Dating 📜
W. Sibley Towner writes:
“Daniel is one of the few OT books that can be given a fairly firm date. In the form in which we have it (perhaps without the additions of 12:11, 12), the book must have been given its final form some time in the years 167-164 B.C. This dating is based upon two assumptions: first, that the authors lived at the later end of the historical surveys that characterize Daniel 7-12; and second, that prophecy is accurate only when it is given after the fact, whereas predictions about the future tend to run astray. Based upon these assumptions, the references to the desecration of the Temple and the ‘abomination that makes desolate’ in 8:9-12; 9:27; and 11:31 must refer to events known to the author. The best candidates for the historical referents of these events are the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem and the erection in it of a pagan altar in the autumn of 167 B.C. by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The inaccurate description of the end of Antiochus’ reign and his death in 11:40-45, on the other hand, suggests that the author did not know of those events, which occurred late in 164 or early in 163 B.C. The roots of the hagiographa (idealizing stories) about Daniel and his friends in chaps. 1-6 may date to an earlier time, but the entire work was given its final shape in 164 B.C.” (Harper’s Bible Commentary, p. 696)

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The Hebrew material in ch. 8-12 is what is focused on Antiochus IV Epiphanes’s defilement of the Temple, while the Aramaic chapters may be a little older beside the “little horn” portion of ch. 7. Rainer Albertz (in Daniel: Composition and Reception; Brill, 2001) has advanced an interesting theory that the oldest portion of the book (ch. 4-6 in a variant edition) belongs to the mid-third century BCE while the Aramaic apocalyptic material (particularly in ch. 2 and 7) belongs to the reign of Antiochus III, c. 200 BCE.
It was written in the second century B.C. Daniel’s account of Antiochus IV Epiphanes’s reign stands out as the most convincing proof of his Maccabean heritage. Daniel, in contrast to many (but not all) of the books of the Bible, can be roughly dated to between 167 BC, when Antiochus defiled the Jewish temple, and 164 BC, when he died. Up until verse 40, where Daniel predicts that Antiochus will once more march into Palestine, the account of Antiochus’ reign in Daniel 11 is always accurate. Nevertheless, God will intervene to destroy him this time, followed shortly by the resurrection of the dead and the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth. Antiochus died of illness while campaigning in the east, so clearly this did not happen. However, the precise terminus ad quem for the book’s authorship is provided by the prophecy’s failure.
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More proof on the dating and against 6th BCE dating:
Argument: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318725539_A_Contemporary_Defense_of_the_Authenticity_of_Daniel
Refutation (cred to zanillamilla):
The first refutation imposes a temporal break at Daniel 11:35, saying the narrative “shifts forward in history by expressly stating that the following material portrays events near the end of time” which “are not fabrications concerning Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but are referring to the reign of a king which will occur during the end times”. This break is imposed on the text and ignores the probability that the author presents the conclusion of Antiochus’ reign (still in the future from the perspective of the author) as the end of time. Against the notion of such a break is the fact that 11:31 (prior to the supposed break) relates that the king would remove the daily offering and set up the abomination of desolation. Chapter 8 is clear that this profanation of the sanctuary is only for a limited period of over 3 years after which the sanctuary is reconsecrated (8:13-14) and the king is “broken without human hand” (8:25). Chapter 9 relates the setting up of the abomination of desolation and the cessation of sacrifice at the midpoint of the 70th week, with it ending 3 1/2 years later with the “predetermined destruction poured out on the desolator” (9:27). Chapter 12, which concludes the vision in ch. 11, says that “it is for a time, times, and half a time at the end of the power of the shatterer of the holy people all these things will be finished” (12:7), and “from the time when the continual offering is taken away and the desolating abomination is set up is one thousand two hundred and ninety days” (12:11). This is plainly parallel to the 3 1/2 years of 9:27, which would end with the destruction of the king. So 11:31 relates the cessation of daily offering and the setting up of the abomination of desolation and it is in 11:45 when the destruction of the king is related, “he will come to his end with no one to help him”. It is thus contextually the most natural reading to regard 11:35-45 as the same king as the one discussed in 11:31.
It is less parsimonious to argue that paralleled visions with similar content (the mentions of daily offering, the abomination of desolation, the time periods of over 3 years) refer to entirely different time periods. So, for instance, the author argues that on account of ch. 7, Daniel must be referring to the later Roman empire rather than the Greeks, and draws attention to the “little horn”, which he argues pertains to the end times, not the period of Antiochus. Yet ch. 8 contains a paralleled vision with the “little horn” and the writer of Daniel explicitly identifies that horn as a king of Greece, who does exactly the same things that the wicked king of ch. 11 does. Again, the principle of parsimony comes into play. The author defends the later dating of the “little horn” by arguing that the fourth kingdom (in line with the conservative view) is Rome. He says, for instance, that “the beast’s legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay (2:33) represents the democratic system of checks and balances in the Roman senate and assemblies”. This is wholly without justification from the text. Rather the text itself says that the iron and clay means that “the kingdom shall be divided”, “the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile,” and “they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another” (2:41-43).
Contextually, this clearly refers to the kingdom of Greece in ch. 8 and 11, for it is from Greece that “four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power” (8:22), Alexander’s “kingdom shall be broken up and divided toward the four winds of heaven” (11:4), and “mingling with the seed of men” pertains to the marriage alliance between the kingdoms of the north and south in 11:6. Finally, the author of Daniel clearly states that the “time of the end” is when the book is unsealed. Since the book made its appearance during the Maccabean crisis, this is what the time of the end referred to. Surely the book did not remain a secret and unread for all those years leading up to the Roman empire and beyond.
With respect to the second refutation, the author states that “Collins’ assertion that there is no mention of Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem until 597 BC overlooks the Nabonidus Chronicle.” First of all, it is the Babylonian Chronicle that is being referred to here, not the Nabonidus Chronicle, and all the text says is that Nebuchadnezzar marched victoriously through Hatti-land and collected tribute. It doesn’t say that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem per se and took prisoners. If you read the chronicle further, it says that same thing, that the king marched unopposed in Hatti-land and received tribute for nearly every year that followed. It is not until 597 BC when the chronicle describes a siege of Jerusalem and captured the king. This is the point that Collins was making. Rather the story in Daniel 1 arose from a conflation between (1) the invasion mentioned in 2 Kings 24:1-2 that occurred later in Jehoiakim’s reign and (2) the siege of 597 BC that occurred at the end of Jehoiachin’s reign as described in 2 Kings 24:10-16. It was this latter siege that carried off “the treasures of the Temple of Yahweh and the treasures of the royal palace,” as well as “all the nobles and all the notables,” which corresponds exactly to “the royal seed and the nobility” in Daniel 1:3. This conflation probably occurred on the account of the similarity between the names (Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin), and the earliest evidence of it can be found in the work of the Chronicler (third century BC), who duplicated the exile of Jehoiachin into an earlier exile of Jehoiakim. The author of Daniel was not only dependent on this innovation of the Chronicler, but he also uses the very language and wording of the Chronicler (2 Chronicles 36:6-7, Ezra 1:7), showing that this passage in Daniel was written later. Jeremiah 52 knows of no exile in Jehoiakim’s reign, referring to the deportation in 597 BC as the first of three.
The confusion of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin was very common in the Hellenistic era, found in the LXX (which gives “Jehoiakim” as the name of both kings), 1 Esdras making Jeconiah (= Jehoiachin) the successor of Josiah instead of Jehoahaz, Eupolemus combining both kings as the composite Jonachim, and Matthew which combines the two as Jeconiah. Finally, the author says that Belteshazzar is a genuine Akkadian name but omits the fact that Daniel 4:8 portrays Nebuchadnezzar of giving a false etymology of the name, deriving it from the name of the god Bel. It is unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar was ignorant of his own language but it’s plausible that a Jew writing in the second century BC did not know the actual meaning of the name.
The third refutation concerns the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242). The argument that there are more dissimilarities than similarities with Daniel is inadequate. The similarities are far more extensive and cannot be purely coincidental. The affliction is due to a divine פתגמ in both texts (פִּתְגָמָ֔א in Daniel 4:17, פתגם א[להא in 4Q242). The affliction lasts a period of 7 years or times (cf. the use of “time” to refer to a year in 12:7), in contrast to the 10 years Nabonidus gives in his own autobiographical account of his withdrawal (NABON H 1-2). Nabonidus in 4Q242 worshipped “gods of silver and gold, [bronze, iron], wood, stone, clay”, a phrase that finds a very close parallel in Daniel 5:4 (“gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone”). The affliction is reversed through the intervention of an exiled Jew who tells the king to submit to God. The Jewish diviner instructs Nabonidus to “write and proclaim” his confession and in the 4Q242, the king writes his confession in the first person, “I, Nabonidus, was smitten with a bad disease”, etc. In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar writes a letter to “all peoples” stating his faith in “the Most High God” (cf. 3:32-33), and which describes his experience in the first person, “I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my palace” (4:1), “I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven” (4:31), etc.
In both cases, the king’s decree praising the Most High includes a first-person account of his affliction. This is unusual and can hardly be a coincidence. Also the article points to differences such as Prayer of Nabonidus being set in the desert in Teima and the physical affliction of Nabonidus in 4Q242 rather than the mental affliction. However the version of ch. 4 in the LXX OG is slightly closer to 4Q242 in these respects; Nebuchadnezzar withdraws to the desert or wilderness (ἐρῆμος) and says that “my flesh and my heart were changed”. The biblical story has close literary links to 4Q242 but the latter is at the same time more primitive: it pertains to an episode known independently from historical sources (whereas no such episode is known for Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in any contemporary source), it gives the correct name of the king and location in Teima, and the Jewish diviner is not yet identified with Daniel. Also the narrative that follows in Daniel 5 alludes to the affliction story in 5:20-21 and states that Belshazzar is the son of the king that was humbled by God (5:22). Historically Belshazzar was indeed the son of Nabonidus. The simplest explanation then is that the story originally concerned Nabonidus (with roots in his historical withdrawal from Babylon) but the author of Daniel replaced him with the much-better known Nebuchadnezzar.
The fourth refutation concerns Darius the Mede, and the author adopts the theory that identifies with figure with Xenophon’s Cyaxares II, whose historicity is very debatable. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyaxares_II)
H. H. Rowley in 1964 refuted this theory in his Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel which shows that not only does Xenophon not agree with what is known in contemporary sources but that Cyaxares II does not fit with Daniel’s depiction of Darius the Mede. Darius is depicted as ruling over Babylon directly and ruling over a vast empire of 127 satrapies (6:2), which are only appointed after the fall of Babylon, and this recalls both the 20 satrapies organized by the historical Darius the Great and the 127 satrapies of Esther 1:1 that span from Ethiopia to India. Thus Darius was not depicted as a co-regent or ruling over a small kingdom or the province of Babylon, and he is portrayed as ruling prior to Cyrus the Persian (6:29; cf. 6:28 OG: “King Darius was gathered to his fathers and Cyrus the Persian succeeded to his kingdom”). Also Darius is depicted as the son of Xerxes (Ahasuerus), not Astyages, in 9:1, so one would have to also suppose that Xerxes was also a name for Astyages. Rather Darius was the father of Xerxes and the author of Daniel reversed the relation. Contemporary documents show incontrovertably that Cyrus ruled over his empire as monarch after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC instead of Darius the Mede who is never mentioned in administrative and business tablets. The author of Daniel knows that the Persian empire followed that of the Medes (and this is attested in the Hellenistic era in the four kingdom sequence of Assyria, Media, Persia, and Greece), but did not realize that the conquest of Media by the Persians occurred prior to the fall of Babylon.
The article appeals to late sources instead of contemporary documents to support the claim that Darius the Mede was Cyaxares II. Berossus’ account of the fall of Babylon is quoted as such in the article: “But Nabonidus did not wait out the siege, but gave himself up. Cyrus at first treated him kindly, and, giving a residence to him in Carmania, sent him out of Babylonia. But Darius the king took away some of his province for himself. So Nabonidus passed the rest of his time in that land and died.” This is presented as the “best text-critical reconstruction” of the passage, and interpreted to mean that there was a Darius then ruling at the time of the fall of Babylon, yet the passage in italics only occurs in an Armenian translation of Eusebius’ quotation of Berossus. Josephus (Against Apion 1.145-153) reproduced the same passage centuries earlier and the italicized portion is absent in his quotation: “Nabonidus did not wait for the siege to begin but surrendered immediately. Cyrus received him graciously, exiled him from Babylonia, but gave him Carmania instead. Nabonidus spent the rest of his life in that country and died there”. Also the reference to Darius most naturally pertains to Darius the Great. Nabonidus was given residence and administration of the province of Carmania soon after 539 BC but then when Darius took power in 522 BC he took away part of this province, possibly when he reorganized the administration of satrapies.
