_PECULIARITIES OF THE HISTORIC SECTION_
No one can have studied the Book of Daniel without seeing that, alike
in the character of its miracles and the minuteness of its supposed
predictions, it makes a more stupendous and a less substantiated
claim upon our credence than any other book of the Bible, and a
claim wholly different in character. It has over and over again been
asserted by the uncharitableness of a merely traditional orthodoxy
that inability to accept the historic verity and genuineness of the
Book arises from secret faithlessness, and antagonism to the admission
of the supernatural. No competent scholar will think it needful to
refute such calumnies. It suffices us to know before God that we are
actuated simply by the love of truth, by the abhorrence of anything
which in us would be a pusillanimous spirit of falsity. We have too
deep a belief in the God of the Amen, the God of eternal and essential
verity, to offer to Him "the unclean sacrifice of a lie." An error
is not sublimated into a truth even when that lie has acquired a
quasi-consecration, from its supposed desirability for purposes of
orthodox controversy, or from its innocent acceptance by generations
of Jewish and Christian Churchmen through long ages of uncritical
ignorance. Scholars, if they be Christians at all, can have no possible
_a-priori_ objection to belief in the supernatural. If they believe,
for instance, in the Incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, they believe in the most mysterious and unsurpassable of all
miracles, and beside that miracle all minor questions of God's power or
willingness to manifest His immediate intervention in the affairs of
men sink at once into absolute insignificance.
But our belief in the Incarnation, and in the miracles of Christ,
rests on evidence which, after repeated examination, is to us
overwhelming. Apart from all questions of personal verification, or
the Inward Witness of the Spirit, we can show that this evidence
is supported, not only by the existing records, but by myriads of
external and independent testimonies. The very same Spirit which
makes men believe where the demonstration is decisive, compels them
to refuse belief to the literal verity of unique miracles and unique
predictions which come before them without any convincing evidence.
The narratives and visions of this Book present difficulties on
every page. They were in all probability never intended for anything
but what they are--_Haggadoth_, which, like the parables of Christ,
convey their own lessons without depending on the necessity for
accordance with historic fact.
Had it been any part of the Divine will that we should accept these
stories as pure history, and these visions as predictions of events
which were not to take place till centuries afterwards, we should
have been provided with some aids to such belief. On the contrary,
in whatever light we examine the Book of Daniel, the evidence _in
its favour_ is weak, dubious, hypothetical, and _a priori_; while
the evidence _against_ it acquires increased intensity with every
fresh aspect in which it is examined. The Book which would make the
most extraordinary demands upon our credulity if it were meant for
history, is the very Book of which the genuineness and authenticity
are decisively discredited by every fresh discovery and by each new
examination. There is scarcely one learned European scholar by whom
they are maintained, except with such concessions to the Higher
Criticism as practically involve the abandonment of all that is
essential in the traditional theory.
And we have come to a time when it will not avail to take refuge in
such transferences of the discussions in _alteram materiam_, and such
purely vulgar appeals _ad invidiam_, as are involved in saying, "Then
the Book must be a forgery," and "an imposture," and "a gross lie." To
assert that "to give up the Book of Daniel is to betray the cause of
Christianity,"[90] is a coarse and dangerous misuse of the weapons of
controversy. Such talk may still have been excusable even in the days
of Dr. Pusey (with whom it was habitual); it is no longer excusable
now. Now it can only prove the uncharitableness of the apologist, and
the impotence of a defeated cause. Yet even this abandonment of the
sphere of honourable argument is only one degree more painful than the
tortuous subterfuges and wild assertions to which such apologists as
Hengstenberg, Keil, and their followers were long compelled to have
recourse. Anything can be proved about anything if we call to our aid
indefinite suppositions of errors of transcription, interpolations,
transpositions, extraordinary silences, still more extraordinary
methods of presenting events, and (in general) the unconsciously
disingenuous resourcefulness of traditional harmonics. To maintain that
the Book of Daniel, as it now stands, was written by Daniel in the days
of the Exile is to cherish a belief which can only, at the utmost,
be extremely uncertain, and which must be maintained in defiance of
masses of opposing evidence. There can be little intrinsic value in a
determination to believe historical and literary assumptions which can
no longer be maintained except by preferring the flimsiest hypotheses
to the most certain facts.
