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

Meinhold, Beiträge , pp. 30-32; Driver, p. 470.

Speaker's Commentary , vi. 246-250.

New Series, iii. 124.

E.g. , הדם, "limb"; רז, "secret"; פתגם, "message." There are no Persian words in Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, or Malachi; they are found in Ezra and Esther, which were written long after the establishment of the Persian Empire.

The change of n for l is not uncommon: comp. βέντιον, φίντατος, etc.

The word שָׂבֽכָא, Sab'ka , also bears a suspicious resemblance to σαμβύκη, but Athenæus says ( Deipnos. , iv. 173) that the instrument was invented by the Syrians. Some have seen in kārôz (iii. 4, "herald") the Greek κήρυξ, and in hamnîk , "chain," the Greek μανιάκης: but these cannot be pressed.

It is true that there was some small intercourse between even the Assyrians and Ionians (Ja-am-na-a) as far back as the days of Sargon (b. c. 722-705); but not enough to account for such words.

Sayce, Contemp. Rev. , December 1878.

Some argue that in this passage συμφωνία means "a concert" (comp. Luke xv. 25); but Polybius mentions it with "a horn" (κεράτιον). Behrmann (p. ix) connects it with σίφων, and makes it mean "a pipe."

Pusey says all he can on the other side (pp. 23-28), and has not changed the opinion of scholars (pp. 27-33). Fabre d'Envieu (i. 101) also desperately denies the existence of any Greek words. On the other side see Derenbourg, Les Mots grecs dans le Livre biblique de Daniel (Mélanges Graux, 1884).

Orient. u. Exeg. Bibliothek , 1772, p. 141. This view was revived by Lagarde in the Göttingen Gel. Anzeigen , 1891.

Daniel neu Übersetz. u. Erklärt. , 1808; Köhler, Lehrbuch , ii. 577. The first who suspected the unity of the Book because of the two languages was Spinoza ( Tract-historicopol , x. 130 ff.). Newton ( Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse , i. 10) and Beausobre ( Remarques sur le Nouv. Test. , i. 70) shared the doubt because of the use of the first person in the prophetic (Dan. vii. – xii.) and the third in the historic section (Dan. i. – vi.). Michaelis, Bertholdt, and Reuss considered that its origin was fragmentary; and Lagarde (who dated the seventh chapter a. d. 69) calls it "a bundle of flyleaves." Meinhold and Strack, like Eichhorn, regard the historic section as older than the prophetic; and Cornill thinks that the Book was put together in great haste. Similarly, Graf ( Der Prophet Jeremia ) regards the Aramaic verse, Jer. x. 11, as a marginal gloss. Lagarde argues, from the silence of Josephus about many points, that he could not have had the present Book of Daniel before him ( e. g. , Dan. vii. or ix. – xii.); but the argument is unsafe. Josephus seems to have understood the Fourth Empire to be the Roman, and did not venture to write of its destruction. For this reason he does not explain "the stone" of Dan. ii. 45.

By De Wette, Schrader, Hitzig, Ewald, Gesenius, Bleek, Delitzsch, Von Lengerke, Stähelin, Kamphausen, Wellhausen, etc. Reuss, however, says ( Heil. Schrift. , p. 575), "Man könnte auf die Vorstellung kommen das Buch habe mehr als einen Verfasser"; and König thinks that the original form of the book may have ended with chap. vii. ( Einleit. , § 384).

Beiträge , 1888. See too Kranichfeld, Das Buch Daniel , p. 4. The view is refuted by Budde, Theol. Lit. Zeitung , 1888, No. 26. The conjecture has often occurred to critics. Thus Sir Isaac Newton, believing that Daniel wrote the last six chapters, thought that the six first "are a collection of historical papers written by others" ( Observations , i. 10).

Einleit. , p. 6.

Other critics who incline to one or other modification of this view of the two Daniels are Tholuck, d. A.T. in N.T. , 1872; C. v. Orelli, Alttest. Weissag. , 1882; and Strack.

Hengstenberg also points to verbal resemblances between ii. 44 and vii. 14; iv. 5 and vii. 1; ii. 31 and vii. 2; ii. 38 and vii. 17, etc. ( Genuineness of Daniel , E. Tr., pp. 186 ff.).

