The Development of a Late Date for Daniel
The view of the book of Daniel commonly held by critical scholars was actually forecasted by Porphyry, a third century Syrian philosopher. Porphyry’s view of Daniel is seen in the commentary on Daniel by Jerome. In his commentary, Jerome wrote against Porphyry. In the process, Jerome describes Porphyry’s position. According to Jerome, Porphyry argued that the book of Daniel was actually written during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.[3] But if this is the case, then Daniel was obviously written in such a way as to give the appearance that it had been written earlier. The purpose of this, Porphyry proposed, was to give credibility to the prophetic material in the book.[4] Porphyry reasoned that the events which are described in Daniel’s prophecies and which corresponded to actual historical events were actually written after those events had taken place.[5] But, he says, the author of Daniel wrote them as though they had not yet happened in order to give the appearance that the prophecies in Daniel were reliable. Porphyry believed that the author of Daniel wanted his readers to think that certain historical events described in Daniel had been predicted with great accuracy. He believed that the author’s motivation for this was to convince those who read the book that they should heed his message regarding events which had not yet come to pass. The readers would reason that if in the past the book had demonstrated a supernatural ability to accurately predict future events, then chances were good that the book’s predictions about the future would also come to pass. But, Porphyry believed, the prophecies relating to events that were yet future at that time were not fulfilled in the way that the author had suggested they would be.[6] Nevertheless, Porphyry was refuted by Jerome and it seemed that the traditional view—the view that Daniel was written during the time of the Babylonian captivity—would win the day.
Nevertheless, with some modifications, Porphyry’s hypothesis was revived during the eighteenth century. During this time, Anthony Collins, an English deist, promoted a view very close to that of Porphyry in his 1727 book, The Scheme of Literal Prophecy.[7] However, Collins argued this case much more carefully and offered some significant arguments with which those who have held to a more traditional understanding of the authorship of Daniel have had to contend.[8] This view then became refined and popularized by the German commentators Bertholdt and von Lengerke.[9] Brevard Childs, who provides an overview of the scholarly work that developed this idea of a late Daniel, indicates that “these scholars argued on the basis of language, history, theology, and logic that the book was a pseudepigraphical tractate written in the Maccabean age to encourage the Jews in their resistance against the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The prophecies of Daniel were vaticinia ex eventu, prophecies-after-the-event, and were used as a device by which to ensure authority for an apocalyptic message.”[10] This position was then further popularized in England by the commentaries of Farrar and Driver.[11]
The Response of Conservatives
As might have been expected, many scholars of a more conservative stripe sought to defend the early date of the book of Daniel. These included such scholars as Hengstenberg, Havernick, Keil, Pusey, and R. D. Wilson.[12] The debate, it seems, was highly polemical and it seemed that little love was lost between the two camps. The words of E. B. Pusey summarize the conservative position well. Pusey wrote:
The book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battle-ground between faith and unbelief. It admits of no half-way measures. It is either Divine or an imposture. To write any book under the name of another, and to give it out to be his, is in any case forgery, dishonest in itself, and destructive of all trustworthiness. But the case as to the book of Daniel, if it were not his, would go far beyond even this. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied, on a most frightful scale, ascribing to God prophecies which were never uttered, and miracles which are assumed never to have been wrought. In a word, the whole book would be one lie in the Name of God.[13]A New Conservative Response
While the vast majority of critical scholars continue to maintain that Daniel was written during the second century b.c., the majority of confessional scholars hold to the traditional early dating of the book of Daniel.[14] For this reason it is significant that several recent evangelical commentators have also posited a second century date for the book.[15] This new evangelical position is represented by its main proponent, John Goldingay. He writes:
Critical scholarship has sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly approached the visions with the a priori conviction that they cannot be actual prophecies of events to take place long after the seer’s day, because prophecy of that kind is impossible Conversely, conservative scholarship has sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly approached these visions with the a priori conviction that they must be actual prophecies because quasi-prophecies issued pseudonymously could not have been inspired by God; it has also approached the stories with the a priori conviction that they must be pure history, because fiction or a mixture of fact and fiction could not have been inspired by God.[16]Here Goldingay attempts to take a mediating position between the traditional approach of conservative scholars and the approach of critical scholars. While he wants to distance himself from the anti-supernatural bias which, he says, leads some critical scholars to reject the notion of predictive prophecy, he also wants to leave open the option that these prophecies may have been recorded after the events themselves. Goldingay suggests that to discount the possibility that these prophecies may be ex eventu is to impose an expectation of historical accuracy that is extrinsic to the text.
