SOURCE: Heaton, E. W. Introduction to The Book of Daniel : Introduction and Commentary, pp. 17-112. London: SCM Press, 1956.

In the following excerpt, Heaton discusses the author and hero of The Book of Daniel before commenting on its status as apocalyptic literature and on issues surrounding its composition.

1 the Book in Brief

The immediate occasion which called forth the Book of Daniel was the persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, who reigned from 175 to 163 b.c.

The writer, a pious scribe living in the middle of the persecution, is addressing his contemporaries through the medium of an ancient sage, about whom he recounts stories and to whom he ascribes visions. The stories are set in the Babylonian court during the exilic period (586-538 b.c.), and the visions traverse Israel's history from this period to the writer's own time and concentrate on the years of...