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 DANIEL

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DANIEL

pressors, however miglity or numerous, are ultimately punished or made to acknowledge and promote the glorj' of the (iod of Israel. This apocalyptic object of the Book of Daniel is admitted by most scholars of the present day, and is in harmony with the place assigned to that sacred writing in the Hebrew Bible, where it appears not among "the Prophets", or second great division of the original text, but among "the Writ- ings", or third main division of that text.

As apocalyptic writings usually bear the impre.ss of compilation, one might not imnaturally be tempted to regard the Book of Daniel — whose apocalyptic character has just been described — as a compilatory work. In fact, many scholars of the last century — some of whom were C'atholic — have set forth positive grounds to prove that the author of the book has ac- tually put together such documents as could make for his general purpose. At the present day, however, the opposite view, which maintains the literary unity of the Prophecy of Daniel, is practically universal. It is felt that the uniform plan of the book, the studied arrangement of its subject-matter, the strong simi- larity in language of its two main parts, etc. are ar- guments which tell verj' powerfully in favour of the latter position.

(.3) Authorship and Date of Composition. — Once it is admitted that the Book of Daniel is the work of one single author, there naturally arises the important question: Is this .sole writer the Prophet Daniel who composed the work during the E.xile (586-5.30 B. c), or, on the contrary, some author, now imknown, who wrote this inspired book at a later date, which can still be made out? The traditional view, in vigour chiefly among Catholics, is to the effect that the whole work, as found in the Hebrew Bible, should be directly referred to Daniel, whose name it bears. It admits, indeed, that numerous alterations have been intro- duced into the primitive text of the book in the course of ages. It maintains, ne\'ertheless, that both the narratives (chaps, i-vi) wherein Daniel seems to be described by some one else as acting as recorded, and the symbolic visions (chaps, vii-xii) wherein he de- scribes himself as favoured with heavenly revelations, were written, not simply by an author who was con- temporary with that prophet and lived in Babylon in the sixth century B. c, but by Daniel himself. Such difference in the u.se of persons is regarded as arising naturally from the respective contents of the two jjarts of the book: Daniel employed the third person in recording events, for the event is its own witness; and the first person in relating prophetical visions, for such comraimications from above need the per- sonal attestation of those to whom they are imparted. Over against this time-honoured position which ascribes to Daniel the authorship of the book which bears his name, and admits 570-536 B. c. as its date of composition, stands a comparatively recent theorj' which has been widely accepted by contemporary scholars. Chiefly on the basis of historical and lin- guistic grovmds, this rival theory refers the origin of the Book of Daniel, in its present form, to a later writer and period. It regards that apocalj-ptic writ- ing as the work of an unknown author who composed it during the period of the Machabees, and more pre- cisely in the time of Antiochus IV, Epiphanes (175- 1G4 B. c).

The following are the extrinsic testimonies which conservative schohirs usually and confidently set forth as proving that the Book of Daniel must be re- ferred to the well-known Prophet of that name and con.sequently to a nnich earlier date tlian that advo- cated by their opponents. Chri.stian tradition, both in tlie Ea.st and in the West, ha.s been practically luianinious from Christ's time to the present day in admitting the genuineness of the Book of Daniel. Its testimony is chiefly based on Matthew, xxiv, 15: "\Mien therefore you shall sec the abomination of des-

olation, w-hich was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand", in which passage Christ treats Daniel's visions as true oracles, and expressly names that Prophet as their writer. In so doing, it is argued, Christ endorsed and confirmed by His authority the view which was then received among the Jews, and which regarded Daniel as the author of the book which bears his name. Jewish tradition, both during and before Christ's time, bears also distinct witness to the genuineness of the Prophecy of Daniel. In his "Antiquities of the Jew^s" (Bk. XI, ch. viii, §5), the learned Jewish priest and Pharisee, Joscphus (about A. D. 40-100), writes: "When the Book of Daniel was shown to Alexander the Great (d. B. c. 323), wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended". Before the Christian Era, the First Book of the Machabees (written very early in the first centurj- b. c.) shows acciuaiiifancc with the Septuagint version of the Prophecy of Daniel (cf. I Mach., i, 54, with Dan., ix, 27; I Mach., ii, 59, 60, with Dan., iii, vi), whence it is inferred (1) that at that date the Book of Daniel must have been for some con- siderable time rendered into Greek; and (2) that its composition must have preceded this translation by some considerable time more, so that its origin under Antiochus Epiphanes is hardly probable. Again, the Sibylline Oracles (Bk. Ill, verses .388 sqq.), supposed to have been written about 170 B. c, contain an allu- sion to Antiochus IV, and to the ten horns of Dan., vii, 7, 24, and therefore point to an earlier date than that which is proposed by the advocates of the recent theory. More particularly still, the Septuagint trans- lation of the Pentateuch, made about 285 b. c, ex- hibits in Deut., x.x-xii, 8, a doctrine of guardian angels which it has apparently borrowed from the Book of Daniel, and thus tends to prove the existence of that inspired writing long before the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Finally, according to Josephus (Contra Apion, VIII), the Old Testament Canon of the Jews of Palestine, which has always included Daniel among "the Writings", was closed by Esdras (middle of the fifth century B. c), that is to say, at a date so near the composition of the book that its genuineness could then be easily ascertained, and would naturally be the reason for the insertion of the work into the Pales- tinian Canon.

To strengthen the inference drawn from these ex- ternal testimonies, conservative scholars appeal to the following direct and indirect intrinsic grounds. Throughout the second part of his book Daniel speaks in the first person and thereby gives himself implicitly as the writer of chapters vii-.xii. Nay more, in the words: "Then he [Daniel] wrote the dream and told the Sinn of the matters", we have a statement which ascribes expressly to him the writing of the first vision (chap, vii) and, implicitly, that of the subsequent visions, which are indissolubly bound up with the opening one. Now, if the visions described in the second part of the book were recorded by Daniel him- self, the same thing must be admitted in regard to narratives which make up the first part of the l)ook (chaps, i-vi), because of the acknowledged unity of the work. And in this way direct intrinsic evidence is considered as making for the Danielic authorship. The indirect intrinsic grovmds point in the same direc- tion, inasmuch as they tend to show that the author of the Book of Daniel was (1) a resident in Babylon; (2) one who wrote in the period to which the Prophet Daniel belonged; and (3) one who is liest identified with that Prophet himself. The first of tliese posi- tions, it is said, is borne out l)y the close ac(|uaintance which the author evinces in the historical portioTi of the work (chaps, i-vi) with the manners, customs, his- tory, religion, etc. of the Babylonians: the minute details he refers to, the local colouring of his descrip-