“The Hebrew Bible: Daniel” (translated by Robert Alter)

Alter begins his introduction with an intriguing opinion, along with some history, “Daniel is surely the most peculiar book in the Hebrew Bible. It is also clearly the latest…. It is almost certain that the second half of Daniel was written between 167 and 165 B.C.E. because it refers in detail to the persecutions initiated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his suppression of the Temple cult.” Alter continues, “Daniel seems less an interpreter of than a decipherer of divine codes…. It is no wonder that both Christians and Jews used the Book of Daniel as their point of departure for intricate calculations about the end of days…. The other unusual feature of the book is that it is written in two languages. The opening is in Hebrew—the first chapter and the four initial verses of chapter 2. At this point, the text switches to Aramaic, the language in which it continues uninterrupted until the end of chapter 7. The rest of the book is in Hebrew…. In style, its Hebrew sections are seriously flawed. Its narrative is primarily a vehicle for laying out tales of miraculous aid that demonstrate God’s power…. In strictly literary terms, it is a book that falls far below what earlier biblical texts, both narrative and Prophetic, would lead us to expect. And yet Daniel is also a book fraught with religious importance for its age and beyond.”

In Daniel 3:25, Alter points out the unique description of a miracle, “I see four men walking unbound within the fire. Although there are from time to time miraculous events in earlier biblical narrative, this late text drastically steps up the supernatural nature of the miracle…. Human figures living in the here-and-now walk about in the intense flames, accompanied by a divine being.” In Daniel 5:24, Alter points to an instance of indirect action from God, which was becoming the norm for later biblical writing, “Then before Him was sent the palm of a hand. This formulation of indirect agency with the passive mode of the verb reflects a growing tendency in the Late Biblical period to avoid attributing anthropomorphic acts directly to God: it is God’s initiative, but the disembodied hand is somehow “sent” from before the divine presence.”

There are more instances of unique writing in the Book of Daniel. In Daniel 8:16, Alter relates, “Gabriel. It is only in this late period that angels are given names.” In Daniel 12:1, Alter notes, “all who are found in the book. The strong scholarly consensus is that this is the book of life. There are some brief hints in earlier biblical literature of such a book kept on high, but here it is made dramatically explicit.” Finally, in Daniel 12:2, Alter explains, “And many of the sleepers in the deep dust shall awake—some for everlasting life and some for disgrace and everlasting shame. This is famously, the first and only clear reference to the resurrection of the dead in the Hebrew Bible…. Bodily resurrection after burial here is accompanied by the idea of reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked.”