My own conviction has long been that in these _Haggadoth_, in which
Jewish literature delighted in the præ-Christian era, and which
continued to be written even till the Middle Ages, there was not the
least pretence or desire to deceive at all. I believe them to have
been put forth as moral legends--as avowed fiction nobly used for
the purposes of religious teaching and encouragement. In ages of
ignorance, in which no such thing as literary criticism existed, a
popular _Haggada_ might soon come to be regarded as historical, just
as the Homeric lays were among the Greeks, or just as Defoe's story
of the Plague of London was taken for literal history by many readers
even in the seventeenth century.
Ingenious attempts have been made to show that the author of this
Book evinces an intimate familiarity with the circumstances of the
Babylonian religion, society, and history. In many cases this is the
reverse of the fact. The instances adduced in favour of any knowledge
except of the most general description are entirely delusive. It
is frivolous to maintain, with Lenormant, that an exceptional
acquaintance with Babylonian custom was required to describe
Nebuchadrezzar as consulting diviners for the interpretation of a
dream! To say nothing of the fact that a similar custom has prevailed
in all nations and all ages from the days of Samuel to those of
Lobengula, the writer had the prototype of Pharaoh before him, and
has evidently been influenced by the story of Joseph.[91] Again, so
far from showing surprising acquaintance with the organisation of
the caste of Babylonian diviners, the writer has made a mistake in
their very name, as well as in the statement that a faithful Jew,
like Daniel, was made the chief of their college![92] Nor, again, was
there anything so unusual in the presence of women at feasts--also
recognised in the _Haggada_ of Esther--as to render this a sign of
extraordinary information. Once more, is it not futile to adduce the
allusion to punishment by burning alive as a proof of insight into
Babylonian peculiarities? This punishment had already been mentioned
by Jeremiah in the case of Nebuchadrezzar. "Then shall be taken up
a curse by all the captivity of Judah which are in Babylon, saying,
The Lord make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab" (two false prophets),
"_whom the King of Babylon roasted in the fire_."[93] Moreover, it
occurs in the Jewish traditions which described a miraculous escape
of exactly the same character in the legend of Abraham. He, too, had
been supernaturally rescued from the burning fiery furnace of Nimrod,
to which he had been consigned because he refused to worship idols in
Ur of the Chaldees.[94]
When the instances _mainly_ relied upon prove to be so evidentially
valueless, it would be waste of time to follow Professor Fuller
through the less important and more imaginary proofs of accuracy
which his industry has amassed. Meanwhile the feeblest reasoner will
see that while a writer may easily be accurate in general facts, and
even in details, respecting an age long previous to that in which
he wrote, the existence of violent errors as to matters with which a
contemporary must have been familiar at once refutes all pretence of
historic authenticity in a book professing to have been written by an
author in the days and country which he describes.
Now such mistakes there seem to be, and not a few of them, in the pages
of the Book of Daniel. One or two of them can perhaps be explained
away by processes which would amply suffice to show that "yes" means
"no," or that "black" is a description of "white"; but each repetition
of such processes leaves us more and more incredulous. If errors be
treated as corruptions of the text, or as later interpolations, such
arbitrary methods of treating the Book are practically an admission
that, as it stands, it cannot be regarded as historical.
I. We are, for instance, met by what seems to be a remarkable error
in the very first verse of the Book, which tells us that "_In the
third year of Jehoiakim, King of Judah_, came Nebuchad_n_ezzar"--as
in later days he was incorrectly called--"King of Babylon, unto
Jerusalem, and besieged it."
It is easy to trace whence the error sprang. Its source lies in a
book which is the latest in the whole Canon, and in many details
difficult to reconcile with the Book of Kings--a book of which the
Hebrew resembles that of Daniel--the Book of Chronicles. In 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 6 we are told that Nebuchad_n_ezzar came up against Jehoiakim,
and "bound him in fetters to carry him to Babylon"; and also--to
which the author of Daniel directly refers--that he carried off some
of the vessels of the House of God, to put them in the treasure-house
of his god. In this passage it is _not_ said that this occurred "_in
the third year_ of Jehoiakim," who reigned eleven years; but in 2
Kings xxiv. 1 we are told that "in his days Nebuchad_n_ezzar came
up, and Jehoiakim _became his servant three years_." The passage in
Daniel looks like a confused reminiscence of the "three years" with
"the third year of Jehoiakim." The elder and better authority (the
Book of Kings) is silent about any deportation having taken place in
the reign of Jehoiakim, and so is the contemporary Prophet Jeremiah.
