Three Books of Daniel: Plurality and Fluidity among the Ancient Versions

Which Daniel?

Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Jews consider the book of Daniel to be part of their sacred Scriptures. But we do not all share the same book of Daniel. As a biblical scholar who has done extensive research on early Jewish apocalyptic literature, I am often asked to write or speak on “the book of Daniel.” And each time, I have to ask a clarifying question: “Which one?”

Three versions of Daniel are most important for understanding its interpretation and impact within early Judaism and nascent Christianity and among Jews and Christians today. They are (1) the Hebrew and Aramaic form of Daniel preserved in the Masoretic textual tradition; (2) an ancient translation commonly referred to as Old Greek Daniel; (3) an early Greek recension or edition of Daniel, formerly attributed to Theodotion, that I will refer to here as Revised Greek Daniel. These three versions of Daniel have a great deal of material in common. Yet they each have distinctive contours and theological emphases, and they each embody a different literary genre. ¹ In this essay I argue for a shift in our own thinking, away from an emphasis on a unitary and putative, original “Daniel” to a deeper appreciation of the book’s historical and contemporary plurality. I then track shifting genres and distinctive emphases as Daniel evolved from a collection of folktales, to an apocalypse, to a novella, and finally, something very close to a saint’s life. Each iteration of Daniel spoke to the needs of communities in different times and places. Together, they challenge us to perceive a canonical book not as fixed, but fluid, a book that destabilizes our understanding of “Bible” and invites us into more creative engagement with our Scriptures and one another. These three versions of Daniel have each been considered authoritative by different groups of readers.

For Jews and most Protestants today, the authoritative text is the Masoretic Text (MT), a mostly Hebrew and partly Aramaic text-form preserved and handed on by medieval Jewish scholars. Our earliest full witnesses (manuscripts) to this text-form date to the tenth century CE. This version of Daniel was completed around 167 BCE, comprises more or less equal parts Hebrew and Aramaic, and has twelve chapters. Its genre is widely agreed to be apocalypse. ²

For many ancient Greek-speaking Jewish and Christian audiences, likely including some New Testament writers and the author of 1 Maccabees, a form of the Old Greek version (OG) would have been the primary form in which they knew Daniel. This version contains largely the same structure as that found in the Masoretic text of Daniel. But it also includes additional material, embedded within ch. 3 and following ch. 12. These “additions,” as they are often called, include (in ch. 3) a poem commonly called “the Prayer of Azariah,” a prose interlude, and a hymn sometimes called “the Song of the Three Youths” (a version of this song is the basis for the Latin hymn “Benedicite” used in Catholic and Anglican liturgies), and at the book’s conclusion the stories of “Bel, the Serpent, and the Living God” followed by the story of “Susanna.” Beyond this additional material, some portions of Old Greek Daniel, particularly chs. 4–6, seem to be based on a Hebrew-and-Aramaic Vorlage (the source text from which a translation is made) that differs from the Masoretic Text in substantive ways, and some shared chapters are preserved in a different order. Its genre might be best classified as a novella. Though the Old Greek translation would have been authoritative for various early audiences, it did not stand the test of time.

Instead, Revised Greek Daniel (RG) became authoritative scripture for Catholics and Christians within the Orthodox Communion (whether in Greek or in translation) and seems to have been authoritative for some New Testament writers. This version contains additional material similar to that found in Old Greek Daniel, but with a different arrangement. While Revised Greek Daniel shares with Old Greek Daniel the additional material embedded in chapter three, the twelve chapters shared by all three versions appear in the order in which they are preserved in the Masoretic Text, rather than in the Old Greek version. The story of “Susanna” appears first, and the Revised Greek version concludes with the story of “Bel, the Serpent, and the Living God.” In terms of genre, this version of Daniel might be closest to a saint’s life. ³

In the two extant Greek versions (OG and RG), the stories of “Susanna” and “Bel, the Serpent, and the Living God” are told with distinctive emphases and stylistic features. Where they translate a similar Hebrew or Aramaic text, translation choices similarly reveal distinctive theological or social concerns. I explore these in further detail below.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Multiple versions of Daniel include Hebrew/Aramaic, Old Greek, and Revised Greek. (Author’s illustration).

