Talk:Book of Daniel

Whether the Book of Daniel was written in the 6th century or the 2nd century is one question - another question, which is, or should be, more important to Wikipedia, is the way in which this topic is presented. Personally, I find the tone rather arrogant, and disrespectful to almost all believing Jews and Christians, for whom the earlier date is pivotal in establishing either the validity of the Messiah which is to come, or has already come, respectively. To state the later date as fact would indicate that almost all believing Jews and Christians are either fools or liars and that whoever wrote the Book of Daniel was a fraud and a liar as were the Jewish priests who presented it to the people. But even more important than THAT, to an encyclopedia, is that the presentation is more subtly polemic rather than encyclopedic. Compare the way that the Encylopedia Britannica opens its article on the Book of Daniel (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Book-of-Daniel-Old-Testament):

The Book of Daniel, also called The Prophecy Of Daniel, is a book of the Old Testament found in the Ketuvim (Writings), the third section of the Jewish canon, but placed among the Prophets in the Christian canon. The first half of the book (chapters 1–6) contains stories in the third person about the experiences of Daniel and his friends under Kings Nebuchadrezzar II, Belshazzar, Darius I, and Cyrus II; the second half, written mostly in the first person, contains reports of Daniel’s three visions (and one dream). The second half of the book names as author a certain Daniel who, according to chapter 1, was exiled to Babylon.

It then goes on to present arguments that the earlier date is more probable:

The language of the book—part of which is Aramaic (2:4–7:28)—probably indicates a date of composition later than the Babylonian Exile (6th century BC). Numerous inaccuracies connected with the exilic period (no deportation occurred in 605 BC; Darius was a successor of Cyrus, not a predecessor; etc.) tend to confirm this judgment. Because its religious ideas do not belong to the 6th century BC, numerous scholars date Daniel in the first half of the 2nd century BC and relate the visions to the persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164/163 BC).

This is good encyclopedic writing (note the use of the word probable rather than, "The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century...")- and although the E.B. article is rather short, it presents facts as facts and arguments as arguments. So here are the facts: There is a Book of Daniel that is a part of the Old Testament. There is a controversy about the date. Most believing Christians and Jews believe in the earlier date. Most secular, scholars of antiquity and many religious Bible scholars believe in the later date.

Then there are the arguments - The three references in the Book of Ezekial as arguments for the earlier date, the counterarguments to that, the matter of Darius being the successor, not the predecessor being a strong argument for the later date, etc. If this article were really being encyclopedic and not partisan to a point of view, regardless of how many worthies weigh I on the subject, then it would present facts as facts and arguments as arguments, and not arguments as facts; attribute the arguments to the right sources, and leave it to the reader make up his own mind what to think, rather than having Wikipedia tell him what to think. One of the jobs of a good article on a topic such as this one is to provoke the reader to more inquiry not less. This article needs to be re-written by someone who is partisan neither to the earlier date nor to the later one.Contraverse (talk) 20:49, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, we teach it a fact (as opposed to teach the controversy) because that's the only mainstream historical view, from the Ivy League to US state universities. This has been discussed to death, and the academic consensus holds unchanged for more than one century.

"there was a famous professor at Oxford in the middle of the 19th century an imp you see who said that if Daniel did not indeed speak these things he must have lied on a frightful scale somebody must have lied at a frightful scale they say that is actually a lack of any kind of literary sensitivity of an appreciation of literary conventions". Quoted from Yale Bible Study, Daniel: Who Was Daniel? on YouTube. Either Joel Baden was drunken, or he is actually right that John J. Collins is the topmost worldwide scholarly authority on the Book of Daniel.

“there is little that we can salvage from Joshua’s stories of the rapid, wholesale destruction of Canaanite cities and the annihilation of the local population. It simply did not happen; the archeological evidence is indisputable.”

