Interesting information boot- I suppose I lean towards the teachers I've always been under who comment that it seems to be a pre-incarnate Son of God- I don't know if later writings or translations then offer other possibilities. St. Hippolytus was 2nd/3rd century and G. Salmon suggests that Hippolytus was the leader of the Greek-speaking Christians of Rome. Of course they didn't have other translations then- however- I'm curious- do you think that Jesus would have explained these Theophanies to His Apostles when He was with them? I realize this would be an opinion but when you read writings of the early Church writers/fathers- I don't get the impression that they are guessing at when these appearances in the OT are the pre-incarnate Christ- it is as if they know, not guess. There are times when they distinguish 'opinions' from that in other areas-Bootstrap wrote:Daniel 3:25 is interesting, and I'm not confident that I know the right answer here. The Septuagint Greek differs from the Aramaic here. Since I cannot read Aramaic well enough to have an opinion, here are two opinions from sources I generally trust.
Net Notes
This agrees with the older but still respected Keil and Delitzsch:The phrase like that of a god is in Aramaic “like that of a son of the gods.” Many patristic writers understood this phrase in a christological sense (i.e., “the Son of God”). But it should be remembered that these are words spoken by a pagan who is seeking to explain things from his own polytheistic frame of reference; for him the phrase “like a son of the gods” is equivalent to “like a divine being.” Despite the king’s description though, the fourth person is likely an angel or theophany who had come to deliver the three men.
The Septuagint is complicated here because there are actually two complete Greek texts for Daniel, and they are significantly different. You can see a good English translation of both texts side by side here. The translation on the right says "and the appearance of the fourth is like a divine son" (καὶ ἡ ὅρασις τοῦ τετάρτου ὁμοία υἱῷ Θεοῦ), which could also be translated "like a son of a god" or "like a son of God".The fourth whom Nebuchadnezzar saw in the furnace was like in his appearance, i.e., as commanding veneration, to a son of the gods, i.e., to one of the race of the gods. In Daniel 3:28 the same personage is called an angel of God, Nebuchadnezzar there following the religious conceptions of the Jews, in consequence of the conversation which no doubt he had with the three who were saved. Here, on the other hand, he speaks in the spirit and meaning of the Babylonian doctrine of the gods, according to the theogonic representation of the συζυγία of the gods peculiar to all Oriental religions, whose existence among the Babylonians the female divinity Mylitta associated with Bel places beyond a doubt; cf. Hgst. Beitr. i. p. 159, and Häv., Kran., and Klief. in loc.
The translation on the left says "and the appearance of the fourth is the likeness of a divine angel". I don't have the Greek text that it corresponds to handy, but there may be other legitimate translations for that.
So ... this is one of those texts where I wouldn't wager my faith on any one of these interpretations. I'd look for applications that are not dependent on which one is right. And the range of possible readings is one more reason that I'm convinced my understanding of God is incomplete.
But back to the OP- if these pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus were the case for example when from what I have read like when He appeared with 2 other angels at the oak of Mamre when speaking with Abraham before the destruction of Sodom & Gommorah - a careful reading of Genesis 18 reveals a visible "Lord" as one of the 3 men is called- and He also ate food as lesterb brought up in the beginning about Jesus- so even in His pre-incarnate body, which Gen 18 conveys Him & the other 2 angels appeared like men, we know that the Lord spoken of here is not God the Father, but God the Son- who ate, who slept, etc-
I realize you are okay with your understanding being imcomplete because you're not sure who's teaching you believe the most. For me, I do believe the early Church writers because I think that Jesus opened up the Scriptures to the Apostles about His pre-incarnate life- because when know He was with the Father from the beginning- and these teachings are what preserved the Faith & they would use when coming up against heresy- for example- this subject is one of the ways people know that the teachings of the Jehovah Witnesses is considered heresy-their Christology-