I
)J?C9 )JC9), a title that indicates his importance within the heav-
enly host, to be sure, but one that does not convey unique distinction.
In that verse and again in 10:21, Michael is paired with the prince of
Persia, but his unique distinction as the prince of the host (34C)61
appears only when he is paired and compared with Antiochus IV as
his heavenly opposite in 8:11 and 12:1. Furthermore, his greatness
comes in the text only in the moment that he nally defeats Antiochus.
As Michael turns the tide of the battle, the stars regain the positions
they once held. While the focus of Dan 12:3 is primarily on the
maklm, the verse compares them to the heavenly host in order to
emphasize, among other things, the image of elevation and exaltation.
The maklm, once humbled and defeated by Antiochus (Dan 11:33
35) even as the stars were in 8:11, now achieve a status comparable to
that of the angelic host that shines in the rmament (12:3).62 Michael
reorders the cosmic spaces and places that had been disrupted. He
that the roles are not completely specialized, that is, Gabriel is clearly part of the
military retinue but also functions as messenger (10:2021). Nevertheless, the
verb 5> should be read in the context of its uses in ch. 11, where it is always a
political/military reference and never a juridical one; cf. Dan 11:2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 13,
14, 16, 20, and 21.
60. The identity of the prince of the host in Dan 8:11 is contested. See my dis-
cussion of this in ch. 4. I follow Lacocque, Daniel, 162, who identies the prince
of the host with Michael, not God.
61. On prince of the host, 34C, as a unique appellative and thus inher-
ently denite, see Waltke and OConnor, Introduction, 240.
62. The meaning of the statement that the maklm will shine like the stars has
been the subject of much debate. Arguments in favor the view that the maklm
will enjoy astral immortality as heavenly bodies do not take into account the use
of simile here. Cf. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:19697; Collins, Daniel,
393; Michael Moore, Resurrection and Immortality: Two Motifs Navigating
Conuent Theological Streams in the Old Testament (Dan 12:14), TZ 39
(1983): 2930.
1
replaces the exaltation of the little horn in 8:14 with the triumph of the
heavenly host and the shining of the wise ones. The expectations of
the rebellious subordinate emplotment are fullled.
5. The Crisis of Divine Presence and the Ideology of Rule

a. The Invisibility of the Divine
It remains to assess how the nal vision deals with the problem of
divine presence with and for the community. This is, indeed, a prob-
lem despite the assertions of divine power by the rsum, for in the
visions of Daniel the activity of the divine must always work within
two distinct yet related contextsthe world-historical and the local.
Within the rsum, the assertion of Gods world-historical power is
tied to the incomparability of the divine character and activity. This
incomparability, taking its cue from Dan 8, roots divine power over
nations and over history by means of the divines distance from
human agents and agencies. The work of the divine cannot be identi-
ed with the actions or plans of emperors or empires. This incompa-
rability is, in turn, reected in the depiction of divine rule as elusively
displayed in world events. Historical events and outcomes, perpetrated
as they are by human agents, can have no simple one to one corre-
spondence with divine activity and planning. Instead, divine activity
works in the shadow of imperial events and agents, furthering the
divine plan through means that are independent of imperial preroga-
tive but into which imperial prerogative inadvertently plays.
The nal vision, in keeping with this model of independent and
incomparable power, renders the divine character in non-anthropo-
morphic terms. Indeed, the divine is not just non-humanistic; it is
altogether invisible in chs. 1012. There are no graphic symbols of
divine power and presence. The authors use the divine passive to
describe the very few actions of the deity (10:11, 21; 11:11, 20, 36;
12:1), a grammatical construction that renders God as the agent invisi-
ble. The passage makes only three mentions of God, and these are
statements describing loyalty to God rather than depictions or char-
acterization of the deity (10:12; 11:32, 36). Even at the climactic point
of deliverance, when Antiochus IV is contained and the people are
resurrected, Michael, rather than God, appears to be the agent in these
events.63
1
This invisibility makes sense when one considers how form and
function go together in Israelite and Mesopotamian political ideolo-
gies. In the ancient Near East and the biblical tradition, the rulers
rights and powers are often connected to the rulers resemblance to the
divine.64 The legitimation of human agents and agencies often happens
through the theomorphic depiction of those agents, as in Gen 1:2628,
and also in the anthropomorphic depiction of divine power. Daniel
1012, however, counters this tendency through the invisibility of the
divine. The inability to see God directly involved in human events
maintains divine power as set apart from and incomparable to the
power of other agents.
Even in this need to assert Gods incomparability, however, God
cannot remain wholly detached from human community and institu-
tions. The abiding conviction of Daniel is that God is relational.65 The
way in which to assert God as both incomparable and yet also present
with the community is the problem that has haunted Daniel since ch.
8. The difculty is in part related to the institutional presence of the
divine, especially in the cult and temple, which remains desecrated.
When anthropomorphic theophany, such as one nds in Dan 7:914,
can no longer be used to convey divine immanence because it threat-
ens divine incomparability, and when other institutional avenues of
divine presence are also compromised, how will God be present with
the people? The power and the will of the deity must be made avail-
able to the community through some recognizable means if a positive
vision of sovereignty, and not simply a negative one (i.e. assertions of
what sovereignty is not), is to be offered.
Daniel 8 and 9 began to move in the direction of legitimizing man-
tic activities and agents as mediators of divine power and presence,
but they never fully develop a positive ideology of mantic rule. Daniel
8 attempts to mediate the contradiction through temporal means that
express hope for the restoration of the temple at the conclusion of the
period of wrath. Daniel 9 uses mantic historiography in a symbolic
attempt to overcome temple desolation. Yet neither of these visions is
64. Kutsko, Ezekiels Anthropology, 11941, argues this persuasively with

respect to Ezekiels merkavah vision and the priestly vision of humanity in Gen
1:2628.
65. This is evident in the phrase the people of the holy ones of the Most
High, in Dan 7, which, despite all of its other linguistic and referential ambigui-
ties, clearly states that God is in relationship to a certain people who are thereby
identied by means of that relationship. Similarly, Dan 11:32 speaks of the
people who know their God. Daniel 9 is replete with such relational references,
usually signaled by the pronouns yours and ours; cf. 9:1416, 1920.
1
able to realize fully the restoration of the temple. In fact, Dan 9 gives
evidence of the communitys growing ambivalence towards this insti-
tution and its ability to mediate divine presence and power.66
Signicantly, Dan 1012, determined as it is to reassert other
expectations disrupted in Dan 8 and 9, does not revision the restora-
tion of the temple either.67 Indeed, quite unlike chs. 8 and 9, the nal
revelation renders the rededication of the temple invisible and its
legitimacy absent.68 It looks instead to the very different hope of resur-
rection. This is all the more interesting given the centrality of Jerusa-
lem, and especially Mt. Zion, as the point at which cosmic forces
intervene into imperial history (11:45; 12:1). Given the visibility of
Jerusalem in the passage, one might expect its dening political and
religious institution to be restored. However, in disagreement with
Rainer Albertz,69 I do not take this absence to mean that the scribal
authors have turned away from political ideals and goals. In fact, it is
the events and the actors at this moment and place of cosmic eruption
that signal a powerful resolution to the problem of divine immanence
and incomparability.
b. Embodied Power and Presence: The Angels and Maklm

The contradiction and its resolution are evident in the role and gure
of Michael, as well as the other angelic gures in the nal vision.
Michaels name, =<J> (Who is like God?) is an immediate afr-
mation of divine incomparability.70 As Michael defeats Antiochus IV
and delivers the people, his name emphasizes the contrast between the
divine and the king of the north who thought of himself as a god
(EH=A? C35J )J= = =, 11:36). It also subverts all royal ideologies
and their pretensions to represent the divine will. Yet the name also
signals Michaels own paradoxical relationship to God. The name
66. Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35961.

