The Rooted Podcast

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Welcome back to the Rooted podcast from Bible Society. Today we're looking at Daniel and we're going to take some time today specifically to look at the dreams and some of the visions that we find in the book. Things are a bit different today with recording. I'm still Noelle and I'm still here with Mark, but we're joined by the Reverend Dr. Peter Hatton. So we're very, very grateful that he's here. He contributed to the Daniel edition of Rooted. And so we thought we would have him on the podcast too.

talk to him a bit more about his thoughts on Daniel. And so we're very grateful. Thanks for being here, Peter. I wonder if you want to just give a quick introduction, who you are and what sort of work you've done, maybe just so that listeners know a bit more about you. Thank you, Noel. First of all, it's such a privilege to take part both in the published version of Rooted and in this. I'm really grateful for the opportunity. I was a Methodist pastor for 25 years and then began

to work in theological education and ended up in the Baptist College in Bristol, which also works with Trinity College Bristol, the theological college is there, for eight years where I was a biblical tutor and sort of director of studies for the Baptist College. A great privilege. I'm supposed to be retired now, but in fact, still doing quite a bit of work in the colleges in Bristol, some teaching, quite a bit of preaching, walking the dog and looking after my grandchildren in my spare time.

So yeah, I'm very much interested in my particular field of inquiry was the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. But at the moment I'm doing some work on Old Testament and Empire, which is actually very, very, very relevant to Daniel. So I was really grateful for this opportunity to think about Daniel and to dialogue with you guys about the book. Yeah, great. Thanks. And thanks for being here, Peter.

So as I said earlier, we want to look at some of the dreams in Daniel. As we get started, one of the important things to consider when we're thinking about the dreams in this book is that they are set in a context and that context is the Babylonian exile specifically. And there is a significance to that, isn't there? Well, I think this is so interesting. This is where these exiles from Judah end up. They end up in the epicenter of one of the characteristic things about the life of the ancient world.

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which is divination, looking into the future and trying to work out what's going to happen, was at the centre of, you might say, the intellectual life of much of antiquity. And that's true of almost any society in the ancient world, but particularly true of Babylon. You know, it's obviously incredibly important to get some idea of what might be happening in the future, as it is in our own society.

It's one of the things that gives our scientific enterprise such prestige that it can actually, to some extent, tell us what's going to happen in the future. And there were two main ways of divination in the ancient world. One was sort of in the sacrifices, you looked at the entrails of the iron wars, particularly the liver, this dark secret internal world. And it's believed that the gods speak on the features of the, particularly the liver. Whenever we do archeology in the ancient world, we often find that

From Rome to the ancient eras, we find these models of clay livers divided into grids and little signs on them telling you, if you see a sign there, what it means, what it forecasts. But the other great system is the night sky, this astonishing pageant of stars and heavenly bodies. And the Babylonians particularly specialized in what we would call astrology.

but actually had a huge amount of real astronomy. They acquired an amazing knowledge of the night sky. And on the back of that developed a very sophisticated mathematics. Two things like calculate the quadrant of Jupiter, very interested in Jupiter particularly. And the people who did this, the learned sages who specialized in this were immensely learned. I mean, they had real knowledge.

but also of course, it's an unfalsifiable system. If you see something happening in the night sky, something unexpected, which in your system foretells perhaps a famine. What you do, it's not a closed system, it's not absolutely determined, the gods have warned you. So you do a ritual, what's called a turning away, technical terms, apotropaic ritual, and that then turns away the evil. Now what happens if the famine occurs?

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Well, you got the ritual wrong. Okay. What happens if the famine doesn't occur? Yeah, you did your job. You turned it away. So it's an unfalsifiable system. Now the one society in the ancient world which does not do this is ancient Israel. Deuteronomy 17, 18 forbids all sorts of divination. This is astonishingly counter -cultural. And here are these guys.

from this non -divination inclined culture, plonked into the middle and then trained, we learn in chapter one, in precisely this literature and this system. And then, of course, the system in chapter two is posed a completely impossible problem in the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, which he won't even tell the sages.

