Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [160]
But the connection with Isaiah 66 is not merely adventitious; it is a major clue to the composition of the passage. We are fortunate that the words only appear in these two places because they underline how much the seer in Daniel is actually dependent on Isaiah 66. Daniel’s vision is prophecy and confirmation that the last part of Isaiah 66 is to come true in a surprising way with the resurrection of the righteous remnant:
And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. (Isa 66: 23-24)
The term “abhorrence,” used only twice in the Hebrew Bible, is like a tracer bullet, showing that the vision of Isaiah 66 is being interpreted by the seer in Daniel as a prophecy that will shortly come true. The imagery of Isaiah 24-27 is itself interpreted in Isaiah 66.12
The nations will soon know of the Lord’s power because He himself will show them His Glory. Quite possibly, Daniel interpreted this passage to mean that the “son of man,” the manlike figure of Daniel 7:13 is appointed the Glory of the Lord. Daniel probably had the archangel Michael in mind for the position of “Glory of the Lord,” because his name means “he who is like God.”
It looks like the resurrection prophecy of Daniel 12:1-2 is based on a visionary understanding of Isaiah 66:14 “Your bones will flower like grass.” To establish a consistent picture, the seer must also combine Isaiah 66:14 with the imagery of Ezekiel 37, “the vision of the dry bones,” in which the bones lying dry in the valley come together with tendons, flesh, and skin to form human beings again. The purpose of the resurrection in Daniel 12, according to the seer Daniel’s inspired exegesis of Isaiah 66:14, was to show the plan of the Lord, that the Lord’s hand would be known: “that the hand of the LORD is with his servants and his indignation against his enemies” (Isa 66:14). The medium of this combination of passages is a prophetic, revelatory vision, which combines passages from all over the Bible, not in a casual fashion but in a very complex and sophisticated manner. But it is not exegesis; it is a visionary revelation, as the Daniel text explicitly says. It is a vision that the seer has received after avid study of the text. This writing could not have been produced merely by an intellectual exegesis of the text, but rather by a religiously altered state of consciousness (see ch. 8). No exegete would have mixed all the motifs of all these passages without seeking a methodological justification or calling attention to the way in which the passages should be combined; after his study of Isaiah 66, the prophet experienced a dream or vision, in which all the passages were combined into one.
Of particular interest is the following vision of judgment in Isaiah 66.13 In the vision the sinners are those who eat swine’s flesh; God arrives in his chariotry in his warrior (“Ba’al”) form as the “Glory,” easily the best interpretation of the human figure in Daniel 7:13-14.14 God makes a new heaven and a new earth, he brings judgment against his enemies. In this vision of the end, Israel and the nations stream to Jerusalem to worship together, and the dead bodies of those who have rebelled against God are to be an example to all flesh (presumably those who have come to Jerusalem). The seer of Daniel 12 has re-imbued the vision of Isaiah 66 with new life because the vision of the end of time in Isaiah 66 seems to him to fit the historical circumstances of Daniel 12.
This earliest undoubted reference to literal resurrection in the Hebrew Bible suggests that both the righteous and the very evil need to be resurrected for the purposes of giving them their valid and well-deserved deserts. This hope comes not just from the