Rereading Daniel in Apocalyptic Times

Last year, as the Southern California wildfires raged not too far from my San Diego home, the word “apocalypse” kept coming to my mind. Not only to my mind, of course: The newscasters and pundits repeatedly described the destruction as apocalyptic. The word has been thrown around quite a bit in recent years to describe everything from disastrous weather events to the AI takeover of the workplace.

The Greek word apokalypsis means “revealing” or “uncovering,” but we normally use its English equivalent to refer to events of catastrophic magnitude and to the end of the world more generally. This is because of one strange book from the New Testament: the book of Revelation, whose Greek title is Apokalypsis Ioannou (the Apocalypse of John). John, who is from the small Mediterranean island of Patmos, recounts visions of terrible events to come revealed to him by an angel. These events would precede the final defeat of the forces of evil and the establishment of the kingdom of God for the righteous. Of the book’s many vivid and gory images, the most famous is the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who unleash war, famine, death by fire, and plagues upon the earth.

During the five hundred years between the third century BCE and the second century CE, Jews wrote a lot of apocalyptic texts, but interestingly, they didn’t pass them on. Apocalyptic books such as 1 and 2 Enoch, the War Scroll, the Assumption of Moses, the Testament of Abraham, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and others came into the hands of modern scholars either because they were kept by various Christian churches or because they were discovered by chance. The only apocalyptic book to make it into the biblical canon is the book of Daniel. It is the single most influential apocalypse ever written, the keystone to two thousand years of apocalyptic thinking. Although I have long been familiar with the book, I turned back to it recently with renewed interest.

It begins with Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They are elite young Judeans who have been exiled to the Babylonian court of King Nebuchadnezzar, a few years before he demolished Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. In one famous scene, Daniel’s three friends are put in a fiery furnace because they refuse to bow down to a statue and are miraculously saved. In another, Daniel is thrown into a lions’ den overnight because he prays to God rather than to the king; he, too, is miraculously saved.

But Daniel isn’t just pious; he is also gifted with prophet-like wisdom that allows him to rise to greatness in the Babylonian court. Like Joseph in Egypt, Daniel gains favor by interpreting the king’s dreams; in fact, he surpasses Joseph because he knows Nebuchadnezzar’s dream even when the king doesn’t tell him what it is. This is the famous dream of a giant statue made of several types of metal, from the head of gold down to the legs of iron, but with “feet of clay” (hence the famous phrase). Daniel interprets this dream as a historical parable of four kingdoms.

The first half of the book, which is written mostly in Aramaic, consists of royal court stories such as these, but the second half of the book, which is written mostly in Hebrew, is quite different (and is likely by a different author). Here, Daniel is not the interpreter of dreams and visions of others but rather the recipient of dreams and visions of his own. And when it comes to his own dreams and visions, Daniel has no idea what they mean. They are grim, filled with mythical creatures, strange phenomena, and, in both senses, apocalyptic foreboding.

On the surface, the book of Daniel is set during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and just before the destruction of the First Temple. But Daniel’s apocalyptic visions are very clearly concerned with the desecration and desolation of the Second Temple of Jerusalem by the Hellenistic King Antiochus IV, which happened four hundred years later. If that name rings a bell, it is because he is the villain of the Hanukkah story. For reasons that are debated to this day, Antiochus IV is said to have issued harsh decrees against traditional Jewish practices, given orders to place statues of foreign deities in the Jerusalem Temple, and commanded the ruthless persecution of those who refused to comply. We perhaps hear an echo of those persecutions in the stories about the fiery furnace and the lions’ den in the book of Daniel.

Antiochus’s measures against Judaism led to the rebellion of the Maccabees and, after a series of victories, the rededication of the purified Jerusalem Temple in 164 BCE. But when Daniel’s visions were written, there was no victory in sight. What the author saw was an ongoing disaster and imperial oppression on an unprecedented scale. Why would the author of these apocalyptic chapters present the devastating events of the second century BCE as visions shown to Daniel four hundred years earlier? This gets to the central idea of apocalypses from the book of Daniel on: History has a plan, and it has been foretold. Daniel could be shown what would happen centuries after him because the script that God has written will not change.

Daniel is by no means the first biblical book that attempts to explain historical catastrophes as a part of God’s plan, but it does so in a markedly different way from books that preceded it. Biblical prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Joel, and others predicted war, famine, and destruction, but these were prophecies of the near or imminent future, national warnings about threatening regional powers like Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt. Daniel, in contrast, has no way of understanding the predictions introduced to him, not only because they are so far removed from his own world but also because they are presented in a visual code. In chapter 7, he has a night vision that begins with “the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea,” from which four mighty beasts emerge:

The first was like a lion but had eagles’ wings. As I looked on, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted off the ground and set on its feet like a man and given the mind of a man.

Then I saw a second, different beast, which was like a bear but raised on one side, and with three fangs in its mouth among its teeth; it was told, ‘Arise, eat much meat!’

After that, as I looked on, there was another one, like a leopard, and it had on its back four wings like those of a bird; the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it.

After that, as I looked on in the night vision, there was a fourth beast—fearsome, dreadful, and very powerful, with great iron teeth—that devoured and crushed, and stamped the remains with its feet. It was different from all the other beasts which had gone before it; and it had ten horns.

