Resources For Daniel Sermon Series

On Sunday, September 11, I will begin preaching through the book of Daniel.  I'll be taking an "event by event" pace rather than "verse by verse," which will come to roughly one chapter per week.  Let me give you a connection and some background for the primary resources that I've been studying with:

Commentaries

All three of these authors are/were both scholars and pastors while writing their commentaries.  Two are contemporary, and one is "classic," but all three bring an important blend of the academic and the pastoral.  They work deeply in the text, but always with an eye to the lives of the people that they care for and share life with.

1) Daniel: Hope in the Midst of a Hostile World by George M Schwab from the The Gospel According to the Old Testament.   Click Here for ChristianBooks.com 

2) Daniel: Faith Enduring Through Adversity by Iain M Duguid from the Reformed Expository Commentary Series.  Click Here for ChristianBooks.com

3) Daniel: Commentary by John Calvin.

Sermon Series

Tim Keller Sermon Series entitled Daniel: Living By Faith in a Secular World.  These four sermons were preached in April and May, 2000.   Click Here for Redeemer Sermon Store

When Was Daniel Written?  An Important Question

I was a college freshman when I had my first encounter with "academic" study of the Bible.  That first year, we were presented with - among other things - the view that Daniel was actually written centuries later than it claimed.  Rather than the sixth century BCE, during the Babylonian exile, in the view of my professors Daniel was written in the second century BCE.

The presentation went something like this one in Wikkipedia:

In the critical view, "there would be few modern biblical scholars ... who would now seriously defend such an opinion."  Many biblical critics date the book to the 2nd century BC: "The arguments for a date shortly before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 164 are overwhelming." Click Here for entire article.

Well, I looked for those "overwhelming arguments" and frankly, was unable to find them.  Sure, there was a lot written and a number of questions raised.  But, when I gathered them all and weighed them out, it seemed that the heart of the problem rested in chapter 11, where Daniel had a vision while Cyrus was king that essentially predicted events that would not happen for centuries.  The argument went something like this: "no one could write with such details about events that had not yet happened, so it must not have been written until after those events happened."  Circular reasoning indeed!

Pursuit of the evidence has led me to conclude that Daniel was written exactly when it claims to be: recording eyewitness events between 605 and 536 BCE.  That is the view I take in my study and sermons, and I will give a brief explanation of why in the first sermon, but it will only be brief.  I would recommend the following article Evidences Relating to the Date of the Book of Daniel by David Conklin for a thorough review and evaluation of all questions and evidence with detailed resources.  Click Here for the entire article.