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The Myth : As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. (Dan. 1:17)

The Book of Daniel can be divided into two categories of story. The one tells of how Jews during the Babylonian Captivity can, through faith in God, rise to positions of high power in foreign countries. The other describes and interprets a series of dreams and visions about strange creatures and unusual events.

In the first category, we have the stories of Daniel in the lion’s den and Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. In each of these stories, the central characters defied certain directives of King Nebuchadnezzar that would interfere with their worship of God. As punishment, they were to be put to death. In each case, however, an angel of God came to protect them. When they emerged unscathed from their ordeal, the King elevated them to positions of high authority in the kingdom.

Daniel, the central character, had been blessed by God with the gift of dream interpretation, which enabled him to predict events in the future. He had been brought to on at about 587 B.C. when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah and removed the Hebrews from Canaan. Daniel and three companions were singled out by the king’s staff and educated in the royal academy. As with Joseph, Daniel’s skill in dream interpretation led to positions of high authority in the kingdom.

Daniel presents us with a series of unusual dreams and visions, which when interpreted reveal the political events of the future down to the final days. In one episode, for instance, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of an unusual and frightening creature. It had a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. A stone was hurled at the creature’s feet and the entity broke into tiny pieces that were swept away by the wind. The stone that destroyed the statue became a mighty mountain that filled the earth.

Daniel explained Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Nebuchadnezzar, he said, was the golden head, ruler of a glorious and powerful kingdom. But after his reign, an inferior kingdom would arise (presumably symbolized by the silver portions) and after that a third kingdom, of brass, shall rule the entire world. A fourth kingdom would be as strong as iron but would split into pieces. After this, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will last forever.

As other dreams unfold the future becomes clearer. They reflect a parade of historical events in which the Chaldaean empire of Nebuchadnezzar is replaced by Persians and Medes and then by Greeks, from whom various branches split off. Historians studying the prophecies, have traced an accurate line of political events ending during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (175 B.C.-164 B.C.), a Seleucid Greek who persecuted the Jews. His cruel tyranny led to the Maccabbeean uprising that liberated the Jews from Greek rule.

This set of predictions is rather remarkable for a man living in 587 B.C., but there is a major flaw in the story. The Book of Daniel describes the succession of several kings during the lifetime of Daniel and the sequence is substantially inaccurate.

Daniel gives the following succession of Babylonian kings: 1) Nebuchadnezzar, 2) Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, 3) Darius the Mede, and 4) Cyrus. Elsewhere, it says that Darius the Mede was the son of Ahasuerus (i.e., Xerxes).

The historically accurate sequence would be: 1) Nebuchadnezzar, 2) Evil-Merodach, 3) Neriglassar, 4) Nabonidus, 5) Belshazzar, son of Nabonidus, and 6) Cyrus.

Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar but of the later king named Nabonidus, and several of the predictions that Daniel made about Nebuchadnezzar actually refer to events in the life of Nabonidus. So it would appear that somehow Daniel the Wise confused Nebuchadnezzar with Nabonidus, who was actually the third king after Nebuchadnezzar according to the historical records.

History knows nothing of Darius the Mede. The Babylonian kings known as Darius were Persians and they followed after Cyrus, the Persian king who defeated Nabonidus. The actual Darius was the father of Ahasuerus, not the son.

Daniel appears to be a prophet who has a better grasp on the future than the present, which leads to the obvious conclusion that the predictions were written after the fact, when the later events were well known but the earlier history was a bit fuzzy.

As Antiochus Epiphanes is the last of the kings in Daniel’s predictions, we can safely say that the author of Daniel’s predictions wrote at about 164 B.C. In support of this date of authorship, we should note that the writer concludes his political history with a prediction that the king identified with Antiochus will die in battle somewhere between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean (Dan. 11:40-45) but in fact Antiochus died far to the east in Persia, suggesting that the author was aware of Antiochus but had not learned of his death at the time he was describing Daniel’s predictions.