The Book of Daniel, like the Book of Jonah, is in its narrative parts (chs. i.-vi.) a vivid presentation of real and important religious truths, even though the events described in it did not in all cases occur in actual fact as the narrative recounts.

Mutatis mutandis, the dream in ch. ii., and the visions in chs. vii.-xii. are to be explained upon the same principles. They are (for the most part) indirect, and to our minds artificial, modes of presenting the truth that the movements of history are in God's hands, and are determined by Him beforehand. At the same time, in what relates to the close of the persecution, and the period of happiness which they represent as then beginning, they contain, as has been already remarked, genuine predictions, and genuine delineations of the future kingdom of God, quite in the manner of the older prophets (comp. also the notes on ix. 24, p. 136 f.).

The following are the earliest extant references, or allusions, to the Book of Daniel. (1) The prophecy vii. 7 end, 8 seems to be alluded to in the so-called 'Sibylline Oracles' (p. lxxxiii), iii. 397–400 (c. 140 B.C.): see p. 98. (2) In 1 Macc. i. 54 (cf. vi. 7)-written, probably, during the early decades of the first cent. B.C.-the heathen altar erected by Antiochus on the altar of burnt-offering is called an 'abomination of desolation,' being the same expression which is used in the LXX. of Dan. xi. 31, xii. 11 (see more fully p. 150). This, however, does not prove necessarily the use of the Book of Daniel by the author of Macc.: the author of 1 Macc. may have known independently that the Jews of the Maccabee period called the heathen altar a (D) Drap; and the identity of the Greek rendering (βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως) may be accounted for in more ways than one: it may have been the conventional Greek rendering of the Heb. expression in question, or the translator of either book may have adopted it from the translation of the other. (3) In 1 Macc. ii. 59 f., in the speech put into the mouth of the dying Mattathias, after the mention of Abraham, Joseph, and other Israelitish worthies, who had been examples

1 Schürer, ii. 581 (§ 32); 1 Maccabees in the Cambridge Bible, p. 43.

of constancy and faith, there occur the words, ‘Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael believed, and were saved out of the flame. Daniel in his guilelessness [ev T áñλótηti avtoû=ieņa; cf. v. 37] was delivered from the mouth of lions,' with evident allusion to the narratives contained in Dan. iii. and vi. (4) The prayer in Baruch i. 15-iii. 8 contains (in i. 15-ii. 19) many nearly verbal similarities of expression with Dan. ix. 4-19, which shew incontestably either that the author of the one derived many of his expressions from the other, or that both were dependent upon a common source: it can scarcely, however, be said to be clear, beyond the reach of doubt, that it is the prayer in Daniel which is the original (see p. lxxv). (5) In the N.T. Daniel is mentioned by name in Mt. xxiv. 15 (but in the || Mk. xiii. 14 not in the best MSS.); and the narratives of the book are not improbably alluded to in Heb. xi. 33, 34 (Dan. vi., iii.). For instances in which the imagery or expression of the N.T. appears to have been suggested by the book see p. lxxxv.

The external evidence which has been sometimes appealed to as tending to shew that the Book of Daniel was in existence before B.C. 168-165, is slight and inconclusive.

(i) The allusion, just noted, in 1 Macc. ii. 59, 60 does not prove more than that the narratives of Dan. iii. and vi. were known to the author of Macc., who wrote pretty clearly (see xvi. 23, 24) after the close of the reign of John Hyrcanus, B.C. 135-105, probably about B. C. 90.

(ii) The parallels between Dan. ix. 4—19 and Baruch i. 15-ii. 19 are numerous and striking: see Bar. i. 15 (Dan. ix. 7 a, 8 a), 16 (ix. 8 6). 17 (ix. 8 end), 18 (ix. 96, 10), 20 a1 (ix. 11 b), 21 (ix. 10), ii. 1 a (ix. 12), 21 (ix. 126, 13 a) 46 (ix. 16b), 6 (ix. 7 a, 8a), 71 (ix. 13 a), 8 (ix. 136), 91 (ix. 14), 10 (ix. 10), 11a, c, 12 a (ix. 15), 126, 13a (ix. 16 a), 14a (ix. 17 a), 14 'for thine own sake' (ix. 17), 15 b (ix. 18 middle, 19 end), 166, 17 a (ix. 18 to ‘eyes'), 19 (ix. 186); in other parts of the prayer in Baruch, there are reminiscences principally from Deut. and Jer. The Book of Baruch is manifestly of composite authorship; and i. 1—iii. 8 (if i. 1-14 is the real introduction to the sequel) purports to be a

1 N.B. 'Plagues' in A.V., R.V. of i. 20, ii. 2, 7, 9, iii. 4=kakà= the 'evil' of Dan, ix. 12 (Gk, Kaká), 13, 14.

confession and prayer sent by the exiles in Babylon, in the fifth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, to their brethren in Jerusalem, to be used by them on their (the exiles') behalf1. The real date of the Book of Baruch is disputed. The second part (iii. 9—v. 9) is generally allowed to have been written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70): the first part is assigned by Schürer (ii. 7232) to the same date, though others think it to be a good deal earlier, Ewald, and Reuss, for instance, assigning it to the period of the earlier Ptolemies (c. 300 B.C.)3. It is, however, seldom possible, given simply two parallel texts, to determine, without assuming the question in dispute, which is the older, and which it is that contains reminiscences of the other: the prayer in Baruch might, no doubt, be an expansion (with, at the same time, some omissions) of that in Daniel', but the prayer in Daniel might also be an abridgement and adaptation of that in Baruch; or both might also be based upon an ancient traditional form of confession, preserved in its most original form in Daniel". The Book of Baruch cannot be regarded as having any bearing on the date of the Book of Daniel until it has been shewn more clearly than has yet been done, not only that the prayer in Baruch is older than c. 165 B.C., but also if this is really the case, that the passages common to it and Dan. cannot have been borrowed in the latter from the former.

1 The role assumed is not however consistently maintained, ii. 13, 14, iii. 7, 8, being evidently spoken from the standpoint of the exiles themselves. See BARUCH, BOOK OF, in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible.

* And in his art. on Baruch in Herzog, ed. 2, i. 500 f., ed. 3, i. 641 f. So also Kneucker, in his excellent edition of Baruch (1879), pp. 57-60, cf. 68-70.

The positive grounds favouring this early date are, however, slight: cf. Kneucker, p. 39 f. The arguments in Hastings against Schürer's date do not seem to be conclusive.

The principal additions in Baruch are in i. 166, 19 a, 20 b—22, ii. 1 b, 3-7 a, 8b, 11 middle, 13 b, 14 b—16 a, 17 b—18, 19 a (' of our fathers and of our kings'), and all from ii. 20 to iii. 8. The principal additions in Daniel are in ix. 4—6, 7 b—8 a, 9 a, 10 end, 11 b (partly), 13 end, 16 (from 'and thy fury'), 17 b, 18 (from 'our desolations' to 'thy name,' and 'but for thy great mercies'), 19. (The references, both here and in the text, are to the Greek, which should be compared throughout: let the reader underline, in his two texts (Daniel in Theod.), the passages which are (substantially) the same in both. In Bar. ii. 126 observe that dikaiμara = nipty (see vv. 17, 19), while in Dan. ix. 16 Xenμoσúvn in Theod., and dialoσúvŋ in LXX., both = MPTY: see below, p. 54; Kneucker, pp. 235, 353.)

5 Marshall, ap. Hastings, p. 252a, towards the bottom.

DANIEL

f

(iii) No conclusion of any value as to the date of Daniel can be drawn from the LXX. translation. (1) The date of the translation is quite uncertain; the grounds that have been adduced for the purpose of shewing that it was made in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes himself (e.g. the renderings of ix. 24-27, xi. 30, 33) being altogether insufficient. (2) The errors in the LXX. translation of the book have been supposed to shew that many Hebrew words used in it were unfamiliar to the translators, and consequently that it must have been written at a much earlier date than that assigned to it by critics. It is, however, remarkable that throughout O.T. the LXX. translators (who, as is well known, were not the same for all the books) stand singularly aloof from the Palestinian tradition-often, for instance, not only missing the general sense of a passage, but shewing themselves to be unacquainted with the meaning even of common Hebrew words. Thus the errors in the LXX. translation of Daniel merely shew that the meaning of particular words was unknown in Alexandria at the time, whatever it may have been, at which the translation was made: they do not afford evidence that the words were unknown in Palestine in the second cent. B.C., and would not have been used by an author writing there then. The Greek translator of the Proverbs of Jesus, the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), though a grandson of the author himself, nevertheless often misunderstood the Hebrew in which they were written.

§ 4. Some characteristic features of the Book of Daniel.

As has been pointed out in § 1, the first part of the Book of Daniel (chs. i.-vi.) consists essentially of a series of didactic narratives; the second part of the Book (chs. vii.-xii.),—as also ch. ii., in so far as a succession of world-empires forms the subject of Nebuchadnezzar's dream,-deals with what, viewed from Daniel's standpoint, is future, and is apocalyptic in its character. It will not be necessary to dwell further upon the narrative portions of the Book; but something remains to be said with regard to its apocalyptic parts, and also on some of the more characteristic doctrines which find expression in it. And firstly, as regards the symbolism and the veiled predictions, which form such conspicuous features in these parts of the Book. Symbolism is employed already by the later prophets to a

greater extent than is the case with the earlier prophets. Thus in Ezekiel we have the allegories of the vine-tree (ch. xv.), the abandoned infant (ch. xvi.), the two eagles and the vine (ch. xvii.), the lion's whelps (ch. xix.), the two harlots (ch. xxiii.), the flourishing tree (ch. xxxi.), the shepherds and their flock (ch. xxxiv.); and in Zech. we find a series of visions, in which the prophet sees, for instance, the Divine horses, symbolizing the ubiquity of Jehovah's presence upon the earth (i. 8-17), four horns symbolizing the powers of the world arrayed against Israel (i. 18—21), a golden candlestick, representing the restored community (ch. iv.), and chariots proceeding to the different quarters of the earth, symbolizing the fulfilment of Jehovah's judgements (vi. 1-8). But, as applied in Daniel, both the symbolism and the veiled predictions are characteristic of a species of literature which was now beginning to spring up, and which is known commonly by modern writers as Apocalyptic Literature.

The word 'apocalypse' means disclosure, revelation; and though ordinary prophecy contains 'disclosures,' whether respecting the will of God in general, or respecting the future, the term is applied in particular to writings in which the 'disclosure,' or 'revelation,' is of a specially marked and distinctive character. The beginnings of this type of writing are to be found in those post-exilic prophecies of the O. T. relating to the future, which are less closely attached to the existing order of things than is usually the case, and which, though they cannot be said actually to describe it, may nevertheless be regarded as prophetic anticipations of the final judgement, and consummation of all things, as Is. xxiv.-xxvii., Zech. xiv., Joel iii. 9—171. But at a later date, apocalyptic prophecy assumed a special form, and became the expression of particular feelings and ideas.

Apocalyptic prophecy arose in an age in which there were no longer any prophets of the older type, addressing themselves directly to the needs of the times, and speaking in person to the people in the name of God: and it consists essentially of a

1 Cf. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets, pp. 475 f., 481, 488 f.; and the present writer's Joel and Amos (in the Cambridge Bible), p. 33.