But in any case it seems impossible that it should have taken place
so early as the _third year_ of Jehoiakim, for at that time he was a
simple vassal of the King of Egypt. If this deportation took place in
the reign of Jehoiakim, it would certainly be singular that Jeremiah,
in enumerating three others, in the seventh, eighteenth, and
twenty-third year of Nebuchadrezzar,[95] should make no allusion to
it. But it is hard to see how it could have taken place before Egypt
had been defeated in the Battle of Carchemish, and that was not till
B.C. 597, the _fourth_ year of Jehoiakim.[96] Not only does Jeremiah
make no mention of so remarkable a deportation as this, which as the
earliest would have caused the deepest anguish, but, in the _fourth_
year of Jehoiakim (Jer. xxxvi. 1), he writes a roll to threaten evils
which are still future, and in the _fifth_ year proclaims a fast in
the hope that the imminent peril may even yet be averted (Jer. xxxvi.
6-10). It is only after the violent obstinacy of the king that the
destructive advance of Nebuchadrezzar is finally prophesied (Jer.
xxxvi. 29) as something which has not yet occurred.[97]
II. Nor are the names in this first chapter free from difficulty.
Daniel is called Belteshazzar, and the remark of the King of
Babylon--"whose name was Belteshazzar, _according to the name of
my god_"--certainly suggests that the first syllable is (as the
Massorets assume) connected with the god Bel. But the name has
nothing to do with Bel. No contemporary could have fallen into such
an error;[98] still less a king who spoke Babylonian. Shadrach _may_
be _Shudur-aku_, "command of Aku," the moon-god; but Meshach is
inexplicable; and Abed-nego is a strange corruption for the obvious
and common Abed-nebo, "servant of Nebo." Such a corruption could
hardly have arisen till Nebo was practically forgotten. And what is
the meaning of "the _Melzar_" (Dan. i. 11)? The A.V. takes it to
be a proper name; the R.V. renders it "the steward." But the title
is unique and obscure.[99] Nor can anything be made of the name of
Ashpenaz, the prince of the eunuchs, whom, in one manuscript, the
LXX. call Abiesdri.[100]
III. Similar difficulties and uncertainties meet us at every step.
Thus, in the second chapter (ii. 1), the dream of Nebuchadrezzar
is fixed in the _second_ year of his reign. This does not seem to
be in accord with i. 3, 18, which says that Daniel and his three
companions were kept under the care of the prince of the eunuchs for
three years. Nothing, of course, is easier than to invent harmonistic
hypotheses, such as that of Rashi, that "the second year _of the
reign of Nebuchadrezzar_" has the wholly different meaning of "the
second year after _the destruction of the Temple_"; or as that of
Hengstenberg, followed by many modern apologists, that Nebuchadrezzar
had previously been associated in the kingdom with Nabopolassar, and
that this was the second year of his independent reign. Or, again,
we may, with Ewald, read "the twelfth year." But by these methods we
are not taking the Book as it stands, but are supposing it to be a
network of textual corruptions and conjectural combinations.
IV. In ii. 2 the king summons four classes of hierophants to
disclose his dream and its interpretation. They are the magicians
(_Chartummîm_), the enchanters (_Ashshaphîm_), the sorcerers
(_Mechashsh'phîm_), and the Chaldeans (_Kasdîm_).[101] The
_Chartummîm_ occur in Gen. xli. 8 (which seems to be in the writer's
mind); and the _Mechashsh'phîm_ occur in Exod. vii. 11, xxii. 18;
but the mention of _Kasdîm_, "Chaldeans," is, so far as we know, an
immense anachronism. In much later ages the name was used, as it was
among the Roman writers, for wandering astrologers and quacks.[102]
But this degenerate sense of the word was, so far as we can judge,
wholly unknown to the age of Daniel. It never once occurs in this
sense on any of the monuments. Unknown to the Assyrian-Babylonian
language, and only acquired long after the end of the Babylonian
Empire, such a usage of the word is, as Schrader says, "an indication
of the post-exilic composition of the Book."[103] In the days of
Daniel "Chaldeans" had no meaning resembling that of "magicians" or
"astrologers." In every other writer of the Old Testament, and in all
contemporary records, _Kasdîm_ simply means the Chaldean nation, and
_never_ a learned caste.[104] This single circumstance has decisive
weight in proving the late age of the Book of Daniel.