To offer perspective regarding contemporary usage of two of these books of Daniel, namely the Hebrew-and-Aramaic version preserved in the Masoretic Text (MT) and Revised Greek Daniel (RG), a 2012 Pew Research study on the “Global Religious Landscape” estimated that Protestants (users of MT Daniel) comprise 37% of the world’s Christians (who in turn comprise about 32% of the world’s population), while Catholics and the Orthodox Communion (users of RG Daniel, either in Greek or in translation) together comprise 62% of the world’s Christians. ⁴

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Estimated Proportion of Christians today who hold the Hebrew-and-Aramaic (Masoretic) or Revised Greek Text of Daniel as Authoritative. (Author’s illustration).

While these two large groups hold as authoritative two very different versions of Daniel, commentaries and scholarship on Daniel only rarely place the two side by side or give equal attention to both. And in response to the question I referred to above, when I am asked to write on “the book of Daniel,” the clarifying response is almost always the Hebrew and Aramaic version preserved in the Masoretic text. To the extent that biblical scholarship aims to establish the earliest complete version of biblical texts and understand these within their originating contexts, this response makes some sense. But, increasingly, biblical scholarship has also attended to the pluriformity of ancient and modern texts, the richness of reception history, and the varied contexts of reception and use over time. Those who would interpret Daniel “for the church” do well to become more familiar with the Greek versions of Daniel that have shaped Christian interpretation through the centuries. Such study not only facilitates informed interfaith and ecumenical dialogue about Scripture, it also challenges fossilized understandings of “the Bible” or “the text” by calling attention to the complexity and suppleness of the living witness we call Scripture.

From Putative Unity to a Pluriform Reality

As is well known, most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, with some portions composed in Aramaic, and was later translated into a variety of languages. Perhaps as early as the third century BCE, Jews in Greek-speaking locales such as Alexandria began translating their sacred texts into Greek. Legends preserved in two early Jewish sources, the Letter of Aristeas (mid-second century BCE) and Philo’s Life of Moses (first century CE), give an account of seventy (or seventy-two) translators of the Pentateuch who either collaborated to produce one authoritative translation (per the Letter of Aristeas) or simultaneously produced identical translations (per the Life of Moses), giving rise to the name Septuagint (septuaginta transliterates the Greek word meaning “seventy”) as a general term for the Greek Jewish Scriptures. ⁵ The legends’ emphases on unity in spite of plurality—through scholarly collaboration and consensus (Arist. 302–307), or through an inspired process yielding a translation exactly corresponding to its source (Moses 2.38–40)—are predicated on the idea of a fixed text (e.g., Arist. 30–32; Moses 2.39) whose unitary and essential nature could and should be preserved in translation (cf. Arist. 314). The evidence for what actually happened, of course, is much more complicated.

There was not a single, authorized, “original” version from which all translators worked; nor did translation happen once for all. Instead, translators worked from divergent Hebrew and Aramaic texts that reflected a plurality of living traditions. They also worked in different locales and at different times. Some early translations survived in later tradition, while others were lost or replaced. Any given translation also underwent development over time, as it was copied from one scroll or codex to another. Texts were sometimes modified accidentally, sometimes intentionally. While some copyists took care to introduce no changes, others sought to update language, harmonize conflicting details, or create uniformity in renderings, spellings, and so on. Other tradents may have been more creative in rearranging, adding, or subtracting material, accenting key themes, and introducing new ideas and interpretations.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

One hypothetical reconstruction of key stages in the development of the books of Daniel. (Author’s illustration).

