Page 24 - Daniel

next 450 years. 18

These critical objections to Daniel may be grouped into six categories:
(1) rejection of its canonicity; (2) rejection of detailed prophecy; (3)
rejection of miracles; (4) textual problems; (5) problems of language; (6)
alleged historical inaccuracies.

Rejection of Its Canonicity

As previously explained, Daniel is included in the Writings, the third
section of the Old Testament, not in the prophetic section. Unger has
defined the erroneous critical view of this as follows: “Daniel’s prophecy

was placed among writings in the third section of the Hebrew canon and
not among the prophets in the second division because it was not in
existence when the canon of the prophets was closed, allegedly between
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300-200 B.C.” However, as noted earlier, Daniel was not included
because his work was of a different character than that of the other

prophets. Daniel was primarily a government official, and he was not
commissioned to preach to the people and deliver an oral message from
God as was, for instance, Isaiah or Jeremiah. It is questionable whether
his writings were distributed in his lifetime. Further, the Writings were
not so classified because they were late in date, since they included such

works as Job and 1 and 2 Chronicles, but the division was based on the
classification of the material in the volumes. Most importantly, the
Writings were considered just as inspired and just as much the Word of
God as the Law and the Prophets. This is brought out by the fact that
Daniel is included in the Septuagint along with other inspired works,
which would indicate that it was regarded as genuinely inspired.

The denial that the book was in existence in the sixth century B.C.
disregards the three citations referring to Daniel in Ezekiel (14:14, 20;

28:3), as well as all the evidence in the book itself. Yet, liberal critics
tend to disregard the references to Daniel in Ezekiel. Montgomery states,
“There is then no reference to our Daniel as an historic person in the
Heb. O.T….” Montgomery holds that Ezekiel’s reference is to another
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character, whom he describes as “the name of an evidently traditional
saint.” 21