How much of the book of Daniel was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls & what is
the agreed dating for it? What is the latest it has been dated? The reason
I am asking is to know of the earliest proven evidence for Daniel,
relative to the date of his 2 prophecies in the first century, relating to
the death of Jesus (‘seventy sevens’ prophecy) & to Domitian’s persecution
of the Church (the eleventh horn)? Does the dating of the copy from the
Dead Sea Scrolls prove conclusively that these prophecies were written
before they were fulfilled?

That is a good question. In my book on Daniel, I do not deal
with the specific Dead Sea Scroll evidence for Daniel. There is an
excellent article at the web site on this which is found at
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qwhendan3a.html or click on: Date
of Daniel Let me give you a synopsis. The answer is that we have both
Daniel manuscripts and quotes of Qumran authors from Daniel, labeling it
as scripture, from the second half of the second century BCE in the Dead
Sea Scrolls. There are a total of eight known manuscript fragments from
Daniel so far in the Dead Sea Scrolls, including fragments from every
chapter except Daniel 12. Besides, a passage from Daniel 12 is quoted by
an author in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. From this information we can
say that the book of Daniel was definitely accepted as inspired and
canonical by about 150 BCE or so, making the claim that it was written by
a fake Daniel around 160 BCE seem impossible to support by credible
argument. The likelihood that a pseudepigraphical (ie an autobiography by
a fake author) Daniel would have been circulated and accepted by the Jews
as a whole as scripture within ten or so years is essentially zero. In
fact, the Dead Sea MSS evidence argues for a date of writing at least
before 250 BCE, and most likely one hundred years before that date. A
summary of the Daniel DSS manuscripts is found in the table below, taken
from an article by Flint

[HI:DSS50B:53]:

Item

Manuscript

Number

Content Range

Date Copied

1

1QDan(a)

1Q71

1:10 to 2:6

Herodian

2

1QDan(b)

1Q72

3:22-30

Herodian

3

4QDan(a)

4Q112

1:16 to 11:16

Mid-1st c. BCE

4

4QDan(b)

4Q113

5:10 to 8:16

Ca. 20-50 CE

5

4QDan(c)

4Q114

10:5 to 11:29

Late 2nd c. BCE (note: Ulrich, DJD 16)

6

4QDan(d)

4Q115

3:23 to 7:23?

Ca. mid-1st c. BCE

7

4QDan(e)

4Q116

9:12-17?

1st half of 2nd c. BCE (but this is presumably a typo; it is dated
elsewhere to Late 2nd c.)

8

Pap6QDan

6Q7

8:16? To 11:38

Ca. 50 CE

To give you an idea of how biased liberal scholars are when they assume a
date of post 165 BCE for the writing of Daniel, consider the quote below:

“We need to assume that the vision [of Daniel 8] as a wholeis a prophecy
after the fact. Why? Because human beings are unable accurately to predict
future events centuries in advance and to say that Daniel could do so,
even on the basic of a symbolic revelation vouchsafed to him by God and
interpreted by an angel, is to fly in the face of the certainties of human
nature. So what we have here is in fact not a road map of the future laid
down in the sixth century B.C. but an interpretation of the events of the
author’s own time, 167-164 B.C…” [Towner, Daniel,Interpeter’s Bible,
John Knox:1984, p. 115, cited in [DLIOT:332]]

The evidence is that those who reach the conclusion that Daniel was
written around 165-160 BCE do so because they assume this is true, not
because the evidence supports the conclusion.

John Oakes