V. Again, we find in ii. 14, "Arioch, the chief of the executioners."
Schrader precariously derives the name from _Eri-aku_, "servant of
the moon-god"; but, however that may be, we already find the name as
that of a king Ellasar in Gen. xiv. 1, and we find it again for a
king of the Elymæans in Judith i. 6. In ver. 16 Daniel "went in and
desired of the king" a little respite; but in ver. 25 Arioch tells
the king, as though it were a sudden discovery of his own, "I have
found a man of the captives of Judah, that will make known unto the
king the interpretation." This was a surprising form of introduction,
after we have been told that the king himself had, by personal
examination, found that Daniel and his young companions were "_ten
times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all
his realm_." It seems, however, as if each of these chapters was
intended to be recited as a separate _Haggada_.
VI. In ii. 46, after the interpretation of the dream, "_the King
Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded
that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him_." This
is another of the immense surprises of the Book. It is exactly the kind
of incident in which the haughty theocratic sentiment of the Jews found
delight, and we find a similar spirit in the many Talmudic inventions
in which Roman emperors, or other potentates, are represented as paying
extravagant adulation to Rabbinic sages. There is (as we shall see) a
similar story narrated by Josephus of Alexander the Great prostrating
himself before the high priest Jaddua, but it has long been relegated
to the realm of fable as an outcome of Jewish self-esteem.[105] It is
probably meant as a concrete illustration of the glowing promises of
Isaiah, that "kings and queens shall bow down to thee with their faces
towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet";[106] and "the
sons of them that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles
of thy feet."[107]
VII. We further ask in astonishment whether Daniel could have
accepted without indignant protest the offering of "an oblation
and sweet odours." To say that they were only offered to God in
the person of Daniel is the idle pretence of all idolatry. They
are expressly said to be offered "to Daniel." A Herod could accept
blasphemous adulations;[108] but a Paul and a Barnabas deprecate such
devotions with intense disapproval.[109]
VIII. In ii. 48 Nebuchadrezzar appoints Daniel, as a reward for
his wisdom, to rule over the whole province of Babylon, and to
be _Rab-signîn_, "chief ruler," and to be over all the wise men
(_Khakamim_) of Babylon. Lenormant treats this statement as an
interpolation, because he regards it as "_evidently_ impossible."
We know that in the Babylonian priesthood, and especially among
the sacred caste, there was a passionate religious intolerance. It
is inconceivable that they should have accepted as their religious
superior a monotheist who was the avowed and uncompromising enemy
to their whole system of idolatry. It is equally inconceivable
that Daniel should have accepted the position of a hierophant in a
polytheistic cult. In the next three chapters there is no allusion to
Daniel's tenure of these strange and exalted offices, either civil or
religious.[110]
IX. The third chapter contains another story, told in a style of
wonderful stateliness and splendour, and full of glorious lessons; but
here again we encounter linguistic and other difficulties. Thus in iii.