68. M. A. Sweeney, The End of Eschatology in Daniel? Theological and
Socio-Political Ramications of the Changing Contexts of Interpretation, BI 9
(2001): 12340, arguing for the priestly concerns of Daniels writers, fails to take
these absences, as well as the ambiguities toward the temple in Dan 9, into
account.
69. Albertz, Social Setting, 1:175.
70. See C. J. Labuschagne, The Incomparability of Yahweh in the Old Testa-
ment (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 21, who discusses Michaels name as a form of the
rhetorical question Who is like God?, which signals Gods incomparable power
in other parts of the Hebrew Bible. Labuschagne, however, does not analyze or
discuss the signicance of this in the context of Dan 1112.
1
asserts that Michael is not God, not El. He is the commander of Gods
armies, the military opposite of Antiochus IV, but not the God of
gods, )J= =. At the same time, Michael, like the other angels, has
taken on the features and activities that formerly characterized Gods
activity in the historical realm. He has assumed the role of divine
warrior and deliverer, once the prerogative of the Most High (cf. Deut
33:23; Judg 5:45; Ps 68:89; and most especially Exod 15:11, 13).
Similarly, Gabriel now performs the functions of visual and auditory
revelation that had belonged to God (cf. Dan 10:911; Ezek 1:282:1;
8:3). He also takes on the appearance and description of God offered
in Ezekiel (cf. Dan 10:56; Ezek 1:2628; 8:2).71 The angels in the
nal vision, much as in Dan 8 and 9, are now the anthropomorphic
revelations of God, present with humanity. Their presence allows God,
now elusive and unfamiliar, to be removed from the fray of heavenly
warfare and activities. In the absence of the divine, the angels develop
a heavenly bureaucracy through which divine power and presence are
mediated to the community by the specialized abilities of the angels.
At the same time that the angels take on divine features, the
maklm establish their legitimacy by showing themselves to be, col-
lectively speaking, an ironic embodiment of divine power and pres-
ence. 72 Adopting the prophetic role of the suffering servant of Isa
5253, 73 the maklm attain their power by humbling themselves
71. For discussion of Daniels use of Ezekiel, especially in the nal vision,
see Seow, Daniel, 11828, 15962; Lacocque, Daniel, 2078; and Goldingay,
Daniel, 284, 287.
72. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 13536. Contra Davies, Reading Daniel
Sociologically, 35759, who argues that, There is an ambivalence between the
desire for political power and the rejection of it which poises the authors on a
brink.
73. The relevant literature on this passage and its connection to Daniel is con-
siderable and includes: Bentzen, Daniel; H. L. Ginsberg, The Oldest Interpreta-
tion of the Suffering Servant, VT 3 (1953): 400404; C. Westermann, Isaiah 40
66 (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 25369; Nickelsburg, Resurrection,
26; Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision, 171; J. Day, DA!AT Humiliation in Isaiah
LIII 11 in the Light of Isaiah LIII 3 and Daniel XII 4, and the Oldest Known
Interpretation of the Suffering Servant, VT 30 (1980): 97103; idem, The
Development of Belief in Life After Death in Ancient Israel, in After the Exile:
Essays in Honour of Rex Mason (ed. John Barton and David J. Reimer; Georgia:
Mercer University Press, 1996), 23157; P. D. Hanson, Isaiah 4066 (Interpre-
tation; Louisville: John Knox, 1995), 15369. While the consensus is that Daniel
is comparing the maklm to the suffering servant, A. S. van der Woude has
argued that this is not the case in his article, Prophetic Prediction, Political
Prognostication, and Firm Belief: Reections on Daniel 11:4012:3, in The
1
before the divine and suffering debasement and death. This ironic path
to power forms its own counter-story to the one of kingly power.
The counter-story begins with Daniels experience with the angel in
10:412. Lacocque and Goldingay both note the way in which the
visionary, as the paradigmatic makil, humbles himself before the
angel in 10:812. 74 In dramatic contrast to the kings self-elevating
behavior, Daniel prostrates himself before heavenly power, his appear-
ance becoming disgured (cf. Isa 52:14; 53:2), but is raised up by the
angel (Dan 10:1011). As the revelation continues, the work of the
maklm as a group emerges. While the king undermines the faith-
fulness of the people, the maklm nourish righteousness among the
rabbm, even to the point of suffering death (Dan 11:3233; cf. Isa
53:1112). The king attempts to exalt himself above all gods and is
made to suffer eternal reproach; in the oracle, however, the maklm
are exalted in their servanthood and elevated to the status that the
kings had once desired and claimed for themselves (Dan 12:3; cf. Isa
52:13).75
As was the case with the servant in Isa 53, the fall and death of the
maklm lead to their transformation. Daniel 11:35 uses three verbs to
highlight this transformation: ,C4, which usually refers to the rening
processes of metallurgy; CC3, which is used by Ezek 20:38 and Isa
52:11 to refer to cultic purity; and nally *3=. This last verb is a color
term for whiteness that also indicates justice and moral purity.76 Thus,
in their debasement and perhaps even death, the maklm take on the
physical appearance of their purity and righteousness.
Their whiteness connects them with the earlier theophany of the
Most High.77 The verb *3= is the Hebrew equivalent of the Aramaic
CHI 8=E<,78 which in Dan 7:9 designates the white hair and garments
of the Most High himself.79 Daniel 7 uses whiteness in order to mani-
fest Yahwehs righteous rule and to contrast that embodied right-
eousness to the predatory rule of the four beasts. In their debasement,
Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of

James A. Sanders (ed. C. A. Evans and S. Talmon; New York: Brill, 1997), 63
75. Although one congratulates him for swimming against the current, his argu-
ment is not convincing.
74. Lacocque, Daniel, 207; Goldingay, Daniel, 28791.
75. Chester, Resurrection and Transformation, 61.
76. Brenner, Colour Terms, 133, 180.
77. Cf. Goldingay, Daniel, 309.
78. Brenner, Colour Terms, 9092, 133.
1
the maklm embody purity, righteous rule, and glory that character-
ize the divine in Dan 7.
The nal vision also nds other ways in which to connect the
appearance of the maklm with the theophanic glory of the divine.80
The angelic gure who appears to Daniel beginning in 10:5 is a visual
copy of the divine. His features resemble those of the Most High and
his throne chariot described in Ezek 1:7, 13, 16, 27. As such, he
reects the dazzling appearance and power of the kvd. At their
resurrection, the maklm also take on a dazzling appearance compa-
rable to the heavenly host (12:3). And yet, even prior to their exalta-
tion, they are compared to the angels who are described as being
human or human-like (5IJ, 10:5; )5 J?3 EH>5<, 10:16).81 Daniel
8 refused to describe God using any anthropomorphic comparisons or
relational terms. God was mysterious to the point of being absent. But
in Dan 1012, even though the Most High is invisible, Gods appear-
ance and thus presence is reected by angels who are more and more
human-like and also, along with the humans, more and more divine-
like.
The maklm, as wise ones, also mirror the work of the angels,
who, as messengers of the divine, are engaged in knowing and reveal-
ing the future that Yahweh has planned. This knowledge ultimately
leads to transformative deliverance and unending life both for the
maklm and for those they instruct. Such enduring and life-giving
knowledge contrasts starkly with Antiochus IVs use of intellect. He,
along with the other kings in the historical rsum, are involved in
various transactions of knowledge as well: thinking and knowing
(33= ?E?, 33=3 C>, 5J), acknowledging (C<?), planning (3I), and
willing (= H33=). But their wisdom is the perverse knowledge that
characterizes the rebellious subordinate of Ezek 28:2, 6. Their knowl-
edge leads to assertions of autonomy and the denial of God (11:12, 32,
37). Their wisdom is also caught up in evil plans and deceit (11:23,
27) used to terrorize and undermine others (11:28, 39). Finally, this
kingly knowledge is short-lived. The plans of Antiochus and the other
kings do not endure but are ultimately thwarted, either by the planning
and knowing of opposing kings (11:24, 25) or by means of the divine
plan (11:27).
80. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, 26. Nickelsburg further compares

the maklms glory to Isa 60:1, 3, 19. See also Goldingay, Daniel, 309.
1
81. Lacocque, Daniel, 206, 16768.
c. Invisible Men
As the maklm become dazzlingly visible at the time of the end, all
other would-be agents and institutions of divine power become invisi-
ble. While 2:3145 and, to some extent, ch. 7 understood that under
certain circumstances the foreign king might be a legitimate agent of
divine power, chs. 1012 sever all hopes that a foreign king can serve
Gods purposes.82 Nor does the vision give evidence of any messianic
hopes in connection to the Davidic king.83 This is noteworthy given
the persistence of Davidic hopes in other early Jewish texts such as the
Psalms of Solomon and Qumran materials such as 4Q174 Florilegium
and perhaps 4Q246 apocrDan ar.84
Daniel 1012 refuses to make visible other resistance efforts
(whether armed or not), especially the Maccabean rebellion. Collins
notes that though commentators since Porphyry have interpreted 11:34
as referring to the Maccabees, the point of the verse is that the
maklm receive little real help, from any party.85 The reasons for
overlooking the Maccabees are not entirely clear. Although it is possi-
ble that the oversight is due to a principled rejection of armed resis-
tance, this is by no means a foregone conclusion. 86 The speculation
that the maklm were pacists is based on indirect evidence at best
and can have other satisfactory explanations. It may also be the case
that reluctance to name the Maccabees stems from that groups priestly
status and their central concern with an institution, the temple, towards
which the maklm may have been distancing themselves.
82. Contra Davies, Reading Daniel Sociologically, 35859, who argues that
Daniel gives evidence of an ambiguity between the acceptance of foreign
kingship and the rejection of all foreign rule that is not necessarily due to the
change in political conditions.
83. While Mosca, Ugarit and Daniel 7, 496517, has argued that the
maklm had in fact expressed their Davidic hopes, namely, through the use of Ps
89 in Dan 7. I do not nd this argument convincing.
84. On messianism in early Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls, see John J.
Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995); idem, Encounters with
Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 16978; K. Atkinson,
On the Herodian Origin of Militant Davidic Messianism at Qumran: New Light
from Psalm of Solomon 17, JBL 118 (1999): 43560.
86. See further G. Zerbe, Pacism and Passive Resistance in Apocalyptic
Writings: A Critical Evaluation, in The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical
Interpretation (ed. J. H. Charlesworth and C. A. Evans; Shefeld: JSOT, 1993),
6595.
1
Not only is the temple rendered virtually invisible by the end of the
vision, priestly claims receive little consideration in Dan 1012s end-
time politics. Although the high priest is mentioned in 9:26 as the
anointed one, this reference is specic to Onias III and does not recog-
nize the legitimacy of the high priests thereafter. Daniel 1012 appears
to be in agreement with Dan 9. The aristocratic priestly groups and the
high priest himself are only visible in so much as they are among
those who make alliances with Antiochus IV and abandon the holy
covenant (11:30, 32). This absence cannot simply be attributed to the
texts focus on political agents rather than priestly ones. The rsum
has no trouble understanding priestly gures as political actors.
The priestly hierarchys dominance of sacred place and sacred time
recedes in the nal vision and is replaced by scribal piety. In 10:1, the
sacred time and liturgical rites of Passover, which should have been
celebrated during the period of time covered by the narrative, are
made invisible by Daniels three weeks of fasting. In their ability to
bring about the nal revelation of the end, Daniels mourning rites and
abstinence suggest that mantic piety brings about divine presence,
power, and deliverance for the people far more effectively than the
Passover rites.
Thus chs. 1012 overcomes divine absence at the end not by
reasserting the direct intervention of the divine, but by reenvision-
ing the agency of the maklm ultimately as better knowers than the
kings, better mediators of divine theophany than the temple and priest-
hood, and better resistance than the Maccabees. If the nal vision is
at all successful in overcoming dissonance with respect to divine sov-
ereignty, it has done so through the maklm. Not only are they the
means by which the plan is revealed, but they also, through the
counter-story of their resistance, death, and exaltation, ironically
embody divine power and presence.
6. The Sense of an Ending?

