INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Alan Pihringer

Deep Dive into Daniel • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

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Introduction

-Daniel is one of the most interesting, yet most perplexing, books within the Bible. It has so many well-known stories that you have probably learned since childhood, be it the three men thrown in the furnace, or Daniel in the lion’s den. And yet, it also contains some of the strangest and seemingly confusing visions and dreams in all of Scripture.

-But Daniel is also one of the most important books in the Bible. It gives us some of the clearest pictures of Christ in the Old Testament. It tells us about God’s Kingdom. It is a bridge between the Old and the New Testaments.

-It is considered one of the most important books with regard to eschatology—the theology about the end times. It does have a lot of symbolism that is then borrowed by John in the book of Revelation. But you might be surprised that Daniel does not talk about end times as much as you might think. In fact, most of the visions and dreams have more to do with Israel’s immediate political situations leading up to the first coming of Christ.

-And so, when studying the book of Daniel, we have to be very careful to take the passages we read within their context. We cannot rip Daniel out of its immediate historical and literary context to try and force it to fit our version of end times. If we want to understand what Daniel means, we don’t do it trying to hold it to the light of current events. As one author warned:

Yet by understanding Daniel’s visions as a message written directly for us, we fail to do justice to their meaning throughout history, for surely they meant something to their original audience, and continue to speak to God’s people today

-The question we have to ask is what did the passage mean to its first audience. It will never mean anything other than what was trying to be conveyed to the Jews of Daniel’s day. And then, based on what God was trying to convey in that original setting, what are its applications for today.

-As we dive deep into this book, we will learn many lessons for today about living faithfully for God in the midst of hostile environments. But, yes, we will touch upon any implications that there might be for future times. I must forewarn you, I will give you the varied views of bible scholars for certain aspects of the book; but I am going to challenge you and what you think you believe about the end times. But after challenging you, and giving you the different views, you will have to come to conclusions for yourself.

-So, I will challenge what you think Daniel makes Revelation mean. For example, just to be a stink and to get the wheels in your brain turning, I want you to think about the beasts that are mentioned in Revelation. There is one beast and then there is another beast that comes up out of the water. Generally, you may have heard or believed that the first beast is the Antichrist and the second beast is the prophet of the Antichrist. The problem is that these are direct call-backs to Daniel. In the book of Daniel we will run into a vision of beasts coming out of the sea. But it is abundantly clear that the beasts in Daniel refer to nations or empires. That being the case, guess what, the beasts in Revelation cannot refer to individuals, but they too must refer to nations or empires. Ah, but which ones? That we’ll have to save for a study in Revelation.

-We all come to books like Daniel and Revelation with certain presuppositions (certain filters that we automatically see things through). Most here probably have only heard of the pre-tribulation, pre-millennial view of end times from years of books from Hal Lindsey and Tim Lahaye and the like. But there are several other views. I have to be careful not to let my presuppositions taint the way I teach this. I really don’t hold to a pre-trib, pre-mil view. I probably lean more toward amillenialism—that the millenium in Revelation 20 is symbolic, not literal. Like many of you, years ago I read the Left Behind series. But as the series continued on, to me things just started falling apart. There were things that didn’t make sense and even seemed contradictory. So, those books (along with continued study in the Word) kind of turned my off of the pre-trib, pre-mil view. But I have to be careful not to force that view into the Scriptures. We want the Scriptures to speak for themselves in their context. So, we’ll look at these things from all different angles.

-Tonight, I want to begin with just an introduction to the book of Daniel and set the scene. This background information I think is helpful in order to read the book of Daniel well. Having these things in the back of our minds will assist us in finding the original intended meaning, which allows for more accurate application to our own lives.

APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE

-First, I want to talk about what kind of book Daniel is. We know that the Bible has a lot of different types of literature in it. The Bible is a book, it is literature, and it contains a several different forms. There’s historical narrative, there’s wisdom literature, there’s biography, there’s letters, and many other forms. In order to read Daniel rightly, we need to know what form it is. You can’t read a gospel the same way that you read prophetic literature. You can’t read a proverb like a historical narrative. So, the literary context is important.

-The problem is that the book of Daniel does not neatly fit into one particular category. It involves several different types of literature. Not that this is uncommon for the books of the Bible. Something might be generally one genre, but contain bits and pieces of other genres. Even Revelation is like that, starting out with some epistles before moving on to the apocalyptic.

-So, what in the world is Daniel? Daniel contains some historical narrative. It tells us incidents that happened to real people in real places in history. It tells us real historical facts, but in a narrative format. Some scholars give this portion the fancy title of court tales—it tells the reader things that went on inside a royal court. I guess that would make sense—Daniel worked in the court of the Babylonian king. We might could place the first six chapters into this category.

-But then chapters 7-12 do something different. There is a lot of visions and interpretations and symbols and the like. This type of literature is often called apocalyptic literature. While some OT books might have snippets of apocalyptic within them (for example Ezekiel, Zechariah, and maybe parts of Isaiah), Daniel by far has the most in the OT (and the book of Revelation is its obvious counterpart in the NT). This type of literature is also often found in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha—Jewish literature that is not part of the biblical canon.

