Interpretation of the Book of Daniel

The various interpreters of the prophecies of Daniel may be divided into three basic schools, according to their views of the events referred to in the book. 1. Events in Ancient History. Expositors of one school assign Daniel’s depiction of great tribulation and deliverance mostly to an episode of Jewish history 2,000 years or more ago, under Antiochus Epiphanes, a tyrant who sought to abolish the Jewish religion in 168 B.C. Those who hold this view see Antiochus as the “little horn” of Dan. 7 and 8 , and interpret the four kingdoms of Dan. 2 and 7 as culminating with the Greco-Macedonian Empire, which is considered to be the fourth. Many of this group of expositors reject the validity of the predictive element in prophetic literature, and attribute the book of Daniel to an unknown writer who is supposed to have lived about 165 B.C., and who presumably employed the device of representing himself as Daniel, the prophet, to spur his fellow Jews in their revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. They consider Daniel’s predictions to be vaticinum post eventum , “predictions” actually made after the events “foretold” took place. The noteworthy resemblance between certain details of Daniel’s prophecy and incidents during this critical episode in Jewish history, or later during the wars with Rome, gives this interpretation an appearance of plausibility. Some who accept the book of Daniel as authentic predictive prophecy likewise assign its climax to the time of Antiochus or to the Roman Empire of the first century of the Christian Era. As for the Antiochus theory, despite certain similarities between some of the aspects of Daniel’s predictions and the events connected with the Antiochus Epiphanes episode, Seventh-day Adventists find compelling reasons for rejecting this interpretation. For one thing, Antiochus reigned about midpoint of the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed Alexander the Great, not “at the latter end of their rule,” as Daniel specifies ( Dan. 8:23 , RSV ). His oppression of the Jews was a temporary affair, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that he “prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints received the kingdom,” as Daniel explicitly declared the future tyrant would do ( Dan. 7:21 , 22 , RSV ). It is a simple historical fact that God did not establish His eternal, righteous reign on earth in the long ago when the Jews were still His chosen people. Antiochus did not prove to be the imposing personage required by the prophecies of Daniel, nor was his reign in any sense a prelude to the Messianic Age. Furthermore, the resurrection of Dan. 12:2 , which was to take place immediately upon the downfall of the tyrant king, did not follow Antiochus’ expulsion from Judea. No events connected with his oppression of the Jews correspond to the time periods of Daniel. In fact, the attempt to identify Antiochus Epiphanes as the tyrant prince of Daniel breaks down at every major point. As if to clinch the matter, two centuries after Antiochus, Christ categorically declared that the tyrant prince and the great tribulation of Daniel’s prophecies were still in the future ( Matt. 24:15–20 ). Thus, to apply Daniel’s prophecy to Antiochus is to reject Christ’s own interpretation. 2. Gap Theory (Events in Ancient Times and at the End ). Another school of expositors splits the book of Daniel between ancient history and the future, finding Antiochus in the little horn of Dan. 8 but applying the little horn of Dan. 7 to a last-day antichrist (connected somehow with a Roman fourth kingdom). Most of these expositors are premillennialists of the variety known as dispensationalists ( see Premillennialism ), who hold that prophecy “is concerned only with history as it affects Israel and the Holy Land” ( Scofield Reference Bible , note on Dan. 11:35 ), past and future. Holding that God’s rejection of the Jewish nation at the cross was only temporary, they believe that Daniel’s predictions were fulfilled in order up to the time of Christ, at the end of the sixty-ninth “week” of Dan. 9:27 , at which time, according to their understanding, the clock of prophecy stopped, to resume only at or immediately preceding Christ’s return. According to this theory, “the entire church age” intervenes “between the sixty-ninth week, after which Messiah was cut off, and the seventieth week, within which the ‘little horn’ of Dan. 7 , will run his awful course,” and in the midst of that future “seventieth week” the Jews, restored as a nation to their role as a chosen people, will undergo a three-and-one-half-year tribulation, during which their renewed Temple sacrifices will be taken away ( ibid. , note on Dan. 9:24 ). Advocates of this theory point to the new state of Israel and to the return of some 2 million Jews to Palestine as the first steps toward the fulfillment of these prophecies and toward the bestowal of world dominion on the Jews in a 1,000-year Messianic world rule. As for the gap theory, Seventh-day Adventists consider that only by removing the OT kingdom promises