The nal vision is, literarily speaking, ready to come to its end even as
the gure of Daniel prepares for his end in 12:4 and 13. All the prizes
(rather spectacular ones) have been distributed and the loose ends
tidied up. Nevertheless, if the book has taught the reader anything, it is
that the end is a hard thing to ndso much so that Daniel is nearing
his last breath when he seems to nd new energy at the hands of a
redactor unable to bring himself to closure just yet. Thus Dan 12:512
presents the reader with yet another revision of the end of the
wonders in the form of two calculations of the end in vv. 11 and 12.
1
These have long been understood as successive recalculations of the

cryptic phrase J4IH )J5H> 5H>= J< (v. 7), which comes as the
answer to the question of How long? in 10:6.87 The rst number,
1290, is apparently a recalculation of the 1150 days from Dan 8:14,
while the second number, 1335, is a recalculation of the 1290 days.
Later redactors were forced to insert these recalculations at two
separate intervals due to the perceived failure of the predictions. The
end of the wonders did not take place, from the redactors view, at
the end of each of those time periods.88
While Dan 1012 is cognitively more impressive than Dan 8 in its
attempt to manifest divine presence and power, 12:512 is important
evidence that the cycle of expectation, experience, and dissonance
continued within the maklm community even after the rededication
of the temple and even after the continued attempts to resolve disso-
nance by several earlier visions. It attests to the fact that at least some
parts of this narrative resolution were not durableand probably
could not be. Indeed, Claude Lvi-Strauss and Fredric Jameson argue
that such political and ideological contradictions seek resolution on
the symbolic level of myth and narrative because they are irresolvable
in actuality.89
And yet, not unlike the maklm themselves, the fragility of the
visions on the level of the concrete does not render these symbolic
mediations any less powerful in their ability to re-imagine Gods rela-
tionship to history and to the community. The compelling character of
apocalyptic consonance is rooted, not in its permanence or its con-
creteness, but in its ability as narrative to be revoiced and recapitu-
lated according to the needs of the community. Thus, within a few
years of its writing, Daniels visions are reclaimed and reused by sec-
tarian Judaism looking to resolve dissonance raised by a slightly dif-
ferent set of circumstances.90 Indeed, the great paradox of apocalyptic
87. This view has been held by many commentators, including Gunkel, Crea-
tion and Chaos, 350 n. 101; Charles, Daniel, 33839; Montgomery, Daniel, 477;
Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 311; Collins, Daniel, 401.
89. I am here drawing on Claude Lvi-Strausss understanding of the purpose
of myth, articulated in his essay, The Structural Study of Myth, in Structural
Anthropology (trans. C. Jacobson; 2 vols.; New York: Basic, 1963), 1:20631.
90. I here refer the reader to Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, who
argues that the apocalypticism of Jewish sectarianism may be traced to what he
terms indigestion in the face of social and political confusion emerging from
both political victories and political disappointments in the aftermath of the
Maccabean revolt.
1
visions is that although they assert ultimate and permanent endings,

the contradictions they mediate and the closure that they do give is
meaningful for its reading community in that moment, although it is
never more than penultimate and temporary. The most that one can
afrm at the close of any apocalyptic imagining ishere is the end
of the matter, for now.
1
Chapter 7
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
1. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty:

A Summary of Findings
The preceding examination of Daniels visions has argued that, con-
trary to the assessment of much critical scholarship, it is sovereignty,
rather than evil or religious persecution, that constitutes the driving
problem of the visions. The language of evil emerges only at the very
end of the last vision cycle in Dan 12:1, but the language of sover-
eignty is everywhere. The issue emerges in the rst vision of the cycle
(Dan 2:3145) well before the persecutions instituted by Antiochus
IV, under conditions of no particular crisis, but during a time in which
the scribal community was nevertheless a dominated group subject to
a foreign king and to forced inter-cultural contact.
The need for the scribal community is to assert the Jewish God as
sovereign not only over their community, but also over the gentiles
and their king. This need is evident in the conclusion to the tale itself,
in the depiction of Nebuchadnezzars proclamation of God as God of
gods and Lord of kings (2:47). It is explicitly evident in the lament of
Sir 36:122, which dates from the same time period and shares certain
conceptual points of contact with Daniel. The lament and the vision
may be seen as a dialogue (probably not a directly intentional one) in
which the lament pleads and the vision narratively enacts the plea and
its fulllment. The lament expresses the contradiction between the
expectation of Gods visible power and the present condition of sub-
ordination to foreign rule. This contradiction and the dissonance
emerging from it are driven by the failure of Sirachs deuteronomistic
theology to account meaningfully for that subordination. Sirach does
not embrace the presupposition of deuteronomistic theology that the
Jewish community has been unrighteous. Thus, Sirach begs God to be
known once again to hostile rulers through glorious deeds and also to
be present in the temple. Such acts of power and presence will restore
1
the people, will counter the claims of autonomy made by foreign kings,
and also re-establish the credibility of Gods power with the com-
munity and among the nations (Sir 36:20, 22).
The vision of Dan 2 reects this concern for the visible presence
and power of the divine. It responds to the dissonantal pleas of the
lament not through traditional Israelite frameworks of knowing God,
such as the deuteronomistic framework suggested by Sirach, but
through foreign frameworks of knowing. Through the four-kingdom
schema, the community establishes Gods world-historical power over
the nations by writing its own God and itself into foreign history as
the climax of foreign rule. With its emphasis on the future end of
imperial history, the dream allows the third-century B.C.E. community
to resolve the contradiction between divine invisibility in the present
and divine ascendancy in the past when the deity gave all things into
the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. These will be unied at the time of the
end, when Gods power and presence with the community becomes
visible in the form of the stone that demolishes and displaces the
statue of royal power.
In its present form, the vision of Dan 2 is directed toward the
dominated community; it is not intended to convince the dominators
of Gods power. As such, its use of foreign materials to argue Gods
absolute sovereignty over all nations allows the community to nego-
tiate the dual dynamic of attraction to foreign learning and power on
the one hand, and, on the other hand, the communitys desire to main-
tain the distinctiveness of its identity with its own sources of knowl-
edge and claims to power.
The ideology of rule represented in the nal redaction of Dan 2
marks a shift from that of the Persian-period writings of Second
Isaiah, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, in which the foreign king was
portrayed positively as a representative of divine power for the com-
munity. In the metaphorical echoes of the stone imagery, Gods rule is
now expected to be made present, not through the power of royal
hands and images, but through the Jewish community who will at
the time of the end become visible as an agent, rather than the power-
less object of, foreign history.
Two sets of vision report and interpretation characterize the form
and structure of Dan 7, but also signal the redactional process through
which the writing community of Dan 7 began to reread Nebuchad-
nezzars dream and thereby rethink its expectations of Gods relation-
ship to world-historical powers. The rst edition of the vision, which
probably dates to the late third century or early second century, estab-
lishes the cosmic as well as historical character of divine power by
1
7. Concluding Comments 183
bringing mythic patterns and symbols into the four-kingdom schema.

Yet the relationship between God and king becomes even more
oppositional in Dan 7, which explores their connection symbolically
through the language of bodily form and humanization. In this anthro-
pomorphism, the Most Highs uniquely superlative power in relation
to foreign powers becomes strikingly visible as kings are defamili-
arized and assume beastly forms. The defamiliarization undermines
ancient Near Eastern ideologies of rule. Moreover, the vision also
constitutes a theophany for the community and thus an expression of
divine immanence. Finally, the gure of the humanlike one, Gods
new agent of power in place of royal power, serves to democratize
divine power, relocating it in the faithful Jewish community that has
struggled against foreign subordination.
The visions literary duality also reects a situation of theological
and ideological paradox. In the redaction of the vision in 167 B.C.E.,
after Antiochus had criminalized Torah observance, but before the
desecration of the temple, the vision adds the little horn to the depic-
tion of the fourth beast. This redaction attempts to work through the
potential crisis for articulating divine sovereignty that Antiochus IVs
successes represent. The fourth beast had already served as a rupture
to the pattern of kingship in history, in so far as it, alone of the beasts,
was not commissioned by the divine council to rule. But with the rise
of the little horn, the narratives redactions create and explore a sce-
nario in which the little horn comes to power illegitimately, without
divine authorization, and yet is permitted to succeed in his oppressive
rule. The divine gives the community into his hands.
This scenario not only calls into question the expectations estab-
lished by the vision of the end in Dan 2, it also creates a potential con-
tradiction between divine cosmic power on the one hand and divine
presence with the people on the other. Nevertheless, this contradiction
is permitted because at stake is the larger question of the little horns
claims to autonomy and thus the question of ultimate power vs.
derived power. The handing over of the community to the little horn
robs the horn of the claim to have ultimate power and asserts the
power of God to hand it over to judgment at the time of the end. It is
this future handing overalready anticipated in the visions pattern of
kingshipthat resolves the contradiction for the community. Thus the
vision uses temporal and mythic equipment to establish divine cosmic
power and also immanence in the face of Antiochuss success.
Daniel 8, as a response to the desecration of the temple and the
interruption of the daily sacrices, depends upon Dan 7 for many of
its symbols and patterning of imperial history. Nevertheless, its
1
conguration of the end represents a signicant break from the pre-

vious visions construction of divine power and presence. In the
dramatic enactment of imperial history, the vision of Dan 8 brings the
conict between divine sovereignty and imperial power to its zenith
but fails to resolve the conict. Instead, the vision report concludes
with a statement of the little horns unhindered power and a report of
how the angelic host were thrown to earth and trampled upon. The
vision report taken by itself thus profoundly disappoints the readers
expectations of divine power established, not only in Dan 2 and 7, but
also in the tradition of the rebellious subordinate, which Dan 8 appears
to borrow from Isa 14.
The interpretation attempts to restore the formal and readerly expec-
tations of the vision by asserting the imminent end of the temples
desolation and the little horns power. As with Dan 7, Dan 8 employs
an angelic interpreter to instruct Daniel concerning the restoration of
the divine presence and the end of the little horn. The angels inter-
pretation of history once again asserts that divine sovereignty remains
intact by depicting the work of the little horn to be derived from Gods
planning of the period of wrath, which both allows and limits the
time of the horns activities.
The depiction of the defeat of the horn in Dan 8 picks up the model
of divine intervention seen in Dan 2, one that works without hands.
Yet, quite unlike Dan 2, the divine is not pictured at all in this descrip-
tion, whether anthropomorphically or abstractly. What is more, the
interpretation describes divine activity only indirectly, by means of the
divinum passivum, and negatively, by describing what it is not. The
divine passive indicates that God is in fact at work in the shadow of
historical events, effecting certain outcomes indirectly. Indeed, the
expressions of Gods hiddenness serve to highlight divine transcen-
dence by emphasizing remoteness or the unco-opted character of God.
And yet, this power is also severed from expressions of divine imma-
nence. The anthropomorphic theophany of Dan 7 highlighted divine
proximity to and alignment with the people by showing the divine
appearance to be in continuity with human appearance. In Dan 8,
however, God does not appear and is not presented as being in con-
tinuity with people. God is now removed from the community; it is
present only through the divine plan as it is given humanistic shape in
the form of the interpreting angels who take on the features and many
of the functions of the divine.
1
Despite its attempts to reconcile the problem of divine power and

