A great stone, not cut by human hands, fell on the feet of the statue and destroyed it, and the rock became a mountain that filled the whole world.

[6] Modern scholars agree that Daniel is a legendary figure;[7] it is possible that this name was chosen for the hero of the book because of his reputation as a wise seer in Hebrew tradition.

[13] The Book of Daniel is an apocalypse, a literary genre in which a heavenly reality is revealed to a human recipient; such works are characterized by visions, symbolism, an other-worldly mediator, an emphasis on cosmic events, angels and demons, and pseudonymity (false authorship).

[15] Daniel, the book's hero, is a representative apocalyptic seer, the recipient of the divine revelation: has learned the wisdom of the Babylonian magicians and surpassed them, because his God is the true source of knowledge; he is one of the maskil, the wise, whose task is to teach righteousness.

[15] The book is also an eschatology, meaning a divine revelation concerning the end of the present age, a moment in which God will intervene in history to usher in the final kingdom.

[16] Daniel 2 exhibits both these genres, but it is also made up numerous subgenres: a court tale, a dream report, a legend, an aretalogy, a doxology, and a midrash.

[21] Giant figures were frequent in ancient dream records, and parallels can be drawn from Greek (Hesiod's Works and Days), Latin (Ovid's Metamorphosis) and the Persian Bahman Yasht.

[23] Daniel 2:20–23 emphasizes the Divine as a repository of wisdom and the controller of the destiny of kings; such hymns and prayers are typical of postexilic biblical narratives.

[25] Most modern scholars agree that the four world empires symbolised by the statue are Babylon (the head), the Medes (arms and shoulders), Persia (thighs and legs) and Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt (the feet).

[28] Verses 41b-43 give three different interpretations of the meaning of the mixture of iron and clay in the statue's feet, as a "divided kingdom," then as "strong and brittle," and finally as a dynastic marriage.