Daniel

(eighth–ninth century)

   Daniel is an OLD ENGLISH alliterative poem of 764 lines appearing in the Bodleian Library’s JUNIUS MANUSCRIPT. The poem is based mainly on the Vulgate version of the Old Testament book of Daniel, chapters 1 through 5. But far from being a simple paraphrase, the Old ENGLISH text is unified by its homiletic tone and the theme of pride and its accompanying fall, interpreted as the working out of divine retribution.

   The poem begins with a description of the prosperity the Jews experienced for as long as they followed God’s law and the destruction and captivity they were faced with when they turned from God. This introduction presages the hard-hearted pride of Nebuchadnezzar, who falls ignominiously when he will not acknowledge God even after witnessing the miracle of the three youths in the furnace. The poem climaxes with the feast of Belshazzar and his prideful insolence in profaning the holy vessels of the Jews, ensuring his own fall. But the chief focus of the poem (for most of the first 485 lines) is the story of the youths Hannaniah, Azariah, and Mishael and their miraculous salvation from the furnace. Daniel himself does not appear until after Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream, and he does not assume a major role as seer and prophet until after Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream.After Belshazzar’s feast, Daniel begins to interpret the writing on the wall, but the poem breaks off abruptly. Clearly the poem is unfinished as we have it, but it is likely that the completed poem would have depicted the downfall and death of Belshazzar, since that would have fittingly paralleled the other two downfalls in the poem. It is unlikely that the poem was ever intended to include any version of the second, apocalyptic half of the biblical book of Daniel.

   A difficult structural problem in the poem is caused by two lyrical passages—the prayer of Azariah and the song of the three youths (lines 279–439). For one thing, Azariah’s prayer for deliverance appears after that deliverance has already occurred in the poem. Second, that deliverance is narrated twice. And finally, the prayer of Azariah, along with another longer version of the song of the three youths, occurs independent of this text in another Old English manuscript, the EXETER BOOK. Scholars generally agree that the passage in question was interpolated into the original text of Daniel, though it is possible to read the prayer as a communal prayer for the deliverance of the Hebrew people. But the precise relationship between this passage and the independent poem in the Exeter Book is complex and uncertain. It is unclear which may have borrowed from which, whether both are by the same poet or whether there was some collaboration between two writers. The coincidental survival of both poems in different manuscripts may result from the popularity in the liturgy of the two biblical passages from which these two lyrics derive. The date of Daniel’s composition is also uncertain. Malcolm Godden notes the poem’s “pervading sense of human vulnerability,” underscored by the false security of the walled cities of Jerusalem and Babylon, neither of which can stave off disaster when it comes (Godden 1991, 224). Uncertainty and the constant danger of heathen attack would make the poem relevant at nearly any time during dangers of Viking intrusion.

   Bibliography

   ■ Godden,Malcolm. “Biblical Literature: The Old Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 206–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

   ■ Greenfield, Stanley B., and Daniel G. Calder. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

   ■ Krapp, George Philip. The Junius Manuscript. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, I.New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.