Seleucid success against the faithful community, the interpretation is
not able to create consonance fully. This is because of its failure to
establish a coherent endingone that removes the little horn from the
center of history, replaces it with images of divine power, and prom-
ises an open future for the community. This lack of literary coherence
reects the profound character of the institutional crisis of divine
presence wrought by Antiochus IV. The lack of eschatological future
in the vision means that this institutional crisis is not solved symboli-
callythe little horn may be defeated, but more important is the ques-
tion about who or what will restore the institutional presence of the
deity. The temple is desecrated, the sacrices halted, the priesthood
corrupted, Torah observances outlawed, and God is no longer avail-
able via theophany. Just how will God be present with the people?
Daniel 9 also responds to the crisis of the institutional presence of
God brought about by the events of the winter of 167 B.C.E., yet its
response serves to complement that of Dan 8. Whereas Dan 8 puts
emphasis on the hidden and absent power of God within the world-
historical context of Antiochus IVs rule, Dan 9 addresses the hidden
and absent power of God with respect to the local context of the com-
munity in Jerusalem. Thus, the prayer of Dan 9 uses deuteronomistic,
Jeremian, and priestly frameworks for organizing its historiography,
rather than foreign ones, and invokes the particular name of Yahweh
instead of the universal epithets for God at work in Dan 7 and 8.
Within this primarily local and parochial framework, the prayer and
the oracle work together to shift the balance of power at work in Dan
8. Daniel 8 makes divine indirect agency (i.e. the divine passive, the
period of wrath) the ultimate source of historical events and Anti-
ochuss direct agency the derived source. Yet the prayer and oracle of
Dan 9 shift the origin of historical events to divine direct and indirect
agency (the divine passive appears in the oracle), as well as to the
direct activity of the Jewish community itself.
In contrast to the depiction of the end and the period of wrath in
ch. 8, the prayers use of deuteronomistic theology allows the Jewish
community to become an active participant in its own history. This
happens in both positive and negative ways. Negatively, the retribu-
tive, self-blaming theology of the prayer sees the community as the
cause of its own experience of exile and divine absence. Positively,
however, this means that the community can exercise some control
over its experience of punishment at the hands of its enemies and at
the hands of God.
1
The prayer and the oracle together create a process by which the
community participates symbolically in this history. While the prayer
evokes the rst three parts of the deuteronomistic cycle of history
(apostasy, oppression, crying out), the mantic aspect of this material
makes this crying out or penitence a request for saving knowledge.
The oracle provides the knowledge of their deliverance. That deliver-
ance means overcoming the institutional crisis of divine absence as
well as bringing about the end of the desolator. By contrast, in this
deuteronomistic manticism, the absolute sovereignty of God is still of
utmost concern. Thus the people do not have complete control over
their deliverance. The divine plan limits their power in time, even as it
limited the little horns power in Dan 8. As such, Gabriel reveals that
70 year-weeks must pass before the end of the desolation and the
desolator.
The process of knowing at work in the movement from prayer to
oracle effects symbolic triumph over the institutional crisis of divine
absence and constructs at the same time a positive ideology of rule.
The passage accomplishes this through the symbolic substitution of
mantic realities for the desolated institutions of divine presence. The
outlawed Torah (C35) of Moses is symbolically reconstituted as the
mantic plan (C35) of God, announced by Gabriel; the cultic rites of
the tmd that at one time had maintained the divine presence in the
temple are now substituted with the particular mantic rites of Daniel
that bring about divine presence in the form of esoteric revelation.
Even the sacred locus of the temple itself, whose rededication is not
imagined, is symbolically displaced by the atoning time of 490 years.
Moreover, Daniels act of reciting the prayer normally heard on the
lips of kings, priests, and governors brings new legitimacy to the
maklm as political and religious leaders for the Jerusalem com-
munity. Similarly, the revelation to Daniel of the vaticinium ex eventu
concerning the temples desolation, rededication, and re-desolation is
of the kind that normally would have been revealed to kings. The new
power that will mediate divine power to the community is, according
to this vision, located in the gure and activity of the makil, not in
priestly or kingly leaders.
Daniel 9 may be read as an attempt to soften the more problematic
aspects of Dan 8s vision, but neither vision is completely successful
in developing an ending in which the condition of institutional divine
absence is reversed, a future without Antiochus IV is imagined, and
the conditions of the faithful are once again restored. As long as the
host of heaven remains trampled, God hides the divine face, Antiochus
1
haunts historys ending, and the future of the community remains

clouded, the visions will not be able to effect closure to the question of
divine transcendent power and benecial presence.
The nal vision of Dan 1012, unlike those of chs. 7, 8, and 9, has
no particular historical catalyst to which it responds. Yet its myriad
connections with ch. 8 and to a lesser degree ch. 9 suggest that it
should be read as an attempt to bring closure to the discordant experi-
ence of Dan 8 and 9s endings and the continuing crisis of the
institutional absence of the divine. It does this by emphasizing, once
again, the power of the deity to shape history in a pattern of kingship
that will resume, complete, and repair Dan 8s disrupted expectations
of the end.
The historical rsum and oracle of deliverance in 10:2112:4
accomplish this primarily by restoring the expectations of the rebel-
lious subordinate motif that had been inverted in Dan 8. The rebellious
king who comes to power through illegitimate means, who makes
perverse plans, attempts to elevate himself, asserts his autonomy and
power over that of the divine, is nally brought low in a climactic
eruption of imperial time at Mt. Zion. At this point, the eschatological
end is nally imagined in a manner missing since Dan 7s vision. The
pattern of imperial time is discontinued but the future is reopened for
the scribal community as Michael intervenes to defeat the forces of
the king of the north, the people are nally delivered, and judgment
ensues in a resurrection to ongoing life for the righteous and everlast-
ing abhorrence for the wicked. Signicantly, in this construction of the
end, Antiochus IV is displaced from the center of attention and the
heavenly host are implicitly elevated once again, and along with them
the maklm.
This vision not only reverses the conditions of the fallen elite, it
also forms a counter-story of political ambition to that of the king of
the north. Thus, while the king elevates himself, indulges in perverse
and wicked plans, uses terror and deception to ruin the people, and
creates a crisis in the institutional presence of the divine, the maklm
humble themselves before God, stand rm in their knowledge of God,
are brought low by the king, but are nally elevated and made to
radiate a theophanic glory that characterized the divine in Dan 7.
Moreover, as the maklm become visible agents of divine glory and
righteousness, they make invisible all other institutions of divine
power and presencethe temple, the priestly aristocracy, the Macca-
bees, and of course the king.
1
Daniel 1012s vision of the end creates a coherent story of

maklm power and presence that resolves the tension between tran-
scendence and immanence and tries to bring closure to the cycle of
visions. Nevertheless, just as the last of the loose ends are being tidied
up, a few more spring loose in the recalculations of the end offered in
Dan 12:512. These calculations, offered in the disappointing after-
math of the death of Antiochus IV, ironically conrm the need for the
nal vision in the rst place. It is not enough to envision the end in
strictly negative terms such as the death of the evil king, as Dan 8 and
9 had attempted. The kings death did not thereby resolve all the
difculties around the communitys subordination and bring about the
end of empire and the beginning of an open future. Yet this did not
entirely undermine the symbolic action of the nal vision. In fact, the
work of the visions is most effective when it envisions sovereignty in
positiveterms. Even though the symbolic realization of this sover-
eignty may be fragile and not always capable of realization, its power
may nevertheless be seen in centuries of readers who have adapted
these materials and strategies and used them to revise their own social
context.
2. The Function of the Visions:

Symbolic Resolution and Resistance
in the Plot of Sovereignty
This study of Daniel set out to argue that at the heart of the apocalyptic
visions and their historical rsums is a profound struggle with divine
sovereignty. As such, their theological function is not, according to
this argument, primarily theodic. Although the apocalyptic visions
share with theodic texts such as Job 19:2 and the lament psalm the
question of How long? (Dan 8:13; 12:512) and the concern over
divine absence/presence, nevertheless, the two sets of literature use
these shared concerns to resolve different problems. While laments
struggle with the individuals experience of undeserved outcomes in
the face of a powerful yet supposedly righteous Godwhat Walter
Brueggemann terms a theodic crisisDaniels visions are primarily
interested in conicting claims to sovereignty and the means by which
Gods power will be asserted both world-historically and also with
Gods people. In this calculus, the visions are perfectly willing to
entertain that the righteous may suffer in the process of Gods plan for
history, though this suffering is of secondary interest to asserting
Gods power over foreign kings. Gods righteousness is not invoked
1
as a potential source of contradiction within the economy of Gods

