Though
scholars differ in details, virtually all who reject the traditional authorship
are agreed that the book in its present form was produced about 168 B.C.
The writer attributed his visions to Daniel to get his message, in whose truth
he profoundly believed, more readily accepted. Charles puts it thus: “How then
from the third century B.C. onward was the man to act who felt himself charged
with a real message of God to his day and generation? The tyranny of the Law
and the petrified orthodoxies of his time, compelled him to resort to
pseudonymity. And if these grounds had in themselves been insufficient for the
adoption of pseudonymity, there was the further ground—the formation of the
Canon. When once the prophetic Canon was closed, no book of a prophetic
character could gain canonization as such, nor could it gain a place among the
sacred writings at all unless its date was believed to be as early as Ezra.”
It
should be clear that such a pious imposture could never have succeeded, if the
new book had contradicted the already existing Scripture. Now, with only one
major exception, the main “historical errors” are contradictions of Scripture
as well. Thus the modern view virtually answers its own difficulties. Were the
book a second-century production, we may guarantee, that the writer must have
had fully adequate grounds for his apparent contradictions of other Scriptures.
The bigger the problem, e.g. the identity of Darius the Mede, the surer
we may be that there is an adequate explanation. But the same argument holds if
the book is dated earlier. Fiction that hopes to be accepted as history must be
meticulous in its accuracy; how much more if it wishes to be accepted as
inspired as well.
There
is a tendency to underrate the critical acumen of the period. The Talmud shows
us that the early rabbis were very conscious of discrepancies, real or
apparent, in the Scriptures. We may not agree with the means by which they
explained them away, but that does not diminish the clear-sightedness by which
they saw them.
In
all fairness it must be added that this only meets the charge of specific
error, not that of giving a generally false picture of the times described. This
is a charge more easily made than proved. Since, however, there is an
increasing tendency to attribute the narrative part of Daniel to the fifth
century B.C., it should be clear that the charge is not a serious one. (H. L.
Ellison, Men Spake from God: Studies in the Hebrew Prophets [London: The
Paternoster Press, 1952], 138, italics in original)
Further Reading:
Thomas E. Gaston, Historical Issues in the Book of Daniel