2, though "all the rulers of the provinces" and officers of all ranks
are summoned to the dedication of Nebuchadrezzar's colossus, there is
not an allusion to Daniel throughout the chapter. Four of the names of
the officers in iii. 2, 3, appear, to our surprise, to be Persian;[111]
and, of the six musical instruments, three--the lute, psaltery, and
bagpipe[112]--have obvious Greek names, two of which (as already
stated) are of late origin, while another, the _sab'ka_, resembles the
Greek σαμβύκη, but may have come to the Greeks from the Aramæans.[113]
The incidents of the chapter are such as find no analogy throughout the
Old or New Testament, but exactly resemble those of Jewish moralising
fiction, of which they furnish the most perfect specimen. It is
exactly the kind of concrete comment which a Jewish writer of piety
and genius, for the encouragement of his afflicted people, might have
based upon such a passage as Isa. xliii. 2, 3: "When thou walkest
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel,
thy Saviour." Nebuchadrezzar's decree, "That every _people, nation,
and language_, which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abed-nego, _shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall
be made a dunghill_," can only be paralleled out of the later Jewish
literature.[114]
X. In chap. iv. we have another monotheistic decree of the King of
Babylon, announcing to "all people, nations, and languages" what
"the high God hath wrought towards me." It gives us a vision which
recalls Ezek. xxxi. 3-18, and may possibly have been suggested by
that fine chapter.[115] The language varies between the third and the
first person. In iv. 13 Nebuchadrezzar speaks of "a watcher and a
holy one." This is the first appearance in Jewish literature of the
word _'ir_, "watcher," which is so common in the Book of Enoch.[116]
In ver. 26 the expression "after thou shalt have known that _the
heavens_ do rule" is one which has no analogue in the Old Testament,
though exceedingly common in the superstitious periphrases of the
later Jewish literature. As to the story of the strange lycanthropy
with which Nebuchadrezzar was afflicted, though it receives nothing
but the faintest shadow of support from any historic record, it may
be based on some fact preserved by tradition. It is probably meant
to reflect on the mad ways of Antiochus. The general phrase of
Berossus, which tells us that Nebuchadrezzar "fell into a sickness
and died,"[117] has been pressed into an historical verification of
this narrative! But the phrase might have been equally well used
in the most ordinary case,[118] which shows what fancies have been
adduced to prove that we are here dealing with history. The fragment
of Abydenus in his _Assyriaca_, preserved by Eusebius,[119] shows
that there was _some_ story about Nebuchadrezzar having uttered
remarkable words upon his palace-roof. The announcement of a coming
irrevocable calamity to the kingdom from a Persian mule, "the son of
a Median woman," and the wish that "_the alien conqueror_" might be
driven "through the desert where wild beasts seek their food, and
birds fly hither and thither," has, however, very little to do with
the story of Nebuchadrezzar's madness. Abydenus says that, "when he
had thus prophesied, he suddenly vanished"; and he adds nothing about
any restoration to health or to his kingdom. All that can be said is
that there was current among the Babylonian Jews some popular legend
of which the writer of the Book of Daniel availed himself for the
purpose of his edifying _Midrash_.
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]
History knows of no such king.[121] 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]
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] 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] 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] 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] or of representing him as Nebuchadrezzar's
successor. Nebuchadrezzar was succeeded by--
Evil-merodach _circ._ B.C. 561 (Avil-marduk).[127]
Nergal-sharezer " 559 (Nergal-sar-utsur).
Lakhabbashi-marudu } " 555 (an infant).
(Laborosoarchod) }
Nabunaid " 554.
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]
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]
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]--or with Cyaxares II.
in the romance of Xenophon?[131]--or to say that Darius the Mede
is Gobryas (Ugbaru) of Gutium[132]--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] when, even in the days of Darius
Hystaspis, there were only twenty or twenty-three satrapies in the
Persian Empire?[134] 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.
"Darius the Mede," says Professor Sayce, "is in fact a _reflection_
into the past of _Darius the son of Hystaspes_,[135] just as the
siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus are a reflection into the past
of its siege and capture by the same prince. The name of Darius and
the story of the slaughter of the Chaldean king go together. They
are alike derived from the unwritten history which, in the East of
to-day, is still made by the people, and which blends together in a
single picture the manifold events and personages of the past. It
is a history which has no perspective, though it is based on actual
facts; the accurate combinations of the chronologer have no meaning
for it, and the events of a century are crowded into a few years.
This is the kind of history which the Jewish _mind in the age of the
Talmud loved to adapt to moral and religious purposes_. This kind of
history then becomes as _it were a parable, and under the name of
Haggada serves to illustrate that teaching of the law_."[136]
The favourable view given of the character of the imaginary Darius
the Mede, and his regard for Daniel, may have been a confusion with
the Jewish reminiscences of Darius, son of Hystaspes, who permitted
the rebuilding of the Temple under Zerubbabel.[137]
If we look for the _source_ of the confusion, we see it perhaps in
the prophecy of Isaiah (xiii. 17, xiv. 6-22), that the _Medes_ should
be the destroyers of Babylon; or in that of Jeremiah--a prophet
of whom the author had made a special study (Dan. ix. 2)--to the
same effect (Jer. li. 11-28); together with the tradition that _a_
Darius--namely, the son of Hystaspes--_had_ once conquered Babylon.
