The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

CHAPTER FIVE
THE FORMATION AND RE-FORMATION OF DANIEL
IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Loren T. Stuckenbruck
INTRODUCTION
Following the discoveries in the eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran in
1947–1956, scholars have used two main ways for conceiving the relationship
between the circles that produced and copied these materials,
and the group in which the book of Daniel originated. First, some scholars
have argued that Daniel is best characterized as early or pre-Essene; 1
along these lines, they have thought that some adherents of the group for
which Daniel was written, after a period of disappointment with the
longer-term consequences of Hasmonean rule, eventually separated
themselves out to form the community that lived at Qumran. 2 Second,
other scholars have hesitated to posit such a direct social connection. For
them, although the book of Daniel no doubt was among documents (e.g.,
works collected into 1 Enoch and Jubilees) that shared the general religious
milieu reflected in the writings of the Qumran community, its ideas did
not necessarily originate within the same social movement. 3 Nonetheless,
1. If this hypothesis were correct, there would be no reason to suppose that Daniel
and the Enochic literature, which preserve distinguishable apocalyptic perspectives,
derived from identical apocalyptic circles; see n3 (below).
2. See, e.g., Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (trans. J. Bowden; 2 vols.;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:175–218, who has argued that the Essenes who produced
the sectarian literature at Qumran were, along with the Pharisees, one of the
splinter groups that emerged from the “Hasideans” (cf. 1 Macc 2:42; 7:13; 2 Macc
14:6), thought to be behind the composition of both Daniel (called “wise ones” in
Dan 11:33–35; 12:3, “bringers of understanding”) and the 1 Enoch literature; cf. also
Frank M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1995), 104. John C. Trevor has taken a more extreme view in “The Book of Daniel
and the Origin of the Qumran Community,” BA 48 (1985): 89–102, arguing that the
visions of Daniel (chs. 7–12) were actually composed by the Righteous Teacher.
3. In particular, see John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York:
Crossroad, 1987), 90; idem, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Literature of the Dead
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