Daniel Book Review

In Dr. Newsom’s article about the book of Daniel, she provokes the reader’s thoughts with the riveting question: “What is this book saying about the relationship between God and human political power?” In our country now, masses of people are actively working to protest and resist bans, laws, toxic pipelines, and discriminatory practices in our justice systems- almost every week in Minneapolis, MN, a protest makes the news, with citizens making an effort to show solidarity and resistance against the actions of politicians in power. People openly isolate loved ones and family due to political views. Holidays are a struggle with families attempting to navigate through conversation topics that won’t incite political debate around the dinner
Though this literary work is not part of the canonical book of Daniel, it aligns with the characters and time era of the events in the book, indicating that they may have been written around the same time, and/or about the same events that Daniel records. Newsom says that this document “presents the king as acknowledging the Most High God of the Jews for healing him and forgiving his sin, and as recognizing that the idols have no power. In this respect, it is similar to the narrative endings of Daniel 2, 3, and 4, in which the king acknowledges the power of the God of the Jews.” The author tells us that by humbling himself and acknowledging God’s sovereignty and power, Nabonidus was, in a way, showing that he was worthy enough of the support of the Jews in
The four elements that this statue was made of signified four kingdoms (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome), each of which transferred world power to the next, but ultimately all died out in the end. Newsom tells us, “the dream imagery is a visual representation of an internationally known theory of imperial succession called the "four kingdoms" schema. According to this notion world rulership is periodically transferred from one great power to another. In some versions, a world power uses the schema to justify its dominance. … Some used it to envision an eschatological end to the sequence of empires. Thus, the author of the dream in Daniel 2 agrees that God has indeed delegated sovereignty to foreign kings and kingdoms—but not