Frederic Farrar - The Expositor's Bible - The Book of Daniel

XI. When we reach the fifth chapter, we are faced by a new king, Belshazzar, who is somewhat emphatically called the son of Nebuchadrezzar. 120 120 Dan. v. 11. The emphasis seems to show that "son" is really meant – not grandson. This is a little strange, for Jeremiah (xxvii. 7) had said that the nations should serve Nebuchadrezzar, "and his son, and his son's son "; and in no case was Belshazzar Nebuchadrezzar's son's son , for his father Nabunaid was an usurping son of a Rab-mag.

History knows of no such king. 121 121 Schrader, p. 434 ff.; and in Riehm, Handwörterb. , ii. 163; Pinches, in Smith's Bibl. Dict. , i. 388, 2nd edn. The contraction into Belshazzar from Bel-sar-utsur seems to show a late date. The prince of whom it does know was never king, and was a son, not of Nebuchadrezzar, but of the usurper Nabunaid; and between Nebuchadrezzar and Nabunaid there were three other kings. 122 122 That the author of Daniel should have fallen into these errors is the more remarkable because Evil-merodach is mentioned in 2 Kings xxv. 27; and Jeremiah in his round number of seventy years includes three generations (Jer. xxvii. 7). Herodotus and Abydenus made the same mistake. See Kamphausen, pp. 30, 31.

There was a Belshazzar — Bel-sar-utsur , "Bel protect the prince" – and we possess a clay cylinder of his father Nabunaid, the last king of Babylon, praying the moon-god that "my son, the offspring of my heart, might honour his godhead, and not give himself to sin." 123 123 Herod., i. 191. See Rawlinson, Herod. , i. 434. But if we follow Herodotus, this Belshazzar never came to the throne; and according to Berossus he was conquered in Borsippa. Xenophon, indeed, speaks of "an impious king" as being slain in Babylon; but this is only in an avowed romance which has not the smallest historic validity. 124 124 Xen., Cyrop. , VII. v. 3. Schrader conjectures that Nabunaid may have gone to take the field against Cyrus (who conquered and pardoned him, and allowed him to end his days as governor of Karamania), and that Belshazzar may have been killed in Babylon. These are mere hypotheses; as are those of Josephus, 125 125 Antt. , X. xi. 2. In c. Ap. , I. 20, he calls him Nabonnedus. who identifies Belshazzar with Nabunaid (whom he calls Naboandelon); and of Babelon, who tries to make him the same as Maruduk-shar-utsur (as though Bel was the same as Maruduk), which is impossible, as this king reigned before Nabunaid. No contemporary writer could have fallen into the error either of calling Belshazzar "king"; or of insisting on his being "the son" of Nebuchadrezzar; 126 126 This is now supposed to mean "grandson by marriage," by inventing the hypothesis that Nabunaid married a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar. But this does not accord with Dan. v. 2, 11, 22; and so in Baruch i. 11, 12. or of representing him as Nebuchadrezzar's successor. Nebuchadrezzar was succeeded by —

Примечание 1 127 127 2 Kings xxv. 27.

Nabunaid reigned till about b. c. 538, when Babylon was taken by Cyrus.

The conduct of Belshazzar in the great feast of this chapter is probably meant as an allusive contrast to the revels and impieties of Antiochus Epiphanes, especially in his infamous festival at the grove of Daphne.

XII. "That night," we are told, "Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was slain." It has always been supposed that this was an incident of the capture of Babylon by assault, in accordance with the story of Herodotus, repeated by so many subsequent writers. But on this point the inscriptions of Cyrus have revolutionised our knowledge. " There was no siege and capture of Babylon ; the capital of the Babylonian Empire opened its gates to the general of Cyrus. Gobryas and his soldiers entered the city without fighting, and the daily services in the great temple of Bel-merodach suffered no interruption. Three months later Cyrus himself arrived, and made his peaceful entry into the new capital of his empire. We gather from the contract-tablets that even the ordinary business of the place had not been affected by the war. The siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus is really a reflection into the past of the actual sieges undergone by the city in the reigns of Darius, son of Hystaspes and Xerxes . It is clear, then, that the editor of the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel could have been as little a contemporary of the events he professes to record as Herodotus. For both alike, the true history of the Babylonian Empire has been overclouded and foreshortened by the lapse of time. The three kings who reigned between Nebuchadrezzar and Nabunaid have been forgotten, and the last king of the Babylonian Empire has become the son of its founder." 128 128 Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments , p. 527.

Snatching at the merest straws, those who try to vindicate the accuracy of the writer – although he makes Belshazzar a king, which he never was; and the son of Nebuchadrezzar, which is not the case; or his grandson, of which there is no tittle of evidence; and his successor, whereas four kings intervened; – think that they improve the case by urging that Daniel was made "the third ruler in the kingdom" – Nabunaid being the first, and Belshazzar being the second! Unhappily for their very precarious hypothesis, the translation "third ruler" appears to be entirely untenable. It means "one of a board of three."