Despite the legends, the Greek Jewish Scriptures in use between the second century BCE and the early centuries of the Common Era did not always closely match one another or extant Hebrew texts of the same books. Tradition has held that in the second century CE, a Jewish scholar named Theodotion sought to bring uniformity to this pluriform landscape by producing a revised translation of the Greek Jewish Scriptures. In addition to the Greek Jewish Scriptures, Theodotion was believed to have had access to a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures that was very similar to a “proto-Masoretic text,” that is, a Hebrew and Aramaic text that closely resembles what would become the Masoretic Text, the biblical textual tradition preserved by Jewish rabbis known as Masoretes in the medieval period. Theodotion sought to produce a Greek translation that more closely followed this proto-Masoretic text. We cannot say for sure if Theodotion actually existed, or which, if any, books he may have revised. But such revisions of the Greek Jewish Scriptures, also called “recensions,” are well attested, and some became authoritative among Christian users. Evidence indicates that numerous scholars undertook such revisions at various times, possibly as early as the first century BCE.

It is difficult to establish exactly which Greek translations these early revisers worked from. As noted above, in these early centuries BCE and CE there were a variety of different Greek texts in circulation, some that were closer to the proto-Masoretic Text, and others that, for some biblical books at least, were significantly different. In the past, the differences were commonly attributed to willful or careless translators. There was evidence of one Hebrew textual tradition, and multiple Greek textual traditions. Thus scholars often assumed that the differences originated within the Greek tradition.

This view changed with the publication of Hebrew (or, in the case of Daniel, Hebrew and Aramaic) biblical scrolls discovered at Qumran. Among them were many whose Hebrew texts were almost exactly like the later Masoretic Text. But there were also numerous scrolls that preserved a Hebrew text closely matching the divergent Greek witnesses for certain books. That is, scrolls at Qumran that date to the first century BCE and first century CE revealed that the reason for many differences between the Masoretic Text and extant Greek translations of certain Old Testament books and even among the ancient Greek translations was that there were divergent Hebrew (or, in the case of Daniel, Hebrew-and-Aramaic) texts in circulation and use for certain books that would later be considered canonical by Jews and Christians. ⁶ Thus, a complicated textual landscape and history existed not simply because of translation processes, but also prior to and alongside those processes. Moreover, where we have evidence of multiple text-forms for a given book at Qumran, no evidence suggests that one text form was held in higher regard than another. It seems that, for those who deposited scrolls at Qumran, it was the book (or, more accurately, the scroll) and not one particular version of it that was authoritative. As Tim McLay observes, “The existence of such a variety of forms of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures during the Second Temple Period teaches us that that there was no single authoritative text for some of the books that were regarded as Scripture at that time.” ⁷

But if some users were comfortable with a pluriform textual tradition, the recensions attest that not everyone favored pluriformity, as the Septuagint legends indicate. Some users of these Scriptures became concerned to establish a single authoritative text for a given book and for broader collections of Scripture. In the third century CE, one Christian interpreter, Origen of Alexandria, sought unity through plurality: he assembled multiple textual witnesses into a single, massive document in order to “heal the text of the Septuagint” for his Christian readers and to facilitate informed interfaith dialogue about texts shared by Christians and Jews. ⁸ In six parallel columns he provided (1) first a Hebrew (or, for Daniel, Hebrew-and-Aramaic) text, (2) then a transliteration into Greek, (3) a recension by Aquila, (4) a recension by Symmachus, (5) the Old Greek version, and 6) finally the recension attributed to Theodotion (which in this essay I call “Revised Greek”). This six-columned synoptic presentation of the text gave rise to the name Hexapla, or “Sixfold” Bible. The Hexapla comprised about 50 volumes, of which only fragmentary portions survive. Origen’s Hexapla and later translations from it are important witnesses to the ancient Greek versions of Daniel, and I return to this below.

