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ABSTRACT
How can a faith community that yields ultimate allegiance to God live
faithfully under the rule of temporal powers that make competing claims to
ultimate sovereignty? While Daniel has often appealed to sectarian groups
that find themselves outside of mainstream traditions, its exotic symbolism
and "end times" perspective has held little appeal to Christians occupying
positions of cultural and political power. As the church increasingly finds
itself in the position of a minority religion in today's religiously pluralistic
context, the nature of the book of Daniel as resistance literature now has a
far greater relevance.
' Barry A. Jones is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at the Divinity
School of Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina.
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powers,
about a future empire far more fierce and
hostile than all its predecessors. The
interpretation of the visions given to Daniel by angelic interpreters points
specifically to the circumstances of persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid
king Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the years 168 to 164 b ce .
The themes of resistance to assimilation and persecution in Daniel have
always been clear to interpreters. Developments in biblical scholarship in
the last two decades, however, have brought greater attention to these themes
because of their resonance with issues arising in the last half of the twentieth
century. Since roughly the end of World War II, scholars in the West have
gained greater exposure to, awareness of, and critical perspective on the
nature of modem colonial expansion by Western nations and the concomitant
experiences and cultural responses of indigenous peoples living under
Western colonial rule. Postcolonial studies gives attention to the complex
dynamics between colonizing and colonized peoples and investigates the
structures and practices of empires.1 Although begun as an investigation of
the history and dynamics of Western European colonialism, postcolonial
studies also has application to the study of empires in antiquity, which
includes much of the history of the Bible itself.
The perspective of postcolonial biblical criticism brings the relationships
betw een the Jews and their im perial
The perspective of
overlords in the book of Daniel to the
postcolonial biblical criticism
foreground. Recent studies have brought the
brings the relationships
significance of the imperial context of the
between the Jews and their
writer(s) and audience of Daniel into sharper
imperial overlords in the book
focus. Postcolonial biblical criticism also
of Daniel to the foreground.
provides a new set of questions for
contemporary Christians who read Daniel as
sacred scripture and seek to translate its message into the life of faith. This
article will review the scholarship on Daniel that gives attention to life lived
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Resisting the Pow er o f the Empire: The Theme o f Resistance in the Book of Daniel
T he B o o k
D a n ie l
of
F all 2012
The tales of Daniel 1-6 take place against the narrative backdrop of the
Babylonian exile. The apocalyptic visions of
. . . the book of Daniel
Daniel 7-12, addressing the crisis of the Seleucid
portrays exile not only as an persecution centuries after the return from
event but also a paradigm
exile, are also placed within the narrative
of Jewish existence from the
framework of the Babylonian captivity. Thus,
fall of Judah to the
the book of Daniel portrays exile not only as
Hellenistic period and
an event b ut also a paradigm of Jewish
beyond.
existence from the fall of Judah to the
Hellenistic period and beyond.
Daniel's portrayal of the history of subordination from the exile through
the succeeding empires of Persia and Greece is well suited to the perspective
of postcolonial studies. Smith-Christopher has worked to bring the
perspective of the historical experience of exile to the attention of biblical
studies. As a result of his interrogation of the systems and methods of
empires, certain themes emerge within his commentary. First, he contradicts
claims of earlier scholarship that the Jewish experience of exile and imperial
rule was not particularly harsh and that the portrayals of foreign kings in
Daniel 1-6 cast them in a somewhat favorable light. There is an identifiable
tradition in biblical scholarship and within the biblical record itself that
diminishes the harsh realities of exile and imperial rule by emphasizing the
continuing identity of intact Jewish communities, the relative rise in status
of some Jews within the imperial bureaucracy, and the somewhat favorable
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Resisting the P ow er of the Empire: The Theme of Resistance in the Book of Daniel
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church s new status as a minority
brought about or has even signaled the
jnt0rest jn a p|ura|jstic age jts
church's
-church's new
new status
status as
as aa m
minority
inority
current situation has been fre
interest in a pluralistic age, its current
quently compared to the status of
situation has been frequently
an exile somewhat analogous to
compared to the status of an exile
the plight of Daniel and his friends
.somewhat
somewhat analogous
analogous to
to the
the plight
plight of
of
in Nebuchadnezzar's court
Daniel and his friends in
Nebuchadnezzar's court.34
In employing the book of Daniel as a model for being a faithful minority
in a threatening world, the church does well to consider the two distinct
settings and challenges portrayed in the book. Chapters 1-6 address the
challenge of maintaining faithful allegiance in the face of the temptation to
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Resisting the Power o f the Empire: The Theme of Resistance in the Book of Daniel
Fewell, The Children of Israel: Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our
Children (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 117-30.
7 Ibid., 40.
8 Ibid., 51-52.
T he B oo k
D a n ie l
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F a ll 2012
9Ibid., 58-59.
10 Ibid., 65-66.
11Ibid., 89-91.
12 Am ong the commentators w ho em phasize a change in portrayal of the nature of the
k ingd om s from nations that offer both danger and op portu nity to m ythical beasts
representing the forces of chaos, see John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of
Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 323; and Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire,
227.
13 Smith-Christopher, "Daniel," 122.
14 An important contribution to seeing Daniel in this light is W. Lee Humphreys, "A
Life-Style for Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel," Journal of Biblical Literature
92 (1973): 211-23.
15 Smith-Christopher, Religion of the Landless (Bloomington, IN: Meyer-Stone Books,
1989), 153-78.
16 Smith-Christopher, "Daniel," 52, 124-25.
17 Ibid., 91-92.
18Ibid., 151.
19 Portier-Young, xxi-xxii.
20 Ibid., 44.
21 Ibid., 36-37.
22 Ibid., 62-73.
23 Ibid., 136-38.
24 Ibid., 141-42.
25 Ibid., 176-78.
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28 Ibid., 234.
29 Ibid., 235-36.
30 Ibid., 243-44.
31 Ibid., 256-57.
32 Ibid., 265-74.
33 Ibid., 263-65.
34 The analogy between the Babylonian exile and the status of the post-Christendom
church is the prem ise of Smith-Christopher,s A Biblical Theology of Exile (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2002). See also Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching among
Exiles (Louisville: W estm inster-John Knox, 1997); and m ore recently Out of Babylon
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010).
35 Smith-Christopher, "Daniel," 150.
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