influences1, they undoubtedly mark a later phase of revelation than that which is set before us in other books of the O.T. And the conclusion to which these special features in the Book point is confirmed by the general atmosphere which breathes in it, and the tone that prevails in it. This atmosphere and tone are not those of any other writings belonging to the period of the Exile: they are those of a stage intermediate between that of the early post-exilic and that of the early post-Biblical Jewish literature.

A number of independent considerations, including some of great cogency, thus combine in favour of the conclusion that the Book of Daniel was not written earlier than c. 300 B.C. And there are certainly grounds, which though they may not be regarded as demonstrative, except on the part of those who deny all predictive prophecy, nevertheless make the opinion a highly probable one, that the Book is a work of the age of Antiochus Epiphanes. The interest of the Book manifestly culminates in the relations subsisting between the Jews and Antiochus. Antiochus, it is admitted on all hands, is the subject of viii. 9—14, 23—25; and, as pointed out on pp. 99 f., there are cogent exegetical reasons for supposing that he is likewise the 'little horn' of vii. 8, 21, 24—26, and that events of his reign are described in ix. 25-27. The survey of Syrian and Egyptian history in ch. xi. leads up to a detailed description of his reign (vv. 21—45o): xii. 6, 7, 10-12 revert again to the persecution which the Jews experienced at his hands. This being so, it is certainly remarkable that the revelations respecting him should be given to Daniel, in Babylon, nearly four centuries previously: it is consonant with God's general methods of providence to raise up teachers, for the instruction or encouragement of His people, at the time when the need arises. It is remarkable also that Daniel-so unlike the prophets generally—should display, as remarked above (p. viii), so little interest in the welfare, or prospects, of his contemporaries; that his hopes and Messianic visions should attach themselves, not 2 Cf. p. 193.

1

Comp. below, p. xciv ff.

(as is the case with Jer., Ezek., Isa. xl.-lxvi.) to the approaching return of the exiles to the land of their fathers, but to the deliverance of his people in a remote future. The minuteness of the predictions, embracing even special events in the distant future, is also out of harmony with the analogy of prophecy. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets unquestionably uttered predictions of the future; but their predictions, when definite1, relate to events of the proximate future only; when (as in the case of Jeremiah's prediction of 70 years' Babylonian supremacy) they concern a more distant future, they are general and indefinite in their terms. And while down to the period of Antiochus's persecution the actual events are described with surprising distinctness, after this point the distinctness ceases: the closing events of Antiochus's own life are, to all appearance, not described as they actually occurred (see on xi. 40-45); and when the end of his life has been reached, the prophecy either breaks off altogether (viii. 25, ix. 27), or merges in an ideal representation of the Messianic future (vii. 27, xii. 1—3). Judged by the analogy of other prophecies (e.g. Is. viii. 1-ix. 7; x. 5-xi. 16), these facts would imply that the author wrote during the period of Antiochus's persecution itself.

As a matter of fact, this supposition explains consistently all the features of the Book. The author lives in the age in which he manifests an interest, and which needs the consolations which he has to address to it. He does not write after the persecutions are ended (in which case his prophecies would be pointless), but while they are in progress, when his message of encouragement would have a value for the godly Jews in the season of their trial.

It is hardly possible to fix the actual year in which the book was written; but the inexactness respecting the closing events of Antiochus' life renders it almost certain that these were still in the future when the author wrote: the general tenor of chs. ix., xi., and xii. makes it

1 As Is. viii. 4; Jer. xxviii. 16. See more fully the writer's Sermons on the Old Testament, pp. 107-113. Prophecies relating to the future kingdom of God stand upon a different footing: comp. p. lxxxvii ff.

improbable that the re-dedication of the Temple had yet taken place (Bevan, p. 129; Kamphausen in the Encycl. Bibl. col. 1013): from the Maccabees being alluded to as a 'little help' (xi. 34), it is probable further (Kuenen, Einl. §§ 88. 12; 89. 20) that it was written before Judas' defeat of Lysias in 1651 (i Macc. iv. 28-35), perhaps (Kuen.) in 166, during the time described in 1 Macc. iii. 1-iv. 27. Cf. Ewald, Hist. v. 303, Proph. iii. 301, 308 [E.T. v. 155 f., 163], ‘B.c. 168—167'; Wellh. Isr. u. Jüd. Gesch. p. 252 (ed. 3, p. 246), ‘before B.C. 165.'

