[143] The description of God as "the Ancient of Days" with garments white as snow, and of His throne of flames on burning wheels, is found again in the Book of Enoch, written about B.C. 141 (Enoch xiv.).
[144] See Dan. xii. 2. Comp. Jos., _B. J._, II. viii. 14; Enoch xxii. 13, lx. 1-5, etc.
[145] Comp. Smend, _Alttest. Relig. Gesch._, p. 530. For references to angels in Old Testament see Job i. 6, xxxviii. 7; Jer. xxiii. 18; Psalm lxxxix. 7; Josh. v. 13-15; Zech. i. 12, iii. 1. See further Behrmann, _Dan._, p. xxiii.
[147] See Enoch lxxi. 17, lxviii. 10, and the six archangels Uriel, Raphael, Reguel, Michael, Saragael, and Gabriel in Enoch xx.-xxxvi. See _Rosh Hashanah_, f. 56, 1; _Bereshîth Rabba_, c. 48; Hamburger, i. 305-312.
[148] _Berachôth_, f. 31; Dan. vi. 11. Comp. Psalm lv. 18; 1 Kings viii. 38-48.
[149] 1 Macc. i. 62; Dan. i. 8; 2 Macc. v. 27, vi. 18-vii. 42.
[150] Introd., p. 477. Comp. 2 Esdras xiii. 41-45, and _passim_; Enoch xl., xlv., xlvi., xlix., and _passim_; Hamburger, _Real-Encycl._, ii. 267 ff. With "the time of the end" and the numerical calculations comp. 2 Esdras vi. 6, 7.
[151] Roszmann, _Die Makkabäische Erhebung_, p. 45. See Wellhausen, _Die Pharis. u. d. Sadd._, 77 ff.
_PECULIARITIES OF THE APOCALYPTIC AND PROPHETIC SECTION OF THE BOOK_
If we have found much to lead us to serious doubts as to the authenticity and genuineness--_i.e._, as to the literal historicity and the real author--of the Book of Daniel in its historic section, we shall find still more in the prophetic section. If the phenomena already passed in review are more than enough to indicate the impossibility that the Book could have been written by the historic Daniel, the phenomena now to be considered are such as have sufficed to convince the immense majority of learned critics that, in its present form, the Book did not appear before the days of Antiochus Epiphanes.[152] The probable date is B.C. 164. As in the Book of Enoch xc. 15, 16, it contains history written under the form of prophecy.
Leaving minuter examination to later chapters of commentary, we will now take a brief survey of this unique apocalypse.
I. As regards the style and method the only distant approach to it in the rest of the Old Testament is in a few visions of Ezekiel and Zechariah, which differ greatly from the clear, and so to speak classic, style of the older prophets. But in Daniel we find visions far more enigmatical, and far less full of passion and poetry. Indeed, as regards style and intellectual force, the splendid historic scenes of chaps. i.-vi. far surpass the visions of vii.-xii., some of which have been described as "composite logographs," in which the ideas are forcibly juxtaposed without care for any coherence in the symbols--as, for instance, when _a horn_ speaks and has eyes.[153]