They've got the impossible problem. The system can't cope. But Daniel can because he short circuits this thing and goes direct to the creator of the universe. It gives him wisdom to understand. So that's a long introduction, but I think it's often not understood what's going on here. I think that sort of sets the dreams in context. must admit it had never struck me, know, the whole, incredible tension really between Daniel.

with his Jewish background, his Jewish faith, and presumably his deep resistance to any idea of divination in the Babylonian sense. And there he was, plonked in the middle of this whole system, which is completely opposed to everything that he believes. And he's got to operate within it somehow. I mean, that must be incredibly difficult to navigate, all of You put your finger exactly on it, Mark. Everybody here is stressed, you know.

for some reason, Nebuchadnezzar, why is he so hostile to the sages? Does he actually begin to doubt the system? Is there something there going on? Which is an astonishing thought. And as we go on, he's going to have a dream which changes his whole life. By the way, if you had a dream under this sort of thing, I'm going to call it Thought World, you would put some trust in it.

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There were dream books, for instance, which told you maybe the meanings of dreams, but you wouldn't place ultimate trust in that or in a prophet. There were prophets in the ancient world as well, but only in Israel are they given real credibility. And even then, only if what they say comes true. Because actually it's a falsifiable system, the prophetic system. If it doesn't come true, it's a false prophet. What you do is you have a dream which disturbs you and you it's meaningful. You look at the dream book,

nothing here, then you'd go to one of the experts, you know, and they would do some divination to see if what you dreamt or thought the meaning of the dream was correct. But they can't even do that here. You won't even tell them what the dream is. As you say, Mark, this is a system under stress. It's creaking for all its real knowledge. And into this is inserted someone who has a direct link with God.

Maybe this is just worth underlining for people who haven't read much about this before, but we do know a lot about ancient Babylon, don't we? Because there is a lot of material surviving there. are clay tablets. I just got to say this. I spent probably a good hour last night going down a bit of a rabbit hole because I got fascinated by ancient Babylonian mathematics and they were absolutely brilliant. know, apparently one of the reasons why we have

you know, 60 minutes in an hour and there are 360 degrees in a circle and things like that. It's because the Babylonians counted in base 60, whereas we do base 10 usually. And so it's descended all the way down to us from the Babylonians thousands of years ago. So, you know, they were really good at what they did. If you've got a watch on your wrist, you're carrying Babylon on your wrist. 60 is connected with

with the planet Jupiter, which was connected with the great god Enlil. And of course, people nowadays believe in astrology, don't they? Yeah. Really do believe it. I'm astonished how many people still have that superstition. You know, I was just reading a wonderful new biography of George Orwell, the great atheist and skeptic. When he had a son, he had a horoscope cast for him. Wow. And of course, it's an unfalsifiable system.

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And the Apotropaic rituals make it unfalsifiable, but the corresponding ritual in the divine system based in scripture is repentance. That's what turns away the evil. None of this is totally predetermined. It can be changed. And that's why Nebuchadnezzar repents, things change. I mean, one of the big questions, and coming back to my own interests about the Israel Empire,

Scriptures, the Old Testament is just, I think, really interested in the phenomena of empire. And one of the questions that's being asked is, can empires repent? they change their ways, which are so horrible and violent? And of course, the Book of Jonah answers triumphantly, yes, they can. Under the prophetic word of God, they can change.

And would you say that in Daniel, that's sort of what's going on in the dream. So what we're seeing the theme of these dreams and visions to be would be about empire. Is that what you think? Absolutely. Absolutely. With the exception of the dream that relates just to Nebuchadnezzar and his descent into bestiality, which in itself is so important about empire, that these exalted systems, know, it's at the moment he exalts himself and says, Babylon the Great is all my achievement.

that moment he becomes a beast. And these great power systems, which think that they are divine in a sense, that the gods have ordained their power, are actually just a thin margin away from the coming bestial systems, in the worst sense of that word. Which of course is absolutely true historically. I they were based on violence and terror.

ultimately. But they projected themselves as bringing forward, know, civilisation and light and peace to the world. mean, this is really interesting, Peter, and it strikes home to any Brit, I think, because we had the largest empire that the world has ever had. Well, you know, I suspect that a lot of us really don't know much about it nowadays. You know, we've consigned it to history. But the

