_PECULIARITIES OF THE APOCALYPTIC AND
PROPHETIC SECTION OF THE BOOK_
If we have found much to lead us to serious doubts as to the
authenticity and genuineness--_i.e._, as to the literal historicity
and the real author--of the Book of Daniel in its historic section,
we shall find still more in the prophetic section. If the phenomena
already passed in review are more than enough to indicate the
impossibility that the Book could have been written by the historic
Daniel, the phenomena now to be considered are such as have sufficed
to convince the immense majority of learned critics that, in its
present form, the Book did not appear before the days of Antiochus
Epiphanes.[152] The probable date is B.C. 164. As in the Book of Enoch
xc. 15, 16, it contains history written under the form of prophecy.
Leaving minuter examination to later chapters of commentary, we will
now take a brief survey of this unique apocalypse.
I. As regards the style and method the only distant approach to it
in the rest of the Old Testament is in a few visions of Ezekiel
and Zechariah, which differ greatly from the clear, and so to
speak classic, style of the older prophets. But in Daniel we
find visions far more enigmatical, and far less full of passion
and poetry. Indeed, as regards style and intellectual force, the
splendid historic scenes of chaps. i.-vi. far surpass the visions
of vii.-xii., some of which have been described as "composite
logographs," in which the ideas are forcibly juxtaposed without care
for any coherence in the symbols--as, for instance, when _a horn_
speaks and has eyes.[153]
Chap. vii. contains a vision of four different wild beasts rising
from the sea: a lion, with eagle-wings, which afterwards becomes
semi-human; a bear, leaning on one side, and having three ribs in its
mouth; a four-winged, four-headed panther; and a still more terrible
creature, with iron teeth, brazen claws, and ten horns, among which
rises a little horn, which destroyed three of the others--it has
man's eyes and a mouth speaking proud things.
There follows an epiphany of the Ancient of Days, who destroys the
little horn, but prolongs for a time the existence of the other wild
beasts. Then comes One in human semblance, who is brought before the
Ancient of Days, and is clothed by Him with universal and eternal power.
We shall see reasons for the view that the four beasts--in
accordance with the interpretation of the vision given to Daniel
himself--represent the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, and
the Greek empires, issuing in the separate kingdoms of Alexander's
successors; and that the little horn is Antiochus Epiphanes, whose
overthrow is to be followed immediately by the Messianic Kingdom.[154]
The vision of the eighth chapter mainly pursues the history of
the fourth of these kingdoms. Daniel sees a ram standing eastward
of the river-basin of the Ulai, having two horns, of which one is
higher than the other. It butts westward, northward, and southward,
and seemed irresistible, until a he-goat from the West, with one
horn between its eyes, confronted it, and stamped it to pieces.
After this its one horn broke into four towards the four winds of
heaven, and one of them shot forth a puny horn, which grew great
towards the South and East, and acted tyrannously against the Holy
People, and spoke blasphemously against God. Daniel hears the holy
ones declaring that its powers shall only last two thousand three
hundred evening-mornings. An angel bids Gabriel to explain the vision
to Daniel; and Gabriel tells the seer that the ram represents the
Medo-Persian and the he-goat the Greek Kingdom. Its great horn is
Alexander; the four horns are the kingdoms of his successors, the
Diadochi; the little horn is a king bold of vision and versed in
enigmas, whom all agree to be Antiochus Epiphanes.
In the ninth chapter we are told that Daniel has been meditating on the
prophecy of Jeremiah that Jerusalem should be rebuilt after seventy
years, and as the seventