Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel

LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES 520 Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Seri...

Author: Amy Merrill Willis

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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 A Continuum imprint 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Visit the T & T Clark blog at www.tandtclarkblog.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, T & T Clark International.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-567-37948-1 (hardback) Typeset and copy-edited by Forthcoming Publications Ltd. (www.forthpub.com) Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Abbreviations Chapter 1 A POWERFUL AND PRESENT GOD? SOVEREIGNTY, HISTORY, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE VISIONS OF DANIEL 1. Introduction 2. The Scope of the Present Study 3. Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel: Issues in the Recent History of Critical Interpretation a. Theodicy and the Powerful God b. The Ideology of Rule and the Political Functions of the Text c. Sovereignty as a Problem in Daniel 4. A New Investigation of Sovereignty and the Visions: Preliminary Considerations 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 b. Divine Sovereignty and Its Theological Tensions 6. Knowing God in Daniel’s Résumés and Apocalyptic Visions a. Cognitive Dissonance and Failed Prophecy b. Historiography as a Way of Knowing c. Incoherence, Dissonance, and Narrative d. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty Chapter 2 THE SHAPE OF SOVEREIGNTY IN NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S DREAM (DANIEL 2:31–45) 1. Introduction 2. Redaction and the Changing Intentions in Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream 3. The Problem of Foreign Power in Hellenistic Judea—Sirach and Daniel 2 4. Translation of Daniel 2:31–45 5. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream and the Experience of Hellenistic Rule 6. The Dream Report

ix xi

1 1 4 5 8 12 15 19 20 20 22 26 26 29 33 34

36 36 37 40 48 50 52

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Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty

7. Making God Visible in History a. The Manifestation of God through the King b. God as a Force in Foreign History c. Patterns of History as a Means of Knowing 8. Conclusion

Chapter 3 VISIBLE TENSIONS: DIVINE POWER AND PRESENCE IN DANIEL 7 1. Daniel 7 as the Structural and Theological Hinge 2. Translation of Daniel 7 3. Form, Structure, and Redaction: The Seam in the Fabric 4. Emplotting Sovereignty in the First Vision Cycle (Daniel 7:1–18) a. The Narrative Pattern of God’s Conict with Chaos and History b. Threat and Judgment in Verses 4–8 c. The Shape of Divine Justice in Verses 9–14 d. The Ideology of Rule in the First Vision Cycle 5. The Second Vision Cycle (Daniel 7:19–27): Disruption and Dissonance after the Rise of the Little Horn a. Triumph of the Holy Ones b. Resisting Closure c. The Threat to the Holy Ones d. The Paradox of Giving 6. Conclusion

54 54 57 59 60

61 61 63 66 67 67 70 73 78 80 80 80 82 84 88

Chapter 4 DANIEL 8 AND THE CRISIS OF DIVINE ABSENCE 1. Sequel or Remake? 2. Translation of Daniel 8 3. A Matter of Time and Space: The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 8 4. The Crisis of Divine Power and Presence 5. Resolving the Tragedy a. Resolution as a Matter of Time b. From Theophany to Hierophany: Resolution as a Matter of Manticism 6. Loose Ends and Lingering Tensions 7. Conclusion

112 119 121

Chapter 5 RESTORING THE SACRED IN DANIEL 9 1. Introduction: Daniel 9 as an Oddity 2. Translation of Daniel 9 3. The Problem of Daniel 9’s Duality

123 123 125 127

90 90 92 95 103 107 108

Contents

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4. The Threat of Dissonance: Desolation and the Duration of Divine Abandonment a. Desolation, Exile, and Divine Abandonment in the Prayer and Oracle b. Divine Absence and Intention in the Prayer and Oracle c. Cognitive Dissonance and the 70-Year Prophecy 5. Reclaiming the Sacred and Overcoming Desolation a. Blame, Shame, Absence, and Empowerment in the Prayer b. Experiencing the Divine in the Oracle c. The Scribalization of Piety 6. Conclusion

129 133 135 137 137 140 147 150

Chapter 6 RE-VISIONING SOVEREIGNTY IN DANIEL 10–12 1. Introduction 2. Translation of Daniel 10:20–12:4, 13 3. Loose Ends and the Function of the Final Résumé 4. Re-Conguring History and Sovereignty a. The World-Historical Context for Divine Power b. The Local Context for Divine Power c. Re-Visioning the End d. Completing the Pattern 5. The Crisis of Divine Presence and the Ideology of Rule a. The Invisibility of the Divine b. Embodied Power and Presence: The Angels and Makîlîm c. Invisible Men 6. The Sense of an Ending?

151 151 152 157 160 160 164 166 167 171 171 173 177 178

Chapter 7 CONCLUDING COMMENTS 1. The Drama of Divine Sovereignty: A Summary of Findings 2. The Function of the Visions: Symbolic Resolution and Resistance in the Plot of Sovereignty 3. The Theology and the Ideology of Rule 4. Loose Ends: Divine Sovereignty and Time Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

129

181 181 188 193 194

196 209 216


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 Carol’s strengths as a teacher and scholar to be extraordinary—her intellectual acumen, her exacting standards, and her willingness to help others develop scholarly voices. Carol’s patient guidance allows students to undergo transformation—intellectually, professionally, personally. Of course, transformation can be painful and frustrating, but I have a deep appreciation for Carol’s 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 Towner’s 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 College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, especially 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

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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 conclusion. To them I dedicate this work in heartfelt recognition of their labors of love.

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ABBREVIATIONS ABD BDB CTA

IDB IDBSup LXX MT

NIB NRSV

OG TDOT

Theod Vg

Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York, 1992 Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1907 Corpus des tablettes en cunéiformes alphabétiques découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939. Edited by A. Herdner. Mission de Ras Shamra 10. Paris, 1963 The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962 Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume. Edited by K. Crim. Nashville, 1976 Septuagint Masoretic text The New Interpreter’s Bible New Revised Standard Version Old Greek 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– Theodotion 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 God’s 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 Daniel’s depiction of and convictions concerning divine sovereignty. In particular, careful examination of the numerous symbolic depictions of the divine and divine activity suggest not certainty about God’s triumph over arrogant kingly power, but an ongoing conversation about God’s actions and plans for human history. The emergence of rhetorical and ideological methodologies in biblical interpretation has demonstrated that biblical texts are not simply reections of reality or statements of fact, but are instead suasive and argumentative.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 text’s capacity to affect one’s 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 Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (ed. S. McKenzie and S. Haynes; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 136. 2. G. Yee, “Ideological Criticism: Judges 17–21 and the Dismembered Body,” in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (ed. G. Yee; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 148–49. 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. Lévi-Strauss, articulated in his essay, “The Structural Study of 1

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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 contradictions 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 presented for the audience’s 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), 1:206–31. Lévi-Strauss argues that the “purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.” Jameson’s use of LéviStrauss differs slightly from Stephen O’Leary’s use in Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 34–44, in which O’Leary argues Lévi-Strauss’s thesis to assert that apocalyptic discourse, in general, uses eschatology to mediate contradictions regarding the problem of evil. I judge Jameson’s use of Lévi-Strauss to be more appropriate to Daniel, for reasons that will be argued further below. For Lévi-Strauss and Jameson, this contradiction need not be explicit or consciously 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 Burke’s concept of discourse as symbolic action, which he denes in terms that are somewhat different from Jameson’s appropriation of the concept (see Jameson’s 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], 348–49). 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. Fox’s discussion of Ezek 37 in “The Valley of the Dry Bones,” HUCA 51 (1980): 1–15. 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): 139–53; Barry Brummett, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (New York: Praeger, 1991); and O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse. 1

1. A Powerful and Present God?

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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 40–48).8 The rst steps of this kind of analysis have already been taken in Daniel scholarship and have tended to focus their attention on Daniel’s central concern, which is unquestionably ruling power. In particular, attempts have been made to uncover the ideology of Daniel’s editors, the makîlîm (also the producers of the visions in chs. 7–12),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 God’s actions are recounted and spoken of by Daniel and his friends in every narrative in chs. 1–6, graphically on display in ch. 7, and yet invisible and rarely mentioned directly in chs. 9 and 10–12. 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), 139–54. 9. I am in agreement with the growing body of scholarship (especially Englishspeaking 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 makîlîm. 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): 463–74, 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, Davies’s 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), 345–61, where Davies explores the ambivalence of the makîlîm’s 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), 2:645–47. 1

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C. L. Seow rightly observes that although divine ruling power or sovereignty12 “is staked out at every turn, whether explicitly or implicitly,” “there is considerable ambivalence regarding the book’s perspective on the manifestation of divine rule on earth…”13 From the perspective of rhetorical and ideological analysis, one wonders why divine rule generates both tremendous energy and also signicant 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 arguments is it responding? To get at this question, this study will examine Daniel’s 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 Daniel’s apocalypses is the prolonged and sometimes catastrophic experience of foreign rule in Judea, especially that of Antiochus IV during the years 167–164 B.C.E. Yet this study contends that, in contrast to much scholarly assessment, the assertions of sovereignty in Daniel’s 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 suffering. The historical résumés at the heart of Daniel’s visions and dreams are attempts to adjudicate the incoherencies raised by the experience of foreign rule (especially Seleucid rule) with the community’s expectations of God’s 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 Daniel—the 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), 219–46. 14. The consensus view is that Daniel is comprised of these two fundamental genres—tales (chs. 1–6) and apocalypses (chs. 7–12). See, for instance, John J. Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (FOTL 20; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 8–9. 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


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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 10–12. Moreover, I include in my study an examination of Dan 2:31–45, which preserves a report and an interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Although not classied as an apocalypse, Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 community’s condence in divine power. The comments of Goldingay in the conclusion to his commentary capture well this view of the book as maintaining a condent portrayal of the deity. He writes, “The book suggests varying perspectives on God’s 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. 1–6 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 10–12 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. 7–12 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], 8–10), and others that the composition and development of the book centered around the formal differences between tales and apocalypses, so that chs. 1–6 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. 2–7 and the Hebrew chs. 1, 8–12. 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, 1:175–91. 1

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God as powerful, sovereign, and almighty…”15 According to this statement, 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 book’s 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, 329–30. 16. Seow, “The Rule of God,” 246. 17. H. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12 (Göttingen: 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. Collins’s work on the topic is enormous; his rst full-edged discussion 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, God’s 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): 496–517. 22. See, for instance, J. A. Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery,” JTS 9 (1958): 225–42; O. Eissfeldt, “Yahweh and El,” JSS 1 (1956): 25–37. 23. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision, 175. 1


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talking about divine power.24 Once again, these discussions saw in Daniel’s depiction of time powerful assertions of sovereignty. The work of D. Rössler,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 résumés—reviews of history that are vaticinia ex eventu—consistently demonstrate God’s power to unify history and predetermine its unfolding and outcome. Indeed, God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s power and the forces driving that depiction have not been in contention. There is general agreement that these materials depict God’s power to know history and thus determine it. The disputes have to do with other issues. These include: the shape of history in Daniel’s vision (Is the future openended or closed to further developments?); the author’s valuation of that 24. So, for example, James Montgomery, Daniel (ICC; New York: Scribner’s, 1927), 72–87; H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (London: Athlone, 1954); David S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 220–21; 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, 329–30; Klaus Koch, “Gottes Herrschaft über das Reich des Menschen: Daniel 4 im Licht neuer Funde,” in van der Woude, ed., The Book of Daniel, 77–119. 25. D. Rössler, Gesetz und Geschichte, Untersuchungen zur Theologie der judischen Apokalyptic und der pharisaischen Orthodoxie (WMANT 3; Neukirchen– Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1960), 55–59. 26. Rowley, Relevance of Apocalyptic, 151–55. 27. Russell, Method and Message, 220–21. 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. Jones’s 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 God’s direct causation of human events and actions and outcomes before they take place, arises rst in the work of R. H. Charles. 1

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history (Is history a meaningful arena for human activity or not?);33 God’s 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 constrained?). 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 God’s 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 sovereignty 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,” 4–39, 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), 98–113. 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), 205–6. 39. Rowley, Relevance of Apocalyptic, 158–62, 168. 40. George Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 26; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 12–19. 41. Davies, Daniel, 119–20. 42. Daniel J. Harrington, “The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 7–12,” in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (SBLSP 38; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 540–51. 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


