Opus Dei 1972,
This has been a topic related to something that struck me like a lightning bolt several years ago. My background is not JW, but I was confronted with it in a relationship that fell apart. Before that I was not the least curious about these things. ...
Yes, Daniel had quite an impressive resume, didn't he. He worked for Darius the Son of Ahashuerus in chapter 9. Also, he saw service just before the arrival of Darius the Mede... And there was Nebuchadnezzar. But definitely NOT Nabonidus. As for Nabonidus's son, he always thought he was Nebuchadnezzar's and also that he was king.
If you look for historical validation of Daniel, then may I suggest that you check Thucydides or Herodotus. In the first book of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, in introduction the author writes that "the battle of Marathon was fought between the Athenians and Medes".
[In this case, it was not in the Penguine classic. Edited out. Try, for example, Strassler, the Landmark Thucydides. Chapter 1, paragraph 18. Or better yet, go to the original Greek. You don't have to be fluent to spot it.]
Who was king? Darius, Darius the First. From whence? From Persia. He had his own version of Mount Rushmore sculpted above a highway there declaring that he was a Persian and gave an account of his exploits. What was the year of Marathon? 490 BC. A consistent error or eccentricity, Thucydides in literal translation speaks of Persians as Medes about 50 times.
Nobody has ever given me an account of how any Mede got the name Darius or what it would mean.
But there were other Dariuses in the Persian line. In my Bible's index of persons, when it comes to Ahasuerus, it says, "See Xerxes." Xerxes was also called out by Greek historians (Herodotus) as a Mede in his account of the subsequent 2nd Persian invasion of Greece by Darius's successor. That's the same guy that's mentioned in Ezra chapters 4: 6-8. So let's see, when did this transpire? In the late 6th century AFTER the exiles have returned to Jerusalem?
If you look up Darius II, according to sources he reigned after Artexerxes I who was his father. Darius II reigned from 423-405 BC. Artaxerxes died in 424 on Christmas, but it wasn't celebrated back then. And another son Xerxes II followed him, only reigning for a month and half. Then comes Darius II. So I suspect that the notes in my New Jerusalem Bible have their problems too, but they are nothing compared to the problems of this book which resides among Writings and not among Prophets.
The reign of the third Darius was ended about a century later by Alexander the Macedonian, adopted for different reasons by another nationality - the Greeks as the Great.
The third Darius is about the only one that the text of Daniel does not seem to connect its protagonist with.
My conclusion is that the author(s) of Daniel got most of their ancient history via the filter of the Greek occupation of Judah in the second century. And when you hold up the claims made in Daniel to the same light as what others in the ancient world were writing, it does not reflect well on this work as an authoritative document about much outside of the 2nd century Seleucid occupation and tyranny of Antiochus IV. In fact its ideas about Babylon and Persia are largely incoherent and inconsistent myths written arbitrarily in 1st and 3rd person, Hebrew and Aramaic.
Daniel also appears to have signed up with Nebuchadnezzar even before the Babylonian King had a chance to level Jerusalem, whether it was 587 BC or 607 BC. So as a national hero he strikes me a little like Marshall Petain...
That's an awful foundation on which Protestant sects have rested much apocalyptic theology.
