Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/829

 —The Book of Daniel stands between Ezra and Esther in the third great division of the Hebrew Bible known as the Hagiographa, in which are classed all works which were not regarded as being part of the Law or the Prophets. The book presents the unusual peculiarity of being written in two languages, i.–ii. 4 and viii.–xii. being in Hebrew, while the text of ii. 4–vii. is the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic. The subject matter, however, falls naturally into two divisions which are not co-terminous with the linguistic sections; viz. i.–vi. and vii.–xii. The first of these sense-divisions deals only with narratives regarding the reign of Nebuchadrezzar and his supposed son Belshazzar, while the second section consists exclusively of apocalyptic prophecies. There can be no doubt that a definite plan was followed in the arrangement of the work. The author’s object was clearly to demonstrate to his readers the necessity of faith in Israel’s God, who shall not for ever allow his chosen ones to be ground under the heel of a ruthless heathen oppressor. To illustrate this, he makes use on the one hand (i.–vi.) of carefully chosen narratives, somewhat loosely connected it is true, but all treating substantially the same subject,—the physical triumph of God’s servant over his unbelieving enemies; and on the other hand (vii.–xii.), he introduces certain prophetic visions illustrative of God’s favour towards the same servant, Daniel. So carefully is this record of the visions arranged that the first two chapters of the second part of the book (vii.–viii.) were no doubt purposely made to appear in a symbolic form, in order that in the last two revelations (xi.–xii.), which were couched in such direct language as to be intelligible even to the modern student of history, the author might obtain the effect of a climax. The book is probably not therefore a number of parts of different origin thrown loosely together by a careless editor, who does not deserve the title of author. The more or less disconnected sections of the first part of the work were probably so arranged purposely, in order to facilitate its diffusion at a time when books were known to the people at large chiefly by being read aloud in public.

Various attempts have been made to explain the sudden change from Hebrew to Aramaic in ii. 4. It was long thought, for example, that Aramaic was the vernacular of Babylonia and was consequently employed as the language of the parts relating to that country. But this was not the case, because the Babylonian language survived until a later date than that of the events portrayed in Daniel. Nor is it possible to follow the theory of Merx, that Aramaic, which was the popular tongue of the day when the Book of Daniel was written, was therefore used for the simpler narrative style, while the more learned Hebrew was made the idiom of the philosophical portions. The first chapter, which is just as much in the narrative style as are the following Aramaic sections, is in Hebrew, while the distinctly apocalyptic chapter vii. is in Aramaic. A third view, that the bilingual character of the work points to a time when both languages were used indifferently, is equally unsatisfactory, because it is highly questionable whether two idioms can ever be used quite indifferently. In fact, a hybrid work in two languages would be a literary monstrosity. In view of the apparent unity of the entire work, the only possible explanation seems to be that the book was written at first all in Hebrew, but for the convenience of the general reader whose vernacular was Aramaic, a translation, possibly from the same pen as the original, was made into Aramaic. It must be supposed then that, certain parts of the original Hebrew manuscript being lost, the missing places were supplied from the current Aramaic translation.

It cannot be denied in the light of modern historical research that if the Book of Daniel be regarded as pretending to full historical authority, the biblical record is open to all manner of attack. It is now the general opinion of most modern scholars who study the Old Testament from a critical point of view that this work cannot possibly have originated, according to the traditional theory, at any time during the Babylonian monarchy, when the events recorded are supposed to have taken place.

The chief reasons for such a conclusion are as follows.

1. The position of the book among the Hagiographa, instead of among the Prophetical works, seems to show that it was introduced after the closing of the Prophetical Canon. Some commentators have believed that Daniel was not an actual prophet in the proper sense, but only a seer, or else that he had no official standing as a prophet and that therefore the book was not entitled to a place among official prophetical books. But if the work had really been in existence at the time of the completion of the second part of the canon, the collectors of the prophetical writings, who in their care did not neglect even the parable of Jonah, would hardly have ignored the record of so great a prophet as Daniel is represented to have been.

2. Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), who wrote about 200–180 , in his otherwise complete list of Israel’s leading spirits (xlix.), makes no mention of Daniel. Hengstenberg’s plea that Ezra and Mordecai were also left unmentioned has little force, because Ezra appears in the book bearing his name as nothing more than a prominent priest and scholar, while Daniel is represented as a great prophet.

3. Had the Book of Daniel been extant and generally known after the time of Cyrus (537–529 ), it would be natural to look for some traces of its power among the writings of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, whose works, however, show no evidence that either the name or the history of Daniel was known to these authors. Furthermore, the manner in which the prophets are looked back upon in ix. 6-10 cannot fail to suggest an extremely late origin for the book. Besides this, a careful study of ix. 2 seems to indicate that the Prophetical Canon was definitely completed at the time when the author of Daniel wrote. It is also highly probable that much of the material in the second part of the book was suggested by the works of the later prophets, especially by Ezekiel and Zechariah.

4. Some of the beliefs set forth in the second part of the book also practically preclude the possibility of the author having lived at the courts of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors. Most noticeable among these doctrines is the complete system of angelology consistently followed out in the Book of Daniel, according to which the management of human affairs is entrusted to a regular hierarchy of commanding angels, two of whom, Gabriel and Michael, are even mentioned by name. Such an idea was distinctly foreign to the primitive Israelitish conception of the indivisibility of Yahweh’s power, and must consequently have been a borrowed one. It could certainly not have come from the Babylonians, however, whose system of attendant spirits was far from being so complete as that which is set forth in the Book of Daniel, but rather from Persian sources where a more complicated angelology had been developed. As many commentators have brought out, there can be little doubt that the doctrine of angels in Daniel is an indication of prolonged Persian influence. Furthermore, it is now very generally admitted that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which is advanced for the first time in the Old Testament in Daniel, also originated among the Persians, and could only have been engrafted on the Jewish mind after a long period of intercourse with the Zoroastrian religion, which came into contact with the Jewish thinkers considerably after the time of Nebuchadrezzar.