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that respond to the unjust suffering of the faithful community under Antiochus IV’s 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 IV’s 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 history’s end, when God’s power will triumphantly intervene and eradicate Seleucid evil. So sovereignty, and a historiography that reveals God’s 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 end’s nearness,44 the book also offers consolation and encouragement to the community in the interim.45 This view of Daniel’s 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 God’s righteousness and God’s 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 12:1–3 or the question of “How long?” in Dan 8:13 and 12:6 to be evidence of the community’s concern for divine righteousness. Yet these commentators do not fully develop an argument for the 44. Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 274, argues for the quality of the résumés 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 discussions. See further, R. Green, “Theodicy,” ER 16:430–41; W. Brueggemann, “Some Aspects of Theodicy in Old Testament Faith,” PRS 26 (1999): 241–51; and Terrence W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1991). 47. Charles, Eschatology, 206, roots the answer in the determinism of Daniel’s eschatological vision, while Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 19; Davies, Daniel, 119; and Harrington, “Ideology,” 543, locate it in resurrection. 1

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community’s 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 7–12, there is no question of God’s righteousness, 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 O’Leary 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. O’Leary’s insights on the process and strategies by which the community achieves resolution are very valuable, especially those regarding time—and to these I will return later. Nevertheless, O’Leary’s thesis of apocalyptic theodicy is not entirely satisfactory. Because O’Leary’s study is rooted in contemporary apocalyptic discourse, 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, O’Leary’s 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 formulation, see D. Nelson Duke, “Theodicy at the Turn of Another Century, an Introduction,” PRS 26 (1999): 241–51. 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,” 253–68, outlines some biblical models of theodic crises that are fundamentally relational in character, rather than rational. These revolve around the individual’s relationship to Yahweh and the options for the placing of blame, such as blaming a third party or blaming Yahweh for unfair outcomes. 50. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 34–44. Although O’Leary 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), 36–39. 52. Harrington, “The Ideology of Rule,” 550–51. 1


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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-biblical tradition, O’Leary 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 concerning the theodic function Daniel’s 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 connection 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 communities 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream vision in Dan 2:31–45, which 53. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 35, 39. 54. This point has been discussed by Kent Richards (Int 33 [1979]: 304–7) in his insightful review of two treatments of theodicy and evil—one 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, 15–35, is fairly representative. See further S. L. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 44–46, for an examination and critique of the view of apocalyptic discourse as the literature of a crisis situation. 1

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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 Daniel’s 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 ideological 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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): 1–21. 59. Samuel K. Eddy, The King is Dead: Studies in Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334–31 B.C. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961). 60. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” 148–56. 61. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision, 191–215. 62. Erin Addison, “When History Fails: Apocalypticism in the Ancient Mediterranean 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, 1:266–89. 1


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from the book’s 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 Daniel’s 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 Daniel’s function sees the writing and reading community’s political subordination as a key factor in the composition of the dreams and visions.66 As a consequence of this political and cultural reality, 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 Daniel’s 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 community’s own political ambitions.69 64. Addison, “When History Fails,” 109; Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 270. 65. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 266–70. 66. While Daniel’s 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, 55–84, 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 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 134–71. 67. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” 149. 68. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 266–70. 69. John J. Collins, “Daniel and his Social World,” Int 39 (1985): 131–43; Philip R. Davies, “The Scribal School of Daniel,” in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:247–65; see also Albertz, “Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel,” 171–204. 1

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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-à-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 accessible 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” (2:20–23), “our God” (9:17), and “their God” (11:32).72 Davies shows that language about God’s sovereignty is not static or simply assumed in the text. The writers of the visions frame their depictions 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 Davies’s ideological concerns begin to open up some theological tensions at work in Daniel, he does not develop these tensions further in his own investigations. His distinction between an ideology of accomodationism 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 accommodates kings and opposes them at the same time. Indeed, the ideology of rule in Daniel’s 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, 81–88. 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. 72. Ibid., 81–83. 1


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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 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream might call Henze’s conclusion into question. Similarly, Harrington’s treatment of the subject in Daniel’s visions simply 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 book’s 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 recurring 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, recognizes and dismisses the problem at the same time by saying of this disappearance that “myriads of heavenly aides fulll and reveal his [God’s] 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 1–6),” in SBL Seminar Papers, 1999, 537 (emphasis original). 74. See further Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 247; Towner, Daniel, 117–18; M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 508–9. 75. Goldingay, Daniel, 330; similarly, Montgomery, Daniel, 82; Towner, Daniel, 118. 1

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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 God’s 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, God’s action must have witnesses—and the more politically prestigious the witness, the more wonderful the sign, the more signicant the wonder.79

The visibility of God’s power—whether that visibility is accomplished through direct manifestations of the divine or through attestations of divine power by other characters—is the chief means by which God is known. Moreover, Fewell seems to argue that the degree of God’s 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 book’s conict between God and king, with its extraordinary 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 extensive examination of this question in visions. She treats all of Dan 7–12 in one chapter and devotes most of her time and attention to the tales of chs. 1–6. In connection with that, I am not convinced that divine visibility is the only driving force in the visions’ depiction of how one knows God’s 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


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and visions—the reviews of history in chs. 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10–12— 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 ideological and theological signicance. Indeed, recent studies of God’s appearance have demonstrated the signicance of God’s anthropomorphic form for royal ideologies.81 Such insights may also produce important results for understanding Daniel’s portrayal of divine sovereignty and its connection to human sovereignty. Finally, Fewell’s 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, Fewell’s treatment does not attend to such issues as the book’s 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, Daniel’s 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 God’s visible sovereignty over foreign kings, they were not really supposed to persuade the outsider of God’s 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 God’s 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, 143–86; John Kutsko, “Ezekiel’s 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), 125–35. 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 Daniel’s interest in “secret knowledge,” which works, sociologically, to dene a certain group of insiders, those who have access to the knowledge. In Daniel’s 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


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the absolute sovereignty of the God of Israel is not a simple given in the Hebrew Bible… Instead, YHWH’s mastery is often fragile, in continual need of reactivation and reassertion, and at times, as in the laments, painfully distant from ordinary experience, a memory and a hope rather than a current reality.84

Levenson’s 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 God’s potency. Levenson argues that, on the contrary, the perseverance of chaos is evidence of creation’s fragility and divine mastery’s 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 writer’s experience of intellectual and experiential contradiction between several corresponding sets of dichotomies: between faith and realism, between liturgy and reality, between remembrance of God’s 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 24–27, 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 (167–164 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 Yahweh’s 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 reputation 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 Yahweh’s power will be reactivated in the future.88 Thus the contradictions between 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 1

Ibid., 47. Ibid., 14–25. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 32.


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expectation and experience exist in a dialectical relationship within the biblical vision and give rise to an eschatological resolution. Many aspects of Levenson’s 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 Levenson’s 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 God’s power. Unlike the theological investigations of an earlier generation, Levenson does not reduce this afrmation, or the human process that produces it, to a simple balm for troubling times. Despite its insights, Levenson’s 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 mythological 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 résumés also indicate dissonance? And if so, how do those résumés 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 consideration 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 contradiction 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

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the historical résumé is a key feature that all ve revelations have in common and is a preferred means for the visions to speak about sovereignty. 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 résumés 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, resolution, 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 résumés of Dan 2:31–45; 7; 8; 9; and 10–12 emerged out of a scribal context in which the third- and second-century B.C.E. producers, though elite by virtue of their abilities and occupations as retainers 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 7–12 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 tensions 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), 309–21; Redditt, “Daniel 11,” 463–74; 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


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the third and second centuries nd themselves socially elevated but politically subordinated (2:46–49),91 aspiring to participate in cosmopolitan 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 1:4–8).93 Although scribal aspirations and ability to participate in Hellenistic bureaucracies may have been recalibrated during the Seleucid persecutions of 167–164 B.C.E.,94 nevertheless, there remains a strong interest in foreign learning and wisdom that may be seen in Dan 2’s 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 2:31–45 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 Daniel’s advancement in the king’s 91. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 271–80, has emphasized that one’s 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 community 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 ReligiousPolitical 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), 141–45. 92. Davies, “Scribal School of Daniel,” 261. 93. Ibid., 257. 94. Ibid., 258, and Redditt, “Sociohistorical Setting,” 463–74, 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 Background to Daniel 2.47,” JSOT 74 (1997): 61–76. 96. On this point, see especially, Uriel Rappaport, “Apocalyptic Vision and Preservation of Historical Memory,” JSJ 23 (1992): 217–26, and Lester Grabbe, “A Dan(iel) for All Seasons: For Whom Was Daniel Important?,” in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:229–46, who argue for the writer’s internationalist perspective, which may have led him to borrow Greek historiographical materials for Dan 11. 97. The writing and redaction of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 2. 1

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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 God’s 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 subordination—divine impotence vis-à-vis other gods or divine retribution. Additionally, the subordinated community is faced with the challenge of understanding its place among the dominant other and the other’s role relative to God’s power and purposes. The community must assert its own importance and place in the culture even as it determines whether the foreign king is God’s agent or perhaps God’s 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. Humphreys’s inuential article, “A Lifestyle for the Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel,” JBL 92 (1973): 211–23. 99. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 267–68. 100. David Glatt-Gilad, “Yahweh’s Honor at Stake: A Divine Conundrum,” JSOT 98 (2002): 64–66, discusses this conviction as it is expressed in Ps 48:11 and Ps 79:9–10, where God is asked to intervene to preserve Israel in order to salvage God’s own reputation. Glatt-Gilad traces the idea to the holy war ideology of ancient Israel and the ancient Near East where “God’s 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: Ezekiel’s Adaptation of an Ancient Near Eastern Motif,” in Odell and Strong, eds., The Book of Ezekiel, 15–42, provides extensive citations of this motif and its occurrences in Ezekiel, on which Daniel’s 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), 62–93. 1


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these conceptions briey. The tensive understanding of sovereignty includes not only the divine impotence–divine retribution polarity, but also the polarity of divine transcendence–distance and divine immanence–proximity 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 God’s 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 deity’s 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 God’s spatial or temporal distance from humans, but rather on Yahweh’s 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 warrior—a metaphor that likens God to human warriors. At the same time, God’s warrior qualities are unique, since—unlike human soldiers—Yahweh 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, Daniel’s understanding of God also encompasses God’s relational and benecial activity with God’s chosen community in history.107 Lemke connects this notion of God’s activity 103. On this tension, see especially Samuel Terrien, Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1978), 22, 470; Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 400–403, 492–518. 104. Werner Lemke, “The Near and the Distant God: A Study of Jer 23:23–24 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): 135–65. 106. Labuschagne, Incomparability, 64–65. 107. Terrien, Elusive Presence, 18–21. 1

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with temporal and spatial nearness and calls it “salvic nearness.”108 This aspect of divine activity often emerges in biblical texts in terms of God’s election of the Israelites and the Jewish community. The biblical tradition often perceives that in God’s 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 God’s 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 6:11–24).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 maintained 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 1–3 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 3:12–14).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,” 218–19. 112. Barr, “Theophany,” 32–34. 113. Terrien, Elusive Presence, 249. 114. Barr, “Theophany,” 36–37; Terrien, Elusive Presence, 249–50. 1


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Because theophany is occasional and exceptional, Israelite and postexilic 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 9:6–9);115 and the Torah mediates Yahweh’s presence to the people through its ordering of a right relationship between the two and through its remembrance of Yahweh’s past acts as now made present again.116 Divine transcendence and God’s providential immanence need not be contradictory. They can and often do function to serve the other’s purpose. 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 deity’s 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 continued subordination might be understood to be God’s absence from history. Yet absence can also be institutional rather than historical. This absence is what results when the institutions that formally maintained divine presence—temple, kingship, and Torah—are 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 God’s relationship with the community through divine neglect. It may also indicate God’s response to a faithless community. In this case, the priestly and the prophetic traditions understand that God’s transcendence and holiness can threaten the deity’s providential care when the community’s sin threatens the integrity of God. Finally, Samuel Balentine and Joel Burnett both indicate that though the 115. 116. 117. 1

Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 600–621. Ibid., 578–99. Terrien, Elusive Presence, 28.

