EARLY TRACES OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Roger Beckwith

Summary
In three intertestamental works, dating from before the time when the Book
of Daniel is commonly supposed to have been written, a knowledge of the
book seems to be reflected We were formerly dependent on translations of
these works, which made such an inference less certain, but we now have
access to sufficient parts of the original to confirm that the translations are
reliable. We also have a clearer idea now when one of the works (the Book
ofWatchers) was written.

There have always been those who are unpersuaded by the

Maccabean dating which, since the latter part of the nineteenth
century, has commonly been assigned to the Book of Daniel. Some
have criticised the philosophical assumptions underlying such a
dating, and some the alleged acceptability of pseudonymity as a
respectable literary device in Jewish prophetic literature, while others
have addressed the historical and linguistic problems which have
been supposed to prove the lateness ofthe book. 1 Since the Qumran
discoveries took place, a lot of new historical and linguistic evidence
bearing (directly or indirectly) on the date of Daniel has been
emerging,2 and some of it has the effect of confirming apparent
allusions to the book found in writings predating its supposed time
of composition. Three such allusions are the subject of this article.

1 An important study of this third kind is D.J. Wisenian, T.C. Mitchell, R.

Joyce, W.J. Martin and K.A. Kitchen, Notes on Some Problems in the Book of
Daniel (London: Tyndale Press, 1965).
2 For an attempt to summarise this new evidence, see the section 'The
ancient attitude to the Book of Daniel' in my book The Old Testament Canon
of the New Testament Church, and Its Background in Early Judaism (London:
SPCK; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985-86) 355-58, together with the notes on
pp. 414-17. Two of the allusions to Daniel which form the subject of this
article are noted in my book, but not the third.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
76 TYNDALE BULLETIN 53.1 (2002)

I. The Book of Tobit

The earliest of these writings, perhaps, is the Book of Tobit, very
likely the oldest of the books of the Apocrypha. The direct Persian
influence on this book and its familiar acquaintance with the ancient
Book of Ahiqar are unique features, and the arguments used by D.C.
Simpson in Charles's collection3 and by W.O.E. Oesterley in his
Introduction to the Books of the Apocrypha4 for the integrity of the
book and its early date, are still sound. They date it in the late third
or early second century BC, and discoveries made since have not
inclined scholars to date it any later. The most recent attack on the
integrity of the book, made by Frank Zimmermann in his Dropsie
edition of Tobit, 5 and claiming that chapters 13 and 14 must have
been added after AD 70, came less than ten years before the
announcement by J.T. Milik that fragments of four Aramaic
manuscripts and one Hebrew manuscript of the book had been
found at Qumran, several of them extending to chapters 13 and 14.6
One or other of these two Semitic texts, probably the Aramaic one,
must represent the original of the book, and now that the fragments
have been published, 7 we know that the editors date several of the
manuscripts that include chapter 14 to about 50 BC, and one of them
to about 100 BC. It is therefore not surprising that both the main
recensions ofthe Greek translation ofTobit in the Septuagint include
chapters 13 and 14. The Qumran discoveries show that the longer
but less familiar of these recensions, represented by Codex Sinaiticus
and the Old Latin translation, is the one closer to the original.
Now, in chapter 14 the author makes his hero, supposedly living
in ancient Nineveh, at the end of his life warn his son to migrate to
Media, because the prophet Nahum had foretold Nineveh's
destruction, and he believed it. He goes on to say that the prophets
of Israel had also foretold other important events, which would all
take place: the captivity, the desolation of the land, the burning of

3 R.H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1913) vol. 1, 183-85, 194-96.
4 Oesterley, Introduction to the Books of the Apocrypha (London: SPCK,
1935) 167-69.
s Zimmermann, The Book ofTobit (New York: Harper, 1958) 24-27.
6 Milik, 'La patrie de Tobie', Revue Biblique 73 (1966) 522-30, esp. 522.
7 In J.C. Vanderkam et al., Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XIX (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995) 1-76, esp. 57-59. The editorofTobit here is J.A. Fitzmyer,
completing the work of the late J.T. Milik.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
BECKWilH: Early Traces of Daniel 77

the temple, then the return from the exile, and the rebuilding of the
temple, but not like the first,
... until the time when the time of the seasons be fulfilled; and afterwards
they will return, all of them, from their captivity, and build up Jerusalem
with honour, and the house of God shall be builded in her, even as the
prophets oflsrael spake concerning her (Tobit 14:4-5, Codex Sinaiticus,
Simpson's translation).

