Daniel — who's who

The book's central figure. Taken to Babylon in 605 BCE, trained in the royal court, given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar. He refuses the king's food in chapter 1, interprets Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great image in chapter 2, interprets the dream of the great tree in chapter 4, reads the writing on the wall at Belshazzar's feast in chapter 5, survives the lions' den under Darius the Mede in chapter 6, and receives all four apocalyptic visions of chapters 7–12. The book is named for him. Whether it is by him or about him is the book's central interpretive question.

The Babylonian names of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah — Daniel's three companions taken to Babylon with him in 605 BCE. They appear in the food test of chapter 1 and most famously in chapter 3, where they refuse to worship Nebuchadnezzar's great golden image in the plain of Dura. Thrown into a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, they walk out unharmed, accompanied by a fourth figure whose form is like a son of the gods. Their speech before the furnace — our God is able to deliver us, but if not, we will not serve your gods — is one of the most theologically careful passages in the book.

The historical Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE), the conqueror who destroyed Jerusalem in 587 — the same king on whom much of Jeremiah's prophecy turns. In Daniel he is the central royal figure of chapters 1–4, treated with a literary care that makes him one of the most fully developed foreign kings in the Hebrew Bible. He dreams of the great image (chapter 2), sets up the golden image and is awed when the three men survive the furnace (chapter 3), dreams of the great tree and loses his mind for seven seasons (chapter 4), and ultimately praises the Most High in his own voice — one of the most striking confessions in the book.

The king at whose feast the writing on the wall appears in chapter 5 — one of the most famous narratives in the Hebrew Bible. Historically the son of Nabonidus (not Nebuchadnezzar) and regent rather than king; Daniel treats him as Nebuchadnezzar's son and the last king of Babylon. At his great feast, he orders the gold and silver vessels taken from the Jerusalem temple to be brought in for the company to drink from — and in that hour the fingers of a man's hand write on the plaster of the wall. Weighed and found wanting. He is killed that same night.

The figure who takes the kingdom after the fall of Babylon and appears throughout chapter 6. No historical Darius the Mede is known from Persian sources; he is probably a literary conflation of Cyrus the Great and Darius I, or a figure invented to serve the narrative. In the book he is the king who, at his courtiers' urging, signs a decree that for thirty days no one may pray to any god or man other than the king — and who, after Daniel is found praying anyway, is forced to throw him into the lions' den. He passes the night fasting. In the morning Daniel is found unharmed; Darius issues a counter-decree praising the God of Daniel.

One like a son of man — bar enasha in Aramaic — coming with the clouds of heaven and being given an everlasting dominion by the Ancient of Days. In ordinary Aramaic usage the phrase means simply a human being; the contrast in the vision is between the four beasts (the kingdoms of the world) and the human-like figure (what comes after). The chapter's own interpretation identifies the figure with the saints of the Most High who will receive the kingdom. In later Jewish and Christian tradition, the figure became an individual messianic figure — the source of Jesus's most common self-designation in the Gospels.

The angelic messenger who appears in chapters 8 and 9 — named explicitly in both. In chapter 8 he is sent to make Daniel understand the vision of the ram and the goat; Daniel falls on his face and the angel touches him and sets him on his feet. In chapter 9 he appears while Daniel is still at prayer and delivers the oracle of the seventy weeks in response to Daniel's prayer for the end of the exile. Gabriel appears later in the New Testament in Luke 1, where he announces the births of John the Baptist and Jesus; Daniel is the earliest canonical text in which his name appears.