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experience of divine absence may be personally disastrous, it may, at the same time, be used as a theologically positive statement of God’s 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 résumés 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 community 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 community’s 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 Daniel’s Résumés 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 Levenson’s use of dissonance in terms of the contradictions between myth and reality and between experience and expectation. Levenson’s ideas about dissonance and its role in the creation of apocalyptic eschatology derive from Robert P. Carroll’s 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 Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance to biblical prophecy,120 especially the reinterpretation of Second Isaiah’s 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, 173–75; 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. Festinger’s 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


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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 feel—the term is loosely used in the general theory—so cognitive dissonance arises when two cognitions are inconsistent 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 experiences and a present discrete experience. According to Festinger’s theory, the human brain normally desires coherence and consonance. The experience 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 Levenson’s use of dissonance marks a divergence from Carroll’s use in a social-scientic context. Carroll’s 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 Daniel’s visions themselves, with the exception of Dan 9’s reuse of Jer 29 and the 70 years prophecy. Levenson’s interest, however, is not in social-scientic theory or the reuse of prophecy. Instead of adopting the theory’s 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 information, (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 studies, have recently come under much criticism for their assumptions about the nature of prophecy and prophetic utterances. Stephen O’Leary, “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 theory’s view of predictive statements has contributed to a poor evaluation of apocalyptic discourse. Festinger, Carroll, and other scholarly observers of apocalyptic 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 hence…subject to 1

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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 Levenson’s 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 Daniel’s visions.125 Fishbane puts the process of dissonance resolution in the context of mantic reinterpretation of older oracles, a process in which overt oracles became covert and esoteric. He attributes the cause of dissonance to the obscurity, confusion, and unrealizability of the prophetic prediction, to which the community responded by positing “divinely controlled frameworks of meaning.”126 Without denying that Daniel’s visions reinterpret older prophecies or recalculate failed prophetic calculations to create a new hermeneutic, I propose that Daniel’s 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, 28–31), 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 historical discourse, which nally achieves the literary forms of apocalyptic literature (see also Hanson, Dawn, 20–31). Of course, the extensive use of the historical résumé 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): 95–106. 125. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 465–85, 509–24. 126. Ibid., 509–10. 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


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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 temporal 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 maintain 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 Carroll’s 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 Résumé 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 somewhat 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

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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 narrative’s ability to achieve consonance.132 Historical narratives do not just catalog experiences as unconnected 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 narrative 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 one’s past and present experiences. In the event of conicting or contradictory experiences 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 historiography on the basis of their types of temporality—one 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), 3–31; Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer; 3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1:1–87; Hayden White, “The Metaphysics of Narrativity: Time and Symbol in Ricoeur’s Philosophy of History,” in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (ed. D. Wood; New York: Routledge, 1991), 140–59; idem, “The Narrativization of Real Events,” 793–98; and Newsom, “The Historical Résumé,” 215–33. 133. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:66; Newsom, “Historical Résumé,” 218. 134. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:38–43, 66–68. 135. Ibid., 1:71–73; Newsom, “Historical Résumé,” 232; White, “Metaphysics of Narrativity,” 143–44. 136. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending; Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:67. 1


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resolution of that conict within the future, or within the realm of anticipation. 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 contradictions 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. Daniel’s historical résumés constitute congured time. As such, the résumés should be read as having the same abilities to establish consonance 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 Daniel’s résumés seek has to do with the fundamental problem of sovereignty in time. The scribal group’s experience of time from where they stand “in the middest” often obscures God’s power and presence, and without some sense of God’s actions, history truly would be meaningless. While calculations and recalculations of the end can create some coherence between expectations and the actual experience of the end of imperial rule, Daniel’s 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 narrative, 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 important in attaining literary coherence. The apocalyptic ending is about ultimate endings—the 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 temporizing of essence,” according to Kenneth Burke, in which an ending is a “formal way of proclaiming [something’s] 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 Daniel’s résumés. The eschatological ending is 137. 138. 139. 1

Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 17. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 25. K. Burke, quoted in O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 25–26.

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an imagined future, a prediction, but this kind of prediction is made possible in the résumés 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 retelling 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 discernment 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 résumés 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 narrative’s ability to congure history, and thus the apocalyptic résumé’s ability, needs to be noted. This has to do with the narrative’s ability to bend time, to bring past and present 140. G. I. Davies, “Apocalyptic and Historiography,” JSOT 5 (1978): 15–28. 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), 221–28, and J. J. Finkelstein, “Mesopotamian Historiography,” in Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107 (1963): 461–72. 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 Daniel’s historiographical conventions are to those same texts. 143. Finkelstein, “Mesopotamian Historiography,” 463. 144. Addison, “When History Fails,” 242 n. 9, Newsom, “Historical Résumé,” 228–29. 1


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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 happens, one may discern “the ending in the beginning and the beginning in the ending.”146 Through this quality, the beginning and ending of a narrative bracket all the events of the middle into a single envelope of meaning. This quality of narrative especially impacts Daniel’s depiction of God’s 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 references, is also signicant in adjudicating the community’s 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 résumé? Levenson has already argued that the Chaoskampf tradition provides one place in which dissonance is being expressed or, perhaps, repressed. When the résumé 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 text’s logic or part of the text’s unconscious. One discerns these contradictions through extrinsic means, by paying attention to the social and cultural setting of the text’s producers, as well as the events and cultural conceptions in which they lived. Moreover, texts that were written during the time of Daniel’s 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 means—especially 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 résumé, I propose that the gaps in the text that reveal contradiction are often connected to the historiographical strategies of the résumé and the narrative traditions they employ to characterize divine activity. With respect to historiographical strategies, one must attend to the résumé’s 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, 1:67–68; Newsom, “Historical Résumé,” 228–29. 146. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:68. 1

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But even within the résumé, disruptions in the expected patterning of history, such as details withheld or familiar patterns interrupted, may signal contradiction.147 Since the résumés 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 expectations. Older traditions such as the rebellious subordinate and Chaoskampf 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 résumé’s subversion or disappointment 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 Daniel’s apocalyptic résumés, 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 résumés 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 God’s 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 résumés in Daniel offer one last problem for consideration. This problem has to do with the fact there are multiple résumés, not just one. Since these résumés have much in common yet do 147. Robert G. Hall, Revealed Histories: Techniques for Ancient Jewish and Christian Historiography (JSPSup 6; Shefeld: JSOT, 1991), 85–94. 148. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 20–63; Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 79–84. O’Leary and Jameson develop the idea of symbolic action from Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 1


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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 10–12 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 communicator…must 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 editor’s) 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 depiction or plot to divine sovereignty as each successive vision responds to historical events? If so, then it will call into question Collins’s 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 12:1–4. 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, 224–26; B. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis: Eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Dan 8 and 10–12 (Münchener Universitätsschriften; St. Ottilien: EOS, 1977); and Reinhard Kratz, “The Visions of Daniel,” in Collins and Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel, 1:91–113. I do not necessarily accept the hypothetical reconstructions of multiple redactional insertions that characterize the thinking of much German scholarship, such as Kratz’s, but I do agree with the assertions that these come from different hands. 151. Kratz, “Visions of Daniel,” 91–113. 1

Chapter 2

THE SHAPE OF SOVEREIGNTY IN NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S DREAM (DANIEL 2:31–45)

1. Introduction The enigmatic description of history in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream presents many interpretive difculties. Chief among these is its presentation of history as four foreign kingdoms that will be supplanted by a nal unending 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 dream’s 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 chapter’s theology. For others, it presents a strong theological 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 God’s visibility and God’s 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

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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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 chapter’s and the book’s 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 statue’s destruction represented not the end of four kingdoms but the end of a dynasty of four Babylonian kings—each metal representing the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar’s 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, 249–60; Ida Fröhlich, ‘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), 26–27. 2. John J. Collins, “The Court-Tales in Daniel and the Development of Apocalyptic,” 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,” 258–60. 4. Peter von der Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhaltnis zu Prophetie und Weisheit (Theologische Existenz Heute 157; Munich: Kaiser, 1969), 18–22; and Fröhlich, ‘Time and Times and Half a Time’, 11–48. 5. The analysis dates back to B. D. Eerdmans, “Origin and Meaning of the Aramaic Part of Daniel,” Actes du XVIIIe congrès international des orientalistes (1932): 198–202. 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

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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 Isaiah’s idol polemics (cf. Dan 2:27–28; Isa 41:22–23; 43:9; 48:5–6).6 The imagery of the statue and its disintegration into chaff also uses Second Isaiah (Isa 41:15–16; 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, Fröhlich and Redditt argue that it was part of the original and represented Cyrus and his defeat of Babylon.9 Seow’s argument is most convincing, namely, that the stone from the mountain refers back to Second Isaiah’s admonition to the exiles that they recall “the stone from which they were hewn” (cf. Dan 2:45; Isa 51:1–2). 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, Fröhlich, C. L. Seow, and others. 6. Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik, 18–23; 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,” 359–60. 8. John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 169. 9. Fröhlich, ‘Time and Times and Half a Time’, 32–33; 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. 450–425 B.C.E.) and Ctesias (ca. 399–375 B.C.E.). See further David Flusser, “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel,” IOS 2 (1972): 155–59. The eastern, Persian origin of the four-kingdom schema has been documented by Swain, “The Theory of the Four Monarchies,” 1–21; Eddy, The King is Dead, 3–30; and 1


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interpretation in vv. 36–45 seems to have been added in order to reinterpret 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 stone’s 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. 41–43.15 The dream shows no signs of being updated to reect Antiochus IV and his actions in Jerusalem.16 Flusser, “The Four Empires,” 148–75, 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): 330–37, has challenged Swain’s argument on the origin, dating, and distribution of the four-kingdom schema. For response to his critiques, see Collins, Daniel, 166–70. Flusser, “The Four Empires,” 155–62, contends that the tradition developed in two different ways—as 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,” 398–99. 13. Flusser, “The Four Empires,” 156–57; 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 240–193 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,” 263–64; Davies, “Daniel Chapter Two,” 397–98. Reinhard Kratz, Translatio Imperii: Untersuchungen zu den Aramaischen Danielerzahlungen und ihrem theologiegeschichtlichen Umfeld (Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1991), 71–72, 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, 34–35, understand the bulk of the vision to have originated during the third century B.C.E. 16. Collins, Daniel, 35–37. The view of Kratz, Translatio Imperii, 35–43, 71–72, that the toes are a Maccabean period insertion is not convincing. 1

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The present examination of the dream is primarily interested in understanding the vision in its late third-century setting, between 252–190 B.C.E. It is the suasive interactions between audience and text or between the community’s concerns and vision’s 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 understanding of what the vision is doing for its readers, but it is also this interaction 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 Antiochus’s rule over Judea in 167– 164 B.C.E. Indeed, Philip Davies and Paul Redditt both argue that the court narratives of chs. 1–6 and the visions of chs. 7–12 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 IV’s reign, the makîlîm 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 Sirach’s 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,” 352–57; 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,” 123–48. 19. Redditt, Daniel, 28–29. 20. Benjamin Wright III, “ ‘Put the Nations in Fear of You’: Ben Sira and the Problem of Foreign Rule,” in SBL Seminar Papers 1999, 77–80, helpfully describes this period in the late third and early second centuries B.C.E. 1


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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 34:1–8)21 and understood himself to be a teacher and public gure (Sir 24:32–33; 33:18; 37:23), while the Daniel community produced materials not for general public consumption.22 Nevertheless, Sir 36:1–2223 recommends itself as a conversation partner to Dan 2:31–45, and the historical résumés 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” (= 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 36:10–19 will bring with it the return of a glorious divine rule and the elevation of the chosen people. Unlike Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, however, Sirach’s lament, precisely because it is a lament, is able to reveal the speaker’s profound disorientation concerning present events. This disorientation is linked to Sirach’s 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 51:1–12). Yet Sirach’s 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 thinking 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 God’s people at any time; such a situation is simply not the natural order of things. Israel is God’s own possession that he created at the beginning…Yet, 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 Sirach’s 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 people’s faithlessness (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 Birthday (ed. H. W. Attridge et al.; New York: University Press of America, 1990), 92. 27. Sirach’s particular language of the end also parallels “the appointed end” in Dan 11:35, which is further evidence of Sirach’s and Daniel’s intellectual proximity. Such eschatological language and phraseology were fairly uncommon. 28. Wright, “Put the Nations in Fear of You,” 90. 1


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in contrast to 51:1–12, which is otherwise a partner piece to the lament.29 Moreover, Sirach does not ask for forgiveness or confess penitence. Most striking is the lament’s willingness to admit that the present situation of subordination brings into question the incomparability and the honor of God. In its covenantal relationship to God, Judea’s 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; 76:2–4) or in defeat (Jer 7:10–14; 25:29; 44:26).30 This is the case even in Israel’s subjugation by a foreign power. In these circumstances, deuteronomistic theology understands the kings as servants and instruments of the Jewish God (2 Kgs 24:1–20; Jer 27:5–6; 28:14). In Sirach, however, the foreign kings deny outright the incomparability of God (Sir 36:5, 12) and do not recognize God’s power to move history. They understand themselves alone to be the agents of historical events. Yahweh has no visible role in history’s unfolding narrative. The Jewish faithful are no longer witnesses of God’s glory but are objects of history and of foreign power, unempowered 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 God’s strength in the Exodus traditions and the Deuteronomistic History, that is, in the direct shaping of historical events.31 The assumption of the lament is that history should display God’s 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 knowledge. So the pleas are not just about manifesting God’s 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 people’s 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, “Yahweh’s Honor at Stake,” 63–74. 31. Skehan and DiLella, Ben Sira, 422–23. 32. The presence of the kvôd in the temple is also one of the lament’s concerns, but even this appears to be connected to Yahweh’s intervention into the temporal realm. 33. Cf. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 142. 1

