When was the book of Daniel written?

Question 1145

Few books of the Old Testament have been argued over as fiercely as Daniel. Its detailed visions trace the rise and fall of empires with such accuracy that critics have insisted it must have been written after the events it describes, for on their assumptions no one could have foreseen them. The dating of Daniel is therefore not a dry technical matter. It touches directly on whether God truly foretells the future, and whether the Lord Jesus was right to call Daniel a prophet.

Understanding when was the book of Daniel written can significantly impact our interpretation of its messages.

Behind the debate lies the same divide we meet so often in questions of authorship. One side approaches the book willing to believe that God can reveal what is to come, and the other rules that out before a word is read. Once we see which assumption is doing the real work, the evidence can be weighed fairly, and it points strongly to the book being exactly what it claims to be.

Two Proposed Dates

The book presents itself as the work of Daniel, a Jewish exile carried to Babylon as a youth, who rose to serve in the courts of Babylon and Persia through the sixth century before Christ. On this reading the visions are genuine prophecy, given centuries before their fulfilment, and the book is a window into the faithfulness of God to His people in a foreign land.

Many critical scholars instead date the book to the second century, around the time of the fierce persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek ruler who defiled the temple and tried to stamp out the worship of God. On their view the prophecies are history written up after the fact to look like prediction, composed to encourage the faithful during that crisis. The whole debate turns on which of these two settings is correct, a man of the sixth century seeing far ahead, or a writer of the second century looking back and dressing up the past as prophecy.

As with Isaiah, the late date is driven less by the evidence than by an assumption. Daniel’s visions describe the course of the Persian and Greek empires so precisely, down to the struggles of the kings who followed Alexander, that if real prediction is ruled out in advance a late date becomes necessary. The believer who holds that God declares things before they happen has no need to force the book into the second century.

The Evidence for the Sixth Century

Several lines of evidence point to the earlier date. The book shows accurate knowledge of the Babylonian and early Persian courts, including details that a writer living four centuries later in the Greek age would have been unlikely to know. The most famous example concerns Belshazzar, whom Daniel presents as king of Babylon at its fall. For a long time critics dismissed this as an error, since Belshazzar was missing from the standard king lists and the last king of Babylon was known to be Nabonidus. Then archaeology recovered the records that showed Belshazzar to be the son of Nabonidus and co-regent ruling in the city while his father was away, which explains exactly why Daniel could be offered only the third place in the kingdom rather than the second. The book was vindicated in a detail the critics had used against it.

The language of the book tells the same story. Daniel is written partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic, and the form of the Aramaic fits an earlier period rather than the later one the critical theory demands. The presence of a few Persian terms for government suits a man who served in the Persian administration, while the near absence of Greek words is hard to explain if the book were written deep in the Greek-speaking age. Taken together, the court detail, the vindicated history, and the language all favour the sixth century.

The Testimony of the Lord Jesus

The decisive testimony again comes from the Lord Jesus. Speaking of events still future in His own day, He warned His hearers about the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, naming him and treating his words as genuine prophecy reaching beyond the second century into times yet to come. If the book were a second-century work looking backward, then its prophecies were already in the past when Jesus spoke, yet He pointed forward to their fulfilment. To accept the late date is to set aside the plain words of the One who is the truth, who received Daniel as a prophet of God writing real prediction.

This is the same pattern we find with Isaiah and the Pentateuch. The critical theories, however learned, again and again run against the testimony of the Lord Jesus and His apostles, and the believer must decide whose word carries more weight. For those who follow Christ, His witness is enough to settle the matter.

Why It Matters

Daniel is one of the great prophetic foundations of the whole biblical picture of the last things. Its vision of four kingdoms, its seventy weeks, and its Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven feed directly into the teaching of the Lord Jesus and into the book of Revelation. The dispensational reading of prophecy, with its careful attention to God’s distinct programme for Israel, draws deeply on Daniel’s framework of the times of the Gentiles and the seventy weeks decreed for Daniel’s people.

If Daniel is a pious fiction dressed up as prophecy, that foundation is shaken and the structure built upon it grows uncertain. If it is what it claims to be, then we hold in our hands a sixth-century witness to the God who maps the course of history before it unfolds, and the prophecies still awaiting fulfilment carry the same certainty as those already accomplished.

So, now what?

Receive Daniel as the prophet the Lord Jesus said he was, writing in the days of the exile and seeing far down the corridor of time by the Spirit of God. When others tell you the visions were written after the fact, you can answer that the argument rests on ruling out prophecy before examining the evidence, and that the courts, the language, and Belshazzar himself all fit the early date the book claims.

Let the book do its pastoral work, which it was given to do for a people under pressure. It steadies the hearts of the faithful in hostile times with the truth that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of men, that He sets up kings and removes them, and that His everlasting kingdom will at last fill the earth. Read it and be encouraged, whatever empire seems to tower over you, for the God of Daniel still reigns.

“He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.” Daniel 2:21

“He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.” Daniel 2:21

For Further Study

The commentaries of John Walvoord and Stephen Miller defend the sixth-century date and a literal reading of the prophecies, and they handle the historical questions with care. Gleason Archer answers the critical objections in detail in his writing on Old Testament introduction and in his commentary work, and Robert Dick Wilson’s older studies on the historical and linguistic evidence remain a quarry of careful argument for the traditional date.