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legacy of it continues. And, you know, the more I've read and heard about this, I'm listening to a fascinating podcast at the moment called Empire, actually. And some of the things that they bring out are things that I certainly didn't know, which cast us in a very, very poor light indeed, actually, some of the things that we did as a British Empire. And there is this sense that you can convince yourself that

you were basically doing a good thing in bringing the light of civilisation to these poor, benighted countries. But it's not really like that, is it? I would make very complex historical judgements on the British Empire, actually. Yeah. I think it did great harm. Yeah. But it also did great good. Yeah. I mean, think that the paradigm in a way is the slave trade, where the Imperial might, the Royal Navy, becomes the Royal Navy, powerful as it is.

to protect particularly the transatlantic trade and the sugar colonies in the West Indies. There's actually a force to protect the slavers and do such great harm. I mean, it's appalling. But then under the influence of the evangelicals, there's a complete switch and they banned the slave trade. And not only did they ban the slave trade, they set the Royal Navy, the most powerful military force on the planet at that point to...

to end the slave trade and it takes them 40, 50 years. Eventually they do it. So can empires repent? That's a really interesting question, isn't it? The British Empire did great harm, but it also did some good. With Daniel particularly, going back to Daniel, the empire's upper trade has almost been inevitable in their growth and their decline.

The dream always takes the same form, doesn't it? With the exception of Nebuchadnezzar's dream about himself. And that is, Mark, I think you mentioned earlier to me, this notion of the transition of empires, which is really important. So we begin, there are always four things, aren't they? Four animals or four parts of the image in one of the earlier dreams. And they actually clearly stand for various empires, which follow one another on.

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the Assyrian Babylonian Empire, I think that's one thing, the Persian, then the great empire of Alexander the Great, which is so brief, and then the fourth, the four successor kingdoms to Alexander, which still in Daniel, in the prophetic looking forward of Daniel is the last, but well, because the fifth one that's going to come is the great empire that God is going to institute, the new kingdom, which will end all the kingdoms.

And that's the pattern, the four elements in all the dreams which concern empire in the book from beginning to the end. can look at the dreams of Daniel and think, this is terribly, terribly complicated. You know, what on earth are we supposed to make of these? You've got the lion with wings, you've got a leopard, you've got a bear, and then this great terrible beast, which it says in my study Bible is the Roman Empire. You're saying there's a pattern in Daniel to

these dreams and they all mean basically the same thing. think that's fair. I mean, there are details. And as we go forward through the book, the final dreams that Daniel had, it's much more accurate, it's much more specific. I think scholars agree that we land at the end in Daniel's final dreams with the Greek Seleucid, that's one of the four constituents developed out of Alexander's empire.

his empire splits after his death. And the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, who, those of who know the history or have read the book of Maccabees, know is this king who embarks on an aggressive policy of Hellenization. mean, this is 300 years or more after the events in the Babylonian court, which the book of Daniel is

situated, but he begins an aggressive program of Hellenization, of introducing Greek culture throughout his realm, including of course, in the province of Yehud or Judah. This program of introducing Greek culture is fiercely resisted, and Judas Maccabeus raises a revolt, which is ultimately successful in driving the Greeks out.

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And these events are foreseen in Daniel's visions. the desolating sacrifice which is mentioned is when in order to, as it were, convert the temple of God in Jerusalem, Antiochus has a sacrificed to Zeus on the high altar of the temple, to profane it and bring it into the Greek realm of polytheism.

That's the ultimate provocation, isn't it? The ultimate provocation. This is the desolation, the sacrifice that makes desolate. Yes, the abomination of desolation. is an older translation, isn't it? Yeah. That's right. And of course, we should, Jesus mentions in Mark 13, when he forecasts the downfall of the temple of his age at the hands of the Romans.