powerful goodness. Instead, Gods righteousness works in Dan 7 as an
illustration of Gods cosmic kingship over and against rival claimants.
Ironically, while many commentators have argued for Daniels
theodic function, the chapter that comes closest to articulating theodic
concerns is the one usually judged to be the most atypical of Daniels
visions. Daniel 9, of all the visions, expresses in emotional language
the experience of calamitous outcomes at the hands of God. Yet even
here the prayer cannot be said to articulate this calamity for the pur-
pose of resolving a theodic crisis. Quite the opposite, Dan 9 articulates
a traditional, deuteronomistic theodic settlementthe suffering of the
people is just because of their own sinfulness. Nevertheless, this
theodic settlement may be seen as serving the interests of divine
incomparability. Daniels prayer pleas with God to be merciful for the
sake of Gods own reputation (Dan 9:19), even as Sirachs lament did
(Sir 36:1722). God is urged to act in order to maintain the divine
reputation among other nations.
Instead of performing theodic functions, Daniels visions are better
understood as symbolic acts that both resist Hellenistic rule and also
adjudicate the contradictions surrounding the experience and percep-
tion of divine sovereignty in the historical realm (as opposed to the
often privatized or self-centered world of other theodic materials). The
narratives of angelic encounters, which frame the historical rsums of
the visions, attempt to restore coherence or consonance to these
perceptions.
The process of symbolic resolution at work in these visions is dra-
matic in character, a quality that Stephen OLearys work has help-
fully elucidated. This dramatic narrative, incorporating both vaticinia
ex eventu and real predictions in a highly visual enactment of history,
draws the audience into the narrative itself as symbolic participants in
a symbolic activity. As the narratives create and construct the conict
for the audience and then attempt to resolve it through their study of
history and their projection of the end, the framework through which
the reader understands this situation is altered. The drama provides
cognitive equipment and strategies for comprehending divine activity,
imperial activity and its power, and also the role of the seemingly
powerless community.
Yet, as I have shown, the individual drama that each vision pro-
vides dees closure and sustains discordance to varying degrees. In
the case of Dan 2 and 7, this is because of the corrosive power of
time that Antiochuss actions in Jerusalem represent. The consonance
1
that these visions provide is delicate and erodes when tested by tragic
events. In the case of Dan 8 and 9, however, the seeds of discordance
are sown by the visions themselves as they defy eschatological and
narrative closure. In every case, however, these individual dramas
demand resolution in the next vision, creating a discernible cycle of
experience, dissonance, resolution, followed by new experience. Thus,
contrary to Goldingays assertion that the visions essentially repeat
rather than develop the themes of sovereignty,1 I argue that the visions
should be read as evolving explorations of sovereignty, governed by
the intersection of emerging events and their impact on the com-
munitys own construction of divine sovereignty in each successive
vision. They are not individual restatements of a static set of percep-
tions and themes.
The cycle of experience, dissonance, resolution, and new experi-
ence reshapes the individual visions into a coherent narrative with an
overarching dramatic emplotment. This emplotment has a U-shape.
It begins with the reasonably condent eschatological depictions of
sovereignty that one nds in ch. 2. Chapter 7, in its dependence upon
Dan 2, similarly reects a tremendous condence in divine sover-
eignty, even as it begins to show the opening of dark places within the
theophanic radiance of God. With Dan 8, one reaches the bottom-most
point of the plot of sovereign power and presence. Within the chapter,
the expectations of sovereign power to contain the little horn are
largely disrupted and the local presence of God is in a state of crisis.
In his study of the conguration of narrative time, Paul Ricoeur argues
that the tragic plot is the most fundamental narrative representation of
human experience. 2 Within this tragic plot, the narrative works to
bring about meaningful discordance, to keep the experience of time
from being utterly meaningless. Daniel 8, with its depiction of the
institutional crisis of divine presence, comes the closest to being
engulfed by discordance. Daniel 9 attempts to reclaim the nearly lost
coherence of Dan 8 by turning back to a parochial and nationalistic
understanding of Gods relationship with the community. Yet it is not
until Dan 1012 that the containment of threatening forces is accom-
plished and the problem of divine institutional presence is brought
back into a condent coherence with Gods now elusive, yet cosmic,
incomparability. As such, it allows the cycle to come to closure, though
it is an uneasy closure in some respects.
1. Goldingay, Daniel in the Context, 2:642.

2. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:44, 5287; Newsom, Rhyme and Reason,
232.
1
While the contradictions and discordances that drive this cycle are
not precisely the same in every vision, nevertheless, Dan 8 exercises a
signicant gravitational pull over the shaping of those discordances in
a certain trajectory. Nebuchadnezzars dream arises from the conict
created by the scribal communitys expectations of divine power and
their collective experience as a dominated and nearly invisible people.
The vision of the four beasts renovates Dan 2s vision in order to
negotiate the rival claims to sovereignty posed by Antiochus IV. Yet
the resolution posed by Dan 7 is inadequate to bring coherence to the
experience and perception of the desolation of the temple. The new
search for consonance thus motivates the visions in chs. 8, 9, and 10
12 to deal with different aspects of the contradiction between transcen-
dence and immanence that emerge in the aftermath of the temples
desolation.
Once the institutional crisis of divine presence comes to a head in
the desecration of the temple, divine transcendence and immanence
become severed and a source of contradiction in the visions. This con-
tradiction demands a new conception of God and the deitys relation-
ship to history. Thus the deity becomes more and more inaccessible
and invisible in these visions as a way of asserting divine power
incomparable to that of human agents, especially imperial agents. God
is not removed from history but has a complex relationship to histori-
cal events as a knower and a planner of history. In chs. 8 and 1012,
these world-historical events are not necessarily directly indicative of
divine pleasure or displeasure with the community. Gods presence
and activity becomes elusive and indirect in both realms. The divine
passive takes on new importance as the means by which Gods
complex interactions with history are depicted.
Nevertheless, Gods relationship with and for the faithful commu-
nity must still be asserted. The visions feel compelled to understand
Gods power as having some kind of local presence with the commu-
nity and the people. After ch. 7, this local presence can no longer be
communicated through Gods direct activity with the people or even
through formal continuity with the community. Yet, as Dan 9 indi-
cates, God is still understood to be relational. Thus, the visions begin
to develop other means by which the divine presence may be mediated
to the community. One of these, the period of wrath, is temporal.
The period of wrath provides a way in which the community can
talk about Gods power over history, the success of the emperornow
qualied as derived from Gods power but nevertheless illegitimate,
and the work of God to intervene for the community at a point in the
1
near future. The period of wrath functions as a temporal mediation

of divine power and presence.
The mantic revelation of the angels is itself the chief means of
mediating divine world-historical power and local presence. It is
through manticism that the divine plan purportedly becomes known to
the community in the rst place (it is not necessary to view the visions
as records of actual mantic experiences). In this manticism the com-
munity is reconnected with the divine through the acts of knowing,
learning, understanding. These are the few active verbs consistently
attributed to divine agents, God, and Daniel, the makil par excel-
lence. Because of Daniels visionary stance, which creates a certain
degree of alignment between the audience and the visionary, the entire
community of readers comes into communion with the divine through
this privileged act of knowing.
This knowing and the content of the knowledge, which is the divine
plan, are tied to the anthropomorphic/theomorphic depiction of the
angels. In chs. 812, the revealing angels become more and more
godlike in both form and function as God becomes more invisible and
unfamiliar. At the same time, the angels and the visionary are bound
closer and closer together in form and interaction. The angels become
the embodiment of the divine plan, the means of divine presence with
the scribal community. By the end of the vision cycle, the maklm
have become more angelic and godlike, having been resurrected to
eternal life and elevated to the rmament where they radiate a theo-
phanic glow that not only characterizes that of the angelic host, but
also that of the deity. This reciprocal relationship, founded upon the
connection between human form and the functions of knowing and
telling, bridges the heavenly and the earthly in a new circularity of
time that characterizes Daniels narrative, the privileged knowledge of
the maklm serving to legitimate the communitys leadership over
and against imperial rule prior to the end, prior to the resurrection.
This knowing empowers the community to lead others in Jerusalem
toward wisdom and righteousness. This kind of knowing does not
spell quietism but means ideological opposition, not only to Antiochus
IV, but also to the priestly aristocracy that has allied itself with him
against the covenant. This knowing is a powerful and dangerous
political activity that may even lead to disastrous outcomes. The
defeats and humiliations suffered by the maklm (11:3336) are not
to be read as discrediting events but rather as part of the counter-story
of the suffering servant (cf. Isa 5253) who is nally vindicated.
1
3. The Theology and the Ideology of Rule

Richard Horsley argues that it would be going beyond anything sug-
gested in the text to say that they are teachers or leaders of the peo-
ple [N]o current or future leadership role appears for the maklm
in Daniel. They are almost exclusively the recipients of revelation.3
Horsley here discounts as socially signicant the language of 11:33
and 12:3 where the maklm are described as those who lead the
many to righteousness. While these statements may not necessarily
reect with accuracy the social location of the scribes, nevertheless,
these statements are assertions of the groups religious and political
legitimacy. The depiction of the maklm at the resurrection is not
apolitical, as Horsley and others have argued.4 As a projection of their
future status, the resurrection validates their role as ironic leaders in
the present. Yet leadership within the vision is not judged by the stan-
dards of societys central institutionskingship, temple, priesthood.
Leadership is instead determined according to ones ability to bridge
the heavenly and the earthly, to be an agent of power who is divinely
legitimated but also in perfect continuity with Gods just and bene-
cent purposes. In assuming this role, the maklm cut a gure of
power that is markedly different from the typical social roles of king
and the priestly aristocracy.
In so far as the human social realm usually reects the divine sym-
bolic realm, one may see that the legitimation of the maklm evolves
as the exercise of divine power shifts within the book. The visions
provide a diversity of metaphors, models, and images for thinking
about divine power and its connection to human power, but all of
them move toward a model of selectively diffused power. Nebuchad-
nezzars dream begins by afrming, with qualication, the imperial
model of divine rule. Nevertheless, it refuses to match the image of
imperial sovereignty, the statue, with the image of God, the stone.
Instead, the stone is equated in the interpretation with the Jewish
community descended from the Israelite ancestorsthe rock from
which the people were hewn. In Dan 7, kings do not resemble God,
though Gods cosmic kingship is still afrmed in fairly traditional
3. Horsley, Politics of Cultural Production, 143.

