The Graying of God in Daniel 1–7

Abstract

In Daniel 7, the God of Israel is called “the Ancient of Days” three times, an epithet the deity receives nowhere else in the biblical text. Such a designation raises a wide variety of questions about the depictions of deities in the Bible and in other Ancient Near Eastern Literature. The central question of this study will be: Is the divine character portrayed in the first half of the book of Daniel in ways that prepare the reader for this aged appearance in Daniel 7? Answering this question will require two primary tasks. First, because the text in Daniel 7 includes a visualization of God, it must be set in the context of other visualizations of the deity in the Hebrew Bible. Second, once this visualization is understood as clearly as possible, the characterizations of the deity in Daniel leading up to it must be examined by giving careful attention to divine behavior in Daniel 1–6. In the stories that constitute the first half of the book of Daniel, Israel's God operates as a subtle advisor who gives knowledge and grants favor, a sage-like portrait that fits the striking image of an elderly God in Daniel 7.