Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/557

 be perceived for a subsequent division of the historical work in question into three separate books, on account of its reception into the canon. The contents, too, and the form of this book, present us with nothing incompatible either with its single authorship or independence. The use of the Chaldee tongue for the official documents of the Persian kings and their subordinates cannot surprise us, this being the official language in the provinces of the Persian empire west of the Euphrates, and as current with the returning Jews as their Hebrew mother tongue. It is true that the use of the Chaldee language is not in this book confined merely to official documents, but continued, Ezr 4:8-22, in the narrative of the building of the temple down to the dedication of the rebuilt temple, 4:23-6:18; and that the Hebrew is not employed again till from Ezr 6:19 to the conclusion of the book, with the exception of Ezr 7:12-26, where the commission given by Artaxerxes to Ezra is inserted in the Chaldee original. We also meet, however, with the two languages in the book of Daniel, Dan 2, where the Magi are introduced, Dan 2:4, as answering the king in Aramaic, and where not only their conversation with the monarch, but also the whole course of the event, is given in this dialect, which is again used Dan 3-7. Hence it has been attempted to account for the use of the Chaldee in the narrative portions of the book of Ezra, by the assertion that the historian, after quoting Chaldee documents, found it convenient to use this language in the narrative combined therewith, and especially because during its course he had to communicate other Chaldee documents (Ezr 5:6-17 and Ezr 6:3-12) in the original. But this explanation is not sufficient to solve the problem. Both here and in the book of Daniel, the use of the two languages has a really deeper reason; see Dan 2:14.. With respect to the book in question, this view is, moreover, insufficient; because, in the first place, the use of the Chaldee tongue does not begin with the communication of the Chaldee documents (Dan 4:11), but is used, Dan 2:8, in the paragraph which introduces them. And then, too, the narrator of the