That's interesting that Jesus was forecasting the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans. There's something here, isn't there, about all earthly powers failing and all empires crumbling in the end, as of course the Roman Empire was to crumble, and as all of these different empires in Daniel.

crumble as well. They're all replaced by something else. And I wonder if there's just something that we can take from this about where we're to look for some kind of eternal significance, eternal value. I mean, is it saying something about that, do you think? It's saying more than that. think it's alerting those who believe in the scriptures to the

the folly of placing your hopes and your ultimate value in the political structures of this world. Now, this isn't to say that politics isn't important. It's vitally important. God wants the peace of the earthly cities, including Babylon. And this is the interesting thing, isn't it, that in chapter two of Daniel, Daniel ends up saving the

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the diviners and the magicians. But he ends up solving the riddle and thereby saving, in modern days, these intellectuals, the guys who are advising the king and have some wisdom. That's absolutely fascinating. These systems are going to pass, but they do have some value. They can be instruments of God's peace in the world.

And so it's a very complex view if you place your ultimate value in them and do not see that they will one day be superseded by the new kingdom of, I want to say of course, of Jesus who will come at the end to take to himself all power and authority, which is right for his already. And that's the danger for Christians that we collude with the world and its systems and not see that they are all transient.

all passing.

So that's an interesting sort of irony there as well. I think absolutely irony is the great word here, that they think they're in charge. But actually behind the scenes, something else is going on, which is far more powerful than them. And they're trapped as well, these great powerful figures. And you see this very clearly in the story of Cyrus, the lion's den. In fact, the lion and the ritual

slaughter of lions was something they did. Lions would be released into a sort of controlled environment where the king could kill them. The Assyrians leave behind some wonderful bas -reliefs of their kings doing this. And it's just a sign that they're in charge of the fiercest things in the natural world. They're absolutely powerful. And yet when we come to the Lions Den episode, Cyrus is tricked by

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the leaders of his empire, the satraps, into saying something, which then binds him, you know, no petitions except to me. They then say, Daniel is petitioning this god of his, you've got to throw him into the lion's den, as you said you would. And Cyrus doesn't want to do it. He tries to get out of it, but he can't. He's trapped by the system, by what he's said.

So these kings who think that they're in charge of everything are just as much trapped by what they're in as anybody else. It's a very, very insightful analysis of power. God demonstrates his power over the lions because he prevents them from killing Daniel. Noah was asking about God being

sovereign, God being in control of history. So is there something behind the stories of the rise and fall of empire? Is there something divine behind this? Is God in control of that rise and fall? Is God doing something in history, do you think? Control is an interesting word here. In one of the dreams, I've forgotten which one, there's a vision of the sea and then the four winds, which are

clearly from God stirring up the sea to bring change. And I think that's a powerful image of what's going on. But clearly you might want to say, if God's, I think you did mark it in an earlier conversation, very perceptively, if God's in control, he's making a bit of a hash a bit here, isn't he? Because there's so much violence going on. Things which are clearly against his will. You know, behind this is the...

the dreadful exile, not just of the Jews, but of many other people actually, dragged from their homes, forced to come to the area around Babylon. you know, their cities devastated, killings, rapes, enslavement, all this sort of stuff. This is how empire works. So is he in control? It seems he isn't. Yet.

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we are given a vision that at the end will come. These are visions in seven and eight. The court is sitting and one day the books will be opened and everything will be settled and then God will be fully in control. One like the Son of Man will come on the clouds of glory. Again, this is what Jesus of course refers to. And he will sit at the side of the ancient of days and peace will come finally.

At the moment, God allows these things to happen, which is very difficult for us to get our heads around. And in our own contemporary society, why does God allow so much violence and horrible things to happen in our world? And this is a consequence, I think, if you look at the meta -narrative of the Bible, which I think there is a big story going on, of God allowing human freedom. Yeah. We are not

puppets, he can just jerk her out and make us do what he wants. And that unfortunately means if there's true freedom, then the possibility of horrific things being done by human actors is always open and that we do, we do, and we collude with it. But he is not powerless in all this. And the way he's working is through people like Daniel, through the prophets, who reveal what's going on.

even when they themselves are the victim of horrific violence. There's a wordplay here, which isn't really obvious if you're working in English. In Daniel 2, three times, God is called the one who reveals mysteries by both Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. They both call him this. And the Aramaic word for reveal is gulay. As it happens, that same verb means to deport, to exile.

