If the first chapters of Daniel are historical, then Daniel became and reigned as Babylon’s governor before and during the desolation of of Judah or Judea. If that is the case, then we can go back to looking at him as another of those pamphlet illustration figures, right? Bearded, cone-capped, staring out at us with blazing eyes holding a writing instruments and scrolls, prophecies written in concert about an understood over-riding plan...
Maybe. But there are still complications and serious implications. Depending on which set of circumstances you think is counter factual, it will make a difference how you take what follows.
The famous “Song of the Exiles”, Psalm 137:1-9, no doubt of very late origin reads in part :
[1] By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept…
[7] Remember, Yahweh, to the Edomites cost, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Down with it! Raise it to the ground!”
[8] Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, a blessing on anyone who treats you as you treated us…
I’ll leave the last line to recollection or look up. Safe to say, this Psalm represents deep bitterness; if toward Edomites, toward any Babylonian allies or agents. The day of Jerusalem was either the fall when the Neo-Babylonians breached the walls ( 9 th day of the 4 th month June-July, 587) or the day of the month when the temple was burned down (10 th day of the 5 th month – same year). I don’t mean to debate here of 587 vs. 606; because for several other dates I wish to draw from secular sources and apply some dating consistency since this discussion relies on assertions at the beginning of chapters 1 and 2 in Daniel. It is stated:
Dan 1:1: In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon marched on Jerusalem and besieged it. The Lord let Jehoiakim king of Judah fall into his power, as well as some of the vessels belonging to the Temple of God….
[3] From the Israelites, the king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring a certain number of boys of royal or noble descent. .. suitable for service at the royal court. …They were to receive an education lasting three years, after which they would enter into royal service…
Daniel 2:1 In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had a series of dreams, he was perturbed by this and sleep deserted him. … [13] On publication of the decree to have the sages killed, search was made for Daniel and his companions to have them put to death.
Jehoiakim reign: 609 to 598 Nebuchadnezzar: 605-562
Among Assyrianologists, D. J. Wiseman is probably most sympathetic to the historicity of this opening among the problems which he addresses [D. J. Wiseman, “Some Historical Problems in the Book of Daniel,” D. J. Wiseman, ed., Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel. London: The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 9-18.]. Other issues discussed in these 9 pages, were touched on as well in another recent topic [“Has anyone read Thucydides beside the author of Daniel?’] started a month ago. In fact, speaking as an advocate for the late [2 nd century BC] composition for Daniel (and I should emphasize that!), I can say that a lot of pro and con arguments were presented. Some of either nature I was not previously aware of and I believe are worth further thought. But for now, stand by for, despite assumption of historicity, stand by for some more critique.
In the case of Daniel 1:1, other than the book itself there is no explicit reference to siege of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 BC based on the chronology relative to reigning kings. The Babylonian Chronicle gives Nebuchadnezzar’s first siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC in his 7 th year and Jehoiakim’s 11th. Nonetheless, according to Wisemen (implicit):
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the Babylonian Chronicle which, although not giving the date of the departure of the Babylonian army in 605 BC for Carchemish, shows that it did not return from a prior campaign until Shebat (January-February) 605 BC.50 The battle of Carchemish, which opened up the road across the Euphrates, is dated between Nisan (April) and Ab (August) 605 BC by the same Chronicle and is most likely to have taken place in May-June of that year.51[a reference]
With the precise information available from the Babylonian Chronicle it is clear that the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish and, overtaking a part of the army which had retreated to Hamath, continued to pursue stragglers ‘so that not a single man escaped to his own country’. The Babylonians overran the country from the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt (2 Ki. 24:7), though Josephus expressly adds ‘excepting Judea’.52 The Babylonian Chronicle claims that ‘at that time Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole of the Hatti-land’ (i.e. Syria-Palestine).53 If, as has been suggested, Daniel is here using the Babylonian system of dating (postdating, allowing for separate ‘accession’ year) while Jeremiah (25:49; 46:2) follows the usual Palestinian-Jewish antedating (which ignores ‘accession-years’), 54 there is no discrepancy. On the other hand, it has been argued that in Jeremiah 25:1 ‘the first year’ … may be interpreted as ‘the beginning year’ (i.e. accession) of Nebuchadrezzar and therefore in agreement with Jeremiah 46:2. 55 Whichever solution is accepted there remains the question of the siege of Jerusalem in this year, an event unattested in the Chronicle. It could be argued that since [p.18] the Babylonian Chronicle recording the events of 605 BC is primarily concerned with the major defeat of the Egyptians, a successful incursion into Judah by the Babylonian army group which returned from the Egyptian border could be included in the claim that at that time Nebuchadrezzar conquered ‘all Hatti’. If so, Daniel 1:1 would imply that the Babylonian king was himself present. This is not improbable since the energy of the young king in leading his troops is attested frequently in the Chronicle.56
The argument against a specific Babylonian siege rests on silence just as must, at present, any defence of it. It is not impossible that the phrase ‘and besieged it’ (wayya„s£or `a„leha„) could here have the meaning ‘and cut it off’ or even ‘showed hostility towards it’.57 The extant historical data does not allow any dogmatic assertion against the historical accuracy of this verse.
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Very well. Then if we accept all this to be true and that a certain Daniel was among those entered into Babylonian service circa 605 BC with graduation set for 602, we find that almost immediately he and his three colleagues set off for fast track advancement in the Neo-Babylonian power structure.