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“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 God’s 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 lament’s concern for the prophets and their failing predictive 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 lament’s larger concern that history is supposed to be the result of God’s active work. Historical events should showcase divine sovereignty through political, cultic, and national occurrences. However, Yahweh’s current absence from history has not only allowed gentile rulers to make claims of absolute power (vv. 1–3), it has also kept the temple empty of the kvôd (vv. 18–19), and has distanced the people from their inheritance (vv. 13–17).36 Sirach’s deuteronomistic theology of history is no longer able to provide a meaningful or coherent way of knowing and asserting God’s 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 people’s sins and thus ask for repentance, he does not. Thus, the lament expresses the perception of contradiction between the past acts of God’s 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 Failure 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. 38. Ibid., 54. 1


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dissonance that Sirach pleads will be resolved through future evidence of “deeds of old” that will bring an end of foreign sovereignty (vv. 11–12) and the exaltation of the people (vv. 20–21). 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 political 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 lament’s 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 Simon’s positive relationship with the Seleucids, it does indicate a signicant degree of complexity and ambivalence in Sirach’s overall attitude toward Judea’s interactions with Hellenistic culture.42 According to T. Rajak, Sirach’s 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 discussion 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), 80–82. 41. Wright, “Put the Nations in Fear of You,” 79, 90–91, 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 Sirach’s critique. 42. Wright, “Put the Nations in Fear of You,” agrees with Marböck, “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), 101–3. 1

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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 Sirach’s lament and the reuse of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream grow out of the community’s 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 Hengel’s thesis in Judaism and Hellenism, 1:104, of a widespread 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): 290–313. Hengel’s thesis has been moderated but not rejected. The most important re-articulations of it are found in J. J. Collins, “Cult and Culture: The Limits of Hellenization in Judea,” in Collins and Sterling, eds., Hellenism in the Land of Israel, 38–61. 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, 81–90, 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. 46. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 266–90. 47. Ibid., 266. 48. H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 2, quoted in Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams,” 268. 1


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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 36:1–22 and Dan 2:31–45 both constitute complex responses to the dominant culture and their kings. Both clearly bear the marks of hybrid cultural identities—they 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 deuteronomistic theology and the wisdom of the ancients from Israel’s 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 2:31–45 may be seen as a response to the kind of questions and difculties raised by Sirach’s 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 deuteronomistic ways of knowing God no longer preserve divine incomparability and honor, what will? Indeed, as Sirach pleads for an eschatological end to the nations, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream provides a vision of precisely that. And yet it is as if the reader only gets to hear half of the conversation at any given time. Sirach speaks what Dan 2:31–45 does not. 49. Horsley, “The Politics of Production,” 127; Hengel’s discussion (Judaism and Hellenism, 131–53) of Sirach’s “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-Christopher’s 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): 61–76; 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, 1:37–53. 51. I refer here to the four-kingdom schema, widely recognized to be of eastern or Persian origin. See Flusser, “The Four Empires,” 148–75; Collins, Daniel, 166–70. 52. Davies, “Scribal School of Daniel,” 257, suggests that the makîlîm may have brought the earlier Daniel materials in Dan 2–6 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


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Conversely, what Dan 2:31–45 can afrm Sirach cannot. Sirach’s lament expresses dissonance, but it cannot fully bring itself to afrm God’s power over kings and God’s presence with the community. I take Dan 2’s utter silence on the possibility of divine impotence and absence to be more than accidental. As with Sirach’s gaps and silences around deuteronomistic theology, I read Dan 2’s silence as a strategy of containment—an 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 anything, there are other things which must not be said.” In trying to articulate what it regards as the “truth,” the text cannot express things that will contradict that “truth.” In these silences, in the text’s 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 2:31–45 does not give explicit evidence of the dissonance, yet provides an alternative way of knowing that emerges in the king’s 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, that God is not only invisible, but also impotent. The third-century reading of Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 God’s power in new ways.56 4. Translation of Daniel 2:31–45 (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 appearance 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, 74–102, 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,” 151–52. 55. Yee, “Ideological Criticism,” 151 (emphasis in the quote from Pierre Macherey are his). 56. Newsom, “The Historical Résumé,” 226–28. 1


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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 hand—humans, wherever they dwell,59 the beast of the eld, the bird of heaven, and has made you ruler over all of them—you 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 potter’s clay and partly of iron—the kingdom will be divided and it will not have the rmness of iron within it. Therefore, you 57. Jones, “Ideas of History,” 256–57, 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 source—“the rock was of a great mountain. ” The verb E=> favors the accusative reading. 59. The syntax of *JC 5 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, 172–73; 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. Ulrich’s 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 discussion of this verse in Papyrus 967, see W. Hamm, The Septuaginta-Text des Buches Daniel, Kap.1–2, Nach dem Koelner Teil des Papyrus 967 (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1969), 256–58. 1

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Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty saw the iron mixed with the clay. (42) And the toes of the feet, some of iron and some of clay—part 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. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream and the Experience of Hellenistic Rule The early Seleucid reuse of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream represents an attempt to reread the community’s present experience of subordination in such a way that God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s world-historical power and God’s immanence with the Jewish community. 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to reect their perceptions and experiences of subordination. From there I will work backwards to examine how the dream in its entirety helped them narrate a meaningful drama of God’s power at work in history. The Seleucid updating of the dream, which inserted vv. 41–43, reects the scribal community’s 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 particular 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


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referred to in Dan 11:6 and 17. The rst marriage, which tends to be accepted as the referent for vv. 41–43, 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 Antiochus’s estranged rst wife, Laodice, poisoned him and had Berenice and her infant son murdered as well. Laodice’s 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, daughter 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 brutality 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 redactor’s 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 2:31–35) had already acquired its interpretation (vv. 36–40, 44–45), which identied the four metals with the four world empires. Several aspects of the dream and its interpretation need comment. Nebuchadnezzar’s 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, 94–95. 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

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gures to convey meaning. This is the case here as well. The symbolic gures presented in the dream report are signicant to the interpretation’s narration of history. Specically, the key to the interpretation’s narration of history is the development of the parts of the statue as opposed to the dream report’s 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 statue’s four metals, which elsewhere correspond to four metallic ages,67 the dream report emphasizes synchronic time—time taken as a whole.68 In this depiction, the emphasis is placed on the simple opposition between king and God and God’s 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 statue’s extraordinary size (3C *=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 (1.109–201), which dates from the eighth century B.C.E. Commentators generally 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 hypothetical. 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 traditions. See further, Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 37–44, and idem, Daniel, 162–63. There has been debate concerning how this tradition came to the author of Dan 2. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 37; A. Hultgård, “Bahman Yasht: A Persian Apocalypse,” 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. 68. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 34. 69. Seow, “From Mountain to Mountain,” 365. 70. Redditt, Daniel, 58. 1


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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 Darius’s 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 Darius’s 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 statue’s 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 king’s 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 Persia’s 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 Composition 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 4:2487–92; I. Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981): 2–38. 74. Root, King and Kingship, 68–72; Azarpay, “Proportions,” 4:2517. 75. Root, King and Kingship, 59, 185–87. 76. Root, King and Kingship, 189–94; Azarpay, “Proportions”, 4:2517. 77. From Plutarch’s Alexander 37.3, recorded in Root, King and Kingship, 129–30. 1

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have participated in the regular defacing of Marduk’s 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 Babylon’s 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 king’s power. Not only this, royal statues often invoke the gods and their support for the king’s 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 God’s 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 redactors, however, invest the imagery of the dream with a somewhat different view of God’s 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 succession 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 God’s 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), 124–25. 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 Darius’s 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 Darius’s power and allows the viewer to grasp as a unied whole the history of Darius’s military feats. See further Root, King and Kingship, 186–87. 1


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The narration depicts God’s 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 27:5–6; 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 king’s 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 continuity 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 likewise 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 king’s 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 Sirach’s lament demonstrates, this is precisely what the scribal community desires—that God would be known to the gentiles (Sir 36:5). Confessions of God’s power from outsiders were especially valuable to the Jewish community. Such confessions may be seen in the biblical tradition (e.g. Josh 2:9–11) and in Josephus’s story of Alexander the Great’s 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 concerning Alexander the Great’s 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, “Ezekiel’s Anthropology and Its Ethical Implications,” 127. 84. See also Seow, “From Mountain to Mountain,” 364–66. 1

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Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty The story implied that Jews both of Palestine and of the Diaspora would become an integral part of the Macedonian empire—and that they would hold a distinct and privileged position within it. The suzerain’s 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 confessing the God of Daniel. Yet this confession afrms not only God’s place in the foreigner’s world, but also the Jewish community’s 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 community 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 God’s 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. God’s activity will ultimately not be visible through human kings. This conicting view of kingship should be read in terms of the résumé’s 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 God’s cooperation or accommodation to the king. 1


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résumé here adopts Jeremiah’s view of the king as the servant of God (Jer 27:5–6; 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, representing divine agency, or ruling according to divine purposes. The king’s 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 God’s messiah (Isa 44:28–45:1), the one who actualizes God’s 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 2–6 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, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream provides a narrative resolution wherein gentile kingship may be tolerated for a time, even as it remains subject to suspicion. The résumé 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 God’s unequivocal investment in the foreign king or God’s 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, God’s 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 88. Seow, “From Mountain to Mountain,” 366. 89. S. Japhet, “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel: Against the Background of the Historical and Religious Tendencies of Ezra–Nehemiah,” 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 end—i.e., not simultaneously but successively.” In fact, neither of these statements accurately describes the ideology of rule exhibited by Dan 2:31–45. 1

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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 community’s 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 24–25). Both here and in Dan 1:2, God’s giving of power to Nebuchadnezzar is not explained in terms of the community’s culpability. The focus of this historical presentation is primarily on God’s interaction, not with the community, but with the kings and empires. This history displays God’s incomparability by revealing the deity’s interactions 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 Daniel’s presentation of history according to the “salvation history” of the earlier Israelite traditions, leveled this as a critique against the perceived weakness of the résumé’s view of divine activity.91 And indeed, this depiction of God’s activity in history does diverge from Sirach’s 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 Sirach’s 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 God’s actions at the beginning and ending of history, the résumé 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 Yahweh’s inauguration of imperial history. It emphasizes Yahweh’s deliverance, according to the divine prerogative alone, of all creatures and humans into the power of Nebuchadnezzar. Similarly, Yahweh’s activity will also bring the end of imperial history, emphasized by the use of another causative verb ()HB, v. 44). Recalling Ricoeur’s principle of narrative circularity, one sees here that the ending 91. Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:303–6; Davies, Daniel, 86–87. 92. Translations are those of Stephan Reif, “Prayer in Ben Sira, Qumran and Second Temple Judaism: A Comparative Overview,” in Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Conference, Durham, Upshaw College, 2001 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 332. 1


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bends around to the beginning, so that God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 dream’s actual prophecies by prefacing them with past events presented 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 kingdoms 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, whatever happens is discontinuous.”98 93. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:66–68. 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), 83–100; repr. from ZAW 73 (1961): 171–86. 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): 329–43. 96. Davies, “Apocalyptic and Historiography,” 15–28; see also, C. Newsom, “Past as Revelation: History in Apocalyptic Literature,” QR 4 (1984): 40–53. 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. 98. Newsom, “The Historical Résumé,” 227. 1

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The four-kingdom schema provides the community with a meaningful 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 God’s “mighty deeds” are always in the past and never realized in the present, which is the problem present in Sir 36:20. The résumé’s use of the schema works to establish the community 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 God’s manifestation through them.

