General Conclusion to the DAN001 Appendices

Chronology first allows us to place the various chapters within Daniel’s life journey.

The book begins under Nebuchadnezzar and continues down to the Persian period. The order of the chapters is not, however, strictly chronological: the visions of Daniel 7 and Daniel 8 belong to the reign of Belshazzar and therefore precede the fall of Babylon recounted in Daniel 5.

This observation shows that the organization of the book answers to a literary and theological logic as much as to a historical one.

The hypothesis adopted in this study, according to which Daniel would have been about fourteen years old at the time of his deportation in 605 BC, also allows us to follow his aging approximately. It is not a datum explicitly provided by the text, but a chronological marker used to better perceive the extent of his journey.

Daniel thus appears as a man whose life spans several decades and several political regimes.

The distribution of languages is a second major landmark:

Daniel 1.1-2.4a: Hebrew;

Daniel 2.4b-7.28: Aramaic;

Daniel 8.1-12.13: Hebrew.

This organization prevents us from reducing the book to the traditional division alone between historical narratives and prophetic visions.

Daniel 7 is the best illustration of this: it belongs to the visions by its literary genre, but remains tied to Daniel 2-6 by its language and by its function in the organization of the Aramaic section.

Since the book does not explicitly give the exact reason for the choice of these two languages, it is nevertheless fitting to distinguish the certain linguistic observation from the interpretations proposed to explain it.

The Aramaic section displays a particularly strong concentric organization:

A - Daniel 2: the kingdoms and the Kingdom of God

B - Daniel 3: the faithful threatened and delivered

C - Daniel 4: the sovereign humbled

C' - Daniel 5: the sovereign judged

B' - Daniel 6: the faithful one threatened and delivered

A' - Daniel 7: the kingdoms and the everlasting dominion

This structure connects three great questions.

What becomes of the kingdoms?

They follow one another and disappear.

What becomes of the faithful who live under their rule?

They may be tested, but their faithfulness does not depend on the permanence of a political regime.

What becomes of the sovereigns themselves?

They remain subject to the judgment of the Most High.

The literary structure thus directly joins the theological message.

The narratives of Daniel 1-6 must not be regarded as a mere introduction meant to precede the prophecies.

They concretely establish several principles that the visions will later develop on a far broader scale.

Nebuchadnezzar is humbled.

Belshazzar loses his kingdom.

Babylon disappears.

Daniel passes through the change of regime.

These particular events prepare the understanding of the visions concerning the succession of powers.

Conversely, the visions give the narratives their general horizon.

The experiences of Daniel and his companions are no longer merely individual stories of faithfulness and deliverance. They belong to a conception of history in which human kingdoms have a limited duration.

The comparison of the great prophecies reveals a progression.

Daniel 2 establishes a first architecture.

Daniel 7 takes it up from another perspective and develops in particular the judgment, the persecution of the saints, and the dominion given to the one like a son of man.

Daniel 8 focuses attention on certain powers and explicitly identifies several of them.

Daniel 9 introduces the particular prophecy of the seventy weeks concerning Daniel’s people and his holy city.

Finally, Daniel 10-12 forms a great revelation leading from historical conflicts to the time of distress, deliverance, and resurrection.

The general principle can be summarized:

revelation → resumption → deepening → precision → fulfillment.

The existence of correspondences between the prophecies does not mean that every detail must necessarily have an equivalent in another vision.

The method adopted in this study therefore consists in examining each text in its own context before comparing it with the others.

This precaution is essential.

A correspondence explicitly given by the text carries more weight than a reconstructed resemblance.

Thus, Daniel 8.20-21 explicitly identifies the ram with the Medes and the Persians and the goat with Javan.

Other connections may be coherent and even very probable, but they must be presented as interpretations when they are not explicitly stated.

The study has also brought out a narrative and theological correspondence between the beginning and the end of the book.

Daniel 1 presents a young man led into exile.

Daniel 12 presents a man who has reached the end of his life.

At the beginning, Daniel is deprived of his land.

At the end, an inheritance is promised to him.

At the beginning, Babylon seems to determine his future.

At the end, all the kingdoms Daniel passed through appear as temporary.

At the beginning stands the exile.

At the end stands the resurrection.

It is preferable to speak here of a narrative and theological correspondence rather than to assert the existence of a vast chiasm — show definition INF267 necessarily encompassing all twelve chapters.

This progression is one of the most important movements of the book.

In the first narratives, God’s servants are delivered from deadly situations.

The three Judeans come out of the furnace.

Daniel comes out of the lions’ den.

But these deliverances remain temporal.

Daniel 12 goes further:

"Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Daniel 12.2).

The book thus moves from deliverance in the face of death to the hope of a victory that goes beyond death itself.

Daniel’s ultimate horizon is therefore not merely political.

It is eschatological.

All the structures studied finally converge on the same theme.

Daniel 1 affirms that the Lord delivers Jehoiakim into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel 2 affirms that God changes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings (Daniel 2.21).

Daniel 4 affirms that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men (Daniel 4.25).

Daniel 5 shows that a kingdom can be numbered, weighed, and taken away.

Daniel 7 presents the heavenly court and the everlasting dominion.

Daniel 12 leads history on to deliverance and resurrection.

Divine sovereignty is therefore not merely one theme among others.

It gives coherence to the whole book.

The literary analysis is not meant to turn Daniel into an abstract construction.

On the contrary, it allows us to better understand how the message develops.

The succession of languages delimits sections.

The correspondences bring certain chapters closer together.

The chronological indications place the visions back in their context.

The prophetic repetitions allow for deepening.

The narratives give a human dimension to the great theological affirmations.

The visions place individual experiences back within a far vaster history.

The structure is therefore at the service of meaning.

Finally, all these appendices confirm the need to keep three categories.

What the text explicitly affirms.

This includes the reign dates given by Daniel, the identifications supplied by the interpretations of the visions, the observable changes of language, and the events actually reported.

What history allows us to establish or reconstruct with sufficient probability.

This includes in particular the context of the kingdoms, certain datings, and the succession of the sovereigns.

What interpretation proposes.

This includes the identifications that are not directly given by the text, detailed chronological reconstructions, and certain structural or eschatological proposals.

This distinction will accompany the study of each of the twelve chapters.