XIII. In the sixth chapter we are again met by difficulty after difficulty.

Who, for instance, was Darius the Mede? We are told (v. 30, 31) that, on the night of his impious banquet, "Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans" was slain, "and Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old." We are also told that Daniel "prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian" (vi. 28). But this Darius is not even noticed elsewhere. Cyrus was the conqueror of Babylon, and between b. c. 538-536 there is no room or possibility for a Median ruler.

The inference which we should naturally draw from these statements in the Book of Daniel, and which all readers have drawn, was that Babylon had been conquered by the Medes, and that only after the death of a Median king did Cyrus the Persian succeed.

But historic monuments and records entirely overthrow this supposition. Cyrus was the king of Babylon from the day that his troops entered it without a blow. He had conquered the Medes and suppressed their royalty. "The numerous contract-tables of the ordinary daily business transactions of Babylon, dated as they are month by month, and almost day by day from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar to that of Xerxes, prove that between Nabonidus and Cyrus there was no intermediate ruler ." The contemporary scribes and merchants of Babylon knew nothing of any King Belshazzar, and they knew even less of any King Darius the Mede. No contemporary writer could possibly have fallen into such an error. 129 129 I need not enter here upon the confusion of the Manda with the Medes, on which see Sayce, Higher Criticism and Monuments , p. 519 ff.

And against this obvious conclusion, of what possible avail is it for Hengstenberg to quote a late Greek lexicographer ( Harpocration , a. d. 170?), who says that the coin "a daric" was named after a Darius earlier than the father of Xerxes? – or for others to identify this shadowy Darius the Mede with Astyages? 130 130 Winer, Realwörterb. , s. v. "Darius." – or with Cyaxares II. in the romance of Xenophon? 131 131 So Bertholdt, Von Lengerke, Auberlen. It is decidedly rejected by Schrader (Riehm, Handwörterb. , i. 259). Even Cicero said, "Cyrus ille a Xenophonte non ad historiæ fidem scriptus est" ( Ad Quint. Fratr. , Ep. i. 3). Niebuhr called the Cyropædia "einen elenden und läppischen Roman" ( Alt. Gesch. , i. 116). He classes it with Télémaque or Rasselas . Xenophon was probably the ultimate authority for the statement of Josephus ( Antt. , X. xi. 4), which has no weight. Herodotus and Ktesias know nothing of the existence of any Cyaxares II., nor does the Second Isaiah (xlv.), who evidently contemplates Cyrus as the conqueror and the first king of Babylon. Are we to set a professed romancer like Xenophon, and a late compiler like Josephus, against these authorities? – or to say that Darius the Mede is Gobryas (Ugbaru) of Gutium 132 132 T. W. Pinches, in Smith's Bibl. Dict. , i. 716, 2nd edn. Into this theory are pressed the general expressions that Darius "received the kingdom" and was "made king," which have not the least bearing on it. They may simply mean that he became king by conquest, and not in the ordinary course – so Rosenmüller, Hitzig, Von Lengerke, etc.; or perhaps the words show some sense of uncertainty as to the exact course of events. The sequence of Persian kings in Seder Olam , 28-30, and in Rashi on Dan. v. 1, ix. 1, is equally unhistorical. – a Persian, and not a king at all – who under no circumstances could have been called "the king" by a contemporary (vi. 12, ix. 1), and whom, apparently for three months only, Cyrus made governor of Babylon? How could a contemporary governor have appointed "one hundred and twenty princes which should be over the whole kingdom," 133 133 This is supported by the remark that this three-months viceroy "appointed governors in Babylon"! when, even in the days of Darius Hystaspis, there were only twenty or twenty-three satrapies in the Persian Empire? 134 134 Herod., iii. 89; Records of the Past , viii. 88. And how could a mere provincial viceroy be approached by " all the presidents of the kingdom , the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains," to pass a decree that any one who for thirty days offered any prayer to God or man, except to him, should be cast into the den of lions? The fact that such a decree could only be made by a king is emphasised in the narrative itself (vi. 12: comp. iii. 29). The supposed analogies offered by Professor Fuller and others in favour of a decree so absurdly impossible – except in the admitted licence and for the high moral purpose of a Jewish Haggada – are to the last degree futile. In any ordinary criticism they would be set down as idle special pleading. Yet this is only one of a multitude of wildly improbable incidents, which, from misunderstanding of the writer's age and purpose, have been taken for sober history, though they receive from historical records and monuments no shadow of confirmation, and are in not a few instances directly opposed to all that we now know to be certain history. Even if it were conceivable that this hypothetic "Darius the Mede" was Gobryas, or Astyages, or Cyaxares, it is plain that the author of Daniel gives him a name and national designation which lead to mere confusion, and speaks of him in a way which would have been surely avoided by any contemporary.