The author thus utters genuine predictions2: at a moment when the national peril was great, and the very existence of Israel as a nation was threatened (1 Macc. iii. 35, 36), he comes forward with words of consolation and hope, assuring his faithful compatriots that the future, like the past and the present, is part of God's predetermined plan, and that within less than 3 years of the time at which he speaks, their persecutor will be no more, and the period of their trial will be past. This prediction is exactly on a footing with those of the earlier prophets of Isaiah, for instance, who says (viii. 4) that before a child just born can cry Father, and Mother, Damascus will be taken by the king of Assyria; who declares (xvi. 14, xxi. 16) that within three years the glory of Moab, and within one year the glory of Kedar, will both be humbled; and who announces (xxix. 1—5) Jerusalem's deliverance, within a year, from the siege and distress, which he sees impending; or of the great prophet of the Exile, who, as Cyrus is advancing on his career of conquest (Is. xli. 2, 3, 25), bids his people not be in alarm (xli. 8—11, &c.), the successes of Cyrus are part of God's providential plan (xli. 2, 4, 25), and will issue in the deliverance of Israel from exile (xliv. 28, xlv. 4, 13)3.

The historical features of the Book are also explained consistently by means of the same supposition. In some respects

1 N.B. Kuenen's dates for this period are consistently lower by a unit than those commonly adopted; so that by B.C. 164, for instance, he means the same year which is commonly called B.C. 165.

2 Comp. especially viii. 25 end with the event.

3 On the manner in which the Book of Daniel, like the earlier prophets, represents the kingdom of God as beginning immediately after the coming deliverance, see below, p. lxxxix.

it preserves the memory of genuine historical facts: in other respects, it exhibits confused and inaccurate traditions, such as might easily be current in an age later than that of Daniel himself. Nebuchadnezzar was actually the builder of Babylon, and the words placed in his mouth in iv. 30 are, as Prince observes, in entire accordance with historical fact; Belshazzar was a real person, whose lifetime is correctly placed at the close of the Babylonian empire1; there was in all probability an actual plain of Dura; and the learned men of Babylon were actually versed in the interpretation of dreams. But there were no

'satraps' (iii. 2) under Nebuchadnezzar; the learned men of Babylon were not then known distinctively as 'Chaldeans'; Belshazzar was not either 'son' of Nebuchadnezzar, or 'king' of Babylon; Darius the Mede, son of Ahashwerosh, and 'king' over the realm of the Chaldeans (ix. 1), is a figure for whom history has no room: in other representations of the Book,-as, for example, the attitude assumed by the different heathen kings towards the God of Daniel, and the madness of Nebuchadnezzar, there are also in all probability elements of exaggeration or distortion. This double character of the narrative is exactly what would be expected, supposing the Book to be what critics hold it to be, a work not of Daniel's own age, but written some four centuries subsequently.

It by no means follows, however, from this view of the Book that the narrative is throughout a pure work of the imagination. That is not probable. Delitzsch, Meinhold, and others—most recently Behrmann-insist rightly that the Book rests upon a traditional basis. How much of its contents is, in our sense of the word, historical, it is, indeed, impossible to say: but it is probable that Daniel was one of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who, with his three companions, was noted for his staunch adherence to the principles of his religion, who attained a

1 As Josephus (Ant. x. xi. 2) identifies Belshazzar with Nabonidus, it is probable that Berosus (whom Jos. quotes for this period of the history) did not mention him; and hence it may perhaps be inferred that his name was preserved by Jewish tradition, and handed down by it in conjunction with that of Daniel.

position of influence at the court, and who perhaps also foretold something of the future fate of the Chaldaean and Persian empires. The traditions relating to him were combined with those which reached the author respecting the public events of Daniel's time, and developed by him into the existing narratives, with a special view to the circumstances of his own age. The motive underlying chs. i.-vi. is manifest. The primary aim of these chapters is not historical, but didactic: the incidents of Daniel's life are not narrated for their own sakes, but for the sake of inculcating certain lessons, to magnify the God of Daniel, and to shew how He, by His providence, frustrates the purposes of the proudest of earthly monarchs, while He defends and rewards His servants, who in time of danger or temptation cleave to Him faithfully. The narratives in chs. i.—vi. are thus adapted to supply motives for the encouragement, and models for the imitation, of the loyal Israelites, at the time when Antiochus was making his assaults upon their religion,—when (1 Macc. i. 62, 63) the question of eating meat was made a test of faith (cf. Dan. i.), when (1 Macc. i. 41-50) the worship of foreign deities was commanded and that of Jehovah proscribed, under pain of death (cf. Dan. iii., vi.), and when men might well need to be reminded that it was not God's purpose to allow the powers of heathenism to prevail against Him (cf. Dan. ii., iv., v.). The general aim of the visions attributed to Daniel in chs. vii.— xii. is to shew, with increasing detail and distinctness, that as the course of history, so far as it has hitherto gone, has been in accordance with God's predetermined plan, so it is not less part of His plan that the trial of the saints should not continue indefinitely, but that within three years and a half of the time when the persecuting measures of Antiochus first began it should reach its appointed term. God, in other words, was guiding the whole course of history towards the salvation of His people. And the standpoint from which the survey of the future is represented as being made is an appropriate one: from the very centre and stronghold of heathendom, and in the age in which Israel first becomes permanently dependent upon foreign rulers, Daniel views the centuries, and in weird, im