When did Daniel enter the Canon? 

        Most Christians (and Jews) take their Bibles for granted, and never ask themselves how the various books came to be recognized as inspired. The history of the New Testament canon shows that while certain books were recognized as in­spired within a generation of their having been written, others were regarded with suspicion for a considerable period of time. We have similar evidence for the Old Testament, for as late as the end of the first century A.D. and possibly even later, the right of certain books to be in the Canon was being challenged.

        Great stress is laid by the opponents of Daniel’s author­ship on the fact that the book is not certainly referred to or quoted before 140 B.C. The argument from silence is always dangerous, and here the more so because we have so little literature from this period. For all that, it should not be dismissed offhand. The book is unique in the Old Testament; the form of vision, though prepared for by Ezekiel, is unique; the visions must have been until fairly late in the Greek period almost unintelligible; in addition, Daniel never had the stand­ing of a prophet, and will not have seen his first vision until he was at least sixty-five. All this makes an immediate admis­sion to the Canon improbable. In fact, everything points to the remarkable verification of certain parts of the book in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) as the proximate cause of its being recognized as inspired.

        That Daniel circulated in inferior MSS. is shown by the LXX translation (usually dated c. 140 B.C., but probably much earlier). Not only are there many striking variants, especially in chs. 4-6, but there are three additions (to be found in the Apocrypha) running to 174 verses. It seems incredible that any such additions and variations should have entered after the book had been recognized as canonical.

        In the light of these facts, there seems little ground for objecting to the possibility of the Hebrew having been re­placed by Aramaic. This would sweep away the cogency of the linguistic objection, the more so as the Hebrew does not really suit a second-century date, and is not inconsistent with Daniel’s position; he probably seldom spoke Hebrew after the time when he was taken captive as a lad. This is amply adequate to explain many of its peculiarities.