Daniel is a 2nd century BCE book written about events from the 6th century BCE. Ostensibly, it is a published diary of the visions and actions of a Jewish noble, Daniel, in exile in Babylon, portraying “the end times”, with a message of hope that God will intervene to save the Jewish people in their current oppression, just as they did in his time.
- While the dates given are off from actual events by about a decade, this is a novelization. It’s the time of the sacking of Jerusalem, and Nebuchadnezzar, prior to packing the Jews off to Babylon, selects out four Jewish teens of noble class, who are handsome, fit, and smart, to be educated and enter his personal service (wink, wink?). They agree to housing and education, but elect to avoid the fare of the king’s table, which likely included pork, and subsist on a vegetarian diet. They thrive, they learn, they become the king’s trusted advisors, giving better advice than the entire cadre of astrologers, soothsayers, and wizards that were already in the king’s employ. Might be because they dealt in reality rather than magic thinking.
- Nebuchadnezzar has a wild dream, and he’s sure it means something. He calls his advisors and demands that they tell him its meaning. They ask for details, he replies that if they were truly in touch with the spirit world as they claim, they’d know his dream and be able to interpret it. They protest, he orders all of them killed, including Daniel and friends. Daniel has a dream that night, and guessing it might be the same as the king’s asks for an audience. He relates a dream of a giant statue, blah, blah, blah, and interprets it as the future story of the kingdom and the kings to come afterwards. The king, surprised, acknowledges that the dream is the same. Daniel says, hey, it wasn’t me, it was God. Nebuchadnezzar realizes he’s been wrong about the God of the Jews and puts Daniel in charge of the various mystics and advisors.
- Nebuchadnezzar (I’m getting tired of typing his name out) has a golden statue built to match the one in his dream and orders everyone in the kingdom to come and bow down to it and worship him and his own god. Those who don’t do so are thrown into a furnace and burned to death. It is reported to him that three leaders of the Jews have refused to do so, and when he questions them, they defy him in the name of God. He has them bound, the furnace heated to “seven times its normal heat”, and has them thrown in. The furnace is so hot that the men who took them there are burned to death simply by being close. But the three, and a glowing fourth figure, are seen wandering about in the flames and they emerge unscathed. Neb (can I call him Neb?) realizes he might be up against something here, and orders that the Jews aren’t to be castigated for worshiping their own god.
- Neb has another dream, this time of a glorious, giant tree, but it gets cut down, leaving only a stump, while in the background, a heavenly “Watcher” looks on. Daniel is once again called to interpret the dream, which he basically sums up as – King Neb is building an immense, powerful kingdom, which will flourish, but then soon he will find that he and it are crushed by the power of God, leaving behind just the core of its existence, to be rebuilt by someone else. Neb is not cool with this, but goes about his kingly business. A year later, Daniel’s prediction comes true, and we close the chapter with Neb recognizing the power of God versus his personal arrogance.
- Neb, apparently, has been put out to pasture – quite literally if the text is to be believed. His son, Belshazzar, now sits on the throne and is, visibly, a spoiled, rich brat, who thinks nothing of desecrating the sacred objects that his father looted from the Temple. In the midst of a feast, a giant shadowy hand appears and writes the words Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, on the palace wall. None of his advisors understand it. Daniel is brought, and after first praising Nebuchadnezzar for finally recognizing the power of God, and interprets the words to mean that God has recognized Belshazzar is off the rails in his debauchery and disrespect, and that his time is at an end. That night, someone (not identified) assassinates Belshazzar.
- The kingdom is taken over by Darius the Mede. There’s a lot of historical argument over who he was – at no point is he referred to as king, and it seems the most likely is that he was a temporary sort of governor or viceroy of the kingdom until a new king was crowned. He, like the two kings prior to him, found Daniel’s council invaluable and elevated him to supervise the other advisors. They, jealous, tricked Darius into signing a proclamation that anyone who worshipped another god, other than Darius’, be thrown into a lion’s den. They forced him into a corner on this (more evidence of his lack of kingliness), and Daniel was thrown in. Darius fasted and prayed that Daniel would survive, and he did, God having sent an angel to protect him. Then Darius had all the advisors involved in the conspiracy, along with their families, thrown into the den, where they were killed and eaten by the lions.
- It’s Daniel’s turn to have a dream, and he dreams of four beasts carried in on four winds, followed by a whole kerfuffle, and the arrival of a mythic, glowing figure who conquers them all. The interpretation is the rise of four empires – Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and their eventual downfall. Who the mythic figure is has led to much interreligious debate – some believing him to be the first appearance of the Messiah and some the first appearance of Jesus. Others believe that he was the archangel Michael, uniting the empires under God’s, and Israel’s, rule. Power up the space lasers, we’re coming for you!
- Daniel has another vision that I would sum up as a giant unicorn attacking and killing some goats, followed by a conversation with the Archangel Gabriel. It all sort of comes down to a repeat of yesterday’s page – the four empires being destroyed, and a new one (Israel) arising to unite and rule them. I mean, we’ve now had two of the three principal archangels, Michael and Gabriel (the third is Lucifer, and we all know where that one’s going), give Daniel the same message. But so far all he’s done is kept the info to himself and gone about his daily business. Seems like he doesn’t want to rock the boat with his cushy position with the king, no?
- Daniel is musing over his dreams, and Babylonian exile, and decides he needs to have a little chat with God. He launches into a long apologetic screed about all the ways that the Jewish people strayed from God’s path, and are rightfully being punished, but, he does want to remind God that they were promised it would be a for a set, limited time, and, you know, that’s coming to an end, and, you know, maybe it’s time to rebuild Israel, you know, just in case, you know, you forgot?
- Daniel fasts for three weeks and then has a vision of the Archangel Michael coming to him. Michael tells him to stand tall, to be ready for the coming changes, and imparts some of his strength to Daniel. Then he announces he’s off to “deal with” the king of Persia, which I think is currently Darius, from a few pages back. And, he forewarns Daniel that once the Persian empire is gone, the Greeks will swoop in and take over and they’ll be the next to deal with. One wonders why the archangels don’t just get rid of all four supposedly evil empires at once and get it over with.
- Daniel basically sums up the coming events. One by one, the four empires will vie for control, and each will be defeated by one of the others, stronger than it. When it comes to the last, it too will fall to outside forces (not named here, though earlier in Daniel it was named as the people of Israel), as its king becomes over-confident, complacent, and strays from any righteous path.
- Daniel continues his dreamt conversation with the archangels, who swear him to silence and secrecy, while revealing that God, and the heavenly host, will sweep the land of the evil empires, restore Israel to prominence, raise (some portion of) the dead, some of who will be restored to life, some to heaven, some to hell (kinda sorta). When asked when this is likely to happen, the archangels demur, but suggest it will be somewhere around three years after some unspecified conditions are met. We’re still waiting. End scene.