Prophecy and Apocalyptic. 

        As the Hebrew prophet looks further and further into the future, the clear-cut lines of his picture become blurred. This may be by the background becoming hazy, or even virtually vanishing. This is particularly the case in Messianic prophecy — note especially the timeless background of the Servant Songs in Isaiah (see p. 58). On the other hand, the whole picture may lose its sharp outlines; Isa. 24-27 is an excellent example of this. Again, we find the use of stock expressions, verging on the symbolic, or even passing over into it; Ezek. 38f, is a good example of this.

        In Ezek. 40-48, however, we are introduced to a new form of prophecy. The first peculiarity is that it is entirely in vision form. Then, the personal role of the prophet is, ap­parently at least, diminished. He becomes the recorder of what he sees and of the explanations given him. What is yet more important is that the prophet’s guide and mentor is an angelic being, and not directly God. When we add to this the symbolic nature of much of the vision, if not of all, we shall realize that this is something new.

        Zech. 1-8 are mixed, but on the whole they carry the tendencies of the closing chapters of Ezekiel even further. But it is in Dan. 7-12 that this form of prophecy reaches its Old Testament climax. Here the application is taken out of the prophet’s own time, for the vision is for the time of the end, and until then the words are to be shut up and sealed (Dan. 8:26; 12:4, 9). To distinguish this form of prophecy from that usually found in the prophetic books, it is normally called apocalyptic.

        Daniel was a prophet (Matt. 24:15), but prophecy stretches from a prophet’s concern with the daily details of life (cf. ISam. 9:6; IKings 14:Iff; etc). through the proclamation of the eternal principles of the unchanging God to the mysterious foretelling of the distant future. Just as the first only re­ceives casual mention, so the last, as represented by Daniel, quite understandably and correctly, finds its place in the Hebrew canon in the Writings and not in the Prophets.

        The place of Daniel in the Jewish canon is widely used as evidence that it must have been written after 200 B.C. “when the canon of the Prophets was closed.” This argument overlooks  the fact that the Jewish rabbi was just as capable of dis­tinguishing between apocalyptic and normal prophecy as the modern scholar. Then, the fact that the place of Ezekiel in the canon was challenged as late as the end of the first century A.D. shows that “the closing” of the prophetic canon by 200 B.C. is merely a statement of historic fact, and not of a theory of prophetic inspiration. (Ezekiel was challenged because it seemed to be in contradiction to the Law — a difficulty resolved by Chananiah ben Hezekiah after burning 300 measures of midnight oil — and because it seemed to give a handle to certain gnostic speculations.).