A couple of thoughts on Daniel

(Note to readers: we've been instructed to do some blogging for one of my classes this semester, and I figured, hey, I already have a nerdy baseball blog set up, might as well do it there. You are welcome to ignore these posts unless you too are interested in the literature of ancient Israel.)

One of the problems that readers of the book of Daniel may face is a sense of overfamiliarity. Coogan correctly notes how many everyday figures of speech come from this book: “the writing on the wall,” “feet of clay,” and so on. Then there are the familiar scenes, often (perhaps somewhat mysteriously, considering their intense violence) taught to children in Sunday school: Daniel in the lions’ den, rescued by his God, or the three young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, walking in the fiery furnace with a mysterious fourth figure “with the appearance of a god,” later identified in the text as an angel.

The antidote to this familiarity, it seems, may lie in taking a closer look at the text itself. Certainly the familiar events and phrases are present, but the book of Daniel is full of so many odd scenes and wild visions that it could never be called commonplace. Most people, remembering some of these visions, think of Daniel as a prophet, and the book is indeed placed among the other prophets in Christian Bibles. Coogan informs us, however, that in the Jewish tradition it is placed with the Writings, which may lead us to notice that the book does not consist entirely of prophecies. In fact, one of its most notable features is that it consists of two genres: legendary heroic tales in chapters 1 through 6, followed by apocalyptic literature in chapters 7 through 12, where the prophecies are located. In addition, chapters 1 through 6 are stories told about Daniel, while the second half of the book purports to be written by Daniel himself. Because of these and other inconsistencies, the book is difficult to classify, and despite any sense of familiarity we may feel upon first glance, its strange and arresting images continue to intrigue and confound readers today.