I've always been one to make a mountain out of a molehill and yesterday was no different.

The leader asked the study group to share personal thoughts after reading a smattering of verses from Daniel. I offered an insight based on Daniel 12:4, 9 and, indirectly, Daniel 8:26b which all say roughly the same thing: keep secret the message and seal the book until the end time. I said that Daniel's words were known to Jesus, fragments were found at Qumran, the book is unsealed, the visions are no longer secret, this is the end time.

Ironically, this literalist approach did not win over my fundamentalist study partners; they had a different agenda. The quick answer came in the form of a challenge, "So, have you figured out the meaning of all of Daniel's visions?" No, of course not. "Then the book is still hidden." Hardly an objective perspective to set the criteria for classifying a text "public" on how humanly intelligible it is.

I think Daniel is a second century BC composition, at least in its final, redacted form. I consider the pious, heroic stories in chapters 1-6 to be folklore from a much earlier period, certainly post-exilic or perhaps exilic. The leader had begun the study series weeks ago with a paraphrase of the serpent's taunt of Eve in Genesis 3: Did God really say such-n-such? as a rebuke to anyone who might doubt the verbal plenary inspiration of Sacred Scripture. In short, she called me "Satan" at the first class.

I do believe that we are living in the end times. This has been the state of affairs since the Incarnation, since the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.