99. Ibid., 228. 1

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 symmetry of the Aramaic half of the book, creating an outer ring with ch. 2’s 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. 7’s form as symbolic vision and its historical résumé connects Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in 2:31–45, embedded within the court-tale, with the visions and résumés of chs. 8–12. 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 7’s position between two halves of a book divided in one way by language (Aramaic 2–7; Hebrew 1, 8–12) and in another way by form (1–6; 7–12) has been central to the long-running discussion between scholars on Daniel’s development. Adrien Lenglet, “La Structure Littéraire de Daniel 2–7,” Bib 53 (1972): 169–90; Albertz, “Social Setting,” 1:171–204; 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. 2–6. 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, 8–10, 122, 138; Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 27–39, inter alia, have instead placed Dan 7 in the second half of the book with chs. 8–10 because of its formal character as vision. 3. Lenglet, “La Structure,” 184–90. 1

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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 1–3 and 8–10 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 away”…but when they “pass away” God must start again the struggle to gain recognition… At least Daniel 7 discerns the maddening circle. Daniel’s 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 presence. 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 community’s 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 parts—one 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.

4. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 134. 5. Oppenheim, Interpretation of Dreams, 208. 1

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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 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 7–12 (CBQMS 19; Washington, D.C.: CBA, 1988), 66–67, 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 4QDanª,” 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


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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 nªq, ‘Lamb’s wool (Dan 7:9),’ ” JBL 95 (1976): 277–79, argues that “lamb’s 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 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, 109–17, 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

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(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 Montgomery, 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 possibility 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), 218–19; and Collins, Daniel, 312–13. 1

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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 2:31–45.22 That is, both vision reports indicate the occurrence of a dream vision (2:31; 7:1–2), both provide a description of the dream (2:31–35; 7:2–14); and both follow the description with an interpretation (2:36–45; 7:17–18). However, during the course of the interpretation the vision’s formal expectations are suddenly disrupted by Daniel’s 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. 19–22 is, in fact, another vision report. It reiterates vv. 7–14 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. 19–22 challenge not only the angel’s interpretation but also the initial vision report of vv. 2–14. 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 vision’s 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, 177–241, who argues that Dan 7 and 8 represent “baroque versions” 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 12–17, 1979 (ed. David Hellholm; Tübingen: Mohr, 1983), 413–46. 22. Koch, “Vom Profetischen zum Apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 444–45. 23. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 184–85, argues that the seer’s question becomes typical of the symbolic vision with Zechariah’s fth vision. In Dan 7, however, the questioning has a very different character and function than that of Zech 4:4, where the seer’s 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 =, 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 previous 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 beast’s 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 beast’s 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. 4–6. 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. 9–12 and the empowering of the humanlike one in vv. 13–14. 39. For this reason, I nd the speculations regarding the fourth beast’s 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: Universitätsverlag, 2000), 70–85, 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, God’s Conict, 157, and also Collins, Daniel, 299 nn. 193, 194. 1

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c. The Shape of Divine Justice in Verses 9–14 The features of the divine, along with his surroundings, show the Ancient of Days to be an embodiment and executor of justice. Instead of following the expected Chaoskampf plot in which the Divine Warrior does battle against the chaos monster, Dan 7:9–14 depicts a heavenly courtroom 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 rendered—all 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. 9–10). 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. 9–10; cf. 2 Kgs 22:19; Isa 6:1–2). Many commentators have noted the undifferentiated character of heavenly council’s 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), 67–69, 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, 274–75. 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 Daniel’s 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 established.” 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 šnm, 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 šnt, that is, the feminine plural rather than the masculine plural. Even Colpe, “P

VJ P=K,” 417, who 1

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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 El’s 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, are used to describe the cleansing of Israel’s 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 3:4–5 reinforces the role of whiteness in juridical affairs through the heavenly trial of Joshua. In the course of this symbolic vision, the satan presents Joshua’s 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), 64–65. 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 Zechariah’s interest in cultic purity. Certainly Daniel echoes with brief but signicant references to such matters (1:8; 9:27; 11:31; 12:10–11). Primarily, however, juridical purity/righteousness seems to predominate in Dan 7:9 over cultic purity. 47. Mosca, “Ugarit and Daniel 7,” 501. 48. Indeed, Daniel’s beasts appear as mirror images of Ezekiel’s theophany in some respects. The repetition of the number four in Daniel’s vision—four 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 10:1–5. The evoking of Ezekiel’s cherubim is strengthened when one notices 1

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brilliant light, re, and the wheeled throne (Ezek 1:15, 27–28//Dan 7:9– 10).49 But the anthropomorphism of the deity signals divine transcendence in and of itself (cf. 1 Kgs 22:19–20; Isa 6:1–4).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 anthropomorphic 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 Ezekiel’s use of anthropomorphism in Ezek 1–3 engages this royal ideology 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 cherubim’s 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), 33–35. 49. Seow, Daniel, 107. 50. Collins, Daniel, 300. 51. On the connection between Gen 1:26–28 and Ezekiel, see the recent treatment by Kutsko, “Ezekiel’s Anthropology,” 128–32, and David Petersen’s rejoinder, “Creation in Ezekiel: Methodological Perspectives and Theological Prospects,” in SBLSP, 1999 (2 vols.; SBLSP 38; Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 1:490–500. On the divine image as a reference to anthropomorphism, see Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism,” 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): 129–59 (143). J. Maxwell Miller also supports this position in “In the Image and Likeness of God,” JBL 91 (1972): 289–304. 53. M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 22; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 54–56. 54. Kutsko, “Ezekiel’s Anthropology,” 126–28. 1

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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 ultimate rejection of this alignment. In contrast to Dan 2:37, in which Nebuchadnezzar 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 vision’s hierarchy of human and beastly forms, the righteous mediator of divine sovereign power is necessarily a gure who has anthropomorphic features. The humanlike one (? C35. The use of the similes in the description of the ? C3< and the beasts tries to capture the distinction between outward appearance and actual reality, as in Ezek 1. 1

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As the deity bestows (3J9J) on the humanlike one dominion and glory (Aramaic CBJ; Hebrew 53, vv. 20, 25), waging war (53, v. 21), conquering (EA, v. 24), wearing out ( =3, v. 25), and intending (C3D, v. 25). The striking number 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 horn’s 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 173–72 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 Mørkholm, Antiochus IV, 133. An extensive discussion is found in Otto Mørkholm, 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. Mørkholm, Antiochus IV, 130–31, refutes earlier arguments that the inscriptions represent a much more extensive claim to divine status. 1

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It is in this challenge to divine sovereignty, most clearly articulated in the interpretation of the second cycle (vv. 23–27), 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. 23–26 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 2:37–38, 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship, 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 commissioned the little horn and remains opposed to it. The statement also implicates the Most High, who is clearly aligned with the holy ones, in the community’s experience of tragedy. Nonetheless, the Most High’s action of handing over the community reasserts divine sovereignty by undermining the little horn’s 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 reading community that the little horn’s autonomy is more apparent than real. Paradoxically, the community’s experience of being handed over signals the containment of the little horn’s power. When the Most High hands over the holy ones to him, the text establishes Antiochus’s 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 2:37–38, 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 Antiochus’s power, and thus the community’s tragedy, is a matter of time. The interpretation limits and structures the community’s 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. 21–22, it suggests that the community cannot expect an 1

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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 circumscribes the little horn’s 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 kingdom ()= 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 Antiochus’s autonomy. If the rst vision cycle established Yahweh’s international sovereignty through assertions of the deity’s heavenly power exercised over and above the beasts and chaotic seas, this construction of divine sovereignty resolves the community’s 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 community’s 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 experientially tolerated if one knows that they have a temporary quality.80 In

1

80. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 41.

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the narrative of history in ch. 7, time’s passage brings not only the passing 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 community’s 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 Sirach’s lament (Sir 36:1–22). Instead, the second vision cycle provides consonance by providing resolutions that emphasize, as Ricoeur points out, the ending of the tragedy and the cessation of a history that erodes meaning.81 The temporal resolution in the second vision cycle also has a predictive quality, though this is not strictly necessary for the work of consonance. 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 narrative’s convictions. Not only do they frame what is crucially relevant to the writer, they also have the power in such a cosmic narrative to temporize the essence of something or someone. As Kenneth Burke has argued, a history’s 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

81. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:56. 82. See also Jonathan Goldstein, Peoples of an Almighty God: Competing Religions 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 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 25 (emphasis in the quote from Kenneth Burke are his). 1

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In this case, the nature of sovereignty is the subject of temporizing. The end of imperial history reveals the essence of Antiochus IV’s power as limited, fragile, and penultimate. And yet this is not the end of the historical narrative. The résumé 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. 9–14 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 undulations and tensions are indicators of a complex and sometimes contradictory 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 nevertheless is at work, giving power and withholding it. But even this seemingly 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 governance, 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 IV’s decrees. The experience of dissonance is signaled by the 1

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resistance to the closure offered in vv. 17–18, 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 horn’s 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 various strategies of transcendence that tame the experience of Antiochus’s 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.

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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 complemented 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, 37–38; Stephen B. Reid, Enoch and Daniel (Berkeley: BIBAL, 1989), 103; Gzella, Cosmic Battle, 7–9. 3. John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 85. 1

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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 8’s 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 eshing 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 Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 presence. Indeed, commentators often assume that Dan 8 shares the convictions 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. 6. Seow, Daniel, 118. 7. Montgomery, Daniel, 325; Porteous, Daniel, 119; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 216; and Goldingay, Daniel, 201, all comment on the inferior quality of ch. 8’s 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, 37–38; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 14, 230; and Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 224–26; and Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 411. By contrast, Rowley, “The Unity of the Book,” 233–73, has been the most important proponent of the authorial unity of chs. 7–12. 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, 164–65, and Redditt, Daniel, 20–34. Even though the chapters come from 1


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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 community’s expectations established in Dan 7, rather than in tune with them. Trying to reclaim coherence around God’s power and the emperor’s end using temporal, spatial, and mantic strategies, Dan 8 provides a sequel to Dan 7’s 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. 2. Translation of Daniel 8 (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 vision—when 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 8’s 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 2:31–45. 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 Jerusalem’s 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. 7–12 (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 Daniel’s composition and redaction. See, for instance, Montgomery, Daniel, 96; Gammie, “Classication, Stages of Growth,” 202–4; and Kratz, “Visions of Daniel,” 91–113. 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 other’s 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 convictions. 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, 49–50, views this as an early Hebrew duplication of the rst “I saw.” 1


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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 corruption of EHCI from v. 5. It is retained here as the difcult reading, as in v. 5, following 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, 325–26. 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


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(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 last—the 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 preposition 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 (=EH) and the host fall to the earth in v. 10 (94C =AEH). The language of the little horn’s attack on the temple in vv. 8–12 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 28:1–19.46 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 Gzella’s Cosmic Battle. 46. On Daniel’s use of the rebellious subordinate, see further Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 228–29; Goldingay, Daniel, 202; and Seow, Daniel, 122. There is signicant overlap in language and thematic motifs between Dan 8 and Isa 14:4b–20. Both passages use the term “goat” to refer to earthly leaders (cf. Isa 14:9 and Dan 8:5–8). 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 selfexaltation up to the host and the stars: )J>9 345 =58EH (Dan 8:10) // J D< )JC = J3 (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


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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 14:15–16; Ezek 28:8–10). The rebellious subordinate is a character who violates the derived and limited conditions of his kingship. In ancient Israelite and Mesopotamian royal ideology, the king mediates between God and humanity and between the heavenly domain and the earthly.49 Persian royal iconography depicts this relationship graphically in the Behistun relief where the king’s 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 king’s head.50 Closer to home, Dan 4 depicts the king’s 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 king’s power comes to him as an extension of divine power; it is proximate to and derived from the deity’s 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. Page’s 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. 121–40). 48. Ibid., 132. 49. Cf. 2 Sam 7:14; 1 Chr 17:13; Pss 2; 18:44; 72:8; 144:2. See Bertil Albrektson, 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), 42–45, 51; Keith Whitelam, “King and Kingship,” ABD 4:44. 50. Margaret C. Root, “Art and Archaeology of the Achaemenid Empire,” CANE 4:2615–37. 51. See also Bernard Batto’s discussion of the representation of divine sovereignty and royal ideology in the ancient Near East in his “Divine Sovereign,” 143–86. 1

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The apocalyptist’s 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 82:6–7, 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 king’s 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 horn’s 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 Antiochus’s actions, according to the vision report, damage all of these religio-political structures. The king’s 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 Antiochus’s 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 52. Seow, Daniel, 123. 53. The denitive work on Antiochus IV’s coinage comes from Mørkholm, Studies in the Coinage of Antiochus IV in Syria, 68–74, while Seow, Daniel, 123–24, provides a useful and concise discussion of the evidence. 54. Collins, Daniel, 333; Seow, Daniel, 124. 55. Lemke, “Near and the Distant God,” 541–55; Keith Whitelam, “Israelite Kingship: The Royal Ideology and its Opponents,” in Clements, ed., The World of Ancient Israel, 128–36. 56. See especially Peter T. Vogt, Deuteronomic Theology and the Signicance of Torah: A Reappraisal (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 113–59. 57. Most likely what the text means by “the truth” (E> ), according to Lacocque, Daniel, 163. 58. On God’s 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