XIV. But to make confusion worse confounded, if these chapters were
meant for history, the problematic "Darius the Mede" is in Dan. ix. 1
called "the son of Ahasuerus."
Now Ahasuerus (Achashverosh) is the same as Xerxes, and is the
_Persian_ name Khshyarsha; and Xerxes was the _son_, not the father,
of Darius Hystaspis, who was a _Persian_, not a Mede. Before Darius
Hystaspis could have been transformed into the son of his own son
Xerxes, the reigns, not only of Darius, but also of Xerxes, must have
long been past.
XV. There is yet another historic sign that this Book did not
originate till the Persian Empire had long ceased to exist. In xi.
2 the writer only knows of _four_ kings of Persia.[138] These are
evidently Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius Hystaspis, and Xerxes--whom he
describes as the richest of them. This king is destroyed by the
kingdom of Grecia--an obvious confusion of popular tradition between
the defeat inflicted on the Persians by the Republican Greeks in the
days of Xerxes (B.C. 480), and the overthrow of the Persian kingdom
under Darius Codomannus by Alexander the Great (B.C. 333).
* * * * *
These, then, are some of the apparent historic impossibilities by which
we are confronted when we regard this Book as professed history. The
doubts suggested by such seeming errors are not in the least removed
by the acervation of endless conjectures. They are greatly increased
by the fact that, so far from standing alone, they are intensified by
other difficulties which arise under every fresh aspect under which the
Book is studied. Behrmann, the latest editor, sums up his studies with
the remark that "there is an almost universal agreement that the Book,
in its present form and as a whole, had its origin in the Maccabean
age; while there is a widening impression that in its purpose it is
not an exclusive product of that period." No amount of casuistical
ingenuity can long prevail to overthrow the spreading conviction that
the views of Hengstenberg, Hävernick, Keil, Pusey, and their followers,
have been refuted by the light of advancing knowledge--which is a light
kindled for us by God Himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] 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_.
[91] Gen. xli.
[92] See Lenormant, _La Divination_, p. 219.
[93] Jer. xxix. 22. The tenth verse of _this very chapter_ is
referred to in Dan. ix. 2. The custom continued in the East centuries
afterwards. "And if it was known to a Roman writer (Quintus Curtius,
v. 1) in the days of Vespasian, why" (Mr. Bevan pertinently asks)
"should it not have been known to a Palestinian writer who lived
centuries earlier?" (A. A. Bevan, _Short Commentary_, p. 22).
[94] _Avodah-Zarah_, f. 3, 1; _Sanhedrin_, f. 93, 1; _Pesachim_, f.
118, 1; _Eiruvin_, f. 53, 1.
[95] Jer. lii. 28-30. These were in the reign of Jehoiachin.
[96] Jer. xlvi. 2: comp. Jer. xxv. The passage of Berossus, quoted in
Jos., _Antt._ X. xi. 1, is not trustworthy, and does not remove the
difficulty.
[97] The attempts of Keil and Pusey to get over the difficulty,
if they were valid, would reduce Scripture to a hopeless riddle.
The reader will see all the latest efforts in this direction in
the _Speaker's Commentary_ and the work of Fabre d'Envieu. Even
such "orthodox" writers as Dorner, Delitzsch, and Gess, not to
mention hosts of other great critics, have long seen the desperate
impossibility of these arguments.
[98] _Balatsu-utsur_, "protect his life." The root _balâtu_, "life,"
is common in Assyrian names. The mistake comes from the wrong
vocalisation adopted by the Massorets (Meinhold, _Beiträge_, p. 27).
[99] Schrader dubiously connects it with _matstsara_, "guardian."
[100] Lenormant, p. 182, regards it as a corruption of Ashbenazar,
"the goddess has pruned the seed" (??); but assumed corruptions of
the text are an uncertain expedient.
[101] On these see Rob. Smith, _Cambr. Journ. of Philol._, No. 27, p.
125.