This passage, though in a somewhat fragmentary state, is clearly

represented, apparently verbatim, in one of the Aramaic fragments,
4QTobc ar, dated about 50 BC. It envisages a second more general
return from exile, when Jerusalem and the temple will be built with
appropriate honour, as the prophets of Israel spoke concerning
them, which is to take place at 'the time when the time of the
seasonss is fulfilled'. This glorious future rebuilding of Jerusalem
and its temple is probably seen by the author as foretold by Isaiah
and Ezekiel respectively. But who fixed 'the time when the time of the
seasons would be fulfilled' for this to happen? Could it be anyone
but Daniel? It was the author of the Book of Daniel who, taking his
cue no doubt from Jeremiah's now fulfilled prophecy of the seventy-
year exile, to which ~e refers in Daniel 9:2, displays such interest in
the 'times and seasons' which God's power controls (Dn. 2:21), and
particularly in the times when the great events still lying in the future
will occur-at the end of the three and a half times (Dn. 7:25; 12:7), of
the 2,300 evenings and mornings (Dn. 8:14), of the seventy weeks
(Dn. 9:24), of the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days (Dn. 12:11-12). At
the end of each of these periods suffering will end and blessing will
follow for God's people; and the glorious rebuilding of Jerusalem
and its temple, anticipated by the author of Tobit, would certainly be
such events, which could reasonably be expected to take place at
such a time.

II. The Book of Watchers

Possibly as old as Tobit, or even older, is the first part of the Book of
Enoch, the Book of Watchers, occupying chapters 1-36 of the
whole. 1 Enoch is a composite work, consisting of five distinct parts,
four of which have been found at Qumran in the original Aramaic,
together with other related material. The Qumran material is of course

8 0 xpovo~ 'tOOV lcatprov. Cf. Dn. 2:21 (Old Greek and Theodotion) Katpou~
Kat xpovou~.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
78 TYNDALE BULLETIN 53.1 (2002)

fragmentary, but it is sufficiently extensive to show that the complete

Ethiopic translation, on which in the past we had to rely almost
entirely, is substantially reliable; though the third part, the
Astronomical Book, is much condensed in the Ethiopic version, and
the second part, the Book of Parables, must have been added to the
work by editors outside Qumran, possibly to replace the Book of
Giants, which has been found at Qumran but does not occur in the
Ethiopic text. The Aramaic manuscripts were carefully edited by
Milik.9 Milik reckons the Book of Watchers one of the earliest parts
of 1 Enoch, and he dates the oldest manuscript of it some time in the
first half of the second century Bc,IO which suggests that the actual
composition of the Book of Watchers could well go back to the third
century BC.
The Book of Watchers has a remarkably close relationship with
the Book of Daniel. The term 'watcher' or 'wakeful one' (Aramaic
,, l') is used for an angel in no other book of the Old Testament
except Daniel (Dn. 4:13, 17, 23), but it is common in the Book of
Watchers (1 Enoch 10:7, 9; 12:2, 3; 13:10; 14:1, 3; 15:2, 9; 16:1, 2; 22:6
Aramaic), where, as in Daniel, it is linked with the term 'holy one'
(I Enoch 12:2; 22:6 Aramaic). The Book of Daniel is also the only Old
Testament book to give angels individual names, the names being
Gabriel (Dn. 8:16; 9:21) and Michael (Dn. 10:13, 21; 12:1): the same
two names are given to angels in the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 9:1;
20:5, 7), and many angels are there given similar names, likewise
ending in '~ (including Raphael, also found in Tobit).ll Still more
striking are the links between the vision of God in Daniel 7:9-10 and
that in 1 Enoch 14:18-22, though in the latter passage the chariot
vision ofEzekiel (Ezk. 1 and 10), where the divine throne is of crystal
and is carried by the cherubim, is also drawn upon. This passage of
Enoch is found in the Qumran Aramaic in three little fragments, each
containing only one or two words, 12 sufficient to show that the
Aramaic wording is not identical with that of Daniel, but that the
meaning is the same. In Charles's translation of the Ethiopic, the
passage runs:

9 J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4

(Oxford: Clarendon, 1976).
10 Milik, The Books of Enoch, 22-23.
11 Tobit 3:17, 5:4, 12:15, etc. In Tobit 12:15 he is said to be one of seven
archangels, as in the Book of Watchers (I Enoch 20).
12 This is in the manuscript 4QEn° I vii, printed in Milik's edition on p. 199.
The words are 1'::111::> 'cherubim',,, 1-?::Jrv 'streams of', ~::11 ~'?n 'much snow'.
The MS is dated by Milik in the last third of the first century BC (p. 178).

