[AS 3.2 (2005) 241-83] DOI: 10.1177/1477835105059096 The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel and the Linguistic Character of its Aramaic∗ Jan-Wim Wesselius TheologischeUniversiteitKampen The biblical book of Daniel tells its readers about the life and vi- sionsofDaniel,aJudeancourtierandvisionary,andofthreefriendsof his during various short periods in the reigns of the Babylonian kings Nebuchadnezzar(inabout605-603BCE,maybealsoalittle later)and Belshazzar (in about 541-539 BCE), an enigmatic king Darius, ‘the Mede’ (539) and the Persian king Cyrus (in about 539-537). Daniel’s long life (according to the information provided by the book at least ca.622-537)enclosestheentireepisodeoftheExileoftheJudeansand of the inhabitants of Jerusalem (about 587-539), though the Exile is mentioned only implicitly, if at all.1 ∗Earlierversionsofpartsofthisarticlehaveappearedas‘Daniel’[inDutch]in J.P. Fokkelman and W. Weren (eds.), De Bijbel Literair (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2003),pp.251-261,andas‘Hoedevalsebeschuldigingeenechtebeschuldigingwordt. DerelatietussendebeschuldigingeninGenesis38-44enDaniel3en6,endebedoel- ing van het boek Daniel’ [Dutch], in C. Houtman (ed.), De leugen regeert...Valse beschuldiging in de Bijbel en in de wereld van de Bijbel (Kampen: Kok, 2004), pp. 58-80. Some of the arguments presented here are already in J.W. Wesselius, ‘TheWritingofDaniel’,inJ.J.CollinsandP.W.Flint(eds.),TheBookofDaniel: Composition and Reception, 2 vols. (FIOTL 2; Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 291-310, id., ‘Discontinuity, Congruence and the Making of the Hebrew Bible’, Scandina- vianJournaloftheOldTestament 13(1999),pp.24-77,andinearlierpublications quoted there. Detailed discussions of many issues touched upon only briefly here will appear in my forthcoming monograph, Language, Style and Structure in the Book of Daniel. The present article is meant to be a succinct, but basically com- pletepresentationofmynewmodeloftheliteraryandlinguisticnatureoftheBook ofDaniel.BiblicaltextswillbequotedaccordingtotheRevised Standard Version (rsv), with a more literal translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic where that is usefulfortheargument. 1Butitshouldbenotedthataccordingtothechronologyofthebookitselfthe (cid:2)c SAGEPublications(London,ThousandOaksCA,andNewDelhi),2005 242 Aramaic Studies 3.2 (2005) The book is in its present form best described as a kaleidoscopic work. The story is not told in one continuous text, but in ten episodes whichexhibitgreatvariationinlanguage,styleandliterarygenre.The main division in the book is between six stories about Daniel and his three friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah in the first six chapters, and four accounts of visions seen and told by Daniel in chs. 7–12 (10– 12 clearly belong together as one unit). The first two chapters and the accounts of the visions are dated by king and regnal year, the others are dated mainly by the mention of the ruling monarch. The book thus looks like a kind of dossier about Daniel, with various documents about episodes in his life and his visions in more or less chronological order, with only loose connections between them, usually in the form of references to the events of earlier chapters.2 InDaniel1thereadersaretoldthatkingNebuchadnezzarofBaby- lon lays siege to Jerusalem and takes it in the third year of the Judean king Jehoiakim, which according to Jer. 25.1 should be identical with Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year, the period between his actually be- comingkingandthebeginningofhisfirstregnalyearattheBabylonian New Year festival in the autumn.3 On this occasion the vessels of the Temple and probably also Jehoiakim himself (the text is ambiguous) are brought to Babylon. This event probably corresponds with what is narrated in 2 Chronicles 36.6, where it is noted that Nebuchadnez- zar ‘bound him in fetters to take him to Babylon’. It is not entirely Exile lasted for 70 years, which would make Daniel’s life and career even longer, seealsobelow. 