The majority of scholars, however, dismiss these arguments with the evidence that the text finishes at the bottom of a page, and that there is a simple point, which translators assume indicates the end of a complete sentence.

[citation needed] Daniel contains a plethora of lines which Old English scholars refer to as “hypermetric” or long.

The biblical story works through questions of faith and persecution; the poem deals mainly with pride.

The Israelites were conquered because they lost faith in God, who delivered them from Egypt, and started worshiping idols and this is the first prideful act.

The second and third warnings are about internal pride, shown to Nebuchadnezzar II through Daniel's dream interpretations.

Daniel ignores the majority of the apocalyptic and prophetic writing found towards the end of the Biblical source, and focuses instead on the first five chapters of the narrative.

The primary focus of the Old English author was that of the Three Youths, Daniel and their encounters with the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (OE Nabuchodnossor).

Daniel is called aethele cnithas, meaning that he was to be trained a servant for the king.

Then the poem mentions that Israel was conquered for worshiping idols and putting too much faith in man as opposed to God.

Daniel is briefly mentioned in the first hundred lines of the poem, but he shows up to interpret God’s signs to Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel soon got to show off his great wisdom because he succeeded when all the other magicians in the kingdom had failed.

The poem then talks about the three youths being thrown into the “fiery furnace” for not being subservient and worshiping the Babylonian gods.

So God punishes him for his wickedness and castes him into exile for a while, but when he comes back he hasn’t changed his ways.

Yet another piece of evidence that Daniel B seems to be an addition to the original poem lies in the general content of early Old English Christian poetry.

These differences and many others are thought to indicate that the unknown author of Daniel was not simply paraphrasing the Biblical book, but was in fact original in his composition.

However, the poem’s focus diverges from that of the Bible in an attempt to state a more distinctive message about pride.

In conclusion, Daniel is not just a poetic form of the Biblical book, but rather part of the same story with a different perspective.