The fifth point concerns the reference to Belshazzar as the son of Nebuchadnezzar when he was really the son of Nabonidus (who was a usurper along with Neriglissar before him). The article argues that “son” is sometimes used to mean “successor”, even in the case of usurpers. Yet is this the natural meaning in Daniel 5? The emphasis is on a father-son relationship; “Nebuchadnezzar, your father” (v. 18; cf. v. 2, 11) is paired with “you, Belshazzar, his son” (v. 22), it is the queen mother herself who reminds Belshazzar about things that had happened in the days of “your father” (v. 11, 16), with the queen mother reinforcing the family connection between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, and Daniel chides Belshazzar for repeating the mistakes of his father. The most natural way to read the text is to accept it at face value as stating that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar’s son; it is special pleading to appeal to a more unusual reading of the text to save the story from historical inaccuracy. When Belshazzar was officially called “son of the king” in contemporary texts, the reference was to the father-son relationship between Belshazzar and Nabonidus, NOT Nebuchadnezzar. Also the real queen mother, Adda-Guppi, who was Nabonidus’ mother and Belshazzar’s grandmother, who had been alive during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, died in 547 BC – some years prior to the fall of Babylon.
The sixth section discusses briefly the language of Daniel. Although the article is largely a response to Collins, it does not address the various linguistic and orthographic points made in Collins, pp. 15-17 that suggest that the Aramaic is later than Ezra and the Samaria papyri (fourth century BC), with the balance of probability favoring “a date in the early Hellenistic period for the Aramaic portions of Daniel” (p. 17). The Hebrew is even more decisive, “the Hebrew of Daniel has little in common with the exilic period. Rather it falls in the range of Second Temple Hebrew, as exemplified by Chronicles and the Dead Sea Scrolls.” (p. 20) Another point is the density of Persian loanwords (some 17 in all) which is far higher than what is found in the Aramaic translation of the Behistun inscription (namely, none) and the Elephantine letters (Montgomery, p. 21), which also are most frequent in the stories set in the Neo-Babylonian period, with even Nebuchadnezzar using them in his first-person account (4:6). The late vocabulary in Daniel 3 is most noticeable because it is studded with six different Persian administrative titles (including satraps) which would have surely not been used in Nebuchadnezzar’s government. The narrative also includes three Greek words of musical instruments, one of which is not known to have existed until Hellenistic times. The article argues that the Babylonians were not isolated from the Greeks and could have borrowed the instruments and words in the sixth century BC, but there is otherwise no contemporary evidence of those words and instruments being used in Babylon during the Neo-Babylonian period.
The less strained explanation is that the words are in the story because the story itself was written in Hellenistic times when Greek culture was more widely diffused in the Levant. Finally, the Greek vocabulary may not be limited to the musical instruments but also the word for the “herald” in 3:4 has strong claims as having a Greek derivation, as Collins points out.
Finally the author’s attempt to defend the identification of Daniel with the Danel of Ezekiel 14:14, 20, 28:3 is unconvincing. Naming Danel alongside Noah and Job does not prove that Danel was a hoary figure from the past, but this is the natural reading. The article does not discuss how the three were mentioned with respect to the question of being able to “save son or daughter”; Noah is known to have saved his sons from the Flood and Job lost his children during his time of trouble. The reference to Danel would then pertain to the endangerment of Danel’s son or daughter, and this is precisely what we find in the Aqhat story, with Aqhat perishing and Danel attempting to pray for him (the story is incomplete so we don’t know how it ends). But there is no indication whatsoever that the prophet Daniel was known to have had children, much less finding their lives in danger. Josephus presents the tradition that he was a eunuch. It also makes sense for Ezekiel to mention Danel to the king of Tyre (Ittobaal II, 590-573 BC), if Danel were a legendary figure in West Semitic culture. It would seem unusual for the king of Tyre to know a contemporary court official in the Nebuchadnezzar administration. That Ezekiel 28 then draws on Canaanite mythology (as discussed by John Day and Mark S. Smith) only confirms that the allusion to Danel is legendary in character. Finally, the criticism that Danel was a worshipper of Baal in the story is not really pertinent since 1) Ezekiel was addressing a pagan Phoenician king and 2) the version of the Danel story that Ezekiel knew was later than the Ugaritic version we have, and so we don’t know if this feature of the story was part of the legend known to Ezekiel.
Rather than assuming that Greek loanwords would have been more common in the second century BC, we can look at the actual distribution in Aramaic and Hebrew. Loanwords were actually quite rare. There are no examples whatsoever in the Dead Sea Scrolls, aside from the Copper Scroll (more on that later). This includes all the Aramaic and Hebrew works from the third century BC onward, like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, the Temple Scroll, 1QHoyadot, the Damascus Document, Community Rule, and the many scrolls in Cave 4. There is one possible example in ben Sira (Sirach 47:15), early second century BC, but this is disputed since the letters are not fully preserved; otherwise there are no undisputed loanwords in the lengthy book. The book of Daniel remains the earliest book with undisputed Greek loanwords. The Copper Scroll has as much as 9 Greek loanwords in a rather short text but the Hebrew is also later than Daniel’s LBH; it is close to Mishnaic Hebrew. Scholars generally believe that it is later than all other Dead Sea Scrolls, dating either to the time of the first Jewish revolt, or possibly, the second revolt under bar Kochba in the 130s AD. Similarly, Greek loanwords are common in rabbinical literature from the second century AD onward. So even if loanwords were more common in spoken language, they made a slow appearance in written literature. Daniel was actually ahead of the curve on this one.
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Context 📜
Daniel J. Harrington places Daniel in the crisis of the 170’s-160’s BCE, in “The Maccabean Revolt” (1988, 2009). Although Daniel is set in the 6th and 5th centuries, and contains some earlier traditions, Harrington writes, “the narrative setting of Daniel is not necessarily the setting in which the book was composed. In fact, the book of Daniel seems to have been put into its present Hebrew-Aramaic form when the disturbing events described above [the Maccabean revolt] were taking place in Jerusalem…in its final form, it tells us more about the threat facing Israel in 168-165 BC than about the late Babylonian or early Persian periods.” (p.17)

