Publisher's Synopsis
It has been stated by the present Bishop of Durham that the Book of Daniel "exercised a greater influence upon the early Christian Church than any other writing of the Old Testament." Its influence is not so uniform now. It no longer shapes the policy or suggest the teaching of the Church. Bt the loss in breadth seems to be made up by the gain in intensity, If its influence over the "Body of Christ" is less, the spell it casts over the "members in particular" is at least as absorbing.
It is to this individual absorption, or even fascination, that we owe the extraordinary variety in the methods of interpretation of Daniel. "Quot hominess tot sententiae." But Mr. Bevan has a strong hope that the period of diversity and mutual exclusiveness is nearly at an end. His hope is in the scholarship-the strictly scientific scholarship- which is now giving itself to the Old Testament with a singleness of eye never known before. Of this modern scholarship Mr. Bevan's own book is a good, even an illustrious, example. Every portion of the Book of Daniel, every item that tradition or apologetic has furnished about the Book of Daniel, is passed through a most searching examination in the light of Hebrew philology and contemporary history. For some methods of interpretation Mr. Bevan has neither faith, hope, nor charity. No interpretation or tradition need seek shelter under the authority of a name. But if you are willing to begin at the beginning, and to learn what can be said for the Book of Daniel, and every verse of it, by history, sacred, secular, and monumental, and by a most competent acquaintance with Hebrew grammar and philology, this is the book for your purpose.
-"The Expository Times" [1892]"
