Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin: Writing and Resistance in Daniel 5 and 6‪.‬

It is not surprising that the book of Daniel, whose leading character is a Jewish scribe serving in various imperial courts, should feature writing in a recurring role. The story begins with Daniel learning Chaldean literature (1:4) and ends with him in possession of a secret book (12:4). But in the book of Daniel writing is used not merely to give a degree of verisimilitude to the court tales; it marks the exercise of political power, by emperors and the deity alike. (1) The fate of Daniel's people (12:1) as well as that of the emperor (5:24-28) is determined by writing. The book of Daniel discloses an ideology of writing held by its authors. Investigating this ideology will provide insight into the way the text comprehends power and into the ways modern readers might understand the book's original social location. The stance of the book of Daniel vis-a-vis imperial power is bound up with the question of the social location of the book's authors. Scholars have tended to read the fictive setting of Daniel's court tales, especially, as directly representing that location. Hence the authors would have been a part of a court apparatus and would have written the stories to address the concerns of a Jew seeking to serve the empire. They would have had a comfortable, if not uniformly secure, relationship to state power. (2)