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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 movement—leading the reader through a tension that is building toward climax, followed by denouement at which time the central dramatic problem is resolved. The eschatological dramas of 2:31–45 and ch. 7 show how these vision reports are suffused by the tensions involving divine manifestation and power. In Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 (2:31–32). The drama builds as the description registers the structural and material aw in the statue’s 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 reversal—the 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 immediate 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, God’s instruments (7:4–6). 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 (7:13–14), 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): 215–35. Samuel Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 32–33, describes the dire consequences that result from God’s absence and hiddenness. 59. See, for example, Towner’s analysis of Dan 2 in his Daniel, 29–40. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 232–41, 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

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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 symbols 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 community. 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 verb’s description of the horns unfolds the pattern of each kingdom’s 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…=J 9 the ram…became mighty. (v. 4) 9=H589 *CB9 9C3? H>4 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)

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As Goldingay points out, the repetition of =58 in vv. 8–11 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 ram’s 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 ram’s 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 goat’s invincibility, but expects a stronger power to emerge and contain its wrath.62 This expectation 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.a–a. 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 Interpreter’s 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 O’Connor, 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 king’s 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.” Joshua’s 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, however, is a superlative genitive (so Waltke and O’Connor, 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 Considerations,” JCS 41 (1989): 154–64. 62. So also Goldingay, Daniel, 204. 1

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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. 10–12, exploring the fragility and absence of divine power in the face of the little horn’s success. The vision’s imagery of cosmic warfare between the horn and the host emphasizes the power of Antiochus’s military strength in ways Dan 7 does not. There is a discernible shift here from the juridical 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 council’s 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. 1–12) 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. 3–8 had created the anticipation of containment for the goat and the little horn. Yet the lack of divine juridical 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 vision’s 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, 122–23. 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 Israel’s history, has been argued by Mullen, Divine Council, 274–76, one may argue that Dan 7–12 reveals not just a specialization with respect to individual names and characters within the council, but also with respect to agencies within the council. 64. Seow, Daniel, 123. 1


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ground (v. 12). In Dan 8:10–12, 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 successful, 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 horn’s success in v. 12, reveals the contradiction between the community’s experience and their expectations of divine power. In ch. 8, the divine realm is under military attack with no hint of the divine warrior’s intervention. It is not possible to harmonize the vision at this point with Dan 7’s 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, Antiochus 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 Antiochus’s actions since the redaction of Dan 7 have justiably altered the writing community’s 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 emperor’s 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 sovereignty, 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. 67. Seow, “Rule of God,” 240. 1

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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 king’s freedom and power to act. The possibility of the little horn’s autonomy, his freedom 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 8:12’s 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 information 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 vision’s 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 maintained as a central feature of Daniel’s mantological visions, as Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 447–48, argues. 1


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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 tmîd: 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 nevertheless function in similar ways. Both are efforts to assert and circumscribe the limits of the little horn’s 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 establishes 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 good—the establishment of righteous rule—the 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. Seow’s 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,” 93–94, 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 text’s 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. 72. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 41–42. 1

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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. O’Leary has argued that tragic experiences, 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 horn’s power as a legitimate form of divine retribution.75 The emphasis is instead on envisioning its end. Having said that, however, 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 résumé. It functions by putting emphasis on the closing of events and the coming intervention of the divine instead of trying to account for the origins of the community’s 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 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 41) argue that, “Since explanations 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 is…narrative.” 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 God’s 1


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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 community’s 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 deuteronomistic theology of retribution (cf. 1 Kgs 8:33–34, 46–50) and also in 2 Macc 6:14 and 7:38, the acts of the community—repentance, crying out, martyrdom—have 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 community’s transgressions, nor can it be shortened by the community’s repentance. The concept of the period of wrath does not seem good pleasure) and bad outcomes (according to God’s displeasure). It is an agreement about who gets what.” 77. Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 115–16. 78. Collins, Daniel, 338, argues that Dan 8:19 shares this view. See also Goldingay, Daniel, 215. 79. Goldingay, Daniel, 217; Collins, Daniel, 338. 80. Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 115–16. 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 6:13–16 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

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to function in reference to the community’s culpability. The period of wrath appears to signify the community’s experience of imperial power as a result of the deity’s remoteness; it does not signify God’s 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 deity’s 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 God’s remoteness from the community. The community understands that God is not exercising power locally; God’s 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 God’s 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 interpretation 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 83. Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 115–16. 1


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the midst of the deity’s 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 divine’s anthropomorphic appearance—as well as that of the human-like one—contrasted starkly with the misshapen beasts.84 Daniel 8, however, demurs with respect to this embodiment of righteous ruling power, even picking up 2:36’s 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 agent—in Dan 2:36 it means without the king’s agency—and/or more generally, without anthropomorphic 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 composition 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. 7’s model of divine power and presence expressed through anthropomorphic theophany and to embrace the model of divine power implicit in 2:31–45. In Nebuchadnezzar’s 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 God’s ability to act without hands is the mark of absolute power. 1

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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 incomparability turns precisely on the lack of continuity between God’s activity and idols or between God’s activity and human kings. It also suggests a lack of continuity physically—Yahweh 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 God’s 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 disembodiment 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 makîlîm. The deity’s 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,” utilizing 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 DA 3H), 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 IV’s rule—his erce face (v. 23), his perverse imagination and schemes (vv. 24–25), and his might or his hand (5J, v. 24). In the laundry list of activities (vv. 23–25), that his hand and perverse imagination accomplish, he devises extraordinary 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 Ezekiel’s anthropomorphic theophanies, on which Dan 7, 8, and 10 depend, established both the incomparability of the divine (with respect to idols and kings) and God’s presence and continuity with the community. See further his article, “Ezekiel’s Anthropology,” 119–41. 88. The Aramaic verb 39J is the equivalent of the Hebrew verb *E?. 1


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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, Antiochus’s power appears strong and invulnerable. While afrming these appearances, the interpretation nevertheless undermines the little horn’s autonomy and invincibility 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 king’s perverse agenda is accomplished. In 8:25d, however, it is the lack of the hand that nally fells the king. God’s 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 Alexander’s 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 secondarily. 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 1:26–8, and Dan 7:9–12.91 Similarly, the description of the angel as resembling a man (C38 9 C>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 interprets for the prophet (cf. Ezek 37; Amos 7:7–9; 8:1–3). 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 background. 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 messenger function and the embodiment of the divine word,97 then the angels 93. See, for example, Josh 5:13–6:6; Job 4:13; Ezek 1:28–2:2; 3:22–23; 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, 223–24. 95. Diana Lipton, Revisions of the Night: Politics and Promises in the Patriarchal Dreams of Genesis (JSOTSup 228; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1999), 191. 96. Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 247; Mullen, Divine Council, 274–75. 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), 211–12, writes: “From a canonical perspective, prophets appear at about the time that the messenger of God ceases to appear. Noteworthy 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 developments…so that they are called to function, in effect, as ongoing theophanies.” See also von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:91–92. 1


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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 hierophany, 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 God’s 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 community 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 High’s presence with the makîlîm 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 horn’s own plans and activity. The little horn’s 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 Antiochus’s 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,” 1–15. Fox notes that Ezekiel’s 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 God’s power even as Ezekiel is persuaded. Yet, while the author of Dan 7 borrows much from Ezekiel’s 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 vision’s future application. 1

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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 misalignment proves to be fruitful because it invites the community to participate in the process of cognition in the context of the interpretation. Daniel’s confusion empowers their knowing. The makîlîm become active as knowers, as fellow sharers in Daniel’s 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 community’s knowledge of the plan of God becomes a means for resolving dissonance. God is elusive and invisible but nevertheless active in shaping the course of history. And just as history brought about the containment of the ram’s 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 horn’s 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, 79–85, follows C. Lévi-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 knowledge as a means to resolving contradiction in second temple Judaism, see Newsom, “Knowing as Doing,” 149–50. 1


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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 consonance 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 satisfying 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 Daniel’s visions, the question of endings and closures is a signicant one. The interpretation in Dan 8 attempts to give closure to the vision’s noticeably open-ended depiction of the little horn in v. 12. As a result, the little horn does nally meet his fate at the narrative and historiographical end of Dan 8. However, a close scrutiny of Dan 8’s 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 apocalyptic 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 community—the permanent establishment of the visible glory of God’s 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. 103. 104. 105. 106. 1

Kermode, Sense of an Ending, 7, 17. Newsom, “The Historical Résumé,” 230. Lapsley, “Doors Thrown Open,” 143. Ibid. Quoted in Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 22.

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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 eschatological 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 8’s eschatological outcome 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 visionary 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 surprisingly, 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 résumés of chs. 7–12 according to: (A) Events prior to the career of Antiochus IV, (B) the Career of Antiochus, and (C) Eschatological Outcome. Collins’s schematic points up the fact that, alone among the four résumés, Dan 8 is missing an eschatological outcome. 108. Goldingay, Daniel, 212–14. So also Collins, “Daniel and His Social World,” 138–39. 1


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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 horn’s containment fails to command the textual time or energy of the interpretation. While this may be due to some kind of conscious shift in the community’s goals from the clear political assertions of Dan 7 to somewhat 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. 9–12, 23–25), showing him to be the opposite of Dan 7’s humanlike one.110 It also gives a disproportionately larger amount of its attention to the success of the little horn’s career than to its containment. The brief statement of the divine’s action against the little horn fails to exercise the gravity needed to undermine fully the little horn’s 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 2:31–45 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 Antiochus’s 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 God’s 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,” 1:175–76, who sees this as a function of the shift from the Aramaic Daniel to Hebrew Daniel. See Davies, “Reading Daniel Sociologically,” 359–61, who notes tremendous ambivalence in the makîlîm 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

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divine ability to know and shape time and history. This allows the community to see God at work, ultimately limiting and containing Antiochus IV. Because of this shift to the divine as knower, the community’s connection with the heavenly realm is now maintained through manticism rather than through the temple or theophany or even Torah. Despite the vision’s attempts to mediate between divine power over history (by means of God’s 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 makîlîm 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 narrative and the end of history, divine power will remain as a shadow within history.

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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 2:31–45, 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 visionary’s study of Jeremiah’s 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. 4–19 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,” 191–204; 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 Meaning,” CBQ 62 (2000): 236–49, provides a concise and helpful summary of the evidence as well as the recent scholarship on the issue. 3. Montgomery, Daniel, 362; Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 246. 1

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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 Daniel’s reading of Jeremiah’s prophecy. The reader expects, on the basis of vv. 2–3 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 chapter’s 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 community with few means for overcoming the experience of that desolation—it 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 résumés, Dan 9 provides a complementary 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, 222–23; 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

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2. Translation of Daniel 9 (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 concerning the destruction of Jerusalem—70 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 Israel—the 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 promised 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. 8. Some manuscripts read “against you.” 1


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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, concerning 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 supplication 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 MT’s 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


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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 abomination until the decreed destruction is poured out upon the desolator.”19

3. The Problem of Daniel 9’s 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 haphazard manner, then one cannot assume that the form reects an intentional interaction between the writer(s) and readers concerning Antiochus’s decrees. So, two questions are raised from the outset: (1) Is there any evidence 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 makîlîm 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): 91–99; Lacocque, Daniel, 180; Goldingay, Daniel, 237; Collins, Daniel, 347–48; Redditt, “Daniel 9,” 236; Seow, Daniel, 136. 21. Seow, Daniel, 136. 22. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 248, assert this to argue for its status as secondary; but see also Lacocque, Daniel, 178–80, and Collins, Daniel, 347, who argues that the prayer’s liturgical quality indicates an earlier writing that was incorporated 1

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is integral to the chapter as a whole. They all point to signicant linguistic links between the introduction (vv. 1–3), the prayer (vv. 4–19), and the oracle (vv. 20–27) 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. 17–18, 27), Israel’s “iniquities” (*H, vv. 13–16, 24),23 “knowing” (=> )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. 17–18, though originally referring to the desolation of Solomon’s 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. Daniel’s use of Jeremiah’s 70-year prophecy (Jer 25:11/29:10) in vv. 2, 24–27 is clear. Yet Jeremiah’s 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 9:16–17.28 The concern for the temple’s 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. 23. Seow, Daniel, 136. 24. Jones, “Prayer,” 491. 25. Ibid., from E. Nestle, “Zu Daniel,” ZAW 4 (1884): 247–48. 26. Jones, “Prayer,” 491. 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 26:32–40, and Dan 9, via 2 Chr 36:21–23. 1