completely from their literary, historical, and covenant context can they be made to apply to literal Israel in the present or future. Taken at face value, the statements of the inspired writers themselves clearly preclude such an application. (See SDACom 4:25–38.) Adventists see the OT promises of restoration to covenant status, and of universal dominion, as strictly conditional (see Jer. 18:6–10 ). When the Jews rejected their Messiah, our Lord specifically rejected them as the chosen people (see Matt. 21:43 ; 23:38 ), but as individuals the Jews continued to be recipients of grace and could be saved by accepting Christ. Furthermore, the Scriptures nowhere support or provide for a gap of some 2,000 years postulated by this theory, between the sixty-ninth and seventieth “weeks” of Dan. 9:27 . 3. A Third View-Continuous Fulfillment. A third school of expositors is that represented by the early church interpreters and those of the Protestant Reformation. They saw prophecy as fulfilling continuously in history. They identified the four empires of Dan. 2 and 7 as Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome; the 10 horns of Dan. 7 as the tenfold partition of the Roman Empire followed by antichrist. The early Christians expected the antichrist in the future. They did not believe in a “gap” that makes prophecy skip over the period of the church, but in continuous fulfillment, operating even in their day. Jerome ( c. A.D. 400), whose interpretation of Daniel was accepted as standard during the Middle Ages, believed the partitioning of the Roman Empire, then in progress, to be the fulfillment of the tenfold division of the fourth empire of prophecy. He listed several of the divisions by name. He expected the imminent overthrow of Rome to make way for the little horn, the antichrist who would reign in the church, oppressing the saints for three and one-half literal years, after which would come the judgment and the Second Advent. Augustine, however, a few years later, interpreted the stone kingdom-the kingdom of God-as the church in the present age. The late Middle Ages saw a revival of interest in the historical fulfillment of the prophecies, with the addition of two new features-identification of the little horn of Dan. 7 with the Papacy (apparently introduced by Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg, Austria, in 1240), and the application of the year-day principle to the prophetic time periods. Thus developed the idea of the little horn-identified with the NT antichrist and the “man of sin” connected with a great apostasy-as a religiopolitical power, successor to the Roman Empire, enforcing its authority on the people of God and continuing down to the last days. The three and one-half times of this horn were computed as 1260 years ( see Year-Day Principle ). There were various datings assigned to this period, but the capture and banishment of Pope Pius VI by the French in 1798 and his death without an immediate successor led a number of expositors to mark this as the ending of the 1260 year-days. 4. The 2300 Days and the 70 Weeks. During the decades following 1798, there was an increased interest in ascertaining the time when the 2300-day period of Dan. 8:14 , counted as years, would end, and in discovering the relation of the 70 weeks of Dan. 9 to the 2300 days ( see Twenty-three Hundred Days ). There had long been universal acceptance of the 70 weeks as “weeks of years,” with Christ’s death generally placed in the seventieth week. A large number of expositors who took part in the Old World Advent Awakening of the early decades of the nineteenth century followed Johann P. Petri ( d. 1792) in using the 70 weeks of Dan. 9 as the key with which to unlock the 2300 “days” of Dan. 8:14 , by beginning both synchronously. Many of them fixed upon 457 B.C. or thereabouts as the beginning, and A.D. 33 to 34 as the end of the 70 weeks with the cross either in the midst or at the end of the seventieth week. These looked for the end of the 2300 years in 1843, 1844, or 1847. Identifying the little horn of Dan. 8 as the Papacy or as Islam, they differed on the nature of the events to mark the close of the 2300 years, interpreting the cleansing of the sanctuary of Dan. 8:14 variously as the rescue of Palestine from the Muslims, the fall of the Papacy, the purification of the church, the restoration of the Jews, the beginning of a millennial kingdom, or the Second Advent. The distinctive features of William Miller’s message were his identification of this event as the cleansing of the earth by fire at the second coming of Christ, which he anticipated “about the year 1843”; and his rejection of the two popular interpretations of the kingdom of God on earth-(1) as a golden age preceding Christ’s coming, and (2) as a kingdom set up after the Second Advent, with the restored Jews in a position of leadership. Instead, he saw the Second Advent as ending human probation and introducing the eternal kingdom of the glorified saints on a re-created earth. For the Millerite views see Millerite Movement . The link between the Millerite and the Seventh-day Adventist interpretation of the cleansing of the sanctuary was furnished by Hiram Edson’s explanation, following the 1844 Millerite disappointment (written out by O.R.L. Crosier after joint study with Hiram Edson and Dr. F. B. Hahn), that the heavenly sanctuary of the book of Hebrews is the one referred to in Dan. 8:14 ( Day-Star Extra , Feb. 7, 1846). 