I have my copy of SR Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament . Here are some main reasons why Daniel dates to the period of Antiochus Epiphanes, 164-163 BC and not the Neo-Babylonian period:
1. The position of the book in the Jewish canon, not among the Neviim or Prophets but in the miscellaneous collection of late writings called the Ketuvim or Hagiographa, and among the latest of these, in proximity to Esther. The division known as the Prophets was formed prior to the Hagiographa and had the Daniel existed at that time, it would have been ranked as a work of a prophet and included among the former. Daniel and Esther are also similar to each as the two works in the LXX that are heavily interpolated in the Greek versions.
2. Jesus ben Sirach, writting c. 200 BC, in his enumeration of Israelite-Jewish worthies (ch. 44-50), mentions Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets, but is silent as to Daniel. This corresponds to the Jewish canon of the Prophets, but again ignores Daniel.
3. The "Chaldeans" are synonymous in Daniel 1:4, 2:2, etc. with the caste of wise men. This sense is unknown in Assyrian-Babylonian usage but is characteristic of the Persian and Hellenistic periods.
4. Belshazzar is represented as the "king" of Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzer is spoken throughout ch. 5 as his father. In point of fact, Nabonidus was the last king of the Babylon; he was a usuper, not related to Nebuchadnezzer and his son was Belshazzar. The mistake Daniel makes is characteristic of a later period when the facts have been forgotten and not of someone personally acquainted with these individuals. The exquisite detail Daniel has of the Hellenistic period but gross mistakes of the Neo-Babylonian period is another sign that it belongs to the later period.
5. Darius, son of Ahasuerus (Xerxes), a "Mede," after the death of Belshazzar is made "king over the realm of the Chaldeans" (5:31; 6:1; 9:1; 11:1), who in 6:1 organizes the empire into 120 satrapies and becomes sole ruler of the Babylonian empire (6:25), while in reality, Darius Hystaspis, who organized the Persian empire in satrapies, was the father, not the son, of Xerxes, and he reconquered Babylon in 521 and again in 515 BC, not in 535 BC as Daniel would have it. Again, this is a confusion arising from the passage of time and is hardly what someone witnessing the Fall of Babylon would claim.
6.In 9:2 it is stated that Daniel "understood by the books (bsprym)" the 70 years according to Jeremiah that Jerusalem should be desolated. The expression used, equivalent to modern "Scriptures", implies that the prophesies of Jeremiah formed part of a canon of sacred books which most likely had not formed by 536 BC.
7. The number of Persian words in the book, especially in the Aramaic part, is remarkable. That such words should be found in books written after the Persian empire was organized and when Persian influences prevailed, is not more than would be expected and should not at any rate have been used by Daniel under Babylonian supremacy.
8. Not only does Daniel contain Persian words, but it contains at least three Greek words: kitharos = kitharis (3:5, 7, 10, 15), psanterin = psalterion (3:5, 7, 10, 15), and sumponyah = symphonia (3:5, 15). The use of these three words fixes the date of the historical portions of Daniel after the time of Alexander the Great.
9. The Aramaic of Daniel is a Western Aramaic dialect of the type spoken in Palestine, known from inscriptions dating to 3rd cent. BC to the 2nd cent. AD and also of the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan. Its use by a native Judahite in the 6th cent. BC would be utterly inexplicable.
10. The Hebrew of Daniel resembles that of the age subsequent to Nehemiah, containing many words otherwise known from Rabbinical Hebrew (sp. the Mishnah), or common only to the Mishnah and Ezra, Chronicles, Nehemiah, Esther. A list can be provided.
11. The theology of the book of Daniel points to a later age than that of the exile, specifically 200-100 BC. The doctrines of the Messiah (the "Son of Man" concept), of angels (referred to occasionally as "Watchers"), of the resurrection, and of a judgment on the world, are taught with greater distinctiveness and in a more developed form than elsewhere in the OT, with features approximating to those met with in the earlier parts of 1 Enoch (100 BC-50 AD), Jubilees, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls (200 BC-50 AD).
12. The interest of the book manifestly culminates in the relations subsisting between the Jews and Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus is the subject of 8:9-14, 23-25. The survey of Syrian and Egyptian history of the Seleucids in ch. 11 leads up to a detailed description of Antiochus' reign in v. 21-45 and then the persecution which the Jews experienced at his hands. It is incredible for a 6th century prophet living in the Neo-Babylonian period to display no interest in the welfare, or prospects of his contemporaries, that his hopes and Messianic visions should not attach themselves to the imminent return of the exiles to the land of their fathers but to a deliverance in the distant, remote future. It is also remarkable that these prophecies of the remote future in Daniel are so minute in detail with regard to Antiochus' reign, down to the period of his persecution where actual events are decribed with surprising distinctness (unlike prophecies of the remote future in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah), yet suddenly at this point the distinctness ceases and the prophecy shifts into an ideal representation of the Messianic future. Daniel's perspective, then, is of someone writing in the midst of the persecution itself, and views the Messianic Age as following closely on the heels of the Antiochean persecution -- a fulfillment that does not in fact come to pass. The failed prophecy regarding a final attack on Judah and the death of Antiochus in such an attack was not fulfilled (and neither did the resurrection and the enthronment of the Messiah occur), and this quite securely fixes the date of the book between December 164 and April 163 BC.
The book is a classic apocalyptic pseudegraph, exactly in the vein of 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra and other writings. It became part of the OT on the sheer weight of its popularity. But by being placed near the end of the Hagiographa (9th out of the 11 books, or 10th out of the 11 in the Aleppo Codex), we can see that it just barely made it into the OT canon.