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
BECKWI1H: Early Traces of Daniel 79
And I looked and saw therein a lofty throne: its appearance was as
crystal, and the wheels thereof as the shining sun, and there was the
vision of cherubim. And from underneath the throne came streams of
flaming fire so that I could not look thereon. And the Great Glory sat
thereon, and his raiment shone more brightly than the sun and was
whiter than any snow. None of the angels could enter and could behold
his face by reason of the magnificence and glory, and no flesh could
behold him. The flaming fire was round about him, and a great fire stood
before him, and none around could draw nigh him: ten thousand times ten
thousand stood before him, yet he needed no counsellor.

Now compare this with Daniel7:9-10:

I beheld till thrones were placed, and one that was ancient of days did sit:
his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery
stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands
ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before
him. The judgment was set, and the books were opened.
The phrases in italics are obviously connected, and show de-
pendence on one side or the other. At the same time, the anthro-
pomorphisms of Daniel are avoided in Enoch: God is not ancient of
days, and does not have hair like pure wool, nor could anyone draw
nigh to minister 1:o him. And Enoch is careful to add the apologetic
observation 'yet he needed no counsellor'. These rather
sophisticated features suggest that the dependence is on the side of
Enoch. The fact that Enoch draws also upon Ezekiel suggests the
same thing. And when one considers the general literary and
spiritual quality of Daniel, as compared with Enoch, the widespread
assumption that Daniel took Enoch for a model is seen to be
implausible. Rather, Enoch took Daniel for a model, and the whole
pseudonymous apocalyptic literature which followed in the wake of
Enoch presupposed the existence of Daniel-a work of far greater
worth, and a contender for a place in the recognised Jewish canon of
Scripture.B

13 On the question when Daniel was finally accepted into the canon, see note
16 below. Enoch was a standard text at Qumran, and was probably part of an
interpretative appendix to the national canon, recognised by the Qumran
(Essene?) school of thought, though not regarded by them !iS actually Scripture
or quoted in their literature with the distinctive formulas for Scripture (see my
book The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 74-75, 115-18,
358-66, to which, with the publication of 4QMMT, an important new piece of
evidence has been added.) There is another parallel in Enoch to the vision in
Daniel 7, this time in the Book of Giants (4Q530). The Book of Giants is one
of the latest parts of Enoch: it deals not with the watchers but with their
offspring, now individualised and named, and no MS of it is older than the first
century BC. It is not one of the alleged writings of Enoch known to the author
of Jubilees (Jub. 4: 17-24). Very likely, the vision here depends as much on that

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
80 TYNDALE BULLETIN 53.1 (2002)

Ill. Ecclesiasticus
A book that can be dated with some exactness is Ecclesiasticus, the
Wisdom of the son of Sirach. From the combined evidence of the
Greek translator's precise prologue and the author's eye-witness
account ofthe high priest Simon the Just, it is generally agreed that
it was written about 180 BC. 14 The original language was Hebrew,
and much of the Hebrew text has now been recovered, particularly
from the Cairo Geniza and Masada.
In the first seventeen verses of chapter 36, Ben Sira prays to the
Lord to vindicate and restore his people and to judge the nations
that oppress them. The prayer appears to arise out of the concluding
verses of chapter 35, and it is found in the Greek and Syriac as well
as in the Hebrew, so the suggestion that it is a later addition is
gratuitous. Nor is this the only occasion when the author breaks into
prayer: he has done it previously in 22:27-23:6. And the severe
attitude of the prayer to hostile foreign nations is quite consistent
with 50:25-26.
The prayer asks, among other things, for prophecy to be fulfilled,
and in verse 8 the Hebrew text says
rP
1ll1r.J 11p::n tli'ni1
Hasten 'the end' and ordain 'the appointed time'.

