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 DANIEL

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DANIEL

eighty years of age, remained in that exalted position under Darius the Mede, a prince possibly to be identi- fied with Darius Hystaspes (485 B. c). Darius, moreover, thought of setting him over all the king- dom (vi, 4), when Daniel's fellow-officers, fearing such an elevation, sought to compass his ruin by convicting him of disloyalty to the Crown. They secured from the king a decree forbidding any one, under penalty of being cast into the lions' den, to ask any petition of either god or man, except the monarch, for thirty days. As they had anticipated, Daniel nevertheless prayed, three times a day, at his open window, towards Jeru- salem. This they reported to the king, and they forced him to apply the threatened punishment to the violator of the decree. Upon Daniel's miraculous preservation in the lions' den, Darius published a decree that all in his realm should honour and revere the God of Daniel, proclaiming that He is " the living and eternal God". And so Daniel continued to prosper through the rest of the reign of Darius, and in that of his successor, Cjtus the Persian (vi).

Such, in substance, are the facts which may be gathered for a biography of the Prophet Daniel from the narrative portion of his book (i-vi). Hardly any other facts are contributed to thus biography from the second, and more distinctly apocalyptic, portion of the same work (vii-xii). The visions therein described represent him chiefly as a seer favoured with Divine communications respect ing the future punishment of the Gentile powers and the ultimate .setting up of the Messianic Kingdom. These mysterious revelations are referred to the reigns of Darius, Baltasar, and Cyrus, and as they are explained to him by the .\ngel Gabriel from an ever clearer disclosure of what is to happen in "the time of the end". In the deutero- canonical appendix to his book (xiii-xiv), Daniel re- appears in the same general character as in the first part of his work (i-vi). Chapter xiii sets him forth as an inspired youth whose superior wisdom puts to shame and secures the punishment of the false ac- cusers of the chaste Susanna. The concluding chap- ter (.Kiy), which tells the history of the destruction of Bel and the dragon, represents Daniel as a fearless and most successful champion of the true and living God. Outside of the Book of Daniel, Holy Writ has but few references to the prophet of that name. Ezcchiel (xiv, 14) speaks of Daniel, together with Noe and Job, as a pattern of righteousness and, in chapter xxviii, 3, as the representative of perfect wisdom. The ■KTiter of the First Book of the Machabees (ii, GO) refers to his deliverance out of the mouth of the lions, and St. Matthew (xxiv, 15) to "the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet". .\s might well be expected, Jewish tradi- tion had been busy with completing the meagre account of Daniel's life as supplied by the Sacred Scriptures. Allusion has already been made to the tradition of the Jews, accepted by many Fathers of the Church, which states that he was made a evmuch in Babylon. Other Jewish traditions represent him as refusing divine honours proffered to him by Nabucho- donosor; they explain the reason why he was not forced with his three friends to worship that prince's statue in the plain of Dura (Dan., iii), he had been sent away by the king, who wanted to spare Daniel's lif(^ for he knew full well that the prophet would never agree to commit such an act of idolatry; they give many fanciful details, as for instance concerning what happened to Daniel in the lions' den. Others en- deavour to account for what they assume to be a fact, viz. that Yahweh's devout prophet did not return to God's land and city after the decree of restoration issued by Cyrus; while others again affirm that he actually went back to Judea and died there. Hardly less incredible and conflicting legends concerning Daniel's life and place of burial are met with in Arabic literature, although his name is not mentioned in the

Koran. During the Middle Ages there was; a wide- spread and persistent tradition that Daniel was buried at Susa, the modern Shuster, in the Persian province of Khuzistan. In the account of his visit to Susa in A. D. 1165, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela narrates that Daniel's tomb was shown him in the facade of one of the synagogues of that city; and it is .shown there to the present day. The Roman martyrology assigns Daniel's feast as a holy prophet to 21 July, and ap- parently treats Babylon as his burial-place.

ViGOUROUX, La Bible et /c-s dec-oiivertex modfnu\^ (Paris, 1889), IV, Bk, III; Deane. Daniel, His Life and Times (London, 1S88). See also the oommentariea and introductions in bibliog- raphy of Daniel, Book of.

Francis E. Gigot.

Daaiel, Anthony, Huron missionary, b. at Dieppe, in Nonnandy, 27 May, 1001, slain by the Iroquois at Teanaostse, near Hillsdale, Siracoe Co., Ontario, Canada, 4 July, 1648. After two years' study of philosophy and one of law, he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome, 1 Oct., 1621. Sent to Canada in 163.3, he was first stationed at Cape Breton, where his brother Captain Daniel had established a French fort in 1629. For two years he had charge at Quebec of a school for Indian boys, but with this exception he was connected with the Mission at Ihonatiria, in the Huron country, from July, 1634, until his death fourteen years later. In the summer of 1648, the Iroquois made a sudtlen attack on the mission while most of the Huron braves were absent. Father D.aniel did all in his power to aid his people. Before the palisades had been scaled he hurried to the chapel where the women, children, and old men were gathered, gave them gen- eral absolution and baptized the catechumens. Daniel himself made no attempt to e.scape, but calmly ad- vanced to meet the enemy. Seized with amazement the savages halted for a moment, then recovering themselves they discharged at him a shower of ar- rows. "The victim to the heroism of charity", says Bancroft, "died, the name of Jesus on his lips; the wilderness gave him a grave; the Huron nation were his mourners" (vol. II, ch. xxxii). Here Bancroft is in error. The lifeless body was flung into the burning chapel and both were consumed together. Daniel was the second to receive the martyr's crown among the Jesuits sent to New France, and the first of the missionaries to the Hvirons. Father Ragueneau, his superior, speaks of him in a letter to the general of the order .as "a truly remarkable man, humble, obedient, united with God, of never failing patience and in- domitable courage in adversity" CThwaites, tr. Re- lations, XXXIII, 253-269).

Parkman, The Jesuits in Xorlh America (Boston. 1901), X.\.VI; Ban-croft, History of The United Si,,; > n\<.-u .,,. ls,-,3), III, 13S, 139; Thwaites, ed. The Jesuit Ii, ! < ' .land,

1901), XXXIX, 239; index vol., s. v.; Tanm. i, Jesu

usque mili^ans (Prague, 1675); Charlevoix. ,^iii \ m, Ih.^tary ofXew France (New York. 1866). II; Cassam, i'arvu.s Ihuflres (Madrid, 1734), I, 643; Varones Iluslres de la C. dc J. (2 ed. Bilbao. 1889), III, 491; Rochemonteix. Les Jrsuites et la Xourelle France au XVIh siecle (Paris, 1896), II. 74; Drews, Fasti Soc. Jesu (Prague, 1750), III, IS; Campbell. Pioneer Priests of North America (New York, 1908), ISO, 151; Bressani, Death of Father Antoine Daniel in Bressani, Breve Relatione (Macerata, 1653), III, Chap. iv.

EnWARD P. Spillane.

Daniel, Book of. — In the Hebrew Bible, and in most recent Protestant versions, the Book of Daniel is limited to its proto-canonical portions. In the ."^eptuagint, the Vulgate, and many other ancient and modern translations of Holy Writ, it comprises both its proto- and its deutero-canonical parts, which two sets of parts have an cciual right to lie considered as inspired, and to be included in a treatment of the Book of Daniel. As in the Vulgate nearly all the deutero-canonical portions of tliat prophetical writing form a kind of appendix to its proto-canonical con- tents in the Hebrew text, the pre.sent article will deal first with the Book of Daniel as it is found in the