Like Joseph in Genesis before him, Daniel was an ace dream-analyzer, sort of the Sigmund Freud of his era (except much more religious and probably lacking a cigar). Of course, he usually interpreted the dreams of kings, and those dreams typically involved some sort of broad historical lesson or a prophecy of personal catastrophe. We can't suggest what he would've made of the "naked in math class" thing, but we do know that he was an expert on dream interpretation. What is Book of Daniel About and Why Should I Care?Įver had a weird dream? We mean, like, classically weird? Like the ol' forgot-to-wear-clothes-to-math-class dream? Well, Daniel, the prophet and seer, would have rushed to your aid and explained-provided you had just threatened the lives of all the wise men in Babylon, that is. Some of the Bible's best yarns are in here, like the tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the lion's den. But the Book of Daniel is similar to the Writings in that it contains plenty of classic short stories. He has prophetic visions of the future and the end of the world and tries to counsel kings toward justice. Both of these ways of placing Daniel make sense. Christians put Dan in with the books by and about the Prophets, but the Hebrew Bible places his book in with the Writings, alongside works like Esther and the Song of Solomon. The book keeps telling stories about how Daniel and his friends are saved by God whenever the light seemed like it was about to go out and the wicked kings were about to do something horrible.ĭaniel fits into the Bible in an interesting way, too. The Book of Daniel was evidently written by people from the "Let God Do It" camp. But before that happened, the Israelites were debating exactly how they should react-whether with violent revolt, or by waiting patiently for God to overthrow Antiochus, just as the Babylonian tyrants had been overthrown by the Persians earlier. Naturally, none of this went down well with the Israelites, and eventually a rebellion led by the heroic warrior, Judah Maccabee, overthrew Antiochus' reign. (See the Apocryphal Biblical book 2 Maccabees for more details.) He even attempted to install a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies, the very place where God was supposed to reside. Not only did he try to prevent the Jews from worshipping in their temple and practicing their religion freely, he made owning a copy of the Torah punishable by death. When the book was actually written, sometime between 300 and 165 BCE, they were dealing with an unusually nasty king by the name of Antiochus IV Epiphanes-one of the Greek generals squabbling over the remains of Alexander the Great's empire. The Book of Daniel came out of a period when Israel was going through some major problems, like getting invaded, plundered, and totally devastated by different imperial armies while seeing the best-educated Jews carried away into captivity. But that's part of the problem posed by The Book of Daniel: how do you live under the control of people who just don't get it while still remaining true to yourself? It was an issue that the Israelites happened to be struggling with in a big way at the time the book was written. In the course of the book's opening stories, the kings keep realizing that Daniel's God is, in fact, everybody's God, or the only God-and then they immediately do something entirely disrespectful and ridiculous like drinking booze out of sacred vessels or chucking people into furnaces. By the time you finish reading Daniel, you'll probably be wondering how all these Babylonian and Persian kings could be so incredibly thick.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |