Zöckler's 'Kurzgef. Komm.' 8th div. p. 257 ff. (1889), Bevan (1892), and Behrmann (1894): the older commentaries, however, including that of Keil (who identifies, for instance, Belshazzar with Evil-merodach), contain much that has been superseded, or shewn to be untenable, by the progress of archaeology. There are also Kamphausen's edition of the Heb. and Aram. text, with critical annotations, in Haupt's Sacred Books of the O.T.' (1896: the part containing the English translation, and exegetical notes, has not at present [May, 1911] appeared); and Marti's translation, with critical and exegetical notes, in Kautzsch's Die Heilige Schrift des AT.s, ed. 3, vol. ii. (1910), p. 416 ff. Dean Farrar's Commentary, in the 'Expositor's Bible' (1895), contains much that is helpful and suggestive. J. D. Prince's Commentary (London and New York, 1899) is especially rich in Assyriological information.

Among ancient commentaries, a special value attaches to that of Jerome. Porphyry, a learned and able neo-Platonist, the most distinguished pupil of Plotinus (see the art. PORPHYRY in the Dict. of Christian Biography), had written a treatise (not now extant) in which he sought to shew that the historical survey in Dan. xi. must have been written after the events referred to had taken place; and the information collected by him from Greek historians, whose works are now lost, and preserved to us by Jerome, often throws a welcome light on passages of this chapter, which must otherwise have remained obscure1. There are also many other points on which this, like the other commentaries of the same most learned and industrious Biblical scholar, contains much that is still valuable, and should not be neglected by the student.

On the question of the date of the Book of Daniel, the chief advocates of the traditional view have been Hengstenberg in vol. i. of his Beiträge zur Einl. ins alte Test., 1831 (cf. the discussion of ix. 24-27 in his Christologie des AT.s, 1854-7, iii. 83-235 in Clark's translation); Hävernick in his Comm. (1832), his Neue kritische Untersuchungen, 1838 (a reply to von Lengerke), and his Einleitung, II. ii. (1844), p. 435 ff.; Auberlen; Keil in his Comm. (1869), and his Einleitung, ed. 3, 1873, §§ 131-7; E. B. Pusey in the volume of lectures entitled Daniel the Prophet, 1864 (extremely learned and

1 Jerome, though he upheld himself the interpretation of Dan. xi. 36-45 current at the time (see below, p. 193), added, however, the notable and far-sighted words, Pone haec dici de Antiocho, quid nocet religioni nostrae?"

thorough): the same view is also adopted by J. M. Fuller in the 'Speaker's Commentary,' and by J. E. H. Thomson in the 'Pulpit Commentary' (1897),-who, however, like Zöckler (pp. v, 16b, 176, 199 f.), rejects most, if not all, of ch. xi. as an interpolation (pp. iv, vii, xviii, 287), and evades many other difficulties which the book presents by the hypothesis that "the text is in a very bad state, and has been subjected to various interpolations and alterations' (p. 40b); see also H. Deane, Daniel, his life and times, in the 'Men of the Bible' series (1888)2. The most complete treatment of the question from the opposite standpoint is that of Kuenen in his Hist.-crit. Onderzoek, Part ii. (1889), §§ 87-92 (in the German translation, the Einleitung, ii. p. 430 ff.): see also Bleek's classical exegetical study, 'The Messianic prophecies in the Book of Daniel,' in the Jahrb. für Deutsche Theologie, 1860, pp. 47-101 (discusses ix. 24-27 very fully; and shews in particular that the acknowledged fact that ch. viii. and xi. 21-35 refer to Ant. Ep., involves, on exegetical grounds, the conclusion that chs. ii., vii., ix., xi. 36—xii., culminate in references to the same age); and Kamphausen's brochure, Das Buch Daniel und die neuere Geschichtsforschung (1893).

Books or monographs dealing with special points are referred to, as occasion requires, in the notes. The most thorough grammar of the Biblical Aramaic is Kautzsch's Gramm. des Bibl.-Aram. (1884); there are shorter grammars by Marti (Kurzgefasste Grammatik der Bibl.Aram. Sprache, 1896), and Strack (Grammatik deş Bibl.-Aram., ed. 5, 1911). The Commentaries most useful philologically are those of Bevan, Behrmann, Prince, Marti, 1901 (in his Hand-Comm. zum A.T.), and C. H. H. Wright, Daniel and its Critics, 1906 (a philol. Comm.).

The view of the date of the Book of Daniel adopted in the present volume is that accepted by the most moderate and reasonable of recent critics, as Delitzsch (in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie, vol. iii. (1878), s.v.), Riehm, Einleitung (1890), ii. 292 ff., König, Einleitung (1893), §§ 78-9, Kamphausen, op. cit., and in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, Strack, Einleitung (1895), § 63, Schürer, ii. 613 ff. (Engl. tr. II. iii. p. 49 ff.), C. A. Briggs, Messianic Prophecy (1886), p. 411 f., Sanday, Bampton Lectures, 1893, p. 215 ff., Dillmann, A.T. Theol. (1895), p. 522 f., Ottley, Bampton Lectures, 1897, p. 331 f., Hebrew Prophets (1898), pp. 15, 103 ff., E. L. Curtis in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, s.v.,

1 The references are to ed. 1: in ed. 2 (1868), after p. 44, the pagination gradually rises till p. 564 in ed. p. 568 in ed. 2. 2 See also C. H. H. Wright, Daniel and his Prophecies, 1906.

&c. The position is one of those which are sometimes yielded with reluctance, especially by those who have been brought up in the older view, and who can recollect the strenuousness and firm conviction with which that view was contended for by the apologists of a former generation. But the wider knowledge of antiquity which we now possess has shewn that many opinions relating to the Old Testament, not less than to the literature and history of other ancient nations, which were once generally accepted, can no longer be maintained; and the apologist, where, in a matter affecting him, he finds this to be the case, must change his ground. The traditional view of the authorship of the Book of Daniel, it must be remembered, is no article of the Christian faith; and the impossibility of defending it by arguments which will carry general conviction, deprives it of the apologetic value which it was once regarded as possessing.

As stated above (p. xxii), it is argued by Meinhold that the Book of Daniel is of composite authorship, ii. 4o—vi. being earlier in origin than the rest of the Book; and Torrey (Ezra Studies, 1910, 48 f., 162) holds this view of ii. 4b-vii. Another theory of the composite character of the book is developed by G. A. Barton in the Journ. of Biblical Literature, 1898, p. 62 ff. The unity of the Book has also been doubted, on the conservative side, and with the object, at the same time, of explaining its bilingual character, by Mr Thomson: the Book, he supposes (p. vii), 'originally floated about in separate little tractates, some relating incidents, others visions; some in Aramaic, some in Hebrew; and in a somewhat later age an editor collected them together, and added a prologue.' It is true, there are features in the Book which might seem to suggest that the author was not throughout the same; but the question is, whether they are decisive, especially in view of the many marks of unity which link the different parts of the Book together. The reader who is interested in the subject may consult further Budde's criticism of Meinhold in the Theol. Lit.-zeitung, 29 Dec. 1888; and von Gall, Die Einheitlichkeit des Buches Daniel (1895), with J. W. Rothstein's reviews of Behrmann's Comm. and of this work in the Deutsche Litt.-zeitung, 28 Nov. and 26 Dec. 1896: comp. also Kamphausen in the Encycl. Biblica, s.v., § 4.

It is possible that, as Gunkel has argued (Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, 1895, PP. 323-335), the imagery of the four beasts in Dan. vii. is in part suggested by traditional reminiscences of the old Babylonian cosmogonic epic: but the fact, in so far as it is true (for it is certainly overstated by Gunkel), possesses only an antiquarian

interest; it has no bearing upon the sense in which the author applied his materials, or upon the exegesis of the vision (cf. Wellhausen, Skizzen, vi. 232-5). Some verbal parallels between Dan. i.—vi. and the 'Story of Ahikar1,' have suggested also the inference that the author of Dan. was perhaps acquainted with the last-named work: see J. Rendel Harris, The Story of Aḥikar (Camb. 1898), pp. lvii—lx, Ixxxiii, 25, 72, 73, 87, 101, and Barton, Amer. Journ. of Sem. Lang., July 1900, p. 242 ff.

