Was Daniel Jesus' Favorite Book?

Bart Ehrman explains that the biblical book of Daniel, written during the Maccabean persecution of the 160s BCE, was designed to look like ancient prophecy fulfilled—and that this literary trick still fuels modern doomsday predictions that have failed every single time.

Key takeaways

Daniel's author claimed to be writing in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian exile, but scholars agree he actually wrote around 167-164 BCE, during Antiochus Epiphanes' brutal persecution of Jews who kept the Torah. By "predicting" kingdoms that had already risen and fallen (Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Syrians), the author made his real message (hold on, God will soon destroy your persecutors) seem like proven prophecy.
The book's structure gives it away: the first six chapters are short stories (Daniel in the lion's den, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace) while the final six contain wild symbolic visions, like Daniel 7's four monstrous beasts rising from the sea, representing successive empires before God installs a human-like "son of man" figure to rule.
Apocalyptic Judaism itself only emerged about 200 years before Jesus, as a response to inexplicable suffering. Instead of blaming persecution on Israel's sin (the dominant view through most of the Hebrew Bible), this new theology blamed cosmic forces of evil with a limited shelf life before God's intervention; a worldview Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Dead Sea Scrolls community all shared.
Modern prophecy-based date-setting traces back to the French Revolution, when English Christians decided it fulfilled Revelation, and exploded in 19th-century America. William Miller's 1843-44 calculations (treating Daniel's "70 weeks" as 490 years, then adding 2,300 more days-as-years from 457 BCE) convinced thousands to sell farms and quit jobs before the "Great Disappointment" of October 22, 1844 left them ruined.
Jesus' repeated references to a coming "Son of Man" who judges the earth from the clouds appear directly influenced by Daniel 7's vision, though Ehrman notes Daniel wasn't yet firmly canonized in Jesus' lifetime; it sat among the contested "Writings" alongside books like Esther and Song of Songs.
Ehrman's blunt verdict on every end-times predictor from Daniel's imitators to modern evangelicals: they all base their calculations on biblical passages interpreted to please people who already want to believe them, and every single prediction has been proven categorically wrong.

Notable moments

"We were convinced back in the mid-1970s... that the world would end by 1988" based on Revelation and Daniel calculations Ehrman made as a young evangelical.
The description of Daniel's dream in chapter 7: "out of the sea there arise four beasts... the second one's worse than the first, the third than the second, the fourth is the worst."
Antiochus Epiphanes' persecution explained plainly: "if Jews circumcised their baby boys, they'd be executed for doing so."
William Miller's math laid out step by step, ending in "thousands and thousands of people who believed it in America, who gave up their jobs" waiting for October 22, 1844.
The story of a father who deeded his farm away expecting the apocalypse, then "took his son to court" trying to get his property back after the date passed.
Ehrman's closing line on prophecy believers: "every one of them has been categorically proven to be wrong... that should give you pause."
Recommendation of John Collins's scholarly commentary on Daniel as the definitive academic resource for readers wanting the full historical picture.

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