From Fragmentation to Integration

The form of Daniel preserved in the Masoretic Text has undergone a complex composition-history. One possible reconstruction is that the stories in chapters 2–6, written in Aramaic and set in the courts of Babylon and Persia, originally circulated among Mesopotamian Jews as a collection of folktales. Over time, they were joined with an apocalyptic vision (the core of Daniel 7), also composed in Aramaic. This collection was expanded and edited in a Judean setting in the second century BCE. An introductory chapter, in Hebrew, unified the collection by linking its characters more closely to one another and highlighting key themes such as sovereignty, identity, and allegiance. During the persecution of Judeans by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, ca. 167 BCE, the vision in Daniel 7 was revised. New Danielic authors, writing in Hebrew, added to the collection the additional apocalyptic visions and discourse now contained in chapters 8–12. This composition-history yields a complex book that developed from a collection of folktales into an apocalypse. The dance of genres contained within the book is a legacy of its rich composition-history; it is also integral to its meaning.

The composition-history of the Greek versions is richer still, and while they bear traces of the composition-history attested in MT Daniel, each also incorporates additional material and has a distinctive shape and genre of its own. Too often, however, these versions are dissected rather than read as integral wholes. They are frequently presented not in the formats in which they are found in ancient witnesses, but in a format guided by the witness of the MT. As noted above, a key feature (though not the only one) distinguishing the Greek versions of Daniel from MT Daniel is the presence of hymns and stories shared by the Greek versions but lacking in MT. In both OG and RG, some of this material—namely the “Prayer of Azariah,” prose interlude, and “Song of Three Jews”—is integrated into ch. 3. Other portions—namely the stories of “Susanna” and “Bel, the Dragon, and the Living God”—are variously placed at the book’s beginning or end. Positioned in these ways, this material becomes a part of the book, shaping how the whole is read and understood (I address this in further detail below). These portions from RG Daniel are often included in modern Protestant Bibles, not as part of the book of Daniel, but among the Apocrypha, under the heading “Additions to Daniel.” As such they appear in a form that is not attested in the manuscript tradition. That is, they are presented as discrete, independent texts, namely two hymns conjoined by a few verses of prose, and two short, disjointed tales. They have become something new as “additions,” and have been subtracted or divorced from the context in which they were previously transmitted.

In a Catholic Bible, one finds a book of Daniel with fourteen, rather than twelve, chapters. The first twelve chapters follow the sequence found in Jewish and Protestant Bibles and include the hymns and prose interlude that the Greek versions include within ch. 3. They are followed by two chapters containing the stories of “Susanna” (ch. 13) and “Bel, the Dragon, and the Living God” (ch. 14). The New American Bible (NAB) translation labels these chapters an “Appendix.” ⁹ In the popular Catholic Study Bible, John J. Collins offers this explanation: “the ‘additions’ were added some time later, probably before the beginning of the Christian era.” Collins adds that they are “rightly labeled as an Appendix … as they are independent stories in which Daniel happens to play a part. Susanna is placed before Daniel 1 in one Greek translation (that attributed to Theodotion), since Daniel appears there as a young boy, but there is no doubt that the story was originally independent.” ¹⁰ Collins is right that the stories seem to have originated independently from the collection of Daniel traditions to which they became joined. Yet, until the modern era, they have not been transmitted independently. In this choice of format and accompanying explanation, the NAB has struck a precarious balance between a concern for what may or may not be “original” and respect for the text that has been transmitted and used within the Catholic tradition. The resulting translated text does not replicate the structure of any major extant ancient version (MT, OG, or RG) and thus resists analysis of any version of Daniel as an integrated whole.

The New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), which helpfully provides readers with synoptic translations of both OG and RG Daniel, offers readers a similar but slightly different compromise. “Sousanna,” “Daniel,” and “Bel and the Dragon” are presented in three successive chapters as separate but closely related biblical books. ¹¹ The ordering, with “Sousanna” in first position, replicates that preserved in RG Daniel, which is also the basis for versification in NETS (in keeping with the practice of the New Revised Standard Version [NRSV]). Nonetheless, the NETS version of Daniel contains only the twelve chapters shared with MT Daniel, including the hymns and prose interlude (embedded within ch. 3) in OG and RG, yielding a text that, like the NAB, implicitly privileges the structure of MT Daniel and hinders analysis of either OG or RG as an integrated work of literature. The format adopted by NETS instead facilitates comparison of versions at the level of chapter and verse, making it a helpful tool for text-critical analysis but lending to atomistic rather than holistic interpretations.