4. While Collins disagrees with Horsleys assessment of the maklms social
role, Collins, and following him Rainer Albertz, have argued that there is a dis-
tinctive break between chs. 27 and 812 with respect to the maklms political
goals. In chs. 27, these goals appear to be political, but in chs. 812 they are
more elusive and non-worldly.
1
images. Yet, once again, there is a democratizing divine force at work

as Dan 7 shifts divine agency to the angelic humanlike one who is
in turn closely connected to the people of the holy ones of the Most
High. With the crisis of kingship posed by Antiochus IV, models that
depict divine power in traditional kingly terms, as a cosmic agent or as
an active historical agent (i.e. in Dan 2), give way to a non-human-
istic, indirect model of divine power (Dan 812). God sheds the form,
features, and functions that could connect the deity too closely to the
human institution of kingship.
In the place of the imperial model of sovereignty, a bureaucratic
model of divine and human rule begins to take shape in ch. 8 and after.
The deity now becomes aloof and unfamiliar, a planner and knower
instead of a typically active monarch. The deity vests the angelic
functionaries with Gods own former features and functions. In so far
as the divine council becomes specialized in exercising these func-
tionsthat is, the divine court takes on judiciary functions, Michael
takes on the responsibilities of the divine warrior, the host is the army,
and Gabriel becomes the new revealer and interpreterthe cosmos is
now actively ruled by a bureaucracy (more powerful in chs. 1012
than in ch. 8) rather than by a powerful cosmic emperor. Moreover,
this bureaucratic model of power is to some degree institutionalized in
the earthly sphere through the maklm, who themselves were once
government bureaucrats.
4. Loose Ends: Divine Sovereignty and Time

Goldingay once lamented that while historical-critical insights on
Daniel have expanded, theological insights have not always expanded
in the same proportion.5 This study is offered as a modest attempt at
critical theological reection on Daniel. I nd that its multiplicity of
images about the divine, whether gloriously manifested or troublingly
hidden, provides a potentially important center from which to think
about divine power and presence today, especially as contemporary
theological discourse deconstructs traditional conceptions of divine
sovereignty.6 Alas, there is not time or space for that kind of reection
5. Goldingay, Daniel, ix.

6. There are myriad examples of this trend to which I can only refer in brief
fashion. Challenges to notions of divine power have come from many different
cornersfrom the death of God movement, from process theology, and from
feminist theology. However, see also J. J. M. Robertss recent attempt to reclaim
1
in this project; it must await another moment. Any reection on that,

however, must begin with the reality that the gure of God in Daniel
cannot easily be pinned down; it eludes the expectations of readers
and kings. This elusiveness is compounded by the loose-endedness of
time and the eschaton in Daniels vision. While too much discordance
may lead to meaninglessness, some amount is theologically welcome
as a corrective to the lure of dogmatism.
The nal vision of Daniel, though it does not quite succeed in giv-
ing denite closure to the question of sovereignty, nevertheless gives
the contemporary reader, even as it gave the ancient reader, enough to
create a meaningful sense of time, but not enough to bind up time in
some oppressively narrow scheme of power and history. Too often
this point has been missed, especially in discussions that have been
overly preoccupied with the determinism of the visions. This study
has attempted to show that determinism, understood as a divinely
pre-imposed closure of history, does not really get to the heart of time
and power in Daniels apocalypses.
I began my studies in the book of Daniel more than fteen years
ago with Sibley Towner. The years since then, and the work of this
study, represent an ongoing struggle with Towners own assertion that
theological interpretation of Daniel must effect the de-determination
of history.7 As this study draws to its end, I want to suggest that the
multiplicity of its images about the end and about sovereignty already
effect the de-determination of history. The ends are always just loose
enough in this drama to open up a new vision of divine power in
human history.
the language of sovereignty, in response to feminist critiques, in The Enthrone-

ment of YHWH and David: The Abiding Theological Signicance of the Kingship
Language of the Psalms, CBQ 64 (2002): 67586.
1
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1
INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
HEBREW BIBLE/ Deuteronomy 8:27 23

OLD TESTAMENT 4:2 146 8:3334 111
Genesis 6:21 131 8:4650 111, 134
1:2 68 9:5 146 8:50 135
1:2628 75, 172 9:6 139 12:22 115
1:26 55, 115 9:26 131 13:1 115
1:28 55 13:1 146 13:4 115
2:21 116 28:10 135 13:5 115
6:4 154 30:14 146 16:16 105
14:18 14, 79 32:18 54 22:1920 75
15:12 116 33:23 174
15:16 111 2 Kings
38:2 154 Joshua 22:19 73
2:911 55 2425 58
Exodus 5:136:6 116 24:120 43
3:1214 24 5:14 105 24:15 96
15:3 43 24:20 132
15:11 174 Judges
15:13 174 5:45 174 1 Chronicles
15:15 96 6:1124 24 17:13 101
34:28 146
1 Samuel 2 Chronicles
Leviticus 5:34 54 36:2123 128
26 130 17:55 105 36:21 140
26:11 130
26:13 130 2 Samuel Ezra
26:1415 130 2:8 105 5:15 49
26:15 130 7:9 43 6:7 49
26:3133 130 7:14 101 9 127
26:3240 128 7:23 43 9:615 145
26:42 130 19:4 105
Nehemiah
Numbers 1 Kings 9 127
6:25 131 3:5 116 9:637 145
24:16 14, 79 8:1553 145 9:8 146
Job 104:59 69 5253 174, 192

4:13 116 144:2 101 52:11 175
6:15 162 52:13 175
9:59 69 Proverbs 52:14 175
15:15 77 10:25 162 53 175
19:2 188 53:2 175
26:114 69 Isaiah 53:1112 175
26:12 68 1:18 74 60:1 176
26:13 68 6 24, 62 60:3 176
34:20 113 6:14 75 60:19 176
6:12 73 63:11 24
Psalms 6:6 115 66:24 156, 168
2 101 8:8 162
8:5 55 9:69 25 Jeremiah
8:9 55 10:5 111 2:6 24
11:4 23 10:1219 167 7:1014 43
12:4 63 10:1218 162 14:7 135
18:44 101 10:1215 164 23:2324 23
22:5 131 10:15 167 25 128
24:2 68 10:16 167 25:11 128
29:10 69 10:22 162 25:12 128
44:6 43 10:25 111 25:29 43
46 23 14 101, 184 27:56 43, 55,
48:11 22, 43 14:320 167 57
65:78 69 14:420 100 28:14 43, 55,
68:89 174 14:9 96, 100 57
69:25 111 14:12 100, 107, 29 27, 139,
72:8 101 167 148
74 18, 23 14:13 100, 106, 29:10 128
74:1217 69 107, 167 29:1314 139
74:13 68 14:1516 101 32:1625 145
76:24 43 14:15 167 32:21 131
79:910 22 14:1620 168 32:2644 145
82:67 102 23:15 140 44:26 43
83 23 2427 18 50:8 96
88:3 131 27:1 68 51:42 162
89 18, 23, 28:2 162
69, 177 41:1516 38 Ezekiel
89:68 77 41:2223 38 13 24, 62,
89:7 23 43:9 38 75
89:915 69 44:8 54 1 7577
89:10 68 44:2845:1 57 1:525 74
89:11 68 44:28 102 1:7 176
93:15 69 46:1 38 1:13 176
102:3 131 48:56 38 1:15 75
102:11 111 51:12 38 1:16 176
1:2628 74, 115, 27 5, 61, 2:31 52, 53,

174 193 55, 66,
1:26 115 26 47, 57, 113
1:2728 75 61 2:32 70
1:27 176 2 5, 1214, 2:33 103
1:282:2 116 16, 17, 2:34 15, 54,
1:282:1 174 20, 37, 56, 57,
1:28 116 39, 40, 71, 103,
2:12 116 48, 52, 11315,
3:2223 116 57, 58, 168
3:2324 116 60, 61, 2:3541 49
810 62 67, 68, 2:35 50, 54,
8:2 174 72, 78, 103
8:3 174 79, 83 2:3645 39, 66
10:15 74 85, 96 2:3640 51
20:38 175 100, 104, 2:36 113, 114
28 101 105, 160, 2:3738 85, 99
28:119 100, 167 18284, 2:37 56, 70,
28:2 176 18991, 71, 76,
28:6 176 194 85
28:810 101 2:214 66 2:38 55, 57,
31:11 96 2:714 66 58, 70,
32:2 68 2:11 23 71
34:1731 96 2:1922 66 2:40 56
34:17 96 2:2023 14 2:4143 39, 50,
37 2, 3, 116 2:21 70, 81, 51
39:23 24 112 2:4245 50
39:24 24 2:23 66 2:43 39
39:29 24 2:2728 38 2:4445 51, 166
4048 3 2:28 113 2:44 42, 56
2:3145 5, 11, 20, 58, 70,
Daniel 21, 36, 71, 103
16 35, 16, 41, 42, 2:45 15, 38,
40, 61, 47, 48, 5658,
70 57, 61, 71, 85,
1 5, 61, 66, 71, 11315,
158 78, 83, 120
1:1 158 92, 103, 2:4649 21
1:2 58, 70 113, 121, 2:47 41, 48,
1:48 21 123, 131, 55, 181
1:7 158 177, 181 2:48 70
1:8 74 2:3135 51, 66 3 21, 61
1:9 70 2:3134 48 3:1 70
1:17 70 2:3132 103 3:2 70
1:21 158 3:3 70
3:7 70
Daniel (cont.) 137, 148, 7:1528 65

3:12 70 157, 158, 7:1718 66, 80,
4 61, 101, 160, 162, 83, 89
170 172, 7:18 78, 79
4:11 101 17577, 7:1927 67, 80
4:14 70 18285, 7:1922 81, 82
4:16 83 187, 7:2022 82
4:3033 70 18991, 7:2021 81
5 61, 97 193, 194 7:20 81, 82,
5:11 70 7:118 67 84
5:17 70 7:114 77 7:2122 85
5:18 70 7:18 63 7:21 82, 84,
5:19 70 7:12 66 106
5:21 70 7:218 67 7:22 64, 81,
5:24 113 7:214 66 82, 106
5:28 70 7:2 63, 67 7:2327 85
6 21, 61 7:3 67 7:2326 85
6:2 70 7:460 71 7:2325 82, 121
6:8 70 7:48 70 7:24 81, 84
6:9 70 7:46 7072, 7:25 8186,
6:16 70 103 94, 106,
712 35, 10, 7:4 70, 76, 108, 109,
16, 20, 84, 99 112, 114,
40, 61, 7:5 67, 70 129
91, 92, 7:6 76 7:26 86, 106,
97, 106, 7:7 64, 67, 169
120, 129, 72 7:27 86, 88,
169 7:8 66, 67, 103
7 3, 5, 6, 81, 84 812 5, 61,
1420, 7:914 64, 70, 19294
35, 40, 73, 88, 810 61
6163, 172 8 5, 17, 20,
66, 68, 7:912 72, 115, 35, 66,
69, 71 121 73, 90
73, 76, 7:910 73, 75 92, 94
79, 82, 7:9 74, 103, 101, 104,
83, 85, 175 106, 107,
87, 89 7:10 169 111, 113,
92, 95, 7:11 64, 67, 114, 116,
96, 98, 81, 84, 117, 119,
99, 103, 86, 106 121, 123,
10410, 7:12 76 124,
113, 114, 7:1314 72, 103 12830,
116, 117, 7:13 63, 64, 132, 133,
120, 121, 76 137, 148,
123, 129, 7:14 71, 78 151,
15760, 1079, 148, 157,