2ThereisavastamountyofliteratureaboutthebookofDaniel,ofwhichIcan mentiononlyafewtitleshere:G.Ch.Aalders,Daniel [Dutch](COT;Kampen:J.H. Kok, 1962); A. Bentzen, Daniel (HAT, 19; Tu¨bingen: Mohr, 2nd ed., 1952); J.J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Hermeneia; Mineapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); P. R. Davies, Daniel (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985); J. E. Goldingay, Daniel (World Biblical Commentary, 30; Dallas: Word, 1989); J. A. Montgomery,A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; Edinburgh:Clark,1926).Twocollectionsofimportantarticles:A.S.vanderWoude (ed.), The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (Leuven: Peeters, 1993) andCollinsandFlint,TheBookofDaniel:CompositionandReception.Specifically about the literary character of the parts of the book: S. Talmon, ‘Daniel’, in: R. Alter & F. Kermode (eds.), The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: BelknapPress,1987),pp.343-56. 3Notethatthisveryprecisedateisalmostforcedontothereader,becauseDaniel 2,atleastthreeyearsaftertheeventsofthebeginningofch.1(Dan.1.5),isdated to Nebuchadnezzar’s second year (2.1). See already Bentzen, Daniel, p. 17, who rightlynotedthatthereisnocontradictionbetweenthedates. Wesselius The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel 243 clearwhetherthis isathirdconquestofJerusalemintheyear605bce (beside the well-known occasions of 598 and 587), or a purely literary reflectionoftheepisodein2Chronicles36(itisinterestingtonotethat the ambiguity about Jehoiakim’s fate is found there also).4 In Baby- lon, the story in Daniel continues, some of the Israelite princes who live there (and at least some of which have apparently been brought there on the same occasion) are chosen to be educated in ‘the letters and language of the Chaldeans’; this last word always indicates the class of professional scholars and dream-interpreters in the book of Daniel.AmongthemaretheJudeansDanielandhisthreecompanions Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They refuse to be contaminated by the food of the court, which does not meet the standards of their religion (a connection with kashrut seems to be suggested, but is not notedexplicitly), andshow that they canthrive onvegetablesand wa- ter. Finally they are introduced to the king, and he is amazed by their wisdom and knowledge. In the second chapter the king has a dream, and, after they un- succesfully try to persuade him to tell the dream to them, he wants hisChaldeans totellhim boththedreamandits interpretation.When they prove unable to do so he gives orders to kill all the wise men of Babylon, including Daniel and his companions. Daniel, however, is informed about the dream and its interpretation through divine inspi- ration, and he tells them to the king. A huge statue of the materials gold, silver, bronze, iron and iron mixed with clay, which the king saw inhisdream,symbolizestheempireswhichwillariseintheworldfrom the Babylonians onward. In a situation of great political division the kingdom of God, represented as a great stone in the dream, will de- stroy all those empires. Deeply impressed, king Nebuchadnezzar gives honour to Daniel’s God and appoints him and his companions to high positions. The third chapter starts with another huge statue, this time a real golden one which the king ordered to be set up, for which all his sub- jects must bow down on the penalty of being thrown into a fiery oven. Certain Chaldeans accuse Daniel’s three friends (surprisingly, Daniel himself is absent from the story) of refusing to do obeisance to the statue. In a conversation with the king the three men concede this, but persist in their refusal. The king gets very angry and orders his servants to throw them into the oven. An angel, however, saves them 4Collins,Daniel: A Commentary,pp.133-34. 244 Aramaic Studies 3.2 (2005) and when they come out of the oven unscathed, the king orders all his subjects to respect the God of Daniel. Daniel 4, couched as an edict or proclamation of the king to all the nations of the earth, is the last chapter in which Nebuchadnezzar figures. He has a dream of an enormous tree which is cut down, with onlyits rootsremaininginthe earth,whichhis wisemenareunable to interpret, but Daniel explains it: the king will become insane and be driven away from other humans, until the moment he recognizes the power of God. Thus it happens and the king again orders obeisance to Daniel’s God. The events of Daniel 5 take place on the very last day of the king- dom of Babylon. During a royal banquet king Belshazzar gets drunk and orders to bring the vessels of the Temple in Jerusalem so that he and his courtiers can drink from them. At once a hand appears which writes an inscription on the wall of the palace. Daniel is able to read andinterprettheinscription:itcontainsthreenamesofunitsofweight, mina,shekelandhalf-shekel,whichheinterpretsasreferringtotheend of the reign of Belshazzar and of the kingdom of Babylon. In that very night the city is taken by the Medes and the Persians and Belshazzar is killed. The king of Persians and Medes, ‘Darius the Mede’, who is often supposed to be personally referred to in the inscription,5 then receives the kingship over Babylon. Many aspects of ch. 3 return in Daniel 6. Again there are certain unnamedChaldeanswhoutteradenunciation,inthiscasethatDaniel keeps praying to his God in spite of a royal edict, treacherously pro- posed by them to the king, that everybody is to refrain from making a requesttoanyhumanbeingorgodforthirtydays.Dariushasnochoice but to let Daniel be thrown into the lions’ den. But when he comes back to the den on the following morning, it turns out that Daniel has been saved by an angel, and the king orders the accusers with their families to be thrown to the lions. Like Nebuchadnezzar before him, king Darius now gives praise to Daniel’s God. TheatmosphereofthepredictionofDaniel2returnsinch.7,dated tothefirstyearofkingBelshazzar.Thistimetheriddleisnotpresented inadreamoftheking,butinoneofDanielhimself,whichisexplained by a heavenly being. Four animals symbolize again four empires, the 5K. Galling, ‘Die 62 Jahre des Meders Darius in Dan 6.1’, ZAW 66 (1954), p. 152: the sum of the weights mentioned in the inscription is probably 62 shekels, which number coincides with the age of Darius at the time he conquers Babylon (Dan.5.31[rsv 6.1]). Wesselius The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel 245 lastofwhichwillhavetenkings.Thelastofthesekings willbe soevil, thathewilldisturbeventheorderofnatureitself.Hispower,however, willbeendedthroughthecomingofGod’sempire,whenjudgmentand powerwillbegiventothe‘Holyofthehighest’,probablyadesignation forthepeopleofIsrael.Bothhereandforthefollowingchapterswewill present only an outline of the detailed visions and their explanations. In the third year of Belshazzar Daniel has a new vision (Dan. 8), this time apparently not in the form of a dream. A ram with one horn is defeated by a he-goat, and from the latter’s horn arise four others, after which from one of these comes a small horn, which does terrible things and stops the service of sacrifices. The angel Gabriel gives the explanation:thehe-goatisthekingofGreece,whowilldefeatthekings ofPersiaandMedia.The Greek empirewill be divided into fourparts, and at the head of one of these there will be a very evil king, who will even oppose God himself, but will be utterly defeated in the end. WhenDaniel,inthefirstyearof‘DariustheMede’,readsthewords of the prophet Jeremiah that seventy years will pass after Jerusalem’s destruction (Dan. 9.2), in a prayer he confesses sins on behalf of his entire nation and begs for the restoration of Jerusalem. Again Gabriel appearsandheexplainsthatontheonehandthewordofJeremiahhas beenfulfilledatthebeginningofDaniel’sprayer,butthatontheother hand this word refers to the remote future, not of seventy years but of seventy ‘weeks’ of years, 490 years, until the days of an evil monarch, who will interrupt the sacrificial service. The last episode in the book takesup three completechapters (10– 12). In the third year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, Daniel sees a vision of a celestial being. He falls asleep and when he wakes up, various divinebeingsspeakwithhim,andexplainthefurthercourseofhistory in great detail, of the Persian empire until the Greeks defeat it, and of the divided Greek empire again, but this time with the addition of numerous details about the evil king, who will interrupt the sacrifices and will commit all kinds of evil acts, until he will come to his end without human intervention. After the great oppression there will be a time of salvation for Daniel’s people. Daniel is ordered to seal the book until the time of the end, and is promised that he himself will rise again at that time (12.13). It has often been noted that the book is much more interested in the sequence of the great world empires, and in the time scheme of eventsinworldhistory,thaninspecificallyIsraelitehistory.Thoughnot everything is as clear as we would like it, the eschatological age which 246 Aramaic Studies 3.2 (2005) is referred to time and again seems to be identical with the period of oppression