Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 432. Daniel

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 432. Daniel


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Daniel



Literature



Bevan, A. A., A Short Commentary on the Book of Daniel (1892).

Charles, R. H., The Book of Daniel (Century Bible).

Deane, H., Daniel: His Life and Times (1888).

Driver, S. R., The Book of Daniel (Cambridge Bible) (1900).

Ewald, H., The History of Israel, v. (1880) 302.

Farrar, F. W., The Book of Daniel (Expositor's Bible) (1895).

Fennell, B., The Upward Calling of God in Christ (1914), 76.

Godet, F., Biblical Studies: Old Testament (1875), 171, 333.

Hitchens, J. H., in Biblical Character Sketches (1896), 104.

Hunter, A. M., Daniel and the Age of the Exile.

Hunter, P. H., The Story of Daniel (1890).

Kirk, T., Daniel the Prophet (1906).

McClure, J. G. K., Living for the Best (1903), 11.

Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, ii. (1903) 331.

Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 253.

Peake, A. S., The Religion of Israel (1908), 42.

Punshon, W. M., Lectures and Sermons (1873), 3.

Pusey, E. B., Daniel the Prophet (1864).

Rendall, G. H., Charterhouse Sermons (1911), 62.

Smith, R. P., Daniel (1886).

Taylor, W. M., Daniel the Beloved (1889).

Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 259.

Whyte, A., Bible Characters: Ahithophel to Nehemiah (1899), 163.

Williams, I., The Characters of the Old Testament (1870), 279.

Wright, C. H. H., Daniel and his Prophecies (1906).

Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1898) 551 (E. L. Curtis).

Dictionary of the Bible, i. (Single-volume, 1909) 175 (J. Taylor).

Encyclopœdia Biblica, i. (1899), col. 1002 (A. Kamphausen).

Jewish Encyclopedia, iv. (1903) 426 (E. König).

Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, iv. (1898) 446 (F. Buhl).





Daniel



O Daniel, thou man greatly beloved.- Dan_10:11.



Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel.- Eze_28:3.



Scarcely anything is known of the Daniel of history. Like Job, with whom we find him once associated (Eze_14:14; Eze_14:20), he was a vaguely grand figure belonging to Israel's dim and distant past. In the traditions he had a name for righteousness. Ezekiel said of the land of Israel in the beginning of the 6th century b.c., “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God … though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.” And Daniel had a name for wisdom. To the prince of Tyre, lifted up in heart, identifying himself with God, sitting in the seat of God, in the midst of the sea, Ezekiel ironically says, “Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee” (Eze_28:3).



But as a figure in literature how well is Daniel known, and how greatly beloved! He is the hero of a great and mysterious book written in the time of the Maccabean Wars. Just as the real Hamlet, who is known to all the world, owes little but the outline of his story to old Saxo Grammaticus, and as the historical Faust is little more than a nucleus of the drama which sums up the spirit of the modern age, so the Daniel whom we know, the hero of the book which gives magnificent expression to the spiritual aspirations of the Jews in their conflict with the Greeks, has merely a nominal connexion with the Daniel of tradition. He is the splendid literary creation of one of the grandest periods of Hebrew history. The anonymous writer who embodied his own and his nation's ideals in that heroic and saintly figure shows a sovereign indifference to the details of ancient history, and we should do him an injustice if we were to demand of him a rigid accuracy to which he lays no claim. But when the figure of Daniel is viewed in the true light, as the ideal of a nation pouring out its life-blood for its spiritual heritage, it does its work upon generation after generation of readers like all the supreme creations of literature.



Rarely did it happen that a book appeared as this did, in the very crisis of the times, and in a form most suited to such an age, ingeniously reserved, close, and severe, and yet shedding so clear a light through obscurity, and so marvellously captivating. It was natural that it should soon achieve a success entirely corresponding to its inner truth and glory. And so, in this book, we have for the last time in the literature of the Old Testament an example of a work which, having sprung from the deepest necessities of the noblest impulses of the age, can render to that age the purest service, and which, by the development of events immediately after, receives with such power the stamp of Divine witness that it subsequently attains imperishable sanctity.1 [Note: H. Ewald.]