There had been an earlier 'appointed time' (1!:'10), referred to in

Psalm 102:13. This was the time appointed by the Lord through
Jeremiah for Zion to be rebuilt, after the seveni:y years of the

in the Book of Watchers as it does on that in Daniel 7, and, like the former, it
avoids the anthropomorphic features of Daniel 7. It also greatly reduces the
number of bystanders, whose presence the author perhaps thinks unnecessary.
But it would be difficult to agree with L.T. Stuckenbruck that this late and weak
passage is the original on which Daniel 7 depends, as he argues in his essay 'The
Throne-Theophany of the Book of Giants: Some New Light on the
Background of Daniel 7', in S.E. Porter and C.A. Evans, eds., The Scrolls and
the Scriptures (JSPS 26; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997) 211-20.
14 However, the contention of E.B. Pusey (Lectures on Daniel the Prophet
[3rd edn; Oxford: Parker, 1876] lecture 6) and J.H.A. Hart (Ecclesiasticus: The
Greek Text of Codex 248 [Cambridge: CUP, 1909] 249-66), that Ecclesiasticus
and its prologue were written about a hundred years earlier than the usual dates,
has never actually been disproved, only ignored. If this were the case, Ben
Sira's reference would be to the first high priest Simon, not the second, and the
translator's reference would be to the first Ptolemy Euergetes, not the second.
Because of the contents of the book and the translator's prologue, there would
be far-reaching consequences for the history of the canon and of the
Septuagint; and a date in the fourth century BC rather than the third might
become probable for the composition of To bit.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
BECKWI1H: Early Traces of Daniel 81

Babylonian exile (Je. 25:11-12; 29:10; cf. 2 Ch. 36:21-22; Ezr. 1:1; Zc.
1:12; 7:5), but when that time had almost been reached, as Daniel
afterwards perceived it had been (Dn. 9:2), he foresaw another
appointed time, 'the appointed time ofthe end' <fP i!;.'i~).IS This is
in Daniel 8:19, which seems from the context to refer to the
persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, brought to a conclusion by his
death (vv. 23-25). This future 'appointed time' (i.i;.'i~) is also
referred to in Daniel 11:27, 29, 35, and Daniel 11:27, 35 refer likewise
to 'the end' <fp) or 'the time of the end' <fP n.q) a phrase used in a
number of other verses-in Daniel 8:17, 11:40, 12:4, 9 and in all these
places the reference seems to be primarily to Antiochus Epiphanes,
though not perhaps excluding some later persecutor foreshadowed
by Antiochus. This being so, the prayer of Ben Sira would most
naturally belong to the period before Antiochus Epiphanes and his
downfall, when the appointed time of the end had not yet been
reached; and, as Ben Sira wrote about 180 BC, this is indeed when
the prayer was made. But it was made with full knowledge of the
prophecies contained in Daniel 8 or 11-12, and asks explicitly that
they may soon be fulfilled.I6
In these three !fficient works, therefore, Tobit, the Book of
Watchers and Ecclesiasticus, all dating from before 167 BC, we seem
to find a direct knowledge of the Book of Daniel. It is not just a
knowledge of the first six chapters of narrative, which some critics
are willing to concede may be older than the rest (the apparent unity
of the book notwithstanding), but more particularly a knowledge of
the last six chapters of visions; and it extends to the Hebrew as well
as the Aramaic part of the book. The author of Tobit seems to know
Daniel2 and some ifnot all ofthe chapters 7, 8, 9 and 12. The author
ofthe Book ofWatchers seems to know Daniel4, 7, 8 or 9, and 10 or
12, if not all of these. The author of Ecclesiasticus seems to know
Daniel8 or 11-12, and probably both.

15 'The appointed time of the end' is not the only possible translation, but the
parallel phrase 'the time of the end' (fj?. n~)-used in the same connection in
Dn. 8:17; 11:35, 40; 12:4, 9-favours It.
!6 Since Ben Sira evidently knew the Book of Daniel, it is the more interesting
that Daniel and his companions do not feature in his catalogue of famous men
(Ecclus. 44-49). Mordecai and Esther do not feature there either. The probable
reason is that Daniel and Esther had not yet been definitely accepted as
canonical, although moving towards it. At the end of Ecclus. 48, as Pusey long
ago pointed out (loc. cit.), Ben Sira sums up his list of the famous men of
Scripture by returning to the beginning of biblical history, before passing on to
the non-biblical figure of Simon the high priest in chapter 49.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242
82 TYNDALE BULLETIN 53.1 (2002)

If it is the case that any hypothesis is to be preferred to the

hypothesis that Daniel foretold the persecution and death of
Antiochus Epiphanes in advance, then, of course, these ancient
witnesses must either be dated improbably late or the integrity of
their writings must be challenged; but if the possibility of predictive
prophecy is granted, then it is clear that the Book of Daniel, in
substantially its present form, was already known and studied (even
ifit had not yet attained full canonicity) in the period from about 250
to 180BC.

https://tyndalebulletin.org/
https://doi.org/10.53751/001c.30242