of the Jewish religion during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes around 165 bce. As noted from antiquity onwards,thedescriptionofsecondcenturybcehistoryiscorrectupto the great persecution under Antiochus, after which an eschatological age is expected. The book as a whole thus presents itself as pointing to an unfulfilled expectation of the end of history and the coming of God’s kingdom around that time on the basis of the predictions of Daniel in the sixth century bce. Whether this means that the book was at least partly written with this expectation in mind, in the short period between the persecution and Antiochus’ death, as maintained by most critical scholars,6 is outside of the scope of this literary and linguistic study. The events in the book itself range from the accession of king Nebuchadnezzar to the third year of king Cyrus; see below for a possible explanation of this time-frame. In spite of the apparent unity of the contents of most of the book of Daniel we see, as noted above, a bewildering variety of language, narrators and style in the twelve chapters of the book, which made a largemajorityof scholarsagreethat the book was put together by one or more redactors from various earlier materials, while they did not want to interfere too deeply in the texts which they used.7 The book contains parts in two different languages: 1.1–2.4 (until the word tymra, ‘in Aramaic’) and chs. 8–12 are in Hebrew, the part in betweenissurprisinglyinAramaic.TheAramaicpartofthebooklooks like a separate unity, among other things because a clear concentric structure can be recognized: predictions about the course of history in 2 and 7, martyrs’ stories in 3 and 6, and enigmatic predictions to the eastern kings about the direct future of their reign in chs. 4 and 5.8 This division, however, is clearly different from the one according to content, where, as noted above, the narrative chapters 1–6 are in contrast with the visions in 7–12. Between the chapters themselves, moreover, there are considerable differencesalso.Thestoriesin1,2,3,5and6aretoldbyananonymous 6E.g.Collins,Daniel: A Commentary,pp.61-71. 7One of the few scholars of a non-fundamentalistic background to defend the basic unity of Daniel in modern times was H.H. Rowley, in his ‘The Unity of the Book of Daniel’, HUCA 23 (1950–1951), pp. 233-73; reprinted in his The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old Testament (London:Athlone,1952),pp. 235-68;2nded.(Oxford:Blackwell,1965),pp.247-80. 8A.Lenglet,‘Lastructurelitt´erairedeDaniel2–7’,Biblica53(1972),pp.169-90. Wesselius The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel 247 narrator. As noted above, ch. 4 is entirely in the form of a letter, or rather a proclamation, of king Nebuchadnezzar to all the nations of the earth. In ch. 7 Daniel’s vision, which is told in the first person (‘I, Daniel’), is introduced by an anonymous narrator, but 8 and 9 start in the first person without any introduction, whereas the anonymous narratoragainintroducesthefirst-personaccountof10–12.Maybethe end of ch. 7, where Daniel tells about his reaction on the vision and its explanation, should be regarded as a transition to the first-person accounts of 8 and 9: in this way we are reminded that Daniel is still speaking. Another remarkable feature is that in ch. 3 the main person isnotDaniel,buthisthreefriends,whilenoreasonisgivenwhyDaniel is absent from this chapter, or the companions from ch. 4 and the rest of the book. By itself not problematic, but still remarkable is that the chapters are not in the exact chronological order: the events of 7 and 8 (dated to Belshazzar’s first and third years) precede those of ch. 5, which describes the last day of his reign. In the personal names we also see a certain degree of variation. In ch. 1 the readers are told that Daniel and his companions Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah receiveBabylonian names, namely Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, respectively, but the use of these names in the sequel seems to be rather arbitrary. The name of the king who takes Babylon for the Persians in 539 bce is probably given in two forms also, as Cyrus, ‘the Persian’, the historical name of this king, which we also encounter in the book of Isaiah (44.28 and 45.1), beside the enigmatic Darius, ‘the Mede’, the descendant of Ahasuerus (Dan.9.1),certainlynotthefamouskingXerxes,whoruledmuchlater (486–465), but either a fictitious earlier Xerxes or the great Cyaxares, the great-grandfather of Cyrus according to Herodotus.9 There has been an enormous amount of discussion about the supposed question oftheidentityofthisDarius,butweshouldprobablyturnthereasoning around: in an even minimally coherent literary text there is very little reason to suppose that Cyrus and Darius are different persons if we find the dates Darius 1 (Dan. 9.1) and Cyrus 3 (Dan. 10.1) one after the other, and the events at the beginning of the reign of ‘Darius the Mede’ seem to be those usually associated with Cyrus (see below). B.E. Colless has in my view convincingly presented the case for the 9Herodotus, Histories, I, 103-16. Aboutthe questionof this Ahasuerus see, for example, the balanced verdict in Collins, Daniel: A Commentary, p. 348, and the earlierliteraturementionedthere. 248 Aramaic Studies 3.2 (2005) identification of the two, though in my opinion it remains a mystery why Cyrus could be called ‘Darius’. One can note, however, that in this way the character of the book as a ‘linear composed dossier’ (see below)wouldbe underscoredoncemore.In this casethe difficult verse Dan. 6.29 [rsv 28] should probably be translated as: ‘So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius, namely the reign of Cyrus the Persian’.10 It can be added that for some of the arguments about the book of Daniel which are presented below, an identification of the two is helpful, though never essential: in all these cases more or less the same reasoning would be valid in the case of ‘Darius the Mede’ as a real intermediate figure between Belshazzar and Cyrus. Itisalsonotablethatthereareafewimportantlacunaeinthebook itself. It describes events during the reigns of kings at the beginning and at the end of the exile, but as noted above the captivity itself, whichstartedwiththethree(ortwo)displacementsofexileswhichare mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in 605, 597 and 587 bce, and ended through the famous edict of king Cyrus in his first year of office which allowed the exiles to go home again (2 Chron. 36.22-23; Ezra 1.1-4) is passed over almost in silence. This would seem to go a long way towards explaining why the image of king Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel is not the negative one to be expected for the person who destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, but a view which can be compared to the rather positive one in the book of Jeremiah, cfr. Jer. 27.6, ‘Nebuchad- nezzar, my servant’. We shall see below that there is more to the role of Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel. The provenance of Daniel andhiscompanionsisleftinthedark.Notonlyarewenottoldexactly how and when they arrived in Babylon, but the names of their fathers are not evengiven, which is highly unusual in the world of the Hebrew Bible, and would be even more so for princes from the royal house of Judah (Dan. 1.3 and 6). It is suggested at the beginning of the book that they came to Babylon with king Jehoiakim, but this is not said explicitly, and we can only guess after their family relationship with the last kings of Judah, though it seems indeed likely that in the book 10B. E. Colless, ‘Cyrus the Persian as Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel’, JSOT 56(1992),pp.113-26;cf.alsoL.L.Grabbe,‘AnotherLookattheGestaltof “DariustheMede”’,CBQ 50(1988),pp.198-213;D.J.Wiseman,‘SomeHistorical Problems in the Book of Daniel’, in: D. J. Wiseman a.o. (eds.), Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel (London: Tyndale Press, 1965), pp. 9-18. Note that the reasoning proposed by Colless is mainly of a literary nature, whereas earlierauthorsusuallyattemptedsomesortofhistoricalexplanation. Wesselius The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel 249 ofDanielthepredictiontokingHezekiahisfulfilled,‘Andsomeofyour own sons, who are born to you, shall be taken away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon’ (2 Kgs 20.18 and Isa. 39.7).11 In view of these observations, it is understandable that most schol- ars suppose that a complex history underlies this seemingly highly irregular state of the text of the book of Daniel. John Collins’ state- ment in the introduction to his and Peter Flint’s collection of essays on Daniel, ‘It is generally agreed that the tales in Daniel 1–6 are older than the visions in chapters 7–12, and are