The chapter is not quite as long as the book of Daniel, but is too long to summarize easily. The thumbnail sketch of the revolt involved the cash-strapped Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164), the shenanigans of some imperial officials, corrupt priests and Jerusalemites, the looting and desecration of the Temple, and some faction of Israelites going overboard with Hellenizing traditional culture, overturning centuries of tradition. Curiously, many of the ideas in Daniel, like the succession of empires, derive from Hellenistic thinking.

Antiochus, in veiled and sometimes mysterious language, is introduced in Dan 11:21-45, as a “contemptible person,” and events leading up to the revolt are summarized. Elsewhere, Belshazzar may be a stand-in for Antiochus, as may be the “little horn” of Dan.8:9.
In his conclusion, Harrington writes, “Whether for reasons of political safety or the desire to create an esoteric atmosphere, the work seldom communicates directly, using real names and places. The interpreter is challenged to solve puzzles set forth by the text. The circle to which the author belongs (‘the wise’) remains shadowy until near the end of the book.” (p.35)

It was also during this same time period, after classical prophecy had waned, that apocalyptic literature came into existence, the earliest example being the books that became 1 Enoch. Angels provided heavenly revelations to patriarchs, often seemingly influenced by Ezekiel. James Kugel in “How to Read the Bible,” additionally connects apocalyptic writing not only to the continuation of prophecy, but to wisdom writings: “Like earlier wisdom writings, apocalyptic texts hold that there is a great, divine plan governing all of reality, a plan whose rules were established long ago. And like wisdom writings they hold that wisdom is basically hidden and requires deep contemplation in order to be revealed.” (p.656)
Rainer Albertz’ “The Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel” in Daniel: Composition and Reception, Vol. 1 (Brill, 2001). He draws on the fact that Daniel is a pluriform text with material composed in different periods. He notes that ch. 4-6 in the Old Greek represent the earliest edition of the tales which reflects a milieu of the middle of the third century BCE. The next stage is the composition of the Aramaic apocalypse consisting of a newer edition of ch. 4-6 supplemented in a chiasm with another persecution tale (ch. 3 as a counterpart to ch. 6) and the two apocalyptic visions in ch. 2 and 7 concerning the four kingdoms. This Aramaic work dates to around c. 200 BCE in the reign of Antiochus III and reflects the political and religious climate of this period, with a close relationship with Enochic works (see Loren Stuckenbruck’s work comparing the throne vision in ch. 7 with the Book of Giants and the Book of Watchers, with Enochic priority as the most likely option). The third stage is the composition of the Hebrew apocalypse that expands on ch. 7 in the series of visions in ch. 8-12 (written in the first person) and which adds another tale in ch. 1 to give the finished book a proper introduction. This occurred in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, particularly between 168-165 BCE during the time of the Maccabean revolt (with the author taking a quietist stance in comparison to the militants).
The Aramaic work is the section of Daniel spanning between ch. 2 and 7. Everything after this is written in Hebrew and has quite a different character and likely period. Chapters 4-6 within the Aramaic apocalypse arguably is a unit that antedated the composition of the Aramaic text, found in what Albertz regards as an earlier edition in the Greek (which may have had an earlier vorlage now lost).
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Author 📜
The first thing to recognize is that the author placed himself as a contemporary of the great prophets of Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Zechariah. At the time there was a common belief that prophecy had ceased (1 Maccabees 9:27, Josephus, Against Apion 1.37-41, 2 Baruch 85:3, t. Sotah 13.2-4), likely as a consequence of the closure of the Neviʾim canon, although the truth was not as a simple as that, as others still appeared as prophets and some circles still accepted ongoing prophecy (as in Paul’s circle in the NT), but it was probably harder for current written prophetic works to be accepted as authoritative and so pseudepigraphy became a popular vehicle for writing new prophecies of the future (as in the Enochic corpus, the Assumption of Moses, the Psalms of Solomon, etc.). The notion that there were no longer any prophets appears in an addition to Daniel itself, the Prayer of Azariah, which was also probably written during the Maccabean crisis. Second, we find in ch. 11 and 12 multiple statements about the book being sealed up till the “time of the end,” which implicitly is the persecution of the Maccabean crisis when the book made its appearance (Daniel 9:24, 12:4, 9). This is an internal literary device to explain why no one had seen this book before, with the putative author living hundreds of years before the time the book was “unsealed”.
The Damascus Document at Qumran used the same sealing motif to explain how the book of Deuteronomy was unknown for centuries. “David had not read the sealed Book of the Law which was in the ark, for it was not opened in Israel from the death of Eleazar and Joshua, and the elders who worshipped Ashtoreth. It was hidden and not revealed until the coming of Zadok” (CD-A 5:2-5). The subsequent writing and acceptance at Qumran of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, both purported books of Moses, and the later Assumption of Moses, also attest to the belief that there existed other books of Moses that may later be discovered and come to light. The Assumption of Moses uses a similar literary device:
“You however receive the writing of the books which I will hand to you, and you must order them, embalm them, and put them in earthenware jars in a place which he made from the beginning of the creation of the world, so that his name be invoked until the day of repentance” (1:16-17).
Note too how Revelation reverses the sealing motif. John of Patmos instructs the prophecy to NOT be sealed up “because the time is near (ὁ καιρὸς ἐγγύς)” (22:10), for it relates “what must soon take place (γενέσθαι ἐν τάχει)” (1:1). The book was not intended for readers hundreds of years later (like Daniel) but for John’s contemporaries in the here and now. This goes hand-in-hand with John’s rejection of the mode of pseudonymity which otherwise was common in revelatory literature.

Although much of pseudonymity likely involved intentional forgery, when it comes to revelatory literature things are less clear. One motif is that of books being revealed to the writer in a vision. Ezekiel receives his prophecy as a scroll divinely presented to him in a vision to consume (2:9-3:9), and John of Patmos similarly witnesses a great scroll in heaven being unsealed and revealed to him (ch. 5). Jubilees presents Enoch as a scribe who wrote down the heavenly tablets, the understanding of which had to be divinely revealed to Abraham (4:16-19, 12:26-27). 1 Enoch portrays Enoch as the “scribe of righteousness” (12:4), who still resides in heaven (in later tradition he becomes the scribe of the Book of Life). 4 Ezra portrays the Torah as destroyed in Nebuchadnezzar’s burning of the Temple but restored in the post-exilic period as the books were revealed to Ezra in a vision (14:21–22). It is possible that again this concept was just a literary device, but it is also possible that the authors of some pseudepigraphs believed they were writing down an ancient book revealed to them in a vision.

Louis F. Hartman writes:
“Having lost sight of these ancient modes of writing, until relatively recent years Jews and Christians have considered Dn to be true history, containing genuine prophecy. Inasmuch as chs. 7-12 are written in the first person, it was natural to assume that Daniel in chs. 1-6 was a truly historical character and that he was the author of the whole book. There would be few modern biblical scholars, however, who would now seriously defend such an opinion. The arguments for a date shortly before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 164 are overwhelming. An author living in the 6th cent. could hardly have written the late Hebrew used in Dn, and its Aramaic is certainly later than the Aramaic of the Elephantine papyri, which date from the end of the 5th cent. The theological outlook of the author, with his interest in angelology, his apocalyptic rather than prophetic vision, and especially his belief in the resurrection of the dead, points unescapably to a period long after the Babylonian Exile. His historical perspective, often hazy for events in the time of the Babylonian and Persian kings but much clearer for the events during the Seleucid Dynasty, indicates the Hellenistic age. Finally, his detailed description of the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167 and the following persecution (9:27; 11:30-35) contrasted with his merely general reference to the evil end that would surely come to such a wicked man (11:45), indicates a composition date shortly before the death of this king in 164, therefore probably in 165.” (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, vol. 1, p. 448)

J. Alberto Soggin writes:
“The first difficulties in the historical classification of the book begin with the deportation of Daniel and his companions. We do not in fact know anything of a deportation which took place in the third year of Jehoiakim, i.e. in 607 BC. If we allow its basic historicity, the event might be connected with the conquest of Syria and Palestine by Nebuchadnezzar II a little later, after the battle of Carchemish in 605-4 and the victory over Egypt; it was on this occasion that Jehoiakim moved out of the sphere of Egyptian influence and into that of Babylon (cf. II Chron. 36.5). Complex problems of foreign policy followed, to which we alluded in our discussion of Jeremiah. Until recently the note in Chronicles was considered spurious, since there was no point of comparison, but discoveries during the 1950s of various unedited fragments of the Babylonian Chronicle have unexpectedly made sense of both this passage and II Kings 24.1ff. But even admitting the substantial historicity of the events narrated, there remains the problem of chronology, which is evidently some years out. Other elements are no less perplexing: in 5.11 Belshazzar is implicitly called the son of Nebuchadnezzar and in 7.1 he appears as king of Babylon. However, he was neither one nor the other, but the son of Nabonidus, one of Nebuchadnezzar’s successors who came to the throne as the result of a plot. (The only other possibility is that ‘son of . . .’ is intended in a generic sense, as ‘descendant of . . .’, a usage which is attested in Akkadian.) On the other hand, the statement that Belshazzar was king may simply be imprecise wording: towards 553 he was resident in Babylon as a kind of lieutenant-general for the king during his numerous absences, and could therefore have been called king, at least by the people.
Again, in 5.31, as we have seen, a certain Darius the Mede appears, who is considered to be king of Persia after the fall of Babylon. In 9.1 he appears as son of Xerxes, whereas in 6.29 Cyrus succeeds a Darius. If we are to be precise, the question arises what Daniel is doing at the court of the Medes before the Babylonian empire has fallen, always assuming that we take the term ‘Mede’ seriously. This question has never been answered. We must therefore accept that Media is in reality Persia. But the genealogy of the kings of Persia is well known: Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius I Hystaspes, Xerxes. If the Darius mentioned here was Darius I from the last quarter of the sixth century, how old would Daniel be? These are features which were already pointed out by the anti-Christian polemicist Celsus at the end of the second century AD.” (Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 408)