Distinctive Genres

When each major Greek version of Daniel is viewed as an integrated whole, rather than as a fragmented textual artifact, it becomes possible to appreciate the fluidity of genre within the Daniel traditions and the distinctive generic features of each. We most often think of genre as a way of classifying literature or other art forms. Libraries distinguish fiction from nonfiction, romance novels from crime novels, science books from history. Yet understanding genre strictly as classification can give a false impression of fixed categories and forms. The reality is more fluid. In the first part of this this essay I argued for a shift in understanding the text of Daniel, from single or unitary to plural and fluid. It is not only the text that is fluid, but also its genres, and indeed the nature of “genre” itself. Genre theorist John Frow writes of genre as process and ever-shifting field of interaction and interdependence. Like the conditions that give rise to them and in which they are used, genres are constantly in flux; no genre is static or isolated. John Frow describes an “economy of genres” in which “relations between genres”—including their interdependence—are a key to “how they function.” Their interrelationships “organise the universe of knowledge and value,” but those interrelationships are also constantly changing. ¹²

As an interactive and transformative field of creative activity, genre is social, political, and historical, both a product of culture and a shaping force within it. Rosalie Colie argues that genre provides a frame for viewing the world as much as it provides a frame for composition and reading. That is, genres are linked with “kinds of knowledge and experience,” such that “a genre-system offers a set of interpretations, of ‘frames’ or ‘fixes’ on the world.” In this sense, for Colie, genre is “symbolic action” that partakes and participates in the “social structuring of meaning.” ¹³

Frow specifies further ways in which genre is linked to situation. For Frow, the “patterns of genre” take shape in response to recurring situational patterns, or types. Genre “shapes strategies for occasions,” offering a “‘typified’ action” in response to a situational type. ¹⁴ Correlations between genres and settings do not remain fixed or frozen, but by attending to them one can analyze links between the shape and generic features of a text and the life settings, social and political dynamics, and habits of use in the contexts for a text’s shaping and transmission.

The complex composition-history described for MT Daniel above attests to a merging of genres—folktale, didactic story, prayer, apocalyptic vision, timetable, apocalyptic discourse, and more—into a novel hybrid genre that scholars have named “historical apocalypse.” This genre emerges most clearly within second-century BCE Judea as a potent form of Jewish resistance to imperial domination and persecution. ¹⁵ Its stories and prayers provide models of piety and resistance, while its visionary language, symbols, and discourse reshape users’ imaginations, empowering them to perceive and choose an alternative to the hegemonic discourse and power of the reigning earthly empires. The heightened religious and political crisis faced by Judeans in this period, particularly between the years 167 and 164 BCE, provides a specific context for the emergence of this literary genre. But Daniel’s participation in the genre of apocalypse during this critical period (and in many periods thereafter) does not settle its genre once for all. The extant Greek versions attest to alternate forms of Daniel that each participated in the economy of genres in different ways.

The historical orientation of MT Daniel (as historical apocalypse) has helped scholars arrive at a date for the originating setting of MT Daniel by analyzing its contents in relation to existing historical narratives. As a result, MT Daniel is the form of Daniel to which we are most confident in assigning an early date. It is more difficult to assign a precise date to OG Daniel. Yet apart from fragments of Daniel discovered at Qumran, it is the form of Daniel for which we have the earliest extant manuscript witness, namely Papyrus 967.

