Porphyry determined that Daniel must have written the book in hindsight, not in advance. Porphyry made this assertion based on Daniel 11:21, which he believed was a prophecy about Antiochus Epiphenes IV. In his book Against Christians, Porphyry (285 A.D.) put forth the notion that Daniel was written no earlier than 165 B.C.

Lamentations, written by the great prophet Jeremiah, is also in the вЂњwritings.вЂќ Furthermore, Jesus, who was considered a Jewish rabbi, referred to Daniel as a prophet in Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14. It should be noted that Daniel is placed between the books of Esther and Ezra / Nehemiah, which also contain histories and were written in the early Persian period.

Perhaps its detailing of historical records led to its classification within the Jewish Scriptures as вЂњwritingsвЂќ instead of вЂњprophets.вЂќ Skeptics have often pointed to this classification to suggest that DanielвЂ™s prophecies were of minor importance. The first six chapters detail historical records of this time period, while chapters seven to twelve detail DanielвЂ™s visions. The Aramaic portion is in Daniel l 2:4 вЂ“ 7:28. The book is written in both Hebrew and Aramaic. The book ends two years after the seventy years of exile in 532 B.C. Daniel and several other young men (1:4) were deported from Judah to Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar. The book of Daniel begins in 604 B.C., which is eighteen years prior to the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C. Accordingly, I will address the literature on this topic. Such a consensus makes me wonder about whether scholarship is controlled by people who are skeptical of the supernatural inferences in DanielвЂ™s prophecies. According to some, the вЂњscholarly consensusвЂќ on the dating of Daniel is that the book of Daniel was written in the 2 nd century B.C.

The meaning of the book of daniel