However, it does seem that Goldingay has overstated his case on several levels. The reason, Goldingay says, some conservative scholars hold this expectation is because they believe that “fiction or a mixture of fact and fiction could not have been inspired by God.”[17] However, this is clearly overstated. Conservative scholars have long recognized the use of both fiction and a mixture of fact and fiction within biblical texts. Few if any would suggest, for example, that the content of Jesus’ parables corresponds to actual historical events. Scholars recognize that parables are generally fictitious stories given to illustrate a particular point. But although it seems that Goldingay has overstated this case, his point remains well-taken. However, it is not so much a matter of whether conservative scholars have discounted the possibility that biblical authors could write fiction or a mixture of fact and fiction, rather, it is a question of genre. Is the genre of Daniel one in which the readers would have anticipated a correspondence to historical events regarding the seemingly historical descriptions of these elements in the book? If so, then, to what degree?
Ultimately, it is Goldingay’s position that there is no intent on the part of the author of Daniel to deceive those to whom he is writing.[18] He says that there was no expectation of truthfulness on the part of the writer’s audience regarding the statements which describe these quasi-prophecies as prophetic. In support of this, Goldingay argues that “ancient Near Eastern parallels to visions such as these…are all pseudonymous quasi-prophecies, not actual prophecies of known authorship. This suggests that there is no reason to assume that the authors would necessarily have intended—or hoped—to deceive their hearers regarding the visions’ origin; the latter would have known how to hear them.”[19] But it may be that Goldingay is again overstating his case. It seems that there is very good reason to believe that ancient authors who used ex eventu prophecy may have intended to deceive their audiences. This is what critical scholars have understood about the nature of ex eventu prophecy for the last two centuries. It is believed that ex eventu was used so that the authors’ audiences might be more inclined to heed their messages. If the author was perceived to have predicted events accurately, then the audience would have reason to take prophecies about events which had not yet come to pass more seriously.
The fact that pseudonymous quasi-prophecies existed elsewhere in the ancient Near East simply does not provide a basis for believing that they were recognized as such or that the authors intended them to be recognized as such. Ultimately, one must ask why these kinds of texts were written and decide whether or not the intent of the author was to deceive his audience. It is very frustrating that Goldingay has not offered an alternative explanation as to why these authors may have implemented these kinds of quasi-prophecies. He says that the ancient audience would have “known how to hear” them, but he does not explain how they could have heard them or what significance they would have ascribed to them. On one level, he admits this, saying “we have no hard information, only guesses, as to the motivation or psychology that lay behind intertestamental pseudonymous apocalyptic.”[20] But he does not seem to recognize that this sword cuts both ways. If a lack of understanding regarding the nature of pseudepigraphic quasi-prophecies should cause one not to assume an entailment of deception, as Goldingay argues, then the same lack of understanding should also cause one not to assume that the ancient audiences would have recognized quasi-prophecies for what they were.
It should also be noted that Goldingay’s hypothesis does not seem to be able to stand given Tremper Longman’s conclusions regarding fictional Akkadian autobiographies. Longman indicates that fictional Akkadian autobiographies were patterned after nonfiction Akkadian autobiographies which, he says, “intended their audiences to regard their compositions as nonfictional.”[21] And so it is unfortunate that Goldingay does not provide an alternative explanation by which these texts might be understood in a way that does not entail an expectation of truth regarding these prophetic components on the part of those for whom they were written.