James King West writes:
“The same persecutions that provoked the Maccabean uprising also stimulated the development within Jewish circles of a new literary and theological form known as the apocalypse. The name itself (Greek apokalypsis) means ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling,’ in reference to the revealed truths which such writings purport to convey. The book of Daniel, which comes from this period, is the only true apocalypse in the old Testament, though some portions of other books share close affinities with its style (Isa. 24-27; Ezek. 38-39; Zech. 1:7-6:8; Joel 2:1-11; 4:1-21). Between the second century B.C. and the end of the first century A.D., other books of this genre, both Jewish and Christian, became popular; the Revelation of John in the New Testament is one of its best-known representatives. The characteristic theology of the apocalypse is an eschatological dualism which depicts the present age of world history as about to give way to God’s final age—a climactic intervention by God himself for judgment and deliverance. This message is couched in a literary form marked by visions, bizarre imagery, cryptic numbers, and angelic interpreters. Authorship is generally pseudonymous, the works being consigned to some authoritative figure of the distant past, such as Enoch, Moses, Daniel, or Ezra.” (Introduction to the Old Testament, pp. 417-418)

Jay G. Williams writes:
“When the author of Daniel himself attempted to predict the future specifically, he, on the whole, proved to be incorrect. Antiochus did not die as he said nor did his kingdom come to a sudden end. The world still awaits the full manifestation of God’s righteous rule upon earth. Still, he was right about one thing. Antiochus did not destroy Israel. On the contrary, the Maccabees (the ‘little help’ mentioned in 11:34) even led the people to a few moments of glory before the Roman armies put an end to their semi-independent nation. Perhaps our author was wrong in attempting to predict so precisely what was to occur, for the course of history is never easily determined in advance, even by a visionary prophet. He knew, however, that what his people needed was not general platitudes but a specific hope to which to cling. This he provided even at the risk of being wrong. Furthermore, his central, motivating thesis is one which faithful men can hardly reject. Essentially the book of Daniel is an affirmation of the faith that the God of Israel has dominion over the world and that in the end he will save his people. Daniel teaches that the faithful man must live expectantly, with the hope that the Kingdom of God is indeed at hand.” (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 316)

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Daniel 7:13-14 and the allusion to Mark 14:61-64 📜
“Son of man” (Bar’nash) is how you say “human being” in Aramaic. That’s all it means. It’s just a way to say “person.” The verse in Daniel is in reference to a series of visions of various allegorical beasts. The last vision is “one like a bar’nash, meaning “one like a human.” It’s just a way of saying the last vision looked like a man as opposed to a beast. This figure was interpreted Messianically, but “son of man” did not mean “Messiah.” The normal usage was just for a person. It might denote the Messiah in a high context way (like calling him “the Man”), but the meaning of bar’nash is still “human being.”

Having said all that, this exchange with the High Priest. indeed the entire trial before the Sanhedrin, is thought to be almost certainly a fiction created by Mark. The trial is filled with procedural errors and the conviction for blasphemy is impossible because claiming to be the Messiah was not blasphemy. It was also a common claim that did not bother Jews on other occasions. It is not true that the temple authorities thought the Messiah would necessarily come down from the sky. One Messianic claimant, Bar Kochba, was actually endorsed by the High Priest. Daniel was an apocalypse, meaning it was a highly allegorical genre of Jewish literature that no one thought was to be taken literally (just like Christians don’t think a literal beast with seven heads is going to rise out of the sea). The Messiah was just supposed to be a human king and a national liberator. Claiming to be the Messiah was not against any Jewish law and lots of guys did it.
The whole Sanhedrin trial was a way for Mark to shift the blame for the crucifixion away from the Romans and onto the Jews. The same is true of making Pilate reluctant to execute Jesus. This was an author talking to a Roman audience and trying to whitewash Roman culpability for the crucifixion. The Romans would never have crucified anybody for a Jewish religious crime anyway. Crucifixion was reserved only for very specific crimes, and if Jesus was crucified, it could only have been because he was accused of some sort of sedition or other crime against the Roman state. All four Gospels say that the formal charge against Jesus – the one written on the cross – was claiming to be the King of the Jews (i.e. the Messiah). This was not a crime under Jewish law, but it was a crime under Roman law and the Romans routinely executed wanna-be Messiahs without trial.
Notice that John’s Gospel has no Sanhedrin trial, only an arrest and a brief, informal interrogation before Jesus is turned over to Pilate. That is a more realistic scenario.

By the way, who was the witness to the Sanhedrin trial in Mark? The only people there were Jesus and the priests (all of whom Mark says voted to execute Jesus). Where did Mark get this transcript?
It wasn’t a “title” at all, at best it might have been an allusion to Daniel’s son of Man, but it was not a title for the Messiah.

It is not at all clear that Jesus ever used this phrase to refer to himself or that he ever claimed to be the Messiah. In Apocalyptic Prophet, Ehrman argues that Jesus talked about a coming son of man who Jesus believed was a separate entity from himself and that his followers decided he was talking about himself after his death. In some instances where Jesus is said to have used the phrase, “humans” actually does make better sense (e.g. “The sabbath was made for the son of man, therefore the son of man is the lord of the sabbath”).

