Michael Segal's International Critical Commentary on Daniel offers a comprehensive reassessment of one of the Hebrew Bible's most complex books. Combining rigorous textual criticism, philology, literary analysis, and historical contextualization, it traces the intricate relationships among Daniel's textual witnesses-including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek-to reconstruct the stages of the book's literary development. Segal grounds his arguments in empirical manuscript evidence and attested patterns of scribal revision, producing a model of Daniel's composition history that is both methodologically sophisticated and empirically defensible.
The commentary advances numerous original interpretations, from solutions to longstanding philological cruxes to new frameworks for understanding major passages. Throughout, it draws on Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, ancient Near Eastern traditions, and medieval Jewish interpretation. The result is a commentary that provides bold new insights into a complex prophetic and apocalyptic text.