-What in the world is apocalyptic literature? When you hear the word apocalypse you might start thinking of fire and brimstone and world-ending catastrophes and things like that. But the word “apocalypse” literally means revelation, as in God is revealing something that was previously hidden from mankind. That doesn’t seem very helpful since all of Scripture is God revealing something, but this literature has some specific features. As one person defines it:

“ ‘Apocalypse’ is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”

-This type of literature looks beyond the physical to look at the spiritual, where God reveals (often times through an angel) what He is about to do. We usually think that it just deals with end times, but that is often not the case. Apocalypse is more than just judgment on earthly empires, God raining hellfire down on His enemies. It reveals to us the heavenly kingdom and how to live in light of that kingdom when all it seems is that we are surrounded by tyranny. That is why apocalyptic literature is often written to those going through some sort of persecution or trials. So, Daniel is written to the exiled Jews. Revelation is written to the persecuted church. Instead of looking at this literature as doom and gloom, we ought to look at it as hopeful.

-Although Daniel is considered a prophet, his writing is not considered a normal prophetic discourse. When you look at the other prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, etc.), they are proclaiming God’s words of judgment against a disobedient people with the hopes of repentance, but the warning of God’s wrath. Daniel, on the other hand, is actually encouraging a suffering people with a glimpse into God’s plans for them. While our Bible places Daniel as the last of the Major Prophets, following the Greek Septuagint Bible, the Hebrew Bible places Daniel with what is called the Writings alongside books like Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Daniel is unique amongst all the OT writings.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND DATE OF WRITING

-Now I think it would be good to give the historical context of what is going on. Israel had split in two between the northern kingdom of Israel (that included 10 tribes) and the southern kingdom of Judah (which included Benjamin). Because of their disobedience they were constantly harassed by foreign nations. Finally, around 722 BC, the Assyrian Empire carried the northern kingdom into captivity. You would think that would be enough to scare the southern kingdom into obedience, but it did not.

-Assyria constantly bothered Judah, but Assyria was finally defeated by Babylon. The Babylonian prince, and eventual king, Nebuchadnezzar, went after Egypt to keep them from encroaching to the north. Israel, being right there kind of between the two, was turned into a vassal state. Nebuchadnezzar deported several of the brightest and most promising youth from Judah to bring them to Babylon to learn their ways and become part of their bureaucracy. In 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar took a group from Judah that included Daniel and his three friends. This was the first wave of the captivity. Judah’s leadership kept rebelling against God and against the Babylonian king, so there were several subsequent waves of people taken into captivity. Eventually Nebuchadnezzar got sick of them and laid siege to Jerusalem, eventually occupying and burning the whole place down in about 586 BC. Most Jews who survived were taken into captivity into different parts of the empire.

-But no Empire lives forever. After several decades, Babylon became more wicked and grew more politically weak. Eventually the combined Empire of the Medes and Persians would take Babylon on. They easily defeated Babylon and took over their territory, including Israel and Judah. Whereas Babylon liked to take people into captivity and bring them to the center of government, the Persians liked to send people back to their native land and serve the empire from there. So, it was under the Medes and Persians that the Jews went back to their homeland. But Daniel did not do that. In fact, he continued to serve the kings of the new empire. He was taken into captivity in 605 BC probably at about the age of 15, and the last incident recorded in the book probably took place around 535 BC. So, Daniel lived to a ripe old age—at least 85 years old and maybe even into his 90s.

-This is where we find Daniel. Being trained and then serving within government work, part of the captivity, but called of God to receive and give messages to His people in the midst of their trials. Daniel wasn’t the only one used of God during this time. His contemporaries included Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk (although they all ministered in different places).

-The book of Daniel is not written in chronological order, but is written by Daniel to give attestation to historical truths and record visions that God gave to reveal Israel’s future. There are two ways to break down its structure. Chapters 1-6 are stories of the life of Daniel and his friends in serving the foreign kings. Chapters 7-12 are visions about what God is up to. It is also interesting to note that you can also look at the structure of the book by the language that is used. About half of the book is written in Aramaic and the other half Hebrew. The Aramaic portion seems to deal with Babylon and the nations, while the Hebrew portion deals with the Jews.

MAJOR THEMES

-Now I want to quickly mention some major themes that we will run into in this book—mainly the two big ones.

-First, there is the theme of God’s complete sovereignty over history and the nations. God is moving things along as He sees fit to accomplish His purposes upon the earth. We will notice that all these empires that are coming and going contribute their part in preparing the world for the coming of God’s Anointed One, the Messiah. That is where all of history was headed. These empires are nothing but a blip in the timeline of God’s historical-redemptive acts. God is using them and moving them like puppets to accomplish His will. But this is a good thing in that it reminds us that God has control of everything. Even rebellious empires cannot thwart what God has in store.

-But the other major theme is that there is hope for those who are persecuted or suffering under trials. The Jews may have thought God had forgotten them and that all was lost and that they would never see their homeland again. But God does not abandon His people. God has a plan and purpose for His people even when they are under His disciplinary hand, and He loves them and cares for them and wants to remind them of those truths. With the visions God gave His people a glimpse into where things were headed to the point of the Messiah. In fact, I think that God gave them the exact time frame when the Messiah would appear—the first time. But God through Daniel is trying to exhort and console the faithful Jew in the face of their adverse circumstances, and I think it will do the same for us as well. And as one person reminds us that in light of what Daniel writes:

Prophetic information is never given to satisfy mere curiosity but to exhort to holy living

-But for those going through hard times, trials, persecutions, Daniel is a comfort because God is in complete control and is moving things according to His will and purpose. Now, you might not like that will and purpose, and you might not like the timing of His will and purpose, but He is doing it for our good and His glory. All things will turn out for the eternal good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. So, be encouraged by that and by our study of this interesting book.

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