Daniel’s Son of Man Figure: Divine Being or Corporate Representative?
The appearance of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 follows a throne vision of God and a description of the divine court:
As I looked, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat; his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened [Daniel 7:9—10].
That the imagery here is derived from both the appearance of God on Mt. Sinai and Ezekiel’s throne room vision is recognized by many commentators. Scholars debate whether the scene is a heavenly or an earthly one. The vision goes on to describe the coming of “one like a son of man”: “I saw in die night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him” (Dan 7:13). The eschatological kingdom is then given over to the Son of Man (cf. Dan 7:14). Later, the kingdom is described as being handed over to the saints (cf. Dan 7:17, 27). It should be noted that the vision indicates mat this ultimate triumph will occur only after a period of suffering (cf. Dan 7:25)—the passage thus clearly depicts a period of eschatological tribulation.
In receiving the kingdom the Son of Man figure is closely identified with the saints, who, after undergoing the period of eschatological suffering, are vindicated by God (cf. Dan 7:27). Yet whether the figure should merely be interpreted as a corporate symbol of the people is unclear. For one thing, it is well-known that certain individuals in the ancient world such as kings were understood as representatives of their people, i.e., “corporate personalities”. It seems clear that in ancient Judaism the high priest was considered such a figure, e.g., he wears twelve stones symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Exod 28:21). In fact, it is important to note that other figures in Daniel 7 are in fact themselves depicted as corporate representatives: the beasts are identified as both four kingdoms and four kings (cf. Dan 7:17, 23). Since the four beasts are identified as both four kings and four kingdoms it stands to reason that “one like a son of man” may likewise be interpreted as both an eschatological figure and a corporate representative of the saints.
Moreover, one of the major problems with simply seeing the figure as a corporate symbol is the fact that Daniel 7 describes this figure in terms usually reserved for descriptions of divine beings. It should also be noted that the Old Greek describes the “son of man” coming not “to” but “as” the Ancient of Days. Indeed, the author of the book of Revelation seems to have been aware of this reading.
Crispin Fletcher-Louis has suggested an interesting way around the impasse, arguing that choosing between seeing Daniel’s Son of Man figure as divine or human is not necessary if one recognizes certain cultic allusions in the vision. Specifically, Fletcher-Louis has argued that Daniel’s Son of Man figure appears to have been interpreted as a priestly figure by ancient Jews. Such a view does in fact have great potential to explain why Daniel seems to describe him as both a divine figure and a corporate representative. After all, as we have already noted, the high priest was seen as both playing the part of God in the cult (e.g., he wears the divine name on his miter; cf. §2.2.3.) and as representing the people before the Lord (e.g., wearing the twelve stones identified with the twelve tribes; cf. Exod 28:21). Here we seek to build on Fletcher-Louis’ work.
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Meaning of Daniel 7:13-14? 📜
James Montgomery in his ICC volume points out that the same preposition occurs in the same vision with respect to the other figures, e.g. כאריה “like a lion” (7:4), כנמר “like a leopard” (7:6), cf. also דמיה לדב “resembling a bear” (7:5) in stylistic variation. This makes clear that the preposition occurs to convey that the figures are not literal but representational of other entities (v. 17 makes clear that the beasts represent different kingdoms). Montgomery notes: “It is not correct to speak of the prep[osition] as affecting a mystery; it belongs to the expression of visionary phenomena, in which the seer, whether spontaneously or through the use of conventional language, knows that he is seeing only ‘the like of’ something” (p. 318). John Collins in his Hermeneia commentary similarly says: “The preposition -כ ‘like’ is best understood as indicating the mode of perception proper to a vision, so that ‘like a son of man’ means ‘a human figure seen in a vision,’ where the figure may or may not represent something other than a human being” (p. 305). Another example of human beings in likeness can be found in the Animal Apocalypse, written around the same time as Daniel. Different animals and beasts represent kinds of human beings and other mortals (such as the giants before the Flood, represented by elephants and other animals), but occasionally there are human beings in the vision but they represent not people but divine beings like angels.
The author explains what is meant by “one like a son of man”. In the vision, the figure appears in a heavenly setting, walking on the clouds of heaven who approaches the enthroned Ancient of Days (the Most High), who is attended by myriads of angels. “To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed” (v. 14). In the interpretation of the vision, we read that the final evil king from the fourth kingdom “made war against the holy ones and was prevailing over them” … “he shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High … and they shall be given into his power” (v. 21, 25), until “the Ancient of Days came, then judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, and the time arrived when the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom….The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them” (v. 22, 27). The parallel language here shows that the “one like a son of man” is a collective figure, corresponding to the holy ones of the Most High and the people of the holy ones of the Most High who receive kingship and dominion and an everlasting kingdom. The king is described as waging war against them, a theme which reoccurs in the later Hebrew section: “He shall destroy the powerful and the people of the holy ones…Without warning he shall destroy many and even rise up against the Prince of princes” (8:24-25). Chapter 10 describes war as involving both an earthly and heavenly plane and similarly the king was depicted as fighting against heavenly forces: “It grew as high as the host of heaven. It threw down to earth some of the host and some of the stars and trampled on them” (8:10).
The term “holy one” in the OT often refers to heavenly beings and the divine council (e.g. Deuteronomy 33:2, Psalm 89:5-7, Zechariah 14:5, Daniel 4:17; cf. 1 Enoch 1:9), so the picture in Daniel 7 is an exaltation of the faithful people who endured the persecution to reign with God’s divine assembly. The Hebrew section similarly depicts the “wise” (a term borrowed from the Suffering Servant song, referring to the faithful who expiate the sins of their fellow Jews) who undergo persecution and martyrdom (11:33-35) as having an astral glory in the resurrection, they “shall shine like the brightness of the sky … like the stars forever and ever” (12:3). Later texts have similar themes, such as the Self-Glorification Hymn at Qumran (4Q471b, 4Q491c) in which the speaker, identifying with the Suffering Servant like the “wise” in Daniel 11-12, says “I reside in the heavens, and I am counted among the gods and my dwelling is in the holy congregation”, and also the Assumption of Moses which says that after the final persecution Israel “will mount the neck and wings of an eagle and they will be filled and God will exalt you and make you live in the heaven of the stars, the place of his habitation, and you will look down from above, and you will see your enemies on the earth” (10:8-10; cf. the great multitude of martyrs in Revelation 7 who join the heavenly assembly after undergoing a great tribulation, a reference to Daniel 12:1). The apocalypse of Daniel is not so explicit with respect to the locality of the people of the Most High in the resurrection (other than the description of the son of man walking on the clouds of heaven), but they have a similar glorified status and collectively the “one like a son of man” refers to all of those who receive the kingdom of God to rule with authority over the earth.
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Son of Man meaning? 📜
In the Old Testament, the phrase “son of man” is mostly used as an idiom, a way of referring to a person by their humanity. In Ezekiel 37, for example, God asks the prophet “Oh, son of man, can these bones live?” As if to say “You mere mortal human being…”

The thing is, in Daniel 7.13-14, you get this particular use of the idiom. The prophet Daniel describes a vision:
“I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”
So the phrase son of man usually means ‘human being.’ But here, the figure being described isn’t a son of man, but one like a son of man, that is, one like a human being. The figure here is a heavenly figure in human form, sent by God with all of God’s authority to claim the world as God’s own and rule it forever. (Daniel probably means for this figure to be a stand-in for Israel, by the way).
At times in the gospels, when Jesus uses the title “Son of Man,” his own language mimics this passage: “When you see the Son of Man riding on the clouds of heaven.”
It only says “one like a son of man” because it follows a description of several images of beasts. Each beast represents a different kingdom that has subjected Israel. The last vision is “like a son of man,” meaning simply a human rather than an animal. It probably does not refer to an individual at all but is a corporate personification of Israel itself (all the other beasts are kingdoms). This image later seems to have become literalized as an angelic savior figure, often identified with Michael or the “angel of the Lord” in the Old Testament. (Bart Ehrman How Jesus became God).
In any case, the vision was not about an individual and the “like a son of man” only refers to shape being human instead of a beast.

