Daniel 7

       1 "In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters."

       2 "Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.  3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another."

       4 "The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings; I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.'

       5 "And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it; and they said unto it, Arise, devour much flesh."

       6 "After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given  to it.'

     7 "After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it: and it had ten horns."     

Whether or not you wish to join the modern critics who wish to date the entire book of Daniel to the time of the Maccabees or later (167 BC or later), let's give the even later Essene editors their due.   They realized that if the beasts of Daniel 7 were to indicate the same kingdoms and time periods of the vision of the multi-metal image of chapter 2, that to be "prophetic" the lion must be seen while Babylon still ruled the world.  SO, Daniel had this dream during the reign of Belshazzar!

     Most, but not all, interpret the beasts of Daniel 7 to parallel the metal parts of the great image of Daniel 2, which parallelism is shown by this illustration below.