It's just, I think, a coincidence that the sounds are the same. There's no semantic link. So what this is saying is something really powerful. The place of exile, of suffering, in Hebrew, that would be the Gola, it works, you got that in Hebrew, is also the place of revelation. Daniel actually sees the future. Others do too, actually, many people do in this place of...

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The epicenter really of the violence in the ancient world. Yet God is not silent even there. Even in the Gola, there is Gola, there is revelation. this is, I think this is very powerful, this brings us near to the heart of what's going on in Daniel. That we can see the reality of what's going on. As the dreams progress, Daniel changes from being the interpreter of dreams

to a dream himself. But Daniel's dreams become ever more frightening actually. He sees the rebellion, the lack of what seems like the lack of divine control getting worse and worse and culminating with Antiochus Epiphanes, who dares to defile the temple of God. And he's actually, the Aramaic word is a shaman.

devastated, appalled, is often the English translated, but that's almost not strong enough. He's devastated by his dreams. Daniel at the end of the book is a very troubled figure. He begins quite brashly confident, I'll handle all this, I know, you know. He's always faithful. But at the end of the book, he's actually somebody whose dreams have been almost nightmares. But is it a hopeful book, though, Peter? Does it end in a hopeful place? Yes, it does. Because

it faces squarely what looks like the lack of divine control, the reality of human wickedness. then the scripture is so good at this. And then look at the book Lamentations, you know, that those who see the Bible as a collection of fairy stories, wide of the mark. Yes, yes, the final triumph of God is secure, but the reality of human wickedness and the suffering it inflicts upon us is never ever.

ignored. But what then Daniel begins to see, and this is as the dreams progress, is that this human struggle, this human conflict is actually an echo of a broader conflict. You the angelic figures who stand with Daniel tell him that they are struggling with evil forces. And there's a sort of mirroring going on that the struggle in the heavenlies is mirrored by the struggle on earth.

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Does this relate to what Paul says in Ephesians, is it 6 .12, about spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly realms? do think so. this is one of the things that if you see Daniel as a later book, and I think everybody from whatever line you take on interpretation, this is clear. And I'm a little unhappy with notions of development in Scripture, but maybe here we do see one.

that it becomes clearer and clearer as the Old Testament progresses that there is a struggle going on in the heavenlies. And this certainly is straight into the New Testament. And the ministry of Jesus is incomprehensible unless you see him as engaged in a struggle with what you might call the demonic, with the evil spiritual powers. It in a way is a far more important struggle.

than the struggle with the human actors. You're often just the puppets of the bad spiritual forces. mean, obviously it's important that people do what they can within the political structures and civil structures to resist evil. I mean, we're recording this podcast at a time when there's been a

of violence led by right wing activists who want to, you know, sort of take our country back and, you know, violence on the streets and all of that kind of thing. And obviously we want to, to try and resist that and to say the right things and do the right things and, know, the political and civil civic structures and that sort of thing. But

behind that there is a spiritual dimension into which we can pray in the knowledge that we are confronting something which is more than, in a sense, more than just a few people breaking windows and beating up police. There is a spiritual aspect to this. mean, is that a legitimate reading of this?

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And I think that's what the scriptures teach quite clearly. Certainly Daniel, it's very clear in Daniel and in the New Testament. And therefore the great weapon that Daniel employs is petition, which is why he keeps on petitioning God, praying, interceding as part of God's priestly people, even when it's forbidden. That is the one thing you

he will not compromise with. mean, he's living a life of compromise, clearly in the Persian Empire and the Babylonian Empire. He's a high official of the king and that must involve lots of compromise. But the one thing he won't compromise with is petition, intercession. I am puzzled, I have to say, why in national crises that we've been going through for, for selling me for a long time, dear old.

pandemic and everything else that's been happening, why there hasn't been a clearer call from the leaders of the churches to intersection, to an understanding that it's still true today. What's going on in our world is part of a great spiritual struggle. And our weapon in that is not political power. Our primary weapon is prayer.