traditional tales that may have evolved over centuries’, is characteristic of the position taken by most researchers, and is only the starting point for the assumption of a number of editorial processes.12 It should be noted, however, that in view of the disagreement about nearly every aspect of the supposed redactions, Philip Davies’ words about the problem of the languages deserve attention: ‘The presence, and the distribution, of the two lan- guages in Daniel may be in the end inexplicable’, and might well have been extended to the entire problem of composition and origin of the book, though I will indeed attempt such an explanation here.13 Derivation of Table of Contents The unity of the book of Daniel, however, is surprisingly confirmed by the observation that the structure of the entire book mirrors the layout of two other works, namely the story of the life of Joseph in Genesis 37–50 and the biblical book of Ezra (i.e. the first part of the book Ezra-Nehemiah of the Hebrew canon). This is a complex and veryinterestingliterarystrategy,whichexplainsmanyoftheproblems of the literary form of the book: most of the discontinuous features noted above, which have traditionally been explained as the outcome of a complicated process of redaction underlying the present form of the book, turn out to be literary reflections of comparable traits of the other two compositions. Two remarks need to be made about this. Firstly it may be use- ful to point out that this is not an instance of a relatively vaguely 11Collins,Daniel: A Commentary,p.135. 12J.J.Collins,‘CurrentIssuesintheStudyofDaniel’,in:CollinsandFlint(eds.), The Book of Daniel, pp.1-15(5). 13P.R.Davies,Daniel,p.35.Abriefsurveyofvariousopinionsabouttheprehis- toryofthebookinCollins,Daniel: A Commentary,pp.24-38. 250 Aramaic Studies 3.2 (2005) defined process of ‘influence’ of one text on another, but that we are dealing here with a highly sophisticated literary emulation. As I will demonstrate, the author of Daniel wrote his book in such a way that as a whole it refers to other literary works within and outside of the Hebrew Bible, and within this framework contains numerous allusions to various elements in these other works. Secondly, the existence of numerousagreementsbetweenDanielandotherworks,especiallyEzra andthelifeofJoseph,ishardlysomethingnew.Manyofthem,infact, havebeencommenteduponinthevastliteraturedealingwiththebook of Daniel. What was completely new, by contrast, when I first pointed it out, is that these agreementsoccur exactly in linear order: this is an observationwhichcanbe repeatedandis hardly subjecttodoubt, and thus requires some sort of explanation in any case. The change of main person in Daniel 3 agrees with the same phe- nomenon in Genesis 38, the story about Judah and Tamar which in- terrupts the story of Joseph. Important elements of the narrative of Joseph’s life, such as all the revelations of what is to happen in the near and remote future and all the accusations uttered against the main persons, return in corresponding places in the book of Daniel; see Figure 1. The nature of the predictions seems to be comparable in all cases: the three episodes of double dreams which Joseph has or which are explained by him correspond with three riddles posed to the Babylonian kings, two dreams and one enigmatic inscription. Note that in Daniel all three thus assume the character of Pharaoh’s double dreaminGenesis41:anenigmapresentedbyGodtotheking,whichis explained by the Israelite courtier. Both in Daniel and in Genesis the explanation of these riddles has consequences within the cycle of sto- ries itself, whereas the explanation of the others becomes meaningful only after its completion. While these elements constitute part of the narrative texture of Genesis 37–50 only, they are the main motives in the corresponding chapters in Daniel. All the elements which occur in pairs in Genesis have been fused into one only in Daniel, such as the ‘double dreams’ of Joseph, of the steward and the baker, and of Pharaoh, the sexu- ally tinted accusations of Genesis 38 and 39 and the accusations of theft in 42 and 44. By contrast, the nightly prediction of Genesis 46 appears to correspond with the two visions of Daniel 7 and 8. In the substance of these elements some systematic shifts can be observed. We already noted the three riddles which God put before the kings, correspondingwiththreedifferentpairsofdreamsinGenesis.Thefour