Dating to ca. 150 CE, the fragmentary Papyrus 967 (p967) contains a Greek translation of Daniel that includes at the book’s end the stories of “Bel, the Dragon, the Living God,” and “Susanna.” In addition to the inclusion of these stories at Daniel’s conclusion, this witness to OG Daniel has another striking difference from MT Daniel, having to do with macro-structure, the ordering of material. In MT, the folk-tales are grouped together in the first half of the book, while apocalyptic material comprises the book’s second half; the sequence from Hebrew to Aramaic and back to Hebrew also holds significance for the book’s structure and meaning. In p967, the central chapters have a different order, governed not by sub-genre or language, but rather by chronology. ¹⁶ While date formulas are prominent in MT Daniel, they are even more so in OG. In both versions, the book begins in the third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (1:1 NRSV, NETS). Where MT Daniel confusingly sets chapter 2 in Nebuchadnezzar’s second year of rule (2:1), OG Daniel offers the more logical “twelfth year” and adds a chronological setting for chapters three and four (the stories of the furnace and Nebuchadnezzar’s madness) in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule (2:1, 3:1, 4:4 NETS). In MT Daniel, the stories of Belshazzar’s downfall and Daniel’s sojourn in the lion’s den (the latter set during the reign of Darius, who conquered Babylon and received the kingdom upon Belshazzar’s death), directly follow the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness. In p967, however, the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness is followed by the apocalyptic visions that MT Daniel places in chapters 7–8. Chronology governs this structure: Daniel’s vision of the four beasts, the horn, the “One like an Ancient of Days,” and the “Human One” (MT Dan 7) is set in the first year of King Belshazzar (7:1); his vision of the ram and the goat is set in Belshazzar’s third year (8:1). These stories must then take place before the story culminating in Belshazzar’s death (5:29 NRSV/NETS). In Papyrus 967 the stories of Belshazzar’s downfall and Daniel’s sojourn in the lion’s den follow the vision of the ram and the goat. Daniel’s study of Jeremiah, prayer, and the angel’s response then follow, as these are set (in both versions) in the first year of king Darius (NRSV/NETS 9:1).

The ordering of material in p967, our oldest witness to OG Daniel, privileges chronology as an organizing principle for the text. P.-M. Bogaert and Johan Lust have each argued that this ordering is earlier than that found in MT Daniel, while others have argued that the opposite is the case. ¹⁷ We cannot know for certain based on the limited existing evidence. In MT Daniel, the text moves from the coherence of story to the unsettling and jarring incoherence of the apocalyptic visions and discourse, while in p967, story and vision are interwoven, such that the world occupied by Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is always already shaped by the confusion and possibility of new and ongoing revelation. The inclusion of prayer and cosmic liturgy within the furnace carves out space for worship—human, angelic, and other—in the midst of any setting, with or without temple. ¹⁸ Though the stories of “Bel, the Dragon, and the Living God” and “Susanna” are not well integrated by chronological markers, they provide a conclusion to Daniel that accentuates key themes that are emphasized throughout OG Daniel, including monotheism, salvation, and revealed wisdom. MT Daniel culminates with apocalyptic discourse, second-person direct address (“you”), future expectation for an end of crisis and reward to follow, and words of promise and comfort. The ending of p967 is quite different, culminating with instruction, first-person hortatory address (“us” and “we”), and an emphasis on shared responsibility for the community’s future by forming youth to be wise and pious leaders. ¹⁹

The chronologically driven structure of this version of Daniel and inclusion of additional stories in which Daniel features as a hero who upstages rivals and rescues a person in jeopardy contribute to OG Daniel’s participation in the genre of Hellenistic Jewish novella. As Marti Steussy has argued, the book’s conclusion as preserved in Papyrus 967 suggests a context for this early Jewish novella in settings marked not by political persecution or crisis, but rather by “self-rule” in diaspora. ²⁰ Attention is turned not outward, to empire and its end, but inward, to conflict within the community and to means for ensuring stability in the future.