Ehrman speculates that Jesus (like a lot of people) was predicting that this angelic conception of the Danielic Bar Enash was going to come down and intervene, but that he was predicting it in the third person. He wasn’t saying “I am the son of man,” just “Get ready, the son of man is coming,” and that his disciples decided only after his death that he must have been the son of man himself and that he would soon return.
James VanderKam in his article “John 10 and the Feast of Dedication” (in Of Scribes and Scrolls : Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins; University Press of America, 1990) has made a fascinating observation on the background of the story in 10:22-39.
The occasion, being Hanukkah, was one of remembering the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Jesus was standing at the Portico of Solomon, a vestige of the First Temple that survived the various destructions and rebuildings of the city. And here Jesus is accused of again making himself (ποιεῖς σεαυτὸν), in this instance, God. The occasion suggests that Jesus was here viewed as akin to Antiochus who Daniel describes as exalting and magnifying himself above every god (11:33-34). Note the parallel to John 5:18, 10:33 in 2 Maccabees 9:12 in which Antiochus declares on his deathbed that “it is right to submit to God; no mortal man should equal himself to God (μὴ θνητὸν ὄντα ἰσόθεα φρονεῖν)”. An interesting pre-Christian use of the phrase “son of God” is found in the ambiguous apocalyptic fragment in 4Q246, in which a certain figure is said to be “great over the earth […] they [will d]o, and all will serve [… gr]eat will he be called and he will be designated by his name. He will be called son of God, and they will call him son of the Most High. Like the sparks that you saw, so will their kingdom be; they will rule several year[s] over the earth and crush everything; a people will crush another people, and a province another provi[n]ce. Until the people of God arises and makes everyone rest from the sword. His kingdom will be an eternal kingdom, and all his paths in truth. He will jud[ge] the earth in truth and all will make peace. The sword will cease from the earth, and all the provinces will pay him homage”. It is unclear if the figure designated as son of God is a messianic figure or a blasphemous king like Antiochus Epiphanes who rules only briefly (as it is also unclear if the ruler of the kingdom in the last few sentences is God or his agent the messiah).
https://ehrmanblog.org/at-last-jesus-and-the-son-of-man/
https://ehrmanblog.org/who-is-the-son-of-man-from-the-blog-readers-mailbag/

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Was Jesus referring to the Son of Man from Daniel or Enoch? 📜
The phrase “one like a son of man” in Daniel means “like a human being”, with the same preposition occurring in the same vision with respect to the other figures, e.g. כאריה “like a lion” (7:4), כנמר “like a leopard” (7:6), cf. also דמיה לדב “resembling a bear” (7:5) in stylistic variation. This makes clear that the preposition occurs to convey that the figures are not literal but representational of other entities (v. 17 makes clear that the beasts represent different kingdoms). John Collins in his Hermeneia commentary remarks: “The preposition -כ ‘like’ is best understood as indicating the mode of perception proper to a vision, so that ‘like a son of man’ means ‘a human figure seen in a vision,’ where the figure may or may not represent something other than a human being” (p. 305). The interpretation of the vision in the chapter indicates that the “one like a son of man” is a collective figure, corresponding to the people of the holy ones of the Most High who receive kingship and dominion and an everlasting kingdom (7:14, 21, 25, 27). Also it is worth noting that ch. 7 of Daniel draws on Enochic traditions (compare the use of Watcher terminology in ch. 4), particularly the throne visions in the Book of Watchers and the Book of Giants, both dating to the third century BCE. Loren Stuckenbruck has studied this in detail, showing the likely priority of the Enochic sources.
Also notably, the Hebrew portion of Daniel (ch. 8-12) develops the scenario in ch. 7 across several visions, with the “wise” (המשכלים) taking the role of the collective people of the saints of the Most High (= one like a son of man) in ch. 7, who undergo persecution and martyrdom and who in the resurrection (described in astral or heavenly terms) receive their allotted inheritance, i.e. the kingdom (11:33-35, 12:3, 13). This gives one of the oldest interpretations of the Suffering Servant song in Deutero-Isaiah (see H. L. Ginsburg’s article in VT, 1953), applying the servant collectively to the faithful Jews who historically underwent the Antiochene persecution (whose suffering had expiatory value for the many, cf. Isaiah 53:11 which is alluded to in Daniel 12:3), with the term “wise” having an exegetical basis in Isaiah 52:13. This interpretation anticipates the later application of the Suffering Servant to Jesus in the gospels and Paul.
Then in later Jewish interpretation, the collective figure came to be seen as a single messianic eschatological agent. So the Book of Parables (late first century BCE or early first century CE) thus speaks of a heavenly Son of Man who is the chosen messiah who judges kings and the wicked (i.e. on Judgment Day). The later apocalypse of 4 Ezra draws on a similar interpretation of the “one like a son of man” from Daniel as the “Man from the Sea” in a similar role. The eschatological Son of Man in the synoptic gospels (especially Matthew) embodies a similar interpretation of Daniel, and it is one that appears to be influenced by Enochic Judaism. It is worth noting however that the Book of Parables is not extant in its original language and the expression “Son of Man” is variable in Ethiopic. George Nickelsburg and James VanderKam in their Hermeneia commentary of 1 Enoch argue that the variation in the expressions for Son of Man in the Book of Parables is probably due to translation into Ethiopic of a single Greek expression (p. 115). They also note that though it is not yet a fixed title, it is not a generic descriptor but rather a designation imbued with meaning, used alongside other designations like Chosen One, Anointed One, and Righteous One. The figure of the Son of Man in the Book of Parables is thus intermediary between Daniel 7 and the fixed title in the synoptic gospels. The original Greek would have likely used both ὁ χριστός and ὁ υἱὸς (τοὺ) ἀνθρώπου to refer to the same individual. No other text used such language prior to the gospels.
The Hermeneia commentary also points out that the Son of Man expression in its various forms is usually accompanied with demonstratives such as zekku, we’etu “that” (1 Enoch 46:2, 48:2, 62:5, 9, 14, 63:11, 69:26, 29, 70:1, 71:17) or zetu “this” (46:4). The authors note that “the Ge’ez language has no definite article as such and often uses the demonstrative adjective “that” (zekku, we’etu) to translate the Greek definite article”. So the NT practice of using the definite article (ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου) probably had a precursor in the Book of Parables. The main phenomenon however is that the characterization of the “son of man” figure in both sets of texts show common themes and details not found in Daniel 7.
For a full survey, see contributions in Gabriele Boccaccini’s, ed. Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Eerdmans, 2007), and Darrell L. Bock, James H. Charlesworth’s, ed. Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (A&C Black, 2013). In the latter volume, Charlesworth writes:
“Now, many leading Enoch experts and New Testament scholars reject the conclusion that the eschatological Son of Man was created by Jesus’ followers. They are concluding that those behind the Parables of Enoch are Jews who were interpreting the Son of Man in Daniel in creative ways about 100 years after the composition of Daniel. These Jews seem to be the ones who alone developed the concept of the Son of Man who will come in the near future to serve as the cosmic and eschatological Judge…Within Second Temple Judaism, a theological pinnacle was reached with the Son of Man term, concept, and eventually title. In the Parables of Enoch, the Son of Man is a construct that designates a heavenly figure who at the End of Time will serve as a cosmic Judge … We may now perceive that Jews developed the Son of Man concept prior to the Gospels. It is no longer evident, as many specialists concluded, that the Son of Man Christology appeared only after Easter and only in the minds of Jesus’ followers” (pp. 176-213).