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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 9’s concern for the desolation of the temple. In Dan 9:24, Gabriel announces that 70 weeks—which, in context, means that each week is equal to seven years—are 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 temple’s profanation in the course of transgression (A3, v. 12) and the completion of transgressions ()JA9 )E9E in 8:23. 32. Montgomery, Daniel, 373. 33. Seow, Daniel, 147. 1

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important. The desolation, pictured as part of the emperor’s 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 host’s 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 makîlîm. Thus in Dan 8, the temple’s 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 prayer’s 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 community’s own experience, including God liberating it from Egypt (Lev 26:13; Dan 9:15a), its refusal to obey the commandments and statutes (Lev 26:14–15; Dan 9:5, 14), its failure to keep the covenant in contrast with God’s faithfulness to it (Lev 26:15, 42; Dan 9:4–11), and Yahweh’s subsequent desolation of the sanctuary and the city (Lev 26:31–33; Dan 9:17–18). 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 prayer’s 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 Daniel’s prayer, the hiddenness of God is a reality for the community in the delement of the 34. This chapter’s reliance on Lev 26 in combination with Jeremiah’s 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 desolation by a punishing third force, rather than seeing the desolation as the immediate result of the community’s sin. 36. Balentine, Hidden God. 1


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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 community’s guilt in failing to appease the divine face (9H9J J?A, Dan 9:13). Evoking the Aaronic blessing on Num 6:24–26, 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 God’s 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 God’s hand (5J) sharply contrasts with the imagery of the hand in Dan 2:31–45 and 8:25d, where divine agency is executed without hands. Yet its use in this context draws on the deuteronomistic tradition of God’s mighty hand or arm as the liberating presence in Israel’s 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 activity”40 with individuals, 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 consequences of such a break in communication…may be catastrophic in the extreme.”41 While the lament psalm presents itself as the experience of individual piety, Daniel’s prayer applies the language to the community’s experience 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 IV’s 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, 38–40. See below for a further discussion of these inscriptions. 40. Balentine, The Hidden God, 57. 41. Ibid. 1

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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 dislocation, 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 dislocation 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 catastrophe 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 God’s 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, 8:23–25 focused on the face and hands of Antiochus IV, so that his adversive presence haunted the chapter. Daniel 9’s anthropomorphisms, however, displace Antiochus from the center of the text’s energies. Reclaiming the traditional language for Yahweh’s saving activity, the prayer reorients the reader to the divine face and hands, and, by extension, to the possibility that God’s 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 community’s sins and results in the loss of the divine presence within the sacred space of the cult as well as in the loss of God’s liberating actions with the people. For the oracle, however, the crisis is characterized by the loss of those structures that would mediate divine rule—temple and anointed high priest. Desolation is caused by foreign political agents, working with members of the community (vv. 26–27) who dismantle the political and cultic institutions that mediate the divine presence and will. While these divergent constructions might appear to be contradictory readings of the experience of desolation, 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 delement of the temple. Indeed, the prayer and the oracle together claim that the entire community is culpable for these events. 42. So also in 2 Kgs 24:20. 1


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Divine absence, from the cult or from the historical sphere of liberating 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 Yahweh’s 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 overwhelming 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. 44. 45. 46. 1

Burnett, “Question of Divine Absence,” 215–35. Balentine, The Hidden God, 153. Ibid., 172 (emphasis added). Glatt-Gilad, “Yahweh’s Honor,” 67–68.

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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 horn’s aggression, the vision and the interpretation deferred the resolution until the end of the interpretation. The focus on the little horn’s power and success virtually eclipses all evidence of divine activity. The vision nally asserts divine incomparability at the end of the chapter by depicting 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 God’s institutional presence, is never fully recaptured 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 history—apostasy, oppression, crying out, and deliverance. This same narrative cycle is recounted and foreshadowed in other uses of the penitential prayer, such as 1 Kgs 8:46–50. 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 community’s 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 deliverance. In such a circumstance, Yahweh’s righteousness and Yahweh’s mercy are at odds.47 In 9:14, Daniel ascribes righteousness to Yahweh because he punishes the people for their sins. God’s 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. Yahweh’s 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. 48. Walter Harrelson, “Honor,” IDB 4:305–6. 1


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unsettling that the penitential prayer pleads with God to act in mercy. Indeed, the prayer pleads that God consider God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 inalienably God’s.”51 By raising the conundrum of divine honor, the prayer tries to affect God’s 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 Jeremiah’s 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, “Yahweh’s 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 connection between this theme and the possibility of divine weakness in the face of enemies, that motif is not raised in Dan 9. 50. Towner, Daniel, 139. 51. Ibid. 52. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Carroll, When Prophecy Failed; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 508–11; Seow, Daniel, 139. 53. Seow, Daniel, 139. 1

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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, Jeremiah’s prophecy has not yet “failed.” As Wilson understands it, Jeremiah’s 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 Wilson’s 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 exile’s 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 Daniel’s knowledge of exile’s 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. Jeremiah’s oracle in its original context conveyed the extraordinary length of the exile—70 years—in contrast to the public expectation of a two-year exile. In comparison, the 70 yearweeks must have registered as even more extraordinary to the community 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 restoration 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 résumés function to reframe and reorganize chaotic experiences to alleviate confusion, see Newsom, “Past as Revelation,” 40– 53; Hall, Revealed Histories, 489–511. 56. Wilson, “The Prayer,” 97–98. 1


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Even so, it is notable that the oracle does not counter the expectations of the reading community in quite the same way that Jeremiah’s 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 Jeremiah’s 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 8’s framing of the desecration in terms of prolonged 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 restoration 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 prayer’s 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 community. 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 Yahweh’s laws and punishment for those who disobey. Conversely, 57. Daniel Smith-Christopher, “Reassessing the Historical and Sociological Impact of the Babylonian Exile (597/587–539 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), 117–25. 58. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology, 117, briey describes the formal character 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

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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 community’s shameful acts, but exemplies God’s 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 miscarriage of justice. Yahweh’s 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 prayer’s 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): 201–18. The connection between the appeal to Yahweh’s name or reputation in times of distress and the dynamics of honor and shame is discussed by Glatt-Gilad, “Yahweh’s Honor at Stake,” 63–74. 60. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology, 121. 61. Ibid., 122. 62. I cannot agree with Smith-Christopher’s conclusion that, through the narrative 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 exercising 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 makîlîm 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,” 345–61. 1


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righteousness and human shame. The prayer makes clear that the community’s righteousness is non-existent, and it is also deemed non- meritorious in any case (v. 18b; see also Deut 9:6). Instead, the contrast between the honor status of Yahweh and humans is maintained throughout 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 community’s experience of negative shame, that is, of public humiliation and loss of honor through exile and abandonment. Yet, the prayer’s assertion that this has happened through the community’s own failure is also the basis of a positive shame. Since positive shame is marked by the appropriate concern for one’s status with respect to a superior party, it necessarily involves a sensitivity for one’s potential and real failings with respect to Yahweh.63 Such sensitivity is not possible without awareness of Yahweh’s covenant demands. And indeed, in the prayer’s construction of shame, the community’s past failures were inextricably tied to its lack of awareness (=B 3=/( Atbash Codes,” Bib 85 (2004): 503–22; and also Hector Avalos, “Daniel 9:24–25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications,” JBL 117 (1998): 507–11. The text of the inscription, from Leuchter’s translation, “Jeremiah’s 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

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the temple in Babylon lie desolate for 70 years. Yet, after Marduk’s heart was changed, he reduced the time of its desolation and commanded that Esarhaddon rebuild it after eleven years. Another example of a vaticinium 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 9:24–27. The vaticinium in each case features a pattern of “divine alienation–divine reconciliation”74 that involves the desolation/abandonment of the temple for a set number of years because of the god’s 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 commanded 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 god’s word of restoration is veried 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 Assurbanipal’s temple restorations in his References, 35–41. 73. Text A vi 107–124, 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 her—in 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 Esarhaddon’s inscription. 77. Ibid., 38. This is certainly the case with Esarhaddon’s inscription, which, as Leuchter, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy,” 509–10, points out, dates from the second 1


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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 predetermined 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 supposedly 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 indicated by the use of certain kinds of cuneiform play, such as the inversion of numbers or the use of atbash codes in Esarhaddon’s 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, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy,” 510. See also Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles,” 157, 172, 185. 79. Kaufman, “Prediction, Prophecy, and Apocalypse,” 221–28. Dating to the time of Awel-Marduk (562–560 B.C.E.), this text describes how a bad king arises who removes a god from Uruk’s 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., 224–25. 81. So Leuchter, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy,” 508 n. 20, 510. 82. The king’s or prince’s “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,” 508–10, demonstrates this responsibility and explores its relationship to Dan 9. 83. Nissinen, References, 41; Leuchter, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy,” 510. 1

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Daniel 9’s 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 yearweeks 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 Esarhaddon’s 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. Jeremiah’s use of the prophecy had already put a new spin on this equipment by using it to delegitimate the Davidic king in the face of Babylonian dominance.87 If, as Leuchter argues, Jeremiah’s 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 makîlîm. 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 makîlîm 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, 120–23. 86. This critique is subtly present in ch. 9 through the framing of historical and political events in vv. 24–27, in which legitimate temple leadership ends with the murder of the anointed one, Onias III. 87. Leuchter, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy,” 517. 88. Ibid. 89. Wilson, “Prayer of Jeremiah,” 95–98; 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 (“Yahweh’s Honor,” 73–74). 1


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The depiction of the makîlîm 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 makîl par excellence. In the rst place, Daniel’s prayer that gives way to oracle is not only catalyzed by Jeremiah’s writings, but resembles the prophet’s roles as intercessor (i.e. Jer 32:16–25) and recipient of divine oracle (Jer 32:26–44). Moreover, 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 8:15–53), Ezra (Ezra 9:6–15), and Nehemiah (Neh 9:6–37)— king, priest, and governor, respectively. In the oracle, the makîlîm 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 temple’s sacricial schedule. Daniel’s prayer is not simply offered in the direction of the temple, but constitutes an extension of the sacred structure itself that replaces, or lls the gap of, the tmîd 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 makîlîm 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 Jeremiah’s 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 God’s 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 90. Towner, Daniel, 130. 91. Davies, “Reading Daniel Sociologically,” 359–61. 92. K. Bergman, K. Lutzmann, and W. H. Schmidt, “C35,” TDOT 3:109, 117. 1

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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= JE 3 J? H C35 4J (v. 25) )=HCJ EH?3=H 3J9= C35 4>*> = 3 =J= 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 translation 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


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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 power—Edom, 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 *H C5=, 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 vocabulary of knowledge has been far more important than the vocabulary of evil; so 1

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3. Loose Ends and the Function of the Final Résumé In turning to Dan 10–12, 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. 10–12 function as a midrashic interpretation of ch. 7—they 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, however, 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 meaning 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 IV’s decree criminalizing Judaism. This in turn creates the contradictory perception that Antiochus rules also Montgomery, Daniel, 473; Lacocque, Daniel, 240–43; 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 angel’s 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 knowledge of it; it is not to be found by the many in the frantic search for guidance at the end. 23. Goldingay, Daniel, 284. 24. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 117. 25. This fact is the insight of Collins, “The Meaning of ‘The End,’ ” 91–98. 1

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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 perception of divine absence and Antiochus’s success is acute enough to undermine Dan 7’s 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 conguration of the events and their ending. Daniel 10–12 is unique within this cycle of visions because it has no distinctive historical catalyst. By the time of this vision’s 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, Antiochus’s 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 movement 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 recur…we 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 resolution. Thus the work of the last vision is to achieve an ending to all the penultimate ends. Literarily, Dan 10–12 establishes closure to the project through its manifold references to previous chapters. References to “in the third year,” “King Cyrus,” and Daniel’s 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,” 218–19. 27. Hartman and DiLella, Daniel, 189–90; Goldingay, Daniel, 265; Seow, Daniel, 153–54. That some commentators believe ch. 1 to have been added after 1


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Within this larger attempt at closure, Dan 10–12 also brings completion to the last subsection of the book that began with Dan 8, which registers a decisive turning point in the book’s 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 readerly and formal expectations concerning the end of empire and severs the connection between divine power and divine immanence. Its conclusion is marked by loose “ends”—a narrative ending and an eschatological ending that fails to satisfy the reader’s 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 10–12 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 vision’s 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 8’s 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 8’s 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, Hoffnung in Bedrängnis, 190–91; Collins, Daniel, 373–404; 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); Daniel’s posture and trance (10:8–10//8:16–18); the description of angelic princes and the heavenly host (10:13//8:11); the angel’s purpose to make known the future end (10:14//8:17, 19); the angel touching Daniel (10:18//8:18); the shattering of Alexander’s 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?H4C9, 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 king’s 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 10:12–18), 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,” 131–56; Newsom, “Past as Revelation,” 40–53. 1


