The Book of Daniel has sometimes been classified with the prophetic books of the Old Testament, a mistake owing largely to a failure to distinguish between the predominant characteristics of prophetic and apocalyptic writings. Daniel belongs to the latter group, a type of writing that in many respects sharply contrasts prophetic literature. For example, predictions of coming events in the apocalyptic writings are definite and specific, thus indicating the precise time when certain events will occur; predictions made in the prophetic writings are of a general nature and are always conditioned by the decisions of people with reference to moral issues. In other words, the prophets' statements concerning the future are always consistent with the free choice of human beings, which is not true of the apocalypses. So far as the apocalypses are concerned, what was predicted would necessarily come to pass; nothing that anyone could do would alter the situation. The impression that predictions made in the distant past were fulfilled accurately is due to the fact that the apocalypses were written after these events had already taken place, but their predictions are presented as though they were made prior to their predicted events.
Evidence in the Book of Daniel supports the idea that the book was written during the period of the Maccabean wars, but many of the book's predictions are presented as though they were revealed to one of the Hebrews involved in the Babylonian captivity. Nebuchadnezzar's dream is interpreted to mean a prediction concerning the rise and fall of four great world empires: the kingdom of Babylon; the kingdoms of the Medes and Persians; the kingdom of Greece; and the monstrous power under which the Jews suffered persecution at the hands of Antiochus. The stone that is cut out of the mountain and that strikes the image on its feet, grinding the stone to pieces, symbolizes the destruction of this evil power and the establishment of the messianic kingdom. The same set of predictions is made again in Daniel's vision of the four beasts emerging out of the sea. In this vision, a more specific characterization is given of Antiochus and the power that he represents. He is designated by the little horn among the ten horns, rooting up three of them in order to make room for itself. This horn, with eyes like a human's and a mouth, speaks words of blasphemy, persecutes the saints, and endeavors to change laws. A further account of this same evil power is given in the vision of the ram and the he-goat. The specific time periods cited in the book all have reference to the time when this evil power will be destroyed through supernatural intervention and when the new kingdom of righteousness will be created. The reference to a resurrection of the dead indicates that the idea of resurrection was beginning to find acceptance among the Hebrews.
