By the time you finish reading Daniel, you'll probably be wondering how all these Babylonian and Persian kings could be so incredibly thick. In the course of the book's opening stories, the kings keep realizing that Daniel's God is, in fact, everybody's God, or the only God—and then they immediately do something entirely disrespectful and ridiculous like drinking booze out of sacred vessels or chucking people into furnaces. But that's part of the problem posed by The Book of Daniel: how do you live under the control of people who just don't get it while still remaining true to yourself? It was an issue that the Israelites happened to be struggling with in a big way at the time the book was written.

The Book of Daniel came out of a period when Israel was going through some major problems, like getting invaded, plundered, and totally devastated by different imperial armies while seeing the best-educated Jews carried away into captivity. So… yeah—not a picnic.

When the book was actually written, sometime between 300 and 165 BCE, they were dealing with an unusually nasty king by the name of Antiochus IV Epiphanes—one of the Greek generals squabbling over the remains of Alexander the Great's empire. Not only did he try to prevent the Jews from worshipping in their temple and practicing their religion freely, he made owning a copy of the Torah punishable by death. He even attempted to install a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies, the very place where God was supposed to reside. (See the Apocryphal Biblical book 2 Maccabees for more details.)

Naturally, none of this went down well with the Israelites, and eventually a rebellion led by the heroic warrior, Judah Maccabee, overthrew Antiochus' reign. But before that happened, the Israelites were debating exactly how they should react—whether with violent revolt, or by waiting patiently for God to overthrow Antiochus, just as the Babylonian tyrants had been overthrown by the Persians earlier. The Book of Daniel was evidently written by people from the "Let God Do It" camp. The book keeps telling stories about how Daniel and his friends are saved by God whenever the light seemed like it was about to go out and the wicked kings were about to do something horrible.

Daniel fits into the Bible in an interesting way, too. Christians put Dan in with the books by and about the Prophets, but the Hebrew Bible places his book in with the Writings, alongside works like Esther and the Song of Solomon. Both of these ways of placing Daniel make sense. He has prophetic visions of the future and the end of the world and tries to counsel kings toward justice. But the Book of Daniel is similar to the Writings in that it contains plenty of classic short stories. Some of the Bible's best yarns are in here, like the tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the lion's den.

Ever had a weird dream? We mean, like, classically weird? Like the ol' forgot-to-wear-clothes-to-math-class dream? Well, Daniel, the prophet and seer, would have rushed to your aid and explained—provided you had just threatened the lives of all the wise men in Babylon, that is. We can't suggest what he would've made of the "naked in math class" thing, but we do know that he was an expert on dream interpretation. Of course, he usually interpreted the dreams of kings, and those dreams typically involved some sort of broad historical lesson or a prophecy of personal catastrophe.

Like Joseph in Genesis before him, Daniel was an ace dream-analyzer, sort of the Sigmund Freud of his era (except much more religious and probably lacking a cigar). But what the Book of Daniel gives to readers today is much more significant than a glimpse into the slumberous visions of ancient Babylonian royalty.

For instance, the entire second half of Daniel offers up a fairly detailed account of the future history and final end of the world; it's not quite as far out as Revelation, but it's some Grade A Head Candy, nonetheless. And as you may have noticed, quite a few people today are way anxious about the world ending and believe that we're living in the last days. That's something Daniel can shed some light on.

Perhaps most importantly, Daniel is the story of a guy who stuck to his guns. He had to deal with a succession of thick-headed and unpredictable kings who, on different occasions, try to kill him, his friends, and all the wise men of Babylon. But Daniel never takes the easy way out. He and his friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—don't collaborate with things that strike their conscience as being wrong. Somehow, miraculously, this totally works out for them.

In a way, Daniel's like Dr. Jennifer Melfi from The Sopranos. She also tries to talk some sense to and interpret the dreams of a bad guy, a ruthless mobster and sociopath (though she's a lot less successful than Daniel). She's trying to "speak truth to power," to the worst kind of power, too: power controlled by evil. But Daniel is dealing with a slightly different kind of villain. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar isn't evil. He's just deluded and confused. He's not willfully ignoring the truth or what's right. He just doesn't know any better. And in a lot of ways, it is the patience and honesty of Daniel that help him to recover.

That's where the essence of the book lies: the main character's struggle to endure the most horrible trials and terrors out of a desire to demonstrate an act of mercy towards the king. It's an example that can inspire anybody. Although the king has more earthly power than Daniel, it is ultimately Daniel who takes pity on the king because Daniel, at least, can see the truth.