Daniel

Towner's Daniel (Interpretation, 1984) is readable and pastorally warm, but its foundational framework is seriously compromised. Its most pervasive problem is a categorical denial of predictive prophecy — stated not as a debated position but as settled fact ("human beings are unable accurately to predict future events centuries in advance") — which is essentially the 3rd-century pagan philosopher Porphyry's antisupernatural argument dressed in incarnational language. From this premise flows a series of escalating problems: Daniel is declared "a non-historical personage" and his narratives "a work of fiction" (described, remarkably, as "good news"), despite Jesus's own explicit reference to "the prophet Daniel" in Matthew 24:15. Most troubling of all, Towner states outright that "the eschaton failed" and "the prophet failed to call history correctly" — charging inspired Scripture with error while simultaneously trying to affirm its theological truth claims, a logical contradiction the commentary never resolves. He also states in the Introduction that for the oppressed, "the greatest source of hope lay not in God's mercy, but in his wrath" — a formulation that directly contradicts Daniel 9:18, where hope is grounded explicitly in God's "great mercy." Historical problems compound these theological ones: Darius the Mede is dismissed as fiction without engaging Wiseman's or Whitcomb's serious counterarguments; a factual error places Antiochus III "recapturing Antioch" from Ptolemy (Antioch was always Seleucid territory); and Ginsberg's minority interpolation theory for the Daniel 9 prayer is accepted without scrutiny. Useful for its literary and applicational insights, but its critical presuppositions must be handled with considerable caution throughout.

Succinct theological commentary, from a more critical position, but aimed at a wide audience and not just for specialists.

reliable and theologically suggestive