162, 114, 119 158, 166,
16569, 8:1323 94 17274,
17174, 8:1314 95, 159 18591
176, 8:13 9, 77, 9:116 125
18388, 108, 188 9:13 128
190, 191, 8:14 109, 129, 9:23 124
194 171, 179 9:2 128, 145,
8:114 95 8:1526 95 149
8:112 95, 106 8:15 115, 118, 9:3 128, 145,
8:13 92 126 146
8:1 96 8:1618 159 9:419 123, 128
8:2 119, 159 8:16 115, 117, 9:411 130
8:312 99 126 9:4 123, 137
8:38 106 8:1718 115 9:5 12, 130
8:34 98 8:17 111, 117, 9:6 145
8:3 98 126, 159 9:7 128, 137,
8:412 93 8:18 116, 159 138
8:4 97, 104, 8:19 42, 110, 9:8 138
105, 159, 111, 117, 9:11 128
167, 168 139, 159, 9:1213 146
8:58 100 165 9:12 128, 129,
8:5 93 8:22 95 138, 145,
8:78 99 8:2325 114, 132 146
8:7 97, 98, 8:23 111, 114, 9:1316 128
105, 106, 129, 131, 9:13 128, 131,
119, 167, 167 139, 145,
168 8:2427 95 149
8:812 100 8:2425 114 9:1416 172
8:811 105 8:24 95, 114, 9:14 130, 134,
8:8 104, 159 159 137
8:910 98 8:25 100, 105, 9:15 12, 130,
8:9 104, 159 11315, 131
8:1012 100, 106, 117, 131, 9:1617 128
107 134, 159, 9:16 111, 128,
8:1011 169 167, 168 131, 135,
8:10 73, 77, 8:26 159 137
100, 104, 8:27 95, 159 9:1726 126
106, 159 9 3, 5, 17, 9:1718 128, 130
8:11 73, 93, 20, 27, 9:17 14, 128,
100, 104, 35, 92, 131
105, 107, 123, 124, 9:18 128, 131,
159, 170 12730, 139
8:12 93, 95, 13335, 9:1920 172
100, 102, 137, 138, 9:19 126, 135,
143, 144, 189
Daniel (cont.) 10:14 159 11:22 162, 163,

9:2027 128 10:16 176 165
9:20 123, 128 10:18 159 11:23 154, 176
9:2127 147 10:19 126 11:24 159, 163,
9:22 128 10:2011:6 152 165, 176
9:23 128, 129, 10:2021 170 11:2526 163
144, 146, 10:20 168 11:25 165, 176
147, 149 10:2112:4 187 11:26 162, 163
9:2427 128, 142, 10:21 77, 161, 11:27 159,
144 168, 170, 16365,
9:24 128, 129, 171 176
141 1112 166, 167, 11:2839 155
9:25 146, 149 173 11:28 165, 176
9:2627 132 11 21, 111, 11:3044 165
9:26 141, 168, 143, 160, 11:30 111, 163,
178 162, 165, 165, 178
9:27 74, 127 166, 170 11:31 74, 127,
29, 148 11:2 163, 170 159, 163,
1012 3, 5, 17, 11:3 163, 170 165
20, 35, 11:4 159, 163, 11:3235 165
77, 151, 170 11:3233 175
15760, 11:6 51 11:32 14, 165,
17173, 11:717 153 171, 172,
17679, 11:7 51, 163, 176, 178
187, 188, 170 11:3336 192
190, 191, 11:1012 163 11:3335 170
194 11:10 162, 163 11:33 3, 40, 41,
10 114, 151, 11:11 162, 163, 193
158, 159, 170, 171 11:34 177
161 11:12 162, 176 11:35 41, 42,
10:1 178 11:13 163, 170 159, 162,
10:23 146 11:14 163, 170 164, 175
10:412 175 11:15 159 11:3637 159
10:4 159 11:16 93, 159, 11:36 95, 111,
10:56 174 163, 170 159,
10:5 176 11:17 51 16265,
10:6 179 11:1827 154 167, 170,
10:812 175 11:1819 163 171, 173
10:810 159 11:18 168 11:3738 165
10:911 174 11:20 162, 163, 11:37 176
10:1011 175 170, 171 11:38 163
10:11 126, 171 11:2112:4 167 11:39 176
10:1212:4 152 11:2145 167 11:4012:4 156
10:12 126, 171 11:2122 163 11:40 159,
10:13 159, 169, 11:21 163, 167, 16264
170 169, 170 11:41 93, 159
11:43 164 Habakkuk 37:23 41

11:45 126, 164, 3:10 162 38:33 47
167, 168, 39:4 47
173 Zechariah 51:112 42, 43
12 151, 158, 1:12 111, 169
159 3 77 1 Maccabees
12:14 35, 168, 3:47 74 1:9 156
169 3:45 74 6:49 141
12:13 9 4:1 116
12:1 77, 105, 4:4 66 2 Maccabees
161, 162, 10:3 96 6:1316 111
164, 6:14 111
16871, APOCRYPHA/DEUTERO- 7:38 111
173, 181 CANONICAL BOOKS 9:10 102
12:23 148 Sirach
12:2 168 6:34 47 PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
12:3 41, 170, 7:14 47 Jubilees
175, 176, 15:5 47 18:912 169
193 21:17 47
12:4 12, 156, 24:3233 41 ROMAN/GREEK/
159, 178 33:113 41 CLASSICAL
12:512 178, 179, 33:18 41 Josephus
188 34:18 41 Antiquities
12:5 159 36:122 41, 47, 11.304 55
12:6 9, 159 87, 181 12.142 45
12:7 179 36:13 44
12:8 159 36:1 41 Hesiod
12:1011 74 36:3 58 Works and Days
12:11 127, 178 36:4 42, 44 1.109201 52
12:12 178 36:5 41, 43,
12:13 152, 156, 55 Plutarch
178 36:7 58 Alexander
36:1012 42 37.3 53
Hosea 36:1112 45
13:78 69 36:12 41, 43 UGARITIC TEXTS
36:1317 44 CTA
Joel 36:1622 41 4.4.41 73
4:12 77 36:1722 189 4.5.6566 74
36:1819 44
Amos 36:2021 45 AKKADIAN TEXTS
7:79 116 36:20 60, 182 Assurbanipal Prism A
8:13 116 36:21 43 vi, 10724 142
8:12 157 36:22 182
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Addison, E. 12, 13, 32 7278, 81, 83, 90, 91, 9395, 97,
Albenda, P. 53 102, 105, 109, 111, 113, 120,
Albertz, R. 5, 13, 61, 68, 121, 173 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 140,
Albrektson, B. 101 146, 148, 151, 152, 15457, 159,
Atkinson, K. 177 163, 16870, 173, 174, 177, 179
Avalos, H. 141, 143, 144 Colpe, C. 68, 73, 76, 78
Azarpay, G. 53 Cook, S. L. 11, 13
Crenshaw, J. 42, 44
Balentine, S. E. 24, 26, 103, 130, 131, Cross, F. M. 68, 73, 74, 78
133 Cumont, F. 96
Barr, J. 24
Batto, B. F. 17, 101 Davies, G. I. 32
Baumgarten, A. L. 45 Davies, P. R. 3, 79, 14, 17, 20, 21, 37,
Bentzen, A. 68, 123, 174 39, 40, 47, 5659, 61, 67, 79,
Bergman, K. 145 121, 138, 145, 149, 161, 168,
Bevan, A. A. 94 173, 174, 177
Bhabha, H. 46 Davis-Kimball, J. 53
Bickerman, E. 45 Day, J. 6, 68, 69, 72, 98, 174
Bird, P. 75 Dequeker, L. 64, 67, 71, 81
Block, D. I. 22 DiLella, A. 35, 41, 43, 45, 49, 50, 55,
Boer, R. 48, 83 67, 70, 76, 77, 81, 90, 91, 93, 94,
Boutower, C. 159 12325, 127, 146, 152, 153, 155,
Brenner, A. 64, 74, 175 156, 158, 162, 179
Brettler, M. 23 Dimant, D. 140, 141
Brock, B. L. 2 Duke, D. N. 10
Brueggemann, W. 9, 10, 23, 25, 110
Brummett, B. 2 Eddy, S. K. 12, 38, 54
Burke, K. 31, 34, 87 Eerdmans, B. D. 37
Burnett, J. S. 24, 26, 102, 103, 133 Eggler, J. 98
Burrell, D. 110 Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 75
Eissfeldt, O. 6, 68
Caquot, A. 41, 45, 96 Eliade, M. 78
Carroll, R. P. 26, 27, 44, 135 Ellis, M. deJ. 105, 143
Charles, R. H. 8, 9, 123, 124, 126, 156, Emerton, J. A. 6, 68, 69
179
Chester, A. 169, 175 Feldman, L. 46
Clifford, R. J. 99, 163, 164 Festinger, L. 26, 135
Collins, J. J. 4, 6, 12, 13, 35, 3739, 42, Fewell, D. N. 16, 52, 62, 80, 97, 113,
46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 59, 61, 6370, 158, 171, 174
Finkelstein, J. J. 32 Hlscher, G. 67
Fishbane, M. 15, 28, 108, 128, 130, 135, Horsley, R. A. 21, 40, 41, 47, 193
140, 149, 162 Hultgrd, A. 52
Flannery-Dailey, F. 146, 147 Humphreys, W. L. 22
Flusser, D. 38, 39, 47, 98, 160
Fox, M. 2, 117 Jameson, F. 1, 2, 29, 34, 48, 118
Fretheim, T. 116 Japhet, S. 57
Frhlich, I. 37, 38 Jastrow, M. 49
Frost, S. B. 8 Jeansonne, S. P. 63, 64, 92, 94, 95, 156
Jepsen, A. 168
Gammie, J. G. 67, 81, 123, 168 Jones, B. W. 7, 8, 49, 127, 128, 139,
Ginsberg, H. L. 35, 39, 51, 67, 81, 91, 148
129, 174
Gitay, Y. 1 Kaufman, S. A. 32, 143
Glatt-Gilad, D. A. 22, 43, 13335, 138, Kearns, R. 68
144 Keel, O. 75
Goldingay, J. E. 3, 6, 7, 15, 49, 56, 61, Kermode, F. 30, 31, 119
65, 76, 77, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99, Koch, K. 7, 66
100, 105, 107, 111, 115, 120, Kratz, R. G. 35, 39, 61, 67, 69, 71, 81,
127, 128, 155, 15759, 161, 167, 91, 92
17476, 190, 194 Kruschwitz, R. B. 38
Goldstein, J. A. 87, 111 Kutsko, J. 17, 55, 75, 76, 114, 172
Grabbe, L. L. 21, 160
Green, R. 9 Labuschagne, C. J. 23, 173
Greenberg, M. 75 Lacocque, A. 5, 61, 69, 78, 83, 91, 93,
Grifn, D. R. 11 95, 102, 105, 115, 126, 127, 153,
Gruen, E. S. 22, 56 154, 157, 170, 17476
Gunkel, H. 6, 179 Lapsley, J. 3, 119, 139
Gzella, H. 8, 90, 96, 100 Lattey, C. 59
Lawson, J. N. 21, 47
Hall, R. G. 34, 71, 76, 99, 110, 115, 136 Lemke, W. 23, 24, 102, 165
Hamm, W. 49 Lenglet, A. 61
Hammer, R. 61 Leuchter, M. 14144
Hanson, P. D. 28, 174 Levenson, J. D. 17, 18, 69
Harrelson, W. 134, 139 Lvi-Strauss, C. 1, 2, 179
Harrington, D. J. 810 Lipton, D. 116
Hartman, L. F. 35, 49, 50, 55, 67, 70, Lust, J. 94
81, 90, 91, 93, 94, 12325, 127, Lutzmann, K. 145
146, 152, 153, 155, 156, 158,
162, 179 Mack, B. 41
Hasel, G. F. 39, 52 Malina, B. J. 139
Hasslberger, B. 35, 91, 159, 168 Marbck, J. 41, 45
Hauerwas, S. 110 Marcus, M. I. 53
Hayes, J. H. 97 McCarter, P. K., Jr 54
Hengel, M. 42, 43, 45, 47, 84, 170 Meadowcroft, T. J. 70
Henze, M. 15, 70 Mendels, D. 39
Holladay, W. L. 140 Miller, J. M. 75, 97
Miller, P. D. 73, 78, 96, 106 Roberts, J. J. M. 195