The theophany of the Son of Man in both passages are strikingly similar, with explicit mention of distress experienced by those witnessing his heavenly enthronement:
Enoch 61:8, 62:3-5: “And the Lord of Spirits seated the Chosen One upon the throne of glory, and he will judge all the works of the holy ones in the heights of heaven, and in the balance he will weigh their deeds….And there will stand up on that day all the kings and mighty and they will see and recognize that he sits on his throne of his glory; and righteousness is judged in his presence and no lying word is spoken in his presence. And pain will come upon them like a woman in labor … and one of them will look at the other and they will be terrified and cast down their faces and pain will seize them when they see that Son of Man sitting on his throne of glory”.

Mark 8:38, 13:26-27, 14:62: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels…At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens….And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Matthew 13:41, 16:27, 19:28, 24:30, 25:31-32: “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil….For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done….Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his throne of glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel….Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory….When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne of glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
Bear in mind also that Matthew otherwise shows dependence on Enochic traditions. For instance, Matthew 22:13, which says that the wicked would be bound (δήσαντες) hand and foot (πόδας καὶ χεῖρας) and cast (ἐκβάλετε) into the outer darkness (σκότος) agrees almost verbatim with 1 Enoch 10:4: “Go, Raphael, and bind (δήσον) Asael hand and foot (ποσὶν καὶ χερσίν) and cast (βάλε) him into the darkness (σκότος)”.
What do those scholars say about the level of divinity attributed to the son of man in Enochic literature?
The glorification of Enoch in the Book of Parables is also at the expense of the archangels so prominent in the other books of 1 Enoch. In their Hermeneia commentary, George Nickelsburg and James VanderKam note: “The final transformation of tradition attested in the Parables’ portrayal of this figure is evident in a comparison with the Book of the Watchers. In the earlier text, divine judgment is executed by the deity (1:3c-9; 25:3) and by three of the four high angels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael (10:4-15). In the Parables, these four are scarcely mentioned (chaps. 40; 54; and 71), and with one exception (54:6), they are depicted only in and around the heavenly throne room, where they utter praise and intercede for humanity (chap. 40). Their judicial functions have been transferred to the Chosen One/Son of Man/Anointed One, who dominates the action in a way that is not the case for the four in the Book of the Watchers (or the Animal Vision, chaps. 85-90). Similarly, the author of the Parables ascribes the eschatological judicial epiphany not to the deity (1:3c-9), but to God’s agent, ‘the Righteous One’ (35:2), the ‘Anointed One’ and the ‘Chosen One’ (52:4, 6, 9)” (pp. 44-45).
The glorification of Enoch also continues in later Enoch literature. In 2 Enoch 22:8-10, God commands the archangel Michael to “extract Enoch from his earthly clothing, and anoint him with my delightful oil and put him into the clothes of my glory,” with the latter conferring angelic status to Enoch, who says: “I looked at myself and I had become like one of the glorious ones, and there was no observable difference”. F. I. Anderson notes in 2 Enoch “Enoch occupies an exalted position as God’s chosen and prime agent which is totally incompatible with Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah” (OTP, p. 96). 3 Enoch is even later, from the fifth or sixth centuries CE, and was steeped in merkabah mysticism and essentially picks up the thread of Enoch’s glorification in 2 Enoch, with the angel Metatron revealed to be Enoch who is also the “lesser YHWH”.

An argument can be made that Daniel started out as an Aramaic book that later was supplemented with a Hebrew apocalypse in the Maccabean period. The earliest kernal would be the collection of narratives in ch. 4-6 (which have strongly variant versions in the OG), with the full Aramaic book having a chiasmic structure (2=7 as parallel dream interpretations on succession of empires, 3=6 as stories of faith under persecution, with 4-5 as stories about humbling of Babylonian kings). This collection may have then been edited during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes by a Hebrew writer who added ch. 8-12 (which does not follow a chiasmic pattern) which shows a new special concern to the Temple and its desecration by the foreign king. (Note also that these chapters are in the first person while the Aramaic chapters refer to Daniel in the third person.) So ch. 8 is a sort of reinterpretation of ch. 7, and ch. 9 picks up on the “how long” questions of ch. 8, and then ch. 10-12 gives a long extended survey of history that takes up the themes found in ch. 8 and 9. The same author added ch. 1 to give the book a proper introduction, and so it was in Hebrew as well. The splice occurs at Daniel 2:4 with the words “in Aramaic”, which introduces a quotation but in fact it is where the Aramaic section begins.
First ch. 11 is transparently a delineation of Seleucid and Lagid history; v. 1 connects ch. 10-12 to Daniel 9 with its reference to Darius the Mede, and the v. 2 is a brief summation of the Persian empire and its end at the hands of Alexander the Great. Then v. 3-20 present a history of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, followed by v. 21-45 which focus intently on Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The author follows the progression of events quite closely and as any good commentary (such as those by Collins, Montgomery, Goldingay, and others) shows, there is little doubt on what historical event each verse relates. The many parallels between the section on Antiochus and the visions in ch. 7, 8, and 9 also show that they were describing the same series of events. So an alternative explanation postponing the composition of this section and making it pertain to an entirely different historical setting would thus need to show how this reading is more parsimonious and better accounts of the literary features of the text than what a straightforward reading (starting with Alexander the Great and progressing into the Seleucid period) would produce. Making the king of the south pertain to the throne of Judea instead of Egypt is just one arbitrary feature of the hypothesis (whereas in Daniel 11 “south” and “north” are relative to a location in between, with the author calling Judea “the beautiful land”).
Second, there is ample external evidence that ch. 10-12 were in existence long before the first century CE. The oldest MS of Daniel (4QDanᶜ) dates to the late second century BCE and contained ch. 10 and 11. 4QDanª dates to the middle of the first century BCE and included the same chapters. 4QFlorilegium (4Q174) belongs to the second half of the first century BCE and it quotes Daniel 11:32, 12:10 as scripture. 4Q248 (Acts of a Greek King) closely parallels parts of ch. 11 and is considered either a source or related literature. So if this section is to be dated to the first century CE, one would need to argue why the consensus dating is wrong.

Porphyry of Antioch (4th c. CE) argued against the historical veracity of the book of Daniel. Porphyry argued that because Daniel’s predictions of the future only come true up to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (2nd c. BCE), then Daniel must have been written / edited in the 3rd-2nd c. BCE. Scholars today still agree with Porphyry’s assessment from 1700 years ago.