He Changes Times: A Study of the Doxology of Daniel 2:20-23 in Relation to the Description of the Tenth Horn in Daniel 7:24-26

The content and function of Dan 2:20-23 and its relation to Dan 7:24-26 has continued to pose exegetical questions that are yet to be adequately explained. First, the question of the textual-historical relation between the two sections: is Dan 2:20-23 (or 2:20-22) a late redactional creation, which seems to take up expressions from both other (scriptural) texts and other parts of Aramaic Daniel, or does the terminology of Dan 7:24-26 echo that of Dan 2? Second, the question of the redactional status and literary function of Dan 2:20-23 which also affects the interpretation of the terminology of changing of times and law in Dan 7:25, although the latter need not have the same meaning as the changing of times and seasons in Dan 2:21. Dan 2:20-23 and the other doxologies in chs. 3, 4 and 6 have been read as inset programmatic summations of the message of the Aramaic court stories or the book of Daniel as a whole, indicating in a nutshell the most important aspects of Daniel (who God is, who the wise are, and what God does). Thus, they are taken to belong to a late redactional layer than the stories in which they are entrenched. Although this goes for Dan 2:20-23 (and the other doxologies), the present research argues that the relation between Dan 2:20-23 and 7:24-26 is sociologically related to the self-presentation of the מַשְׂכִּיל. This is based on the view that Dan 2:20-23 belongs to a late redactional layer which presents a possibility to connect it to a group of מַשְׂכִּילִים in the 2nd century who may have composed this doxology in relation to their own activities. The question about whether it also claims something about the מַשְׂכִּילִים and time is of interest here given the importance of the מַשְׂכִּיל in some of the Qumran texts and the possibility that they are connected to the Danielic מַשְׂכִּילִים of some generations earlier.