[102] Juv., _Sat._, x. 96: "Cum grege Chaldæo"; Val. Max., iii. 1;
Cic., _De Div._, i. 1, etc.
[103] _Keilinschr._, p. 429; Meinhold, p. 28.
[104] Isa. xxiii. 13; Jer. xxv. 12; Ezek. xii. 13; Hab. i. 6.
[105] Jos., _Antt._, XI. viii. 5.
[106] Isa. xlix. 23.
[107] Isa. lx. 14.
[108] Acts xii. 22, 23.
[109] Acts xiv. 11, 12, xxviii. 6.
[110] See Jer. xxxix. 3. And if he held this position, how could he
be absent in chap. iii.?
[111] Namely, the words for "satraps," "governors," "counsellors,"
and "judges," as well as the courtiers in iii. 24. Bleek thinks that
to enhance the stateliness of the occasion the writer introduced as
many official names as he knew.
[112] _Supra_, p. 23.
[113] Athen., _Deipnos._, iv. 175.
[114] The Persian titles in iii. 24 alone suffice to indicate that
this could not be Nebuchadrezzar's actual decree. See further,
Meinhold, pp. 30, 31. We are evidently dealing with a writer who
introduces many Persian words, with no consciousness that they could
not have been used by Babylonian kings.
[115] The writer of Daniel was evidently acquainted with the Book of
Ezekiel. See Delitzsch in Herzog, _s.v._ "Daniel," and Driver, p. 476.
[116] See iv. 16, 25-30.
[117] Preserved by Jos.: comp. _Ap._, I. 20.
[118] The phrase is common enough: _e.g._, in Jos., _Antt._, X. xi. 1
(comp. _c. Ap._, I. 19); and a similar phrase, ἐμπεσὼν εἰς ἀῤῥωστίαν,
_is used of Antiochus Epiphanes_ in 1 Macc. vi. 8.
[119] _Præp. Ev._, ix. 41. Schrader (_K. A. T._, ii. 432) thinks that
Berossus and the Book of Daniel may both point to the same tradition;
but the Chaldee tradition quoted by the late writer Abydenus errs
likewise in only recognising _two_ Babylonish kings instead of
_four_, exclusive of Belshazzar. See, too, Schrader, _Jahrb. für
Prot. Theol._, 1881, p. 618.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[123] Herod., i. 191. See Rawlinson, _Herod._, i. 434.
[124] Xen., _Cyrop._, VII. v. 3.
[125] _Antt._, X. xi. 2. In _c. Ap._, I. 20, he calls him Nabonnedus.
[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.
[127] 2 Kings xxv. 27.
[128] Sayce, _The Higher Criticism and the Monuments_, p. 527.
[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.
[130] Winer, _Realwörterb._, _s.v._ "Darius."
[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?
[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.
[133] This is supported by the remark that this three-months viceroy
"appointed governors in Babylon"!
[134] Herod., iii. 89; _Records of the Past_, viii. 88.
[135] See, too, Meinhold (_Beiträge_, p. 46), who concludes his
survey with the words, "Sprachliche wie sachliche Gründe machen
es _nicht nur wahrscheinlich sondern gewiss_ dass an danielsche
Autorschaft von Dan. ii.-vi., überhanpt an die Entstehung zur Zeit
der jüdischen Verbannung nicht zu denken ist." He adds that almost
all scholars believe the chapters to be no older than the age of the
Maccabees, and that even Kahnis (_Dogmatik_, i. 376) and Delitzsch
(Herzog, _s.v._ "Dan.") give up their genuineness. He himself
believes that these Aramaic chapters were _incorporated_ by a later
writer, who wrote the introduction.
[136] Sayce. _l.c._, p. 529.
[137] Kamphausen, p. 45.
[138] Sayce, _l.c._ The author of the Book of Daniel seems only
to have known of _three_ kings of Persia after Cyrus (xi. 2). But
five are mentioned in the Old Testament--Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes,
Xerxes, and Darius III. (Codomannus, Neh. xii. 22). There were three
Dariuses and three Artaxerxes, but he only knows one of each name
(Kamphausen, p. 32). He might easily have overlooked the fact that
the Darius of Neh. xii. 22 was a wholly different person from the
Darius of Ezra vi. 1.