A Short Commentary , p. 8.

Acts xvii. 26, 27.

See Hitzig, p. xii; Auberlen, p. 41.

Reuss says too severely, "Die Schilderungen aller dieser Vorgänge machen keinen gewinnenden Eindruck… Der Stil ist unbeholfen, die Figuren grotesk, die Farben grell." He admits, however, the suitableness of the Book for the Maccabean epoch, and the deep impression it made ( Heil. Schrift. A. T. , p. 571).

See iii. 2, 3, 5, 7; viii. 1, 10, 19; xi. 15, 22, 31, etc.

Exod. xv. 20; Judg. iv. 4.

1 Sam. x. 5; 1 Chron. xxv. 1, 2, 3.

2 Kings iii. 15.

Jer. xxix. 26; 1 Sam. xviii. 10, xix. 21-24.

2 Kings ix. 11. See Expositor's Bible, Second Book of Kings , p. 113.

On this subject see Ewald, Proph. d. A. Bundes , i. 6; Novalis, Schriften , ii. 472; Herder, Geist der Ebr. Poesie , ii. 61; Knobel, Prophetismus , i. 103. Even the Latin poets were called prophetæ , "bards" (Varro, De Ling. Lat. , vi. 3). Epimenides is called "a prophet" in Tit. i. 12. See Plato, Tim. , 72, a.; Phædr. , 262, d.; Pind., Fr. , 118; and comp. Eph. iii. 5, iv. 11.

Dan. ix. 6, 10. So conscious was the Maccabean age of the absence of prophets, that, just as after the Captivity a question is postponed "till there should arise a priest with the Urim and Thummin," so Judas postponed the decision about the stones of the desecrated altar "until there should come a prophet to show what should be done with them" (1 Macc. iv. 45, 46, ix. 27, xiv. 41). Comp. Song of the Three Children, 15; Psalm lxxiv. 9; Sota , f. 48, 2. See infra , Introd., chap. viii.

Dan. ix. 2, hassepharîm , τὰ βίβλια.

Ewald, Proph. d. A. B. , p. 10. Judas Maccabæus is also said to have "restored" (ἐπισυνήγαγε) the lost (διαπεπτωκότα) sacred writings (2 Macc. ii. 14).

Smith's Dict. of the Bible , i. 501. The daily lesson from the Prophets was called the Haphtarah (Hamburger, Real-Encycl. , ii. 334).

On this subject see Kuenen, The Prophets , iii. 95 ff.; Davison, On Prophecy , pp. 34-67; Herder, Hebr. Poesie , ii. 64; De Wette, Christl. Sittenlehre , ii. 1.

Joël, Notizen , p. 7.

Thus Dr. Pusey says: "The Book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battle-field between faith and unbelief . It admits of no half-measures. It is either Divine or an imposture. To write any book under the name of another, and to give it out to be his, is, in any case, a forgery dishonest in itself, and destructive of all trustworthiness. But the case of the Book of Daniel, if it were not his, would go far beyond even this. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a frightful scale. In a word, the whole Book would be one lie in the Name of God." Few would venture to use such language in these days. It is always a perilous style to adopt, but now it has become suicidal. It is founded on an immense and inexcusable anachronism. It avails itself of an utterly false misuse of the words "faith" and "unbelief," by which "faith" becomes a mere synonym for "that which I esteem orthodox," or that which has been the current opinion in ages of ignorance. Much truer faith may be shown by accepting arguments founded on unbiassed evidence than by rejecting them. And what can be more foolish than to base the great truths of the Christian religion on special pleadings which have now come to wear the aspect of ingenious sophistries, such as would not be allowed to have the smallest validity in any ordinary question of literary or historic evidence? Hengstenberg, like Pusey, says in his violent ecclesiastical tone of autocratic infallibility that the interpretation of the Book by most eminent modern critics "will remain false so long as the word of Christ is true – that is, for ever." This is to make "the word of Christ" the equivalent of a mere theological blindness and prejudice! Assertions which are utterly baseless can only be met by assertions based on science and the love of truth. Thus when Rupprecht says that "the modern criticism of the Book of Daniel is unchristian, immoral, and unscientific," we can only reply with disdain, Novimus istas ληκύθους. In the present day they are mere bluster of impotent odium theologicum .