By contrast with p967, RG Daniel places the story of “Susanna” first. ²¹ Its telling of Susanna is marked by stylistic elegance and accentuates the distinctive accomplishments of Daniel rather than the future of the community. ²² In so doing, it introduces to the reader young Daniel, a paragon of piety, virtue, and wisdom, who will be portrayed as the book’s hero from beginning to end and will be offered to the reader as a model for emulation. In keeping with the reviser’s apparent desire to produce a standardized text that closely matches proto-MT, the chapters shared between all three versions appear not in the chronological order found in OG Daniel but in the order preserved in MT Daniel. But RG Daniel has its own distinctive ending, concluding with the story of “Bel, the Dragon, and the Living God,” and emphasizing not so much crisis, as in the MT, nor internal conflict and stability, as in the OG, but rather a contest resulting in individual success and defeat of external enemies. This theme, found in earlier Daniel legends (especially Dan 2 and 5), finds sharp expression in the book’s final verse: “And [Cyrus] pulled him out but threw into the pit those responsible for attempting his ruin, and they were immediately devoured before him” (v. 42 NETS).

Lawrence Wills has argued that just as the addition of apocalyptic visions (MT Dan 7–12) transformed a collection of legends into an apocalypse, so the subsequent addition of “Susanna” and “Bel, the Dragon, and the Living God” as a frame for the Greek versions of Daniel transformed an apocalypse into a novel that Wills defines as “a work of prose narrative fiction, composed (or reedited) and transmitted in the written medium and read primarily as entertainment.” ²³ More particularly, Wills classifies Daniel as a “biographical novel,” ²⁴ with a strong emphasis on the life and career of its titular hero.

Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin understands the novel as “the most fluid of genres,” a “genre-in-the-making” that emerges within new, multilingual, international contexts and consciousness. ²⁵ As a result, a novel is dialogical and inconclusive, reflecting and refracting shifts in reality and the multifold dimensions of a “new world still in the making.” ²⁶ The refractions of worlds in the making found in OG and RG Daniel foreground cosmic liturgy, the confession of one God, the demolition of idols, a future generation of leaders for God’s people, and advancement of the pious within gentile culture.

This latter emphasis, particularly prominent in RG Daniel, combines with RG’s heightened portrayal of the character Daniel as a virtuous hero to strengthen the impression that RG Daniel moves through the genre of novella toward that of saint’s life by its use of hagiographic discourse. Christian Høgel draws on the work of M. van Uytfanghe to specify four key characteristics of hagiographic discourse that may be present in saints’ lives as well as other genres: (1) hagiographic discourse foregrounds an individual who is “connected in a particular way to God or to the holy, without being God in every way”; (2) exhibits a “stylised relationship between language and historical reality”; (3) is “more performative than informative” (e.g., apologetic, idealizing, edifying, didactic); and (4) is marked by “certain themes and archetypes that support the stylisation (the image of the central person is static, determined by providence; the person is endowed with a strong ethical and spiritual dimension that reflects his or her virtues, displayed in both asceticism and miracles).” ²⁷ Among the late antique Christian hagiographic discourses studied by Høgel, he notes that hagiographic writings in “high style” (e.g., classicizing Greek) were introduced in an effort to deploy saints as emblems of power and to construct a Christian social elite. Christian virtues would then also gain social and political currency. ²⁸ By contrast, low-style writings typically reflect the influence of oral tradition and suggest wide circulation to a more socially diverse audience. ²⁹ Høgel argues that these performative dimensions of hagiographic discourses were not limited to Christian texts, and can be found across multiple traditions. Bringing this perspective to bear on study of RG Daniel, which, by contrast with OG Daniel, embodies high style, might reveal further dimensions of this complex, living tradition and its multiple portrayals of worlds in the making.

Conclusion

In this essay I have argued that Daniel is not single, but plural, not fixed, but fluid. The three major extant ancient versions of Daniel, represented by MT, OG, and RG, together participate in a complex economy of genres, moving between legend, folk-tale, prayer and song, vision and apocalypse, novel and saint’s life. A greater appreciation of this multiplicity and fluidity will complicate our relationship to “the biblical text(s)” in necessary ways, enriching our interpretations as well as our dialogues.