Daniel and JubileesThird, while "the wise" will receive their postmortem reward, thewicked will awaken "to shame and everlasting contempt" (liXI^^1? niS^D"?
Dan 12:2 ). This text, too, harkens back to the prophet Isaiah, in this
case to the final prose oracle, which describes a gruesome scene in which the
priests go out and "look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled
against me... they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh" (Isa 66:24). The word
for "abhorrence" (TlNTl) occurs only in these two texts in the Hebrew Bible,
and in both cases the shame is thought to be everlasting. Daniel here takes
the eschatological passages in Isaiah to the next level, so that "Third Isaiah
reads like a description of the time of the writing of Daniel."^19
In a classic study on the topic of inner-biblical interpretation, Michael
Fishbane has provided a thorough analysis of Daniel's reuse of earlier
prophecy.^20 In his section titled "The Mantological Exegesis of Oracles"
Fishbane discusses a wealth of examples taken from Dan 9-12 in which the
biblical author reuses biblical prophecies. The assumption is that by the time
of Daniel, the precise meaning of the ancient prophecies, much like that of
oracles, visions, or omens, was no longer self-evident and hence required in
terpretation. It could be that a prophecy was found to have failed or that it
remained unfulfilled or simply was in need of reinterpretation. Because of
this oracularization of Scripture, the word of the prophet itself had become
the subject of interpretation; it had to be decoded and, in a sense, translated
so that it could be reapplied to the current situation. In support of his argu
ment Fishbane produced a significant number of text examples from Daniel
for which he was able to trace their linguistic origin to the prophetic corpus.
Fishbane has revealed the full extent to which the apocalyptic texts in
Dan 9-12 are indebted to biblical prophecy. There is hardly a verse here that is
not anchored in the prophetic discourse. Fishbane's model of "mantological
exegesis" works for Dan 9 and its reinterpretation of Jeremiah. I remain un
convinced, however, that it works equally well for the numerous other pro
phetic texts we hear echoes of in Dan 9-12. There is nothing in Daniel to sug
gest that the prophetic utterances seemed obscure and unintelligible, let
alone had become the subject of interpretation like an oracle or an omen. In
Dan 9:2 the text stresses that Daniel "understood" (,rn, 3 ^N'n 'JX) the
words of Jeremiah. Similarly, the examples adduced by Fishbane hardly sug
gest that the texts in Isaiah caught Daniel's attention because of their obscu
rity. True, the angelus interpres does assist Daniel with his understanding to
- Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 34.
- Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 474-524.