Personally, I am inclined to disagree with practically everything Christalone said above.
About seven months ago engaged in a long discussion/debate with several other posters about the nature of Daniel:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/223784/1/Has-anyone-read-Thucydides-beside-the-author-of-Daniel
If you do not want to search through those pages, here are some more recent comments.
How you determine what the "majority" of Biblical scholars believe is going out on a limb. Let me illustrate:
Back in the late 19th century in America when Russell and Rutherford immigrated from their Presbyterian upbringings to that of the 2nd Adventist fold, the Baptist and Presbyterian founded seminaries and universities were sending their instructors to Europe to study Biblical languages at the centers of classical and archeological study. Two such emissaries returned with their viewpoints transformed: Baptist Crawford Russell Troy and Presbyterian Charles Augustus Briggs. Each after studying at the University of Berlin reported back that most of what was believed as inerrant ( such as Daniel) was very doubtful and did not hold up well to the same scrutiny given to other documents of antiquity. They were among the first Americans to be introduced to Europe's New High Criticism of the Bible. Troy found an academic appointment elsewhere and Presbyterians majorities subsequently tried Briggs for heresy. The point being, the majority of Biblical scholars who find Daniel to be essentially true have a vested interest in such. And there might even be a self-selecting process which has little to do with actual scholarship.
The genuine debate in the US about what evidence Briggs and Troy could cite was overtaken by the Darwinian controversies. Everyone too busy debating how related humans were to apes. Since Rutherford started his career with - and even dressed like William Jennings Bryan, who volunteered himself for the Scopes Trial prosecution, you can imagine what limb this forum is viewing the rest of the tree from.
Secular sources ( e.g., a typical encyclopedia such as Funk & Wagnalls or the Britannica ) would tend toward a 2nd century BCE origin, especially since Daniel does an awful job of "predicting" the past or the time one would assume he was writing the text ( when he is speaking in 1st person; sometimes it is in 3rd, or in Aramaic or Hebrew). Having recently audited a series of lectures on the Persian Empire, it is significant to note that the lecturer took exception to Daniel as a Persian empire source - even among Bible books - for the number of discrepancies in its narrative and the difficulty it had with identifying Persian or Babylonian kings. Near the end the lecturer spoke of how the Persian empire lived in the imagination of people with whom it had some contact. In this case, probably like that of the peoples of the US Atlantic seaboard with the British, Dutch and French colonies of the 17th century of which it once consisted.
As you will note in the above cross reference, much is made of Daniel's reference to Darius the Mede. And consequently, many in support of an apocalyptic view of past and future history come to the conclusion that there was an intermediate state between Cyrus the Persian and the last Babylonians which was run by this King. Daniel gives an account of his arrival in chapter 5 in variance at least with Isaiah (whom he never acknowledges). This state was not mentioned in Isaiah chapters 1-39 or the portions written much later, chapters 40-66.
One ancient historian backs up the author or authors of Daniel to a certain extent; that's Thucydies.
Thucydides at least, was convinced that decades before the Peloponnesian Wars that Greece was invaded by the Medes, and during that period, the time of the Battle of Marathon, the Persian king was King Darius. If you read the original or get the right translation, you will 50 or more examples of him calling the invaders Medes, even "Medianizing" Greeks.
The trouble is, that Darius in a monument 5o himself as big as Mt. Rushmore insists with documentation that he was a Persian. Not that it would have helped Daniel's case either way. This Darius (522-486 BC) followed Cyrus. In other words, the author of Daniel got his ancient history about Persia via the medium of Greek records. Second century BCE Judea was a Seleucid Greek province, ruled by the heirs of Alexander. Persecutions, desecration of the temple by a conqueror (Antiochus IV) and forced violations of food prohibitions are recorded in Maccabees more explicitly than the veiled references of Daniel. But Daniel seemed to have no idea of the outcome of the rebellion that followed.