While I was gazing upon these horns, a new little horn sprouted up among them; three of the older horns were uprooted to make room for it. There were eyes in this horn like those of a man, and a mouth that spoke arrogantly. (Dan. 7:1–8)

With the help of commentary provided elsewhere in the book and of the historical context provided to us by nonbiblical sources, we can decipher what this bizarre sequence of animals stands for. The lion with eagle’s wings is the Babylonian empire; the bear is the kingdom of Media; the winged leopard with the four heads is Persia; and the fourth beast who is too terrifying to even be compared to any known animal is the Hellenistic empire. Its ten horns are the ten kings from the Seleucid dynasty that preceded Antiochus IV, and the horn with the eyes and mouth that “spoke arrogantly” is Antiochus IV himself. Later on, an angel explains to a bewildered Daniel that this little horn is a future king who will “speak words against the Most High, and will harass the holy ones of the Most High. He will think of changing times and laws” (Dan. 7:24–25).

Daniel is understandably frightened when he sees these strange, fearsome creatures, and you, the reader, should be scared as well. But someone is taking note of everything that is happening:

As I looked on, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took His seat. His garment was like white snow, and the hair of His head was like lamb’s wool. His throne was tongues of flame; Its wheels were blazing fire. A river of fire streamed forth before Him; Thousands upon thousands served Him; Myriads upon myriads attended Him; The court sat and the books were opened. (Dan. 7:9–10)

While the beasts wreak havoc on earth, a court of justice is set up in heaven. The Ancient of Days—presumably God—is not intervening, but the opened books suggest that evidence is being collected. When the divine trial is called to order, He will issue a verdict, which will put an end to the reign of the beasts. The angel explains to Daniel:

Then the court will sit and his [the arrogant horn’s] dominion will be taken away, to be destroyed and abolished for all time. The kingship and dominion and grandeur belonging to all the kingdoms under Heaven will be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High. Their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them. (Dan. 7:26–27)

The idea of a divine final reckoning, after which an era of divinely ordained peace will commence, is also well known from the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. What makes Daniel’s visions unique is the idea that history has to unfold exactly according to a particular sequence and that nothing about it can be changed or rushed. Each of the kingdoms was given “a time and season” to dominate (Dan. 7:12). History must run its full course, disastrous as it is.

In his brilliant book Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire, Paul J. Kosmin argues that the subject of the book of Daniel is not simply this or that empire and its relations with the Jews: Its subject is time itself. Time, according to the author(s) of Daniel, is not a formless stream in which we all flow from one moment to the next but rather a structured and intricate design, divided into discrete and meaningful historical units, devised by God Himself. Antiochus IV’s defiance of Jewish tradition was also aimed at God’s sacred times (“He will think of changing times and laws,” Daniel is told). But this is all in vain, and when each kingdom has lived out its designated era, God will bring about his own kingdom in which time itself will come to an end.

What I find most striking about the book of Daniel is that there is absolutely nothing that humans can do about any of this. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah tell their audiences what is about to unfold so that they can change their ways­—forsake the idols they worship, cease to oppress the poor, not rely on untrustworthy political powers, and so on. If they do, God will relent, and the prophesied calamities will not come to pass. But Daniel is told repeatedly that there is nothing for him or anyone else to do: Everything must play out over hundreds of years, exactly as predicted. It makes him sick: “So I, Daniel, was stricken, and languished many days. . . . I was dismayed by the vision and no one could explain it” (Dan. 8:27). As he continues to receive these visions of the inevitable, Daniel becomes increasingly despondent: “I was drained of strength, my vigor was destroyed, and I could not summon up strength” (Dan. 10:8).

Even at the very end of the book, Daniel remains confused and alarmed:

I heard and did not understand, so I said, “My lord, what will be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go, Daniel, for these words are secret and sealed to the time of the end. Many will be purified and purged and refined; the wicked will act wickedly and none of the wicked will understand; but the knowledgeable will understand. . . .

But you, go on to the end; you shall rest, and arise to your destiny at the end of the days.” (Dan. 12:8–13)

When the time comes, some will understand that the world is about to be transformed and act accordingly; most will not. Daniel, however, has no other choice but to continue with his allotted lifespan and then wait, with other worthies, for the final resurrection that will take place when the kingdom of God is established.

This conviction that the course of history is predetermined and that it will unfold as planned until its inevitable end regardless of human actions is a key feature of ancient apocalypses. Following in the footsteps of the book of Daniel, authors of ancient apocalypses featured other righteous protagonists who are shown visions of what is to come and respond with terror and anguish, sometimes even protesting and asking God to reconsider. But they are always told that history is a done deal, and in tens or hundreds or thousands of years, the world will be set right for all eternity.

Daniel’s helplessness as catastrophes unfold before his eyes resonates with me now in a way that it didn’t before. I return to his vision of the four kingdoms and find myself thinking: Civilizations die. It happened to the Babylonians, to the Persians, to the ancient Greeks, and it will eventually happen to all human societies. It is not pleasant to witness or be a part of that demise, but it is an altogether normal part of history.

The comfort of the apocalyptic mindset lies in the fact that it allows us to relinquish the illusion of control. If nothing can be done to change the course of history, then there is really nothing that should be done to change it. But is this an attitude of healthy equanimity or cowardly laziness? After all, I do not really believe that the disasters and atrocities that are currently taking place in the world are part of a foretold plan. The evils that we are seeing and the dangers that we are facing are for the most part made by human beings, and it is mostly in the hands of human beings to fight them. It’s just that it is less clear than ever what it takes for this fight to be successful.

What I find myself loving about the book of Daniel on this rereading is that its main character embodies an ancient version of this ambivalence. On one hand, he is a bold young man, uncowed by earthly kings (or lions) and capable of great achievements. On the other hand, he is forced to accept that in the greater scheme of things and time, he must succumb to forces that he does not fully understand and certainly cannot control. Historically, these two facets of Daniel may have been created by two different authors, but in the book that lies before us, the acceptance and the resistance, the conviction and the confusion exist within the same person. He, like us, must “go on to the end” as best as he can.