This is the judgment of one of the more conservative historians of ancient Israel. To be sure, there are far more conservative historians who try to defend the historicity of the entire biblical account beginning with Abraham, but their work rests on confessional presuppositions and is an exercise in apologetics rather than historiography. Most biblical scholars have come to terms with the fact that much (not all!) of the biblical narrative is only loosely related to history and cannot be verified.^[1]

— John J. Collins

It does not mean that Jews and Christians get called liars. It means that archaeology has spoken and there is no turning back to pre-Enlightenment historiography.

Above Joseph Rowe claimed that there are "two camps" of participants in a statement that implies that both perspectives should be taken as equally valid claims and that a "compromise" midway between the perspectives is appropriate. This is a false dichotomy and that is simply not the way that WP works. We give prominence to mainstream interpretations and usage (as demonstrated by the majority of RSs) in the lead and relegate the occasional idiosyncratic usage to a brief mention deep in the article. I might be inclined to support a sentence or two below the psychology and sociology sections but only after: 1) the multiple issues at Philosophy of conspiracy theories are resolved 2) and suitable neutral language is suggested that does not overstate the importance of a minority academic interpretation of the topic. I would discourage opening a new RfC to include these suggestions in the lead as it is highly unlikely to succeed.
— User:Mu301

What difference do you see to Smith and Mormonism? A man claims he has had revelations from God, presents a new scripture he says comes from God, starts a new religion that claims to be a restoration, not new. It sure seems very similar. The more serious problem in your arguments above is that you continously imply we should find some middle road between faith and scholarship. We should not, as that would be the opposite of WP:NPOV. I know many people misunderstand NPOV and think it's about meeting halfway. It is not; it's about representing the most reliable sources as accurately as possible.
— User:Jeppiz

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 22:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

" that whoever wrote the Book of Daniel was a fraud and a liar" I don't see a problem with that statement. Most of the books in the Old Testament are pseudepigrapha written in the Achaemenid Empire or the Hellenistic era and attributed to mythical or outright fictional characters from the distant past. Seeking truth in the Bible is a fool's errand.Dimadick (talk) 04:33, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The Encyclopedia Britannica article is based on an earlier version of the Wikipedia article. (Sorry, but EB uses Wiki quite a lot). The author of Daniel was writing an apocalypse, not a prophecy, and he followed the rules of Jewish apocalypse (there are quite a few of them, though Daniel is the only one that made it into the Bible). Achar Sva (talk) 10:45, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

"for whom the earlier date is pivotal in establishing either the validity of the Messiah which is to come, or has already come, respectively. To state the later date as fact would indicate that almost all believing Jews and Christians are either fools or liars and that whoever wrote the Book of Daniel was a fraud and a liar as were the Jewish priests who presented it to the people".

Actually, many believing Jews and Christians are more than willing to accept the 2nd-Century date. Just because the book was written later does not mean that it cannot be considered inspired. Seb773 (talk) 17:58, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, and likewise, a later date of composition does not preclude the idea that some of all of the material dates back to earlier information. Textual criticism and faith can certainly inform one another, but they have their separate spheres. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 18:18, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: what evidence is there that the EB article copied from Wikipedia? NyMetsForever (talk) 18:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the evolution of the Wikipedia article over the years, and the EB article quoted above is very close to one of them. The Wikipedia article was written from sources which did not include the EB. You can look far back into the history of this article, to the time when it was extensively rewritten by PiCo. Achar Sva (talk) 08:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: I don't know the details, but I thought that generally, it was Wikipedia consensus that EB is generally a reliable source NyMetsForever (talk) 17:16, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@NyMetsForever: The two claims are not mutually exclusive. If Britannica wants to become the vetted Wikipedia, it has the right to do so. tgeorgescu (talk) 18:00, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@NyMetsForever: Not when it uses Wikipedia as its source. Achar Sva (talk) 01:02, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: I checked the revision history. It appears that user PiCo started substantially rewriting this article in 2018. I also checked the Britannica most recent revision to its article, and it was in 1998, when Wikipedia did not exist. Here is the documentation I will ask you to:

• i) withdraw your claim.
• ii) apologize for lying.

cc: @Tgeorgescu:.. Here is the documentation NyMetsForever (talk) 03:47, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: @Tgeorgescu: even more damning, I checked my 1991 paper Encyclopedia Britannica, and it says virtually the same thing as the online version last edited in 1998. I think Achar Sva needs to apologize for lying. NyMetsForever (talk) 03:57, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