Good. That's really interesting, isn't it? Because in the past we have had national days of prayer and the leaders of the churches have come together and said, you know, this is what we need at this time and at this place. And you're right, we haven't done it. We haven't done it. The levers of real power here are the spiritual ones. So does that come into play, you think, with the falling of empires as well? So everything we're talking about being in the heavenly realms and things.

we're seeing these empires come to power and crumble, you would say that that is also having to do with what's going on in sort of the heavenly realms as well? Absolutely. I mean, they are inherently unstable. This is in a way where the control of God comes in. But he is stable. His power never changes. But these earthly empires are always teetering on the brink of collapse.

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They don't need much of a push to go over. it's quite interesting, isn't it, to define empires as well, because we can think of the British Empire and we can think about political control and these other empires as well. And it's about politics and one country exerting its rule over another country, another territory. But I mean, it's possible to argue, I think, that some of the really big

players geopolitically today are not political entities like countries anymore. They're people like Google, know, they're people like Meta, which runs Facebook, they're Amazon, and the power and the influence that they exerts geopolitically is absolutely massive. And their income, on which they pay very little tax, is greater than that of many small countries.

Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that, but it's absolutely true. When you think about it, commercial empires are... The word empire is a troubling one to me because it's not, it isn't a scriptural word. There is no corresponding word in the biblical vocabularies. The words used in the Old Testament are around the word melek, king. So what we would call the emperor is the great king or the king of kings.

And interestingly in the New Testament, they use the Greek word oikoumene, which means household. And that's in a way a of imperial propaganda. which we get the word economy. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Just so, just so. it's, these power structures, commercial as you, I think very healthily and interestingly brought out, but also militarily, because ultimately force is what underlies what I would consider

imperialism. You quoted Mark Kipling's wonderful poem. I've got it here. It's called Recessional by Rudyard Kipling and it was written in 1897 for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. It's got a refrain. It says, Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. I'll give you one verse. says, the tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart.

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still stands thine ancient sacrifice, and humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget." And the idea behind the poem is that, you know, the British Empire was at its peak in 1897. there's fantastic pictures and even some movie imagery as well of this great parade.

Queen Victoria at a very advanced stage and sitting on the steps of St Paul's. And you you've got all of the subject peoples and they're all filing past her. And it was an expression of absolute imperial power, sort of focused on this one person, on Queen Victoria. And Rudyard Kipling wrote this poem and it was a really brave thing to do, I think.

And he said, look, you've got this power, but you will lose it unless you remember who is in charge, who is in control. And it's not you, it's God. know, the theme, the transition of empires is something that Kipling is so aware of, as indeed, of course, in poems like, Day Thou Gavest, Lord Ascended. Yeah. Yeah. So be it, Lord, thy throne shall never like earth's proud empires.

pass away. You know, this is, is it redemptive that these proud imperialists have some sense that actually, you know, this is not going to last and we hold it only in God's power? I hope so. But on the other hand, one definition of empire, which I really like, is a nation in overreach.

In a sense, all these imperial systems are signs of rebellion. If you see the notion that there something natural about certain political entities, they express a culture and a way of being together linked by culture and language and other things, and there's a natural givenness about them. If that's true, I think arguably you can say that there are such structures.

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nations which decide to go beyond that and force others into unions with them.

but by bad means and plunder and exploit them, then they are in overreach and they will collapse. That won't last. And quote a little bit of recessional again, Kipling's poem, Lo all our pomp of yesteryear is one with Nineveh and Tyre.

which are now ruins.

I think this is what Daniel is a part, actually. These horrific systems of exploitation and domination, which seems so eternal and want to think they last for a thousand years, will come crashing down. think we'll probably wrap there. Thank you so much, Peter. We're so grateful to have you on and have this conversation.

So much more to say. Well, we'll be back next week with another episode with Peter and we'll be talking about some of the apocalyptic and sort of end times language that we find at Daniel. If you love the podcast, please do feel free to give us a rating or a review. We also have a survey in the show notes. We'd love for you to fill out if you want to give any of your feedback, that would be really great. And that's it. So we'll see you next week for another episode. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Rooted Podcast.

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