According to the account, after the 2nd year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Daniel has elicited a statement of faith from Nebuchadnezzar and the king made him “governor of the whole province of Babylon and head of all sages of Babylon”. At Daniel’s request, the king entrusted the affairs of the province of Babylon to Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego. "Daniel himself remained in attendance on the king.” That’s handing over a lot of power to a group of kids who were supposed to have been hostages – and then rather inconsistent with what he will be doing over the next 2 decades. Then Dan 3 is an episode in which Daniel’s three friends face burning for not falling down before a golden idol. They are saved by miraculous intervention.
Aside from the issue of origin or historicity of Dan 2, it is noted that the earliest versions of this book include chapters written in Aramaic and subsequently translated into Hebrew. In Dan 2 and 4, the Old Persian word “raz” for “secret” appears in the Hebrew text (and in no other Biblical book); and in Dan 3, the announcement about adoration of the golden idol is addressed to both governors and “satraps”, another term from the Persian era. It is also curious that Nebuchadnezzar should consider Babylon as a province rather than the capital region, but let us digress no further on that.
Why Daniel should write of his youth in Aramaic in the third person using Persian terms and then switch to Hebrew in later chapters in the first person, as some would suggest, I cannot imagine, but there still remains an ounce or more of basis for the stories of Daniel whenever they were recorded or how. So let us continue.
If Daniel arrived in Babylon in circa 605 BC, for many, myself included, his arrival in Babylon is confused with the FALL of Jerusalem in 587. It is not explicitly stated in Dan 1 as 605 -But if the chronology of kings is taken into consideration with the conventional historical interpretation, Daniel as described, arrives and comes to power in Babylon many years BEFORE Jerusalem is destroyed. While Daniel’s unwillingness to breech dietary laws is consistent with Jewish opposition to enforced Hellenization during Antiochus Epiphanes reign in the 160s BC, as is opposition to idolatry as well, concessions considered apostasy, the book of Daniel completely sidesteps Daniel’s role as a high servant of Nebuchadnezzar in the midst of his two campaigns against Judah, the second ending with its complete “desolation”. Instead, we have a picture of a high officer of Babylon who later serves its next conquerors. That Ezekiel might speak derisively of the besieged King of Tyre [Ez 28:5 "So you are wiser than Daniel ["or Danel" in some translations] ] seems strange when this siege commences with the fall of Jerusalem and Daniel is serving the agent of both military campaigns. Ezekiel's wrath is for Tyre's betrayal of Jerusalem under siege.
For some he reason elects not to return home.
In the OT there are some characters who had somewhat similar roles to play. Esther pleads for her people’s safety before her husband the Persian King. But in the case of Esther, mass slaughter of her people is prevented, if not their enemies. In contrast to Esther Daniel did not do very well. The entire kingdom is disposed of by Nebuchadnezzar whom Daniel supposedly convinced that his God was the God of gods in two instances and two chapters. But owing to the circumstances of his arrival as in Babylon as a hypothetical hostage, with Judah in revolt in 597 and 587, it is a wonder he and any other hostages reputedly taken in 605 were not executed. Nehemiah and Ezra, who can be considered as agents of the Persian monarchy, figure in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple . But strangely, considering the number of recorded revolts to Persian rule - in Egypt, Ionian Greece, the Mediterranean islands, the Far East, the city of Babylon - not a single one is recorded in the land where Davidic rule was terminated. The Judeans must have liked being part of the Persian Empire. From all indications, a couple of centuries respite.
In recent times (WWII) it is difficult to find an exact analog to the role which Daniel had taken on, should this all be true. In Vichy, France, Marshall Petain ruled in behalf of the German Reich, but was not groomed from adolescence for such duty; quite the contrary. At the war’s end, when he returned to France from Germany via Switzerland, he was tried for treason and sentenced to death, the sentence commuted to life imprisonment where he died in 1951. When the Soviets helped Germany divide Poland in 1939, and when they executed the captured Polish officer corps at Katyn Forest the following year, they also retained certain promising hostages to train as communist leaders for a future Polish communist state – and their fate since is not quite as clear. But it was not the Soviet but the German army that was directed to lay Poland desolate. In this 20th century company, if we take the historical timeline for Daniel as quite literal, the unwritten part of the book concerns his role as a Babylonian collaborator - which brings us back to Psalms 137. Would he be regarded any better than the Edomites by contemporaries?
Among the Gentiles who would insist over present day TaNaKh construction that Daniel was a prophet, the first century AD Pharisee historian Josephus is often cited. Josephus before the Judean war of 66-70 had connections in Nero’s court, but he was engaged in defense of the fortress Jopata before capture by Vespasian. By his account he claimed that he prophesied the Roman general would one day be emperor and so Vespasian spared him. With Vespasian’s son Titus, also bound for the throne, he observed and recorded the siege of Jerusalem - on the Roman side. Josephus might have had a strong affinity for Daniel after all.
Not having faced the brutal choices of Josephus, Marshall Petain or Daniel, I would not wish to judge them. But their compromise would dampen my desire to build statues in their memory or base my religious principles on their exploits. So which is better: Daniel the figure of a book that is a cycle of parables or Daniel the valued minister of Nebuchadnezzar during the destruction of Jerusalem?