By Michael B. Shepherd, Assistant Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Louisiana College
[img_assist|nid=6559|title=Michael Shepherd|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=78|height=100]The Sistine Chapel is one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art. From the depiction of Moses (left wall) to the life of Christ (right wall) to the sequence from creation to judgment (ceiling and center wall), it is like walking into the Bible itself. Michelangelo’s artistic portrayals of the events of the Bible are in many ways like the textual renderings of the same events by the biblical authors.
Reading of Scripture informed Michelangelo’s work to the extent that the Sistine Chapel has long since occupied an important place within the history of biblical interpretation.
One of the most intriguing features of this great work of art is the presentation of the biblical prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Jonah, Zechariah, and Daniel (Matthew 24:15).
All but Jeremiah and Jonah have a biblical text of some sort in their hands. This is noteworthy given the fact that the Hebrew Bible as a whole is the product of the prophets (Daniel 9:10; Ezra 9:10-11; Romans 1:2; 16:25-26).
Isaiah, for example, has the fingers of his right hand stuck within the pages of a bound Bible (also Zechariah). It is beside the point that this is somewhat anachronistic (Ezekiel and Joel have scrolls; the codex was not invented until the first century A.D.). What is significant is that Michelangelo does not picture Isaiah primarily in terms of a preacher but in terms of the text that bears his name. In other words, Michelangelo has captured the book of Isaiah as put together by someone who had their hands in the Bible – someone who read and interpreted the book of Moses at the very least.
Michelangelo’s version of Daniel is particularly interesting.
Daniel is seated with a large bound Bible lying open in his lap. Between his legs is a smallish figure holding up the Bible on his shoulders as if bearing the weight of the world.
To Daniel’s right is the surface upon which he is writing his own book. Daniel appears to be transferring the theological message of the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures to his own composition. This is not so much a statement about Daniel the interpreter of visions as it is a statement about the book of Daniel and its relationship to the Hebrew Bible.
In the English Bible the book of Daniel stands toward the end of the Old Testament just before the book of the Twelve (Hosea-Malachi). In the standard critical edition of the Hebrew Bible (Biblia Hebraica), the book of Daniel also has a prominent position toward the end, before Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles.
The internal clues of the book suggest that this placement was not an accident but a recognition that the composer of Daniel intended the book to be something of a culmination of all the prophetic writings. The book of Daniel is like a glass filled with Moses and the prophets. If someone were to tip the glass, the New Testament would come out (Matthew 24:15, 30; 26:64; Mark 13:26; 14:62; Luke 21:27; Revelation 1:7; 13).
For the purposes of this article, two examples of Daniel’s connection to the rest of the Hebrew Bible will have to suffice. The first is the use of phrase “at the end of the days” in Daniel 2:28 and 10:14. This phrase only occurs at critical junctures in the composition of the Hebrew Bible. Its four occurrences in the Pentateuch are strategic (Genesis 49:1; Numbers 24:14; Deuteronomy 4:30; 31:29). Three of these precede key poetic units that point to the future hope of a coming messianic king (Genesis 49:8-12; Numbers 24:7-9, 17; Deuteronomy 33:5, 7, 20). Beyond the Pentateuch the phrase occurs in the programmatic passage of Isaiah (Isaiah 2:2-5; Micah 4:1-4), which looks forward to the ingathering of the nations and the justice and peace of the messianic kingdom. The phrase also occurs in the restoration sections of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 30:24 [also 23:20; 48:47]; Ezekial 38:16) and in the programmatic passage of Hosea and the Twelve (Hosea 3:4-5). Each of these passages anticipates the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant (2 Sam 7) in a messianic figure who will reign over an everlasting kingdom.
When Daniel says that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue is ultimately about what will happen “at the end of the days” (Daniel 2:28), the reader should come with the expectation that he or she will learn something here about the messianic kingdom. The stone that appears after the four parts of the statue (Daniel 2:34-35) represents the everlasting kingdom of the Davidic covenant (Daniel 2:44-45). In the parallel passage of chapter 7, the messianic figure appears in the vision after the four beasts and receives the everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14). The phrase “at the end of the days” also introduces the final vision of the book (Daniel 10:14), which concludes with the resurrection (Daniel 12:2, 13).
The second example comes from Daniel 9.
In this chapter Daniel is reading the book of Jeremiah in Babylon somewhere around 539 or 538 B.C. (Dan 9:1-2) and looking for the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years – the return from Babylon (Jeremiah 29:10).
In the latter part of the chapter the angel Gabriel appears and tells Daniel to understand Jeremiah’s prophecy in terms of “seventy sevens” (a complete, indefinite period of time), during which the city of Jerusalem will be rebuilt, the Messiah will be cut off, and the final enemy of the people of God will be destroyed (Daniel 9:24-27).
Gabriel’s interpretation fits well with the Hebrew text behind the ancient Greek translation of Jeremiah 25:1-13, which makes no reference to Nebuchadnezzar or Babylon as the final enemy in Jeremiah 25:1, 9, 11, 12 and leaves Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years open to the future (see also Ezekiel 38:14-17, which speaks of an unidentified final enemy named Gog to appear “at the end of the days” in fulfillment of “the prophets”).
Michelangelo thus did very well to represent the book Daniel as integrally linked to the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. The larger composition of the Hebrew Bible is the context in which readers are to understand the book.