When was the Book of Daniel written?

There are numerous reasons to accept an early writership for the Book of Daniel. I have outlined the following six for consideration.1. Daniel is a part of the Hebrew canon and the hebrew cannon was closed before the 4th century BCE. The priests did not allow any new books to be added to the canon and evidence of this is that the apocryphal books and the Macabees were never included in the canon. This adds weight to this because it shows that the priesthood stood as guardians of the scriptures and did not allow them to be added to willy nilly. No new books have been added since the 5th century according to Jewish tradition.2. Jesus Christ himself accepted Daniels prophecy and also quoted from it when he was describing the future destruction of Jerusalem which came in 70CE. (Matt 24:15 is a quote from Daniel 11:31)
This shows two things. 1. that the prophecies of Daniel were still future in the 1st century and therefore could not refer to, as some suggest, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, which was over 100 years before Jesus day. And 2 it shows that the book of Daniel was being used in the synagogues in the 1st century which means they were a part of the cannon. As mentioned above, the connon was closed 3 centuries earlier.3. Parts of the book of Daniel was also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the parchments of Daniel were dated to be 2nd century BCE. For this reason and the fact that the book was already in circulation by early in the 1st century, it has been concluded by some scholars that as the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible states: 4. the Jewish historian Josephus states that the prophecies of Daniel were shown to Alexander the Great when he entered Jerusalem. This was about 332 BCE. Jewish Antiquities, XI, 337 [viii, 5]5. Parts of Daniel are written in both Hebrew & Aramaic. About the Aramaic portion of Daniel, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says: The style of writing and the terms used are a strong evidence of very early authorship.6. The 6th Century prophet Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel who served as a prophet during the Babylonian exile. Ezekiel mentions Daniel by name a number of times in his own writings. So if Daniel really was forged, then so was the book of Ezekiel. Not that this in itself proves Daniels early writership, but it does prove that Daniel did live in the 6th centuryI also wanted to mention that Daniels prophecy gives the time of appearence of the Messiah. That prophecy is extremely convincing considering it gives the year of the messiahs appearance as 29CE...the very year that Jesus was baptized. Edited by Peg, : Correction Jesus baptism was in the year 29ce, not 36.

why would it be missing books??? Only because you assume that the books were written late. However according to Jesephus, the books of the 13 prophets were written and complete by the time of Artaxerxes who was from 465—424 BCE.Josephus wrote in 'Against Apion' (I, 38-40 [8]) that the Hebrew Scriptures had been fixed for a long time. He wrote: If jesus was the Messiah, then he could not have been wrong becuase the Messiah was sent by God, with full knowlege of the history of the world. Jesus had a prehuman existence and therefore he would not have used that book if it were a fake.

on the contrary, it was Herodotus who refers to the son of Nabonidus and Nitocris as fighting against Cyrus the Persian.So there is external evidence that Nitocris married Nabo & that she was the daughter of Neb.
this would explain the reason why Nabo was able to take the Babylonian throne. It would also harmonize with the fact that Neb is referred to as the father of Nabo's son Bel.... with Nitocris being Bels mother, and she being Nebs daugther, then Bel is aptly called a 'son' of Neb by blood relation. firstly, you are wrong about there being no battle. There certainly was a battle that was fought the way all battles were fought...with swords on the battlefield. It began earlier with an unprecedented military engagement known as the Battle of Opis.The prophets Isaiah and Jerimiah fortold hundreds of years in advance of the details of babylon. here is what Isaiah says would happen: Jerimiah in chpt 50 says: All quotes taken from this wiki articleThe prophecies show that Babylon was to be taken by one named Cyrus.The babylonians would be 'like women' This means they would not fight like men. The men of the city did not put up a fight because apparently they were all drunk at a feast in the castle. this is also why Cyrus could walk into the city and why the 'Gates were not shut' the rivers would be devistated and dried up & the fords would be seized You say that the takeover was bloodless. This means you are saying that no one died when Cyrus overthrew Babylon. Are you able to provide some evidence that no one died in the takeover?

perhaps you can explain what books you are refering to as the canonized torah of 400bceand provide evidence for suchmaybe then i can get on the same page as you.

admittedly, the evidence is patchy as you would expect. But it is still there in bits and pieces and many have been led to conclude that Nitocris, who was named as the mother of Belshazzar, was a daughter of Neb because she was a queen.Here is an intersting list of No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.historyofthedaughters.com/34.pdfdaughters of babylon where details of Nitocris is foundThe Ancient Dictionary Page 1205 - look halfway down the page on the left side column

the ancient rabbis arranged the books of the canon in 3 groups- the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. They listed Daniel with the Writings. However the greek septuagint lists Daniel in between the major and minor prophets. I dont know if anyone knows why this was the case.Obviously he was considered a prophet because jesus quoted from his prophecies and many jews accepted that. this is a harder one to decipher by Josephus broad statement because the books were arranged differently to what we have them. Some books were together as one such as Ezra and Nehemiah for instance. This could have been a similar situation with the prophets. Because these writings were written on long continuous scrolls, they were kept together. The scribes also had a system for keeping track of things. They would name a scroll after each letter of the hebrew alphabet and the contents of that scroll would always remain the same. It wasnt until many centuries later that the bible was divided into smaller books with chapters and paragraphs.