The scrambling is pervasive. Whether Daniel arrives in Babylon in an early raid or after Jerusalem's fall, the text abounds with anachronisms. Even before Daniel graduates from school for Babylonian priests ( no astronomical information provided, but much about interpreting dreams), Daniel takes on a dream interpretation challenge in the second chapter and predicts a succession of kingdoms. The king is thankful for having this sorted out. He rewards Daniel and his fellow princes and professes his respect for Daniel's god. Nevertheless, if Daniel arrived "early", Nebuchadnezzar still eventually razes the Temple of this god to the ground and carries off the population of Jerusalem.
In the next chapter, (3), the King certainly has forgotten all about the god of Daniel and his set up an idol to which he calls all the governors including Daniel and his fellow Judaen princes... plus satraps of the kingdom to attend the dedication. ... SATRAPS. By the time SATRAPS are instituted by the Achaemenan-Persian empire (Darius I instituted a system of 20 of them), the captives in Babylon should have been freed to return to Judea to rebuild Jerusalem.
In chapter 8, the ram and he-goat are discussed in the context of an event in the 3rd year of King Belshazzar. Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus the last Neo-Babylonian king. So the chronicle is bogus - unless someone would like to provide a stone tablet in the British Museum or elsewhere that is dated to the reign of Belshazzar rather than his father. The calendar is based on kings; not their heirs or lieutenants.
In chapter 9, the entry is dated to the first year of Darius, son of Artaxerxes/Aheuserus. That would be Darius II. Daniel is still fretting about when the Hebrews will be allowed to return to Jerusalem. Obviously this is NOT Darius the Mede. But this Darius reigned from 423 to 404 BC. This is no longer an issue. Read Ezra.
This chapter also introduces one of criteria by which the Hebrews determined who was a "prophet" and who was not. Those active after the reign of Artexerxes were NOT - and the TaNaKh (the Hebrew Hebrew scriptures) reflects this by placing Daniel among the writings and not among the Prophets. Thus, for modern day Jews, it is not a question of dating Daniel, but whether it is simply a set of stories like other writings.
It should also be noted that as late as the 180s or 190s BCE when the Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Ben Sira was written, when the prophets are enumerated in chapters 46-49, Daniel is conspicuously absent.
That reference perhaps is made to Daniel in Ezekiel ( Danel or Daniel in translations 28:9), I would be inclined to doubt. If Daniel is indeed already the high servant of Nebuchadnezzar at the siege of Tyre, then why would Ezekiel adress the king (28:2-3): " So you are wiser than [he], no sage as wise as you..." Tyre did not fall as did Jerusalem and there is not much prophecy about these laments over Tyre either.
Finally, there is reference to Daniel in Matthew, chapter 24, the book and chapter from which most things WTS emanate. Nowhere else in the NT is Daniel's name used. Here it is:
"So when you see the appaling abomination of which the prophet Daniel spoke, set up in a holy place ( let the reader understand), then those in Judaea must escape to the mountains."
What Daniel spoke of, I argue as do many, were events recorded in Maccabees I and II. Jesus warns that they could happen again: desecrations in the Temple accompanied by war and terrible suffering. This unquestionably happened within three decades with the second destruction of the temple experienced under Roman siege. It's a separate issue of how the second temple destruction came to be predicted in the New Testament repeatedly. But it is strange, is it not, that in all the accounts of rebuilding the Temple, no OT prophets seem to step forward to speak of the second temple's eventual doom. And Christians for all of their pre-occupation with "prophecy" don't seem to give this issue much attention. Not the problem of the now favored, I suppose.
For the sake of apocalyptic theology, prophecy is woven into an elaborate garment that seems to go on and on. The inferences taken from Daniel and Revelation a millenia or two ago are different from the ones we take living millenia later. Yet we are united with people of the past by applying a morbid element of our imaginations in an exercise of futility - and making decisions that would not have been warranted otherwise.
Have to go.