5. Daniel 11 . By the time of William Miller, expositors were largely agreed on the application of the earlier part of Dan. 11 to Ptolemies and Seleucids, but they differed on where to introduce Rome. Miller explained the willful king of Dan. 11:36 as the Papacy, but took the king of the north in v. 40 to represent England, and in vs. 40–45 , Napoleon. There was division of opinion between recognizing the Papacy or the Turk in the interpretation of the latter part of Dan. 11 among SDA s for nearly a century. Some, such as James White, found the Papacy represented, while Uriah Smith identified Turkey as the power. His classic exposition, Thoughts on Daniel , which was printed in the Review and Herald from January 1869 to July 1871, perpetuated his view for three quarters of a century. Many SDA s today follow the position taken by White. 6. Seventh-day Adventist Interpretation. SDA s follow a continuous historical interpretation. (For the classical exposition of Daniel, see Uriah Smith, Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation; for a contemporary exposition, see SDA Bible Commentary on Daniel.) Adventists identify the nations of the metallic image of Dan. 2 as the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greco-Macedonian, and Roman empires, and the 10 toes as the barbaric kingdoms that succeeded Rome and grew into the nations of modern Europe. The “stone” that demolishes the image is Christ’s eternal kingdom, the “great mountain” that fills the earth. This same succession of political powers is represented by the four beasts of Dan. 7 , with the 10 horns as the kingdoms in the area of the old Roman Empire and the little horn of Dan. 7 as the Papacy. Adventists understand the great horn of the Grecian goat in Dan. 8 to represent Alexander the Great (the book itself explains the symbolic ram and he-goat of Dan. 8 as the Persian and Grecian kingdoms); and the four horns the Hellenistic kingdoms into which his empire was divided, with the little horn of Dan. 8 , which grows exceeding great, as representing Rome in both imperial and papal phases, with emphasis on the latter. The cleansing of the sanctuary in v. 14 is understood to refer to the blotting out of confessed and forgiven sins from the books of record in the heavenly sanctuary, beginning at the close of the 2300 “evening and mornings” in A.D. 1844 (figured on the day-for-a-year principle of prophecy from 457 B.C.). See Investigative Judgment . Seventh-day Adventists understand the angel’s explanation of Dan. 9:24–27 to be the second installment of the explanation of the vision begun in Dan. 8 , with emphasis on the “70 weeks,” or 490 years, that were to be “cut off” as the first portion of the 2300 years of Dan. 8:14 and assigned to the Jewish nation. They consider that the carrying out, in 457 B.C., of Artaxerxes’ decree authorizing the complete restoration of the Jewish law and administration in Jerusalem marks the beginning of the “70 weeks,” or 490 years, and that this prophetic period terminated in A.D. 34, with Christ’s crucifixion in A.D. 31 in the midst of the seventieth week of the prophecy ( v. 27 ). Adventists understand Dan. 11 to be a continuous delineation of history beginning with Daniel’s time, with the kings of the “north” and “south” as the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties of Syria and Egypt. Rome is usually understood to come into the picture from v. 14 onward, and vs. 36–39 are applied by some to the Papacy and to its persecution of God’s people, by others to France during the Revolution. The closing verses are applied by some to the Papacy and to its persecution of God’s people, by others to France during the Revolution. The closing verses are applied by many to the Papacy during the “time of the end,” beginning in 1798, at the close of the three and one-half “times,” or 1260 days, or years, of Daniel’s prophecy, although others hold the view that these verses are still unfulfilled prophecy. Christ’s standing up in Dan. 12:1 is understood to mark the termination of His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary at the close of probationary time. Christ’s deliverance of His people foretold in Dan. 12:1 is correlated with the prophecies of Revelation. Daniel was instructed to “shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end” ( Dan. 12:4 ), implying that it could not be understood until that time, but would be then, in terms of its actual fulfillment in history. Evidently not all was sealed, for the angel’s explanation applied certain symbols to specific nations and persons ( Dan. 8:20–22 ; 11:2 ). SDA s believe that the things revealed to Daniel were afterward complemented in the revelation made to John and recorded in the book of Revelation.