Decoding Daniel: The Case of Dan 7,5 227 be seen later in the paper, the fourth beast cannot be linked unequivocally with the Seleucids. Overall, it does not appear as if iconography was the direct source of Daniel’s imagery. In sum, although there are vague similarities between the outline of Daniel’s vision and Ancient Near Eastern mythologies and contacts between aspects of the beasts and Mesopotamian birth omens, iconography and astrology there is no complete correspondence. Is Daniel’s vision then simply due to his own imaginative powers or is there another body of tradition upon which Daniel drew? 3. The origin of Daniel’s vision The Hebrew Bible has been suggested as the background to Daniel’s vision. Older scholars and, indeed some recent ones, have contented themselves with referring to Biblical passages in a most cursory way. They simply indicate that such passages provide similar statements to details in Daniel’s vision or provide examples of the way in which aspects of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology were incorporated into passages other than Daniel. There have been a few attempts to give a fuller Biblical background to the literary outline of Daniel’s vision. Porter in Metaphors and Monsters claims that in the exilic and post-exilic periods wild beasts came to represent Israel’s foreign overlords (39) and that in some psalms the judgement of the beasts is associated with the future hope of Yahweh’s or Israel’s sovereignty over the nations (40). He also points out that God as judge prior to a glorious future appears in a number of places in the Prophets (41). Further, that the Son of Man derives from the Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament notion of the Shepherd King (42). Mosca (43), in 1986, posited that Psalm 89 provided the general pattern for Daniel’s vision in Chapter 7 and certainly there is a reasonable correspondence to the second part of the vision, but not to the first half. Haag (44) sees three complexes of Biblical material as having been incorporated into Daniel’s vision: God’s use of foreign nations to carry out his judgement; the enemy of God tradition and the Zion/David tradition. Haag is surely approaching a resolution to the problem of the background to Daniel 7. He emphasises that the four beasts do not derive from mythology rather from Biblical tradition although he sees their composite nature as a creation of the author of Daniel. One further background has been suggested. John Day (45), in 1985, argued that a passage in Hos 13,7-8 was the impetus for the simile of the four beasts in Dan 7,3-7 (46): (39) PORTER, Metaphors and Monsters, 95. (40) PORTER, Metaphors and Monsters, 97. (41) PORTER, Metaphors and Monsters, 102. (42) PORTER, Metaphors and Monsters, 109-114. (43) P.G. MOSCA, “Ugarit and Daniel 7: A Missing Link”, Bib 67 (1986) 496-517 (44) E. HAAG, “Der Menschensohn und die Heiligen des Höchsten”, The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (ed. A.S. VAN DER WOUDE) (Leuven 1993) 137-184. (45) J. DAY, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 156-157. (46) Prior to Day, a number of scholars had made a passing reference to Hos 13,7-8 as a Biblical text which mentioned the lion, bear and leopard e.g. MONTGOMERY, Daniel, 288- 289; H. JUNKER, H., Untersuchungen über literarische und exegetische Probleme des