Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 36:4 (Dec 1993)
Article: Holding On To Daniel’s Court Tales
Author: Richard D. Patterson

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JETS 36:4 (December 1993) p. 445

Holding On To Daniel’s Court Tales

Richard D. Patterson*

I. Daniel In The Critics’ Court

Probably no other conclusion concerning the writing of the book of Daniel has been so widely embraced than that the composition of its first six chapters is to be sharply distinguished from that of the latter half of the book. Indeed J. J. Collins observes: “The first six chapters of the book contain material which is older than the later chapters, and this material has been re-edited in Maccabean times to attain a redactional unity with the apocalyptic vision of chs. 7–12.”1 Although this opinion falls somewhat short of universal acceptance,2 it may be taken as established that the vast majority of critical scholarship holds that the final form of the book of Daniel is a second-century-BC—hence predominantly Maccabean—product, either through the work of one author/editor3 or as a result of a final redactor who reworked the earlier material.4 Even a widely-used, conservative

* Richard Patterson is professor of Old Testament at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, Box 20000, Lynchburg, VA 24506–8001.

JETS 36:4 (December 1993) p. 446

volume concludes: “Chs. 1–6, expressed in the third person, may well have been written by someone else about Daniel.”5

While the book of Daniel is generally taken to have reached its final form in the second century BC, chaps. 1–6 are held to reflect an earlier period.6 Scholarly opinion has largely focused on the Greek period, no earlier than the third century BC. “Cc. 1–6 … are pre-Maccabaean, composed in Babylonia: they may be roughly assigned to the 3d cent., to an age not earlier than the division of Alexander’s empire by the Diadochi.”7 Eissfeldt is willing to allow some of the material of chaps. 1–6 to stem from the Persian era: “Since the narratives of i-vi take place at the Babylonian and Persian courts, and contain much that well reflects the conditions there, … the most likely assumption is that their material does go back to the Persian period.”8 Although an occasional scholar may thus admit to a pre-Greek period, certainly any thought of a still earlier...

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