there are two nebuchudnezzarsNeb I & Neb IINeb II is the one i'm refering, but i apologize, i dont think i made that clear at all

in the book 'Nabonidus and Belshazzar' by P Dougherty on page 79 his research suggests that Nabonidus was the husband of Nitocris, Nebuchadnezzar's (II) daughter by his wife of the same name. He is probably using Herodotus as a reference (I, 188) where heredotus refers to Cyrus the Persian as fighting against the son of Labynetus and Nitocris. If that is true, then Nabonidus was married to a woman named Nitocris... my link shows that a woman named after her mother as many were.You know as well as I do that the evidence for ancient babylon is very fragmented and there are only dribs and drabs of information. Until something gets unearthed, like Belshazzar was, we are only going by what is currently available via ancient writers.from where i'm sitting, Daniel was correct about Belshazzar, so he could also be right about Belshazzar being in the family line of Neb (II) if one of Nebs daughters was the one married to NaboAnd for Nabo to take the throne legally, then he must have had a fairly strong claim. Marring the princess could certainly put him in line for the throne.

the Encyclopaedia Judaica of 1973, Vol.4, cols.826, 827 says that some jewish authorities put Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah, they deliberately counted the number of books as 22 so that they equaled the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.Perhpaps Josephus was doing the same. the council of Jamnia did not complete the canon. The canon was already complete as can be easily proved by the fact that the Alexandrian Jewish scholars made the Greek Septuagint translation in 280BCE. Esthter & Danile are both in the greek septuagint. Here is the complete list of the Jewish traditionl canonThe Law (The Pentateuch)
 1. Genesis
 2. Exodus
 3. Leviticus
 4. Numbers
 5. DeuteronomyThe Prophets
 6. Joshua
 7. Judges
 8. Samuel (First and Second together as one book)
 9. Kings (First and Second together as one book)
10. Isaiah
11. Jeremiah
12. Ezekiel
13. The Twelve Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as one book)The Writings (Hagiographa)
14. Psalms
15. Proverbs
16. Job
17. The Song of Solomon
18. Ruth
19. Lamentations
20. Ecclesiastes
21. Esther
22. Daniel
23. Ezra (Nehemiah was included with Ezra)
24. Chronicles (First and Second together as one book)

No because Nebo was not related by blood to Neb, so for Nebo to take the throne, he would have to marry a decendent of the throne. That one is suggested to be Nitorcis...an earlier wife of Neb (I) is also named Nitocris and therefore could easily be a daughter of her.But besides this, the evidence suggests that ancient people viewed grandsons and greatgrandsons as 'sons' of the original ruler. An example can be seen on the 'Black Obelisk' of Shalmaneser III an Assyrian king.He names the Hebrew 'Jehu' as a son [as in successor] of Omri even though Jehu was not a son of Omri. The Assyrians continued to call Israel the land of Omri and Israels kings the house of Omri for a long time after Omri's immediate descendants had ceased ruling. Daniel says at 9:1 "In the first year of Da‧ri′us the son of A‧has‧u‧e′rus of the seed of the Medes, who had been made king over the kingdom of the Chal‧de′ans"He doest say that Darius will be the one to overthrow Babylon...he says that Darius was put in charge of Babyblon. that is also how the bible prophecy describes it...'the mighty men of babylon have ceased to fight'...'they have become like women'...'the gates will be left open'....'the waters will dry up' it could mean that Cyrus wanted the people to believe that he had taken the rulership at Gods direction and therefore he didnt need to do any fighting. This is likely the case for its what the bible says. However, the bible also says that Belshazzar was killed that very night as does 2 other secular sourcesaccording to both Herodotus and Zenophon, he certainly killed Bel. [qs]And when day dawned and those in possession The entire
of the citadels discovered that the city was taken and to*Cyr^*^
the king slain^ they surrendered the citadels^ too. Cyropaedia, VII, v, 33[qs]

ok, fair enough i see where you are coming from nowHowever, did you read what Josephus said about the timing of the books of the hebrew scriptures? Do you see that Jesophus said the 13 books of the prophets and the remaining 4 contained hymns and precepts for conduct were "Until the time of Artaxerxes, who succeeded Xerxes as king of Persia"now Artaxerxes I Longimanus ruled from 465—424 BCE...this means that all these books, according to Josephus, were already considered to be the holy books of the jewish faith.besides this, he adds that no books have been added or taken away from them.So the Torah was not the only books cannonized early on...the prophets and the other books were also in there...22 in total according to Josephus.

i'll come back to you tomorrow...which is only a few minutes away now, so i'm off to bed

Hi Iblis, that cannot be correct for the reason that in the first century the entire hebrew scriptures made up the septuagint....the septuagint is the version that Apostles and Jesus used when readings were held in synagugues. Jesus quoted almost word for word from parts of Daniel.there is also an account in Acts about the Ethiopian noble who was reading the scroll of Isaiah. It was a copy of Isaiah from the greek septuagint that he was reading.But the greatest evidence that the septuagint contained more then just the torah, comes from the dead sea scrolls. Fragments of the septuagint from all 12 books of the prophets have been found in them dating back to 50BCE.

in my opinion, timing is more important because its the theme of this discussion.
There is strong evidence to show that Daniel was written back in the 5th century BCE and that is what we are trying to pinpoint. Canonization is really a side point in this discussion. some critics may claim that Daniel is from the Maccabean period, but they cant explain how the writer could have known of Neb's construction projects long before archaeologists brought them to light. Or how he knew of the various laws of the babylonians and medes and persians.remember that both empires had gone into decline long before the second centuryBCE and archeology wasnt a practice among the Jews. You would need to show that the festival was not celebrated by Jews before the maccabee period. Is there evidence that shows this to be the case?
The book of 2 Maccabees 15:36 actually calls the festival Mordecai’s day, because it was Mordecai who played an important part in the events pertaining to the festival. Why would the maccabees not call it by the name of Judas who led the army the defeated Nicanor????

Nowhat i am pointing out is that the septuagint did include the entire hebrew scriptures. This is evidenced by the fact that the 1st century synagogues contained passages of Isaiah which were the Greek Septuagint version.Iblis seems to think that the Greek Septuagint only contained the first 5 books of moses. This is not correct.