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the résumé 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 dominance, 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 paradigmatic 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 11:10–12). The ongoing cycle of aggression, containment, and stalemate are needed, in the logic of the résumé, 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 (11:18–19). 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 (11:21–22), whose career emulates his predecessor’s.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 profanes 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. 40. Collins, Daniel, 383. 41. According to the résumé, 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. 25–26), his scheme to form an uneven alliance with the Egyptian prince is ultimately unsuccessful (v. 27). Signicantly, this move echoes the alliance 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. 18–19). See Clifford, “History and Myth,” 24. 42. Ibid. 1

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aggression reaches its zenith when Antiochus IV’s 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 résumé shows the nal king of the north reenacting the hubris of the Assyrian king (Isa 10:12–15). The king’s overweening pride brings the cycle to its climax and signals the imminence of denitive containment. As Antiochus IV’s 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. Antiochus’s career signals the eschaton’s 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 commander Michael comes to effect deliverance of the people and judgment upon the wicked. b. The Local Context for Divine Power The apocalyptic historical résumé 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 résumé does this in the rst place through the epithets “king of the north” and “king of the south.” These epithets designate two geographically 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 north’s 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 Antiochus’s activities there, it highlights Antiochus’s role in bringing about the crisis of the institutional presence of the divine and the makîlîm’s response. The résumé spends a signicant amount of time describing the king’s disruption of the institutional means of divine presence with the people: the cult, its personnel, and Torah observance. It relates the ousting and death of the high priest Onias III 43. Newsom, “Historical Résumé,” 230–31. 44. Clifford, “History and Myth,” 24. 45. Redditt, “Daniel 11,” 471. 1


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(11:22), the attack on Jerusalem in the aftermath of Antiochus’s defeat at the hands of the Romans (11:30), Antiochus’s alliance with the Jerusalem aristocrats (11:30), the desecration of the Jerusalem sanctuary (11:31), the disruption of the tmîd (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 king’s autonomy and legitimacy. During the period recounted in 11:30–44, the résumé 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 (11:37–38) and even exalt himself over and against the God of gods (11:36). Yet the résumé’s use of “the period of wrath” (11:36) makes it clear that Antiochus’s power is, in fact, derived from the divine plan and not self-originating. It is the divine schema for history that contrasts with the king’s futile scheming (11:24, 25, 27, 28). The concept tries to establish two realities about the nature of Antiochus’s power. In the rst place, the period functions to assert that his successes are not his own but are due to God’s structuring of this period.46 In the second place, the period shows that the divine is working to limit Antiochus’s power in time (11:36). The period of wrath does not signal that Antiochus IV is a retributive 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 makîlîm, who suffer death and captivity and betrayal by those who join them insincerely (11:32–35). In Dan 8 and 11, God’s 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 résumé 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. 47. Lemke, “Near and the Distant God,” 544. 1

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period as that time in which the community must endure the accumulating 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 theological 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 IV’s end is not enough, however, to create full consonance for the community. A vision of the future capable 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 king’s 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 résumé, already established in Dan 2:44–45, 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 11–12 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 completion 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 subordinate from Dan 8 and reordering the cosmic spaces that the little horn had disturbed. And yet, in addition to rectifying Dan 8’s emplotment of history, Dan 11–12 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 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 41–42. 49. Newsom, “The Historical Résumé,” 223. 1


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the sense of anticipation, the perception that there will be more to the story after the end of Antiochus and Seleucid rule. Daniel 11–12 must therefore describe a future period that offers discontinuity from imperial time and yet is continuous with the community’s expectations 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 discontinuity while also nurturing expectations for the future. In this regard, there is a signicant reworking in 11:21–12:4 of ch. 8’s use of the rebellious subordinate narrative.50 Daniel 11:21–45, like Dan 8, frames the career of Antiochus using the elements and language of the rebellious subordinate available to the community from Isa 10:12–19; Isa 14:3–20, and Ezek 28:1–19.51 These shared elements include the usurper’s 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 confrontation 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 containment 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 50. Clifford, “History and Myth,” 23–26. 51. So also Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 15; Niditch, Symbolic Vision, 228–29; Goldingay, Daniel, 202. 52. Page, Cosmic Rebellion, 140–58, 193, 199. I nd convincing Page’s 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. Antiochus’s 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 Antiochus’s usurpation of the crown from his nephew. 53. Clifford, “History and Myth,” 25. 1

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speak of Antiochus’s end. Instead, 8:25d invokes the motif of “without 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 vision’s energy, which never restores the angelic host, the temple, and the Torah. The emplotment of the rebellious insubordinate in Dan 8 is largely inverted. The nal revelation asserts that Antiochus IV will meet the punishment 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 victim’s 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 *J H. The nal vision goes even further than this in asserting the divine containment of the rebellious subordinate. In wedding the oracle of deliverance in 12:1–4 to the historical résumé,55 the writer of the nal vision links Antiochus IV’s end to the battle and judgment scene in vv. 1–4. Although this scene contains no explicit reference to Antiochus 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 III’s 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 insubordinates that was already established in Isa 66:24, from which Dan 12:2 picks up the term *H C5,56 and also in Isa 14:16–20, where the rebellious 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 résumé 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): 389–90; Gammie, “Classication, Stages of Growth,” 203; Davies, Daniel, 63–65; Hasslberger, Hoffnung in Bedrängnis, 135–41; and Paul L. Redditt, “Calculating the ‘Times’: Daniel 12:5–13,” PRS 25 (1998): 375. Collins, Daniel, 371–72, however, disagrees. 56. Collins, Daniel, 393. 57. Page, Cosmic Rebellion, 136–37. 1


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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 12:1–4, 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 résumé, 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 text’s focus from Antiochus to the work of Michael and the destiny of the makîlîm. It is this shift that allows a transformative vision of the future. Michael’s work reverses the fortunes of the king’s war on the heavenly host and the makîlîm community. In Dan 12:1, Michael arises (5>; cf. 11:21) as Antiochus’s 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 deliverance in 12:1–4. Nickelsburg’s form-critical treatment in Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, which argues for the juridical and martial character of the scene remains a classic discussion. Collins, Daniel, 394–98, and more recently, Andrew Chester, “Resurrection and Transformation,” in Auferstehung = Resurrection: The Fourth Durham–Tübingen Research Symposium “Resurrection, Transguration, and Exaltation in Old Testament, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity” (Tübingen, September, 1999) (ed. Frank Avemarie and H. Lichtenberger; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 47–77, provide overviews of the emerging issues. These include: (1) The origins and sources of resurrection thinking— Is it foreign or home grown? (2) The extent of those resurrected—Who 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, 11–14, argues that one should read 5> in 12:1 as indicating Michael’s 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. 18:9–12 who stands in court to give testimony. While there is juridical concept at work in this passage, I am not convinced that Michael’s leadership performs this role. In the rst place, Dan 7–12 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

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heavenly battle in 12:1 focuses on Michael’s 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-deication (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 heavenly 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 makîlîm, the verse compares them to the heavenly host in order to emphasize, among other things, the image of elevation and exaltation. The makîlîm, 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 (10:20–21). 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 discussion 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 inherently denite, see Waltke and O’Connor, Introduction, 240. 62. The meaning of the statement that the makîlîm will shine like the stars has been the subject of much debate. Arguments in favor the view that the makîlîm will enjoy astral immortality as heavenly bodies do not take into account the use of simile here. Cf. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:196–97; Collins, Daniel, 393; Michael Moore, “Resurrection and Immortality: Two Motifs Navigating Conuent Theological Streams in the Old Testament (Dan 12:1–4),” TZ 39 (1983): 29–30. 1


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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 problem despite the assertions of divine power by the résumé, for in the visions of Daniel the activity of the divine must always work within two distinct yet related contexts—the world-historical and the local. Within the résumé, the assertion of God’s 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 divine’s distance from human agents and agencies. The work of the divine cannot be identied with the actions or plans of emperors or empires. This incomparability 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 correspondence 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 prerogative 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-anthropomorphic terms. Indeed, the divine is not just non-humanistic; it is altogether invisible in chs. 10–12. 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 invisible. The passage makes only three mentions of God, and these are statements describing loyalty to God rather than depictions or characterization 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

63. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 131. 1

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This invisibility makes sense when one considers how form and function go together in Israelite and Mesopotamian political ideologies. In the ancient Near East and the biblical tradition, the ruler’s rights and powers are often connected to the ruler’s resemblance to the divine.64 The legitimation of human agents and agencies often happens through the theomorphic depiction of those agents, as in Gen 1:26–28, and also in the anthropomorphic depiction of divine power. Daniel 10–12, 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 God’s incomparability, however, God cannot remain wholly detached from human community and institutions. 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 7:9–14, can no longer be used to convey divine immanence because it threatens 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 available 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 mantic 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, “Ezekiel’s Anthropology,” 119–41, argues this persuasively with respect to Ezekiel’s merkavah vision and the priestly vision of humanity in Gen 1:26–28. 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 ambiguities, 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. 9:14–16, 19–20. 1


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able to realize fully the restoration of the temple. In fact, Dan 9 gives evidence of the community’s growing ambivalence towards this institution and its ability to mediate divine presence and power.66 Signicantly, Dan 10–12, determined as it is to reassert other expectations disrupted in Dan 8 and 9, does not revision the restoration 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 resurrection. This is all the more interesting given the centrality of Jerusalem, 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 Makîlîm 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. Michael’s name, = <J> (“Who is like God?”) is an immediate afrmation 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 Michael’s own paradoxical relationship to God. The name 66. Davies, “Reading Daniel Sociologically,” 359–61. 67. Collins, “The Meaning of ‘The End,’ ” 95–96. 68. M. A. Sweeney, “The End of Eschatology in Daniel? Theological and Socio-Political Ramications of the Changing Contexts of Interpretation, ” BI 9 (2001): 123–40, arguing for the priestly concerns of Daniel’s 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 Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 21, who discusses Michael’s name as a form of the rhetorical question “Who is like God?,” which signals God’s 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 11–12. 1

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asserts that Michael is not God, not El. He is the commander of God’s 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 God’s activity in the historical realm. He has assumed the role of divine warrior and deliverer, once the prerogative of the Most High (cf. Deut 33:2–3; Judg 5:4–5; Ps 68:8–9; 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 10:9–11; Ezek 1:28–2:1; 8:3). He also takes on the appearance and description of God offered in Ezekiel (cf. Dan 10:5–6; Ezek 1:26–28; 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 makîlîm establish their legitimacy by showing themselves to be, collectively speaking, an ironic embodiment of divine power and presence. 72 Adopting the prophetic role of the suffering servant of Isa 52–53, 73 the makîlîm attain their power by humbling themselves 71. For discussion of Daniel’s use of Ezekiel, especially in the nal vision, see Seow, Daniel, 118–28, 159–62; Lacocque, Daniel, 207–8; and Goldingay, Daniel, 284, 287. 72. Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 135–36. Contra Davies, “Reading Daniel Sociologically,” 357–59, 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 considerable and includes: Bentzen, Daniel; H. L. Ginsberg, “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant,” VT 3 (1953): 400–404; C. Westermann, Isaiah 40– 66 (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 253–69; 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): 97–103; 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), 231–57; P. D. Hanson, Isaiah 40–66 (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1995), 153–69. While the consensus is that Daniel is comparing the makîlîm 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 11:40–12:3,” in The 1


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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 Daniel’s experience with the angel in 10:4–12. Lacocque and Goldingay both note the way in which the visionary, as the paradigmatic makil, humbles himself before the angel in 10:8–12. 74 In dramatic contrast to the king’s self-elevating behavior, Daniel prostrates himself before heavenly power, his appearance becoming disgured (cf. Isa 52:14; 53:2), but is raised up by the angel (Dan 10:10–11). As the revelation continues, the work of the makîlîm as a group emerges. While the king undermines the faithfulness of the people, the makîlîm nourish righteousness among the rabbîm, even to the point of suffering death (Dan 11:32–33; cf. Isa 53:11–12). The king attempts to exalt himself above all gods and is made to suffer eternal reproach; in the oracle, however, the makîlîm 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 makîlîm 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 makîlîm 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=E5 , 5J), acknowledging (C

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