For the history of the Seleucidae, the English reader will now turn naturally to the elaborate and masterly work of E. R. Bevan, in two vols. (published since the first edition of the present Commentary appeared), called The House of Seleucus; and for that of the Jews (during the period referred to in the Book of Daniel) to the same writer's briefer and more popular, but brilliantly written volume, Jerusalem under the High-Priests. Five lectures on the period between Nehemiah and the New Testament (1904).

The 'Achiacharus' of Tob. i. 21, 22, ii. 10, xi. 18, xiv. 10 (cf. Harris, p. xxviii). The story is a 'midrash,' or moralizing narrative, describing how Ahikar, a vizier of Sennacherib, being accused falsely of treason, was cast into a dungeon, and how afterwards he was delivered, and his accuser consigned to the dungeon in his stead (cf. Tob. xiv. 1o).

ADDENDA.

P. lx, . 3. Sachau's Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer Jüdischen Militär-Kolonie zu Elephantine (5th cent. B.C.) has just (Sept. 1911) appeared. The documents are written in the same Egyptian Aramaic previously known; and confirm the conclusions expressed in L.O.T., p. 515. Though highly interesting in other respects, they do not, however, throw any materially fresh light upon the language of Daniel, or elucidate the obscure terms sometimes occurring in it.

P. 138 bottom, 139 (ix. 25—6). It is, however, quite possible that we should read, with Grätz: 'it shall be built again, with broad place and street. (26) And at the end [so LXX. (in v. 27), Pesh., Bevan, von Gall, Marti] of the times, after the threescore' &c.

P. 140—1 (ix. 26), Marti reads, with von Gall and partly Bevan : 'and the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed, together with [Dy for Dy: so LXX. Theod. Pesh.] a prince [viz. Onias III]; and the end [viii. 17] shall come with a flood' &c.

P. 174 (xi. 18). It should have been stated that the Heb. rendered 'nay,...even' is very strange. Perhaps Marti is right in developing a clever suggestion of Bevan's (based on the LXX.), and reading (for the whole second part of the verse): 'but a commander shall turn back (i.e, requite) his reproach to him seven-fold' (see Ps. lxxix. 12 Heb.).

P. 193. On the cult of the Seleucidae see further Bevan, Journ. Hell. Stud. 1900, 26-30; House of Seleucus, i. 125, 177, ii. 154-6.

DANIEL.

N the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah 1 came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem,

IN

CHAPTERS I.—VI.

The first part of the book, describing the experiences of Daniel and his three companions under Nebuchadnezzar (chs. i.—iv.), Belshazzar (ch. v.), and Darius the Mede (ch. vi.).

CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION.

Chap. i. describes how Daniel and his three companions, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, came to be in Babylon, at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, the scene of the events narrated in the following chapters (ii. iv.). Nebuchadnezzar, in the third year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah (B.C. 605), laid siege to Jerusalem: part of the vessels of the Temple and some Jewish captives fall into his hands and are carried by him to Babylon (vv. 1, 2). He there gives directions for a number of youths of noble blood, including some of the Jewish captives, to be instructed in the language and learning of the sacred caste, and educated for the king's service (vv. 3-7). Among these youths are Daniel and his three companions, who, while content to pursue the studies prescribed by Nebuchadnezzar, crave and obtain permission to be allowed not to defile themselves in any way by partaking of the special delicacies provided for them from the king's table (vv. 8-16). At the expiration of three years, when the education of the selected youths is completed, the four Jewish youths are found to be distinguished beyond all the others in wisdom and knowledge, Daniel being skilled in particular in the interpretation of visions and dreams; they are accordingly admitted to the rank of the king's personal attendants (vv. 17-21).

The chapter serves a double purpose. It both serves as an introduction to the Book generally; and also teaches the practical lessons of the value, in God's eyes, of obedience to principle, and of abstinence from self-indulgence. The rule which the four Jewish youths felt called upon to obey was indeed a ceremonial rule, of no permanent obligation; but it was one which, to Jews living amongst heathen, acquired sometimes a supreme importance (cf. on vv. 8-10), so that obedience to it became a most sacred duty.

1. In the third year &c.] Whether this is historically correct is

DANIEL

T