PiCo rewrote the article years before 2018. I don't see what you're getting upset about. EB today is written the same way as Wikipedia, by volunteers. That 1998 date is the date EB added the article to its database, not the date of the most recent revision. Let's move on to soomething substantial, the scholarly view of the composition of Daniel. The consensus is that the date at which it first appeared in its modern form was about 164 BCE. The court tales in the first half are older and date back to the Babylonian diaspora, but they were gathered together as a collection around 200 BCE. That's what our article says, and to check that you can look at the sources we use. Achar Sva (talk) 06:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: I am upset because you said that Britannica copied Wikipedia when my paper Encyclopedia Britannica of 1991 says the same exact thing that the 1998 addition to the online database. (Also, Online Britannica records revisions as well and edits as well) Unless user PiCo somehow edited Wikipedia before the paper Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition, it is literally impossible for the EB article to have copied user PiCo. NyMetsForever (talk) 12:55, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: I don't particularly care if we add EB here, since while EB is reliable, it's not required to be here. It just felt wrong to be misled about EB. NyMetsForever (talk) 12:57, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

May I remind you that Wikipedia:Civility is policy? Avoid making personal attacks. Dimadick (talk) 13:00, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Dimadick: maybe I was too harsh. I am sorry @Achar Sva: I did not mean to be harsh. It's a minor point anyways. Both EB and WP are on the same page. NyMetsForever (talk) 17:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

bro lets be honest he still outright lied and that is something that he needs to apologize for. Wikipedia must maintain a level of academic integrity and that lying completely violates it. Juicyj2311 (talk) 00:44, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I have added Britannica (Lerner 1998) to the list of references. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:58, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Morals: both Britannica and Larousse () date the Book of Daniel to the 160s BCE. That is, without presenting the dating of the fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. tgeorgescu (talk) 07:24, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Can someone please explain this excessive citing here:

The most probable conclusion is that the account must have been completed near the end of the reign of Antiochus but before his death in December 164 BC, or at least before news of it reached Jerusalem, and the consensus of modern scholarship[29][30][31][32][33][34][35] is accordingly that the book dates to the period 167–163 BC.[36][37]

This is looks like Wikipedia:Citation overkill to me. Is this really that controversial or something?CycoMa1 (talk) 04:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Now I see the discussion above. But still, this excessive citing looks terrible.CycoMa1 (talk) 04:56, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Elphion: Yes, excessive citing does look terrible. But apparently it provides sufficient justification so that "most probable" can be portrayed as factual in the lead sentence. Which also looks terrible, imo. Assambrew (talk) 21:46, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Nothing to do with me. Though I agree it's overkill. (Also, I changed the template above to render the text legible.) -- Elphion (talk) 00:33, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Oops, I was meaning to reply to @CycoMa1:, not to you. Sorry about that! Assambrew (talk) 00:39, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

See Video on YouTube. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:48, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Meaning: efforts like that study should be encouraged, but also not declared to be the most reliable view on this topic. tgeorgescu (talk) 05:19, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

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after The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. put or by common facts and opinion it was written in 6th century Bc Thenobody2 (talk) 00:34, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

 Not done WP:FRINGE. Both Britannica and Larousse date the Book of Daniel to the 160s BCE. So do Iranica and Judaica.

E.g. Ginsberg, Harold Louis (2007). "DANIEL, BOOK OF". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica: Coh-Doz. Vol. 5 (2nd ed.). Thomson-Gale. p. 423. Retrieved 2026-01-10. THE FOUR AUTHORS OF DANIEL B. Daniel B is in its entirety a product of the reign of Antiochus IV, but it is not all from a single hand. tgeorgescu (talk) 01:16, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

"but it is not all from a single hand" What difference does it make if the book had one or several writers? Dimadick (talk) 19:25, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I didn't wish to get accused of quoting out of context. tgeorgescu (talk) 00:07, 15 January 2026 (UTC)