Goldingay also suggests a second argument for his position which more is theological in nature. He notes that God generally speaks into historical contexts in a way that is relevant to those who are living at that time. He says that God “reveals key truths about the End that are relevant to people’s present lives. He declines to give information about the future of a concrete or dated kind, insisting that people live by faith.”[22] He states further that “it is difficult to see how the God of the Bible would reveal detailed events of the second century to people living in the sixth, even though he could do so.”[23] But while it may be true that God often provides a prophetic word concerning the immediate future, there are a number of important examples in which God speaks in explicit detail about events that are in the distant future.[24] This is evident, for example, in many of Isaiah’s prophecies concerning the Messiah.[25] Furthermore, it seems that Goldingay is begging the question. If it is assumed that he is right about the fact that a sixth century Daniel would conflict with this view of divine revelation (and this itself is merely a concession), then one of two options remains. Either it should be understood that the book was written at a later date or the idea that God only provides a prophetic word for the immediate future must change. Goldingay says that the book was written late. Why? Because, he says, this is how God works. But if Daniel is early, then these prophecies in Daniel clearly show that this is not how God works. Ultimately then, whether he takes the book to have been written at a late date or whether he adopts a different understanding of divine revelation, he will have to look to some other way to arbitrate between these two views. It simply will not do to say that God does not work in this way. This simply begs the question.
Conclusion
Goldingay has proposed two primary arguments for a late dating of Daniel. First, he has suggested that ex eventu prophecy was common in the ancient Near East and was, therefore, not necessarily an attempt by authors to deceive their audiences. These audiences, he indicates, would have had familiarity with this genre and would have consequently recognized it for what it was. Second, Goldingay suggests that God only speaks with such detail into the historical contexts in which the biblical authors live. Therefore, he says, an early date for Daniel would be out of character for God. He simply is not the kind of God who would give detailed information about events that remained four hundred years in the future. However, neither of these two arguments seems to have much strength. The conclusion in the first argument simply does not follow from the premise. The fact that ex eventu prophecy was relatively common does not mean that those who read it would have recognized it as such. And the question remains, if it was not meant to deceive, what was its purpose? Goldingay has not provided an answer to this question. With respect to Goldingay’s second argument, it is a case of question begging. If one assumes that God would not speak in detail about events that remained four hundred years in the future, then of course Daniel must have been written later. However, if judgment regarding the possibility that God might speak this way is postponed, then an early date would provide evidence that God does, at times, speak in detail about events which are in the relatively distant future.
These things having been said, it should also be noted that initial reactions by conservative scholars regarding the late date of Daniel may have been something of an over-reaction. While Goldingay’s hypothesis does not seem to be well supported by his arguments, it does seem to be a legitimate attempt by a confessing evangelical scholar to account for the material found in the book of Daniel. If Daniel contained prophecies that were pseudepigraphic ex eventu prophecies, and if these components did not carry with them an expectation of historicity by modern standards, then it seems that the confessional scholar could recognize this without compromising the doctrine of inerrancy.[26] Nevertheless, it does seem that the unanswered questions left by Goldingay would indicate that more work needs to be done.
Endnotes
[1] For example, see James L. Crenshaw, Story and Faith: A Guide to the Old Testament, (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 365; John J. Collins, The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, (Boston: Brill, 2002).
[2] See Edward J. Young, The Prophecy of Daniel: A Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 19; Charles Boutflower, In and Around the Book of Daniel, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963), 1-2; Tremper Longman III, Daniel, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 21-24; Stephen Miller, Daniel, (NAC 18: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 22-43.
[3] John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 25.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Collins, 25; Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 611.
[8] Childs, 611.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 612.
[12] Ibid., 612.
[13] E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet: Nine Lectures Delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Oxford, with Copious Notes, (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1885; repr., Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1978), 75.
[14] Collins, 26. Collins indicates that the most notable work by conservatives who hold to the traditional view as of late includes the work of Young, Baldwin, Boutflower, Wiseman, Kitchen, Hasel, and Shea.
[15] Most notably, Lucas and Goldingay. See Ernst C. Lucas, Daniel, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002); and John E. Goldingay, Daniel, (WBC 30: Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989).
[16] Goldingay, Daniel, xxxix.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., 321.
[19] Ibid.
[20] John E. Goldingay, “The Book of Daniel: Three Issues,” Them 2 (1977), 49.
[21] Tremper Longman III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography: A Generic and Comparative Study, (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1991), 203.
[22] Goldingay, Daniel, 321.
[23] Ibid., 321.
[24] This has been observed by Wenham. See Gordon J. Wenham, “Daniel: The Basic Issues,” Them 2 (1977), 51.
[25] Ibid.
[26] This is very similar to the situation of Gundry’s position that Matthew contained non-historical elements. Mark Noll’s account of this seems wise and applicable to the situation of Goldingay. See Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 167-69.
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