Montgomery, J. A. 7, 15, 39, 49, 63, 65, Rodd, C. 28
71, 77, 83, 9194, 123, 126, 127, Rohrbaugh, R. L. 139
129, 140, 153, 154, 157, 179 Root, M. C. 53, 54, 101
Moore, M. S. 170 Rssler, D. 7
Mrkholm, O. 81, 84, 102 Rowley, H. H. 7, 8, 37, 38, 51, 67, 91,
Mosca, P. G. 6, 69, 74, 78, 175, 177 97, 129
Mullen, E. T., Jr. 73, 106, 116 Russell, D. S. 7, 11
Nestle, E. 128 Schams, C. 20, 40

Newsom, C. A. 2, 29, 30, 32, 33, 38, 48, Schmidt, W. H. 145, 146
59, 60, 99, 115, 118, 119, 136, Seow, C. L. 4, 6, 12, 38, 39, 51, 52, 54,
158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 190 55, 57, 70, 73, 75, 76, 83, 91, 96,
Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 8, 9, 156, 167, 97, 100, 102, 1057, 109, 111,
169, 174, 176 124, 12629, 135, 153, 15861,
Niditch, S. 6, 15, 35, 63, 66, 73, 78, 91, 174
96, 100, 105, 116, 120, 167 Siegman, E. F. 53
Niskanen, P. 161 Skehan, P. W. 41, 45
Nissinen, M. 116, 131, 142, 143 Smith, J. Z. 9, 12, 13, 162
Noth, M. 59, 65, 67, 81 Smith-Christopher, D. L. 3, 12, 13, 21,
22, 46, 70, 71, 96, 105, 109, 111,
OConnor, M. 105, 170 112, 137, 138, 144, 165
OLeary, S. D. 2, 10, 11, 13, 27, 31, 34, Sokoloff, M. 64
86, 109, 110, 148, 166, 167 Staub, U. 72
Olyan, S. M. 138 Steinmann, J. 98
Oppenheim, A. L. 51, 62, 77, 146 Swain, J. W. 12, 38, 98, 160
Osten-Sacken, P. von der 37, 38 Sweeney, M. A. 173
Page, H. R., Jr 100, 101, 167, 168 Terrien, S. 2325

Paul, S. 161 Thompson, T. 30
Petersen, D. 75 Tiller, P. 76
Polak, F. H. 37, 39 Tilley, T. W. 9
Porteous, N. W. 7, 91, 124, 126, 127 Toorn, K. van der 47
Poythress, V. S. 82 Towner, W. S. 7, 8, 11, 15, 39, 53, 55,
61, 97, 103, 131, 135, 145, 147,
Rad, G. von 8, 9, 58, 116 148, 157, 195
Rajak, T. 45, 46 Turner, M. 29
Rappaport, U. 21, 96, 160
Ray, P. J., Jr. 130 Ulrich, E. 49, 63, 154
Redditt, P. L. 3, 10, 20, 21, 38, 40, 51
53, 67, 74, 91, 105, 123, 127, Vogt, P. T. 102
140, 141, 160, 164, 168
Reid, S. B. 90, 117 Waltke, B. K. 105, 170
Reif, S. C. 58 Westermann, C. 174
Richards, K. 11 White, H. 29, 30, 109
Ricouer, P. 30, 33, 59, 87, 190 Whitelam, K. 101, 102
Rigger, H. 123 Wills, L. M. 4
Wilson, G. H. 127, 136, 139, 144 Yee, G. A. 1, 48

Wilson, R. R. 82
Winter, I. J. 53 Zerbe, G. 177
Wolff, H. W. 59
Woude, A. S. van der 174, 175
Wright, B. G. 4043, 45

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LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/

OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

Amy C. Merrill Willis

Published by T & T Clark International

Visit the T & T Clark blog at www.tandtclarkblog.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: 978-0-567-37948-1 (hardback)

Typeset and copy-edited by Forthcoming Publications Ltd. (www.forthpub.com)

7. Making God Visible in History 54

4. The Threat of Dissonance: Desolation and the Duration

The present volume is the result of a journey that began in Atlanta,

forms of support. Graduate assistants Christina Fusch, Adam Rasmussen,

ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols.

A POWERFUL AND PRESENT GOD?

1. Y. Gitay, Rhetorical Criticism, in To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduc-

Myth, in Structural Anthropology (2 vols.; trans. C. Jacobson; New York: Basic

realities and the mediation of oppositions, such as God bringing to life a

8. On the contradictions undergoing mediation in this vision, see especially

C. L. Seow rightly observes that although divine ruling power or sover-

2. The Scope of the Present Study

However, my concern is limited to the visions and angelic discourses

3. Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel:

God as powerful, sovereign, and almighty15 According to this state-

15. Goldingay, The Book of Daniel, 32930.

talking about divine power.24 Once again, these discussions saw in

history (Is history a meaningful arena for human activity or not?);33

a. Theodicy and the Powerful God

that respond to the unjust suffering of the faithful community under

communitys perception of a contradiction between divine power and

48. Harrington, Ideology, 543.

such as those of Joachim of Fiore, the Millerites, and Hal Lindsey. He

53. OLeary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 35, 39.

b. The Ideology of Rule and the Political Functions of the Text

64. Addison, When History Fails, 109; Smith-Christopher, Prayers and

Approaching the work and function of the visions with a focus on

c. Sovereignty as a Problem in Daniel

Danna N. Fewell,76 however, has argued that the disappearance of God

The visibility of Gods powerwhether that visibility is accomplished

76. Danna N. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty: Plotting Politics in the Book of

and visionsthe reviews of history in chs. 2, 7, 8, 9, and 1012

Levensons argument is not a discussion of Daniel as such. Instead, he is

84. Ibid., 47.

expectation and experience exist in a dialectical relationship within the

4. A New Investigation of Sovereignty and the Visions:

5. The Experience of Subordination and the Social Context

a. Social and Political Tensions in Second-Century B.C.E. Judea

89. See Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period

91. Smith-Christopher, Prayers and Dreams, 27180, has emphasized that

court becomes a model for other Jews,98 Smith-Christopher argues that

b. Divine Sovereignty and Its Theological Tensions

98. W. L. Humphreyss inuential article, A Lifestyle for the Diaspora: A Study

these conceptions briey. The tensive understanding of sovereignty

108. Lemke, Near and Distant God, 544.

Because theophany is occasional and exceptional, Israelite and post-

115. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 600621.

experience of divine absence may be personally disastrous, it may, at the

6. Knowing God in Daniels Rsums and Apocalyptic Visions

118. Balentine, Hidden God, 17375; Burnett, Divine Absence, 235.

dissonance reduction. He asserts that this textual dynamic, with its

121. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed, 87.

prophecies whose failures give rise to a new hermeneutic, Daniel uses

b. Historiography as a Way of Knowing

the process by which these events are made meaningful or achieve

57. Jones, Ideas of History, 25657, argues that CE, though frequently

62. A gloss to clarify the confusion in v. 35 regarding the CH=, according to