Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [174]
The end will come in the following way: A divine figure characterized by the term “ancient of days” (Dan 7:9) presides over the divine council at the last judgment and sentences this last, fourth kingdom to destruction. Then there appears in the clouds of heaven “one like a Son of Man” (Dan 7:13, kebar ’enash), an expression in Biblical Aramaic that means only “like a human figure.” His human appearance contrasts with the monstrous figures that have preceded him in the vision so we may further conclude that his human shape, so emphasized by this puzzling designation, is meant to distinguish him as the good figure from the bizarre animals who are the evil figures. An angel interprets the figure as symbolizing “the holy community, the saints of the most high” (Dan 7:27), who are the sect of the righteous who expect to be saved at the consummation.
The imagery in this passage comes directly out of Canaanite mythology.6 The enthronement of the two figures and the names used for them correspond rather closely to the Canaanite description of ’El, the older, father god, sometimes known in Ugaritic as “the father of years” (abu shanima) rather like the Aramaic term used here, “an ancient of days” (’atiq yamin, Dan 7:9) or “the ancient of days” (’atiq yamaya, Dan 7:13). The indefinite noun in Daniel 7:9 suggests that it is a description of the figure rather than its proper name or title. The Biblical character with his white, woolly beard parallels the description of the Canaanite divinity. The “Son of Man” must therefore be closer to the Canaanite divinity Ba’al, the son of ’El, who supersedes his father in the regulation of the cosmos.7 In parallel fashion, it too is likely to be a description rather than a title. Probably then, in its present context, the figure like a “Son of Man” or, more idiomatically, “the manlike figure” is meant to be understood as an unnamed, principal, heavenly figure in God’s retinue, probably the functional equivalent of the so-called “Prince of the Presence” in later Jewish mysticism, since he is enthroned next to the ancient of days, the grandfatherly figure.
It is unlikely that the figure is a mortal human because the text would have said that it was a human being, not a figure shaped like one. Hence, the figure is likely to be a specific archangel-perhaps Michael but possibly Gabriel-who are mentioned in other visions. The human figure in heaven is more or less what we would call an angel, a person shaped like a human but obviously part of the divine court. Since it is the “primary” angel, we might consider calling it God’s Kavod or “Glory” or, even in later Jewish terminology, his Shekhinah (though that figure is usually gendered feminine in Midrash). Instead of the transient evil kingdom of Antiochus, he establishes a permanent, everlasting, and universal kingdom, which brings salvation from the sufferings in the present, transient, and evil kingdom of Antiochus Epiphanes.
This author must be writing very close to the events of the Maccabean revolt. By framing his predictions as prophecy, he is saying that God has known about this particularly heinous villainy from the beginning and planned for its short duration. The vision is prophecy because it reveals God’s plans for the immediate downfall of this terrible kingdom. This, no doubt, consoled the disheartened and persecuted members of Israel who were being martyred and killed, not for having abandoned God’s word but specifically because they were keeping it: God has vengeance in mind for the oppressors and felicity for those who stay true to God’s word. After Daniel admits his anxiety about the vision, the angel explains what the plan is, and after that, the final judgment quickly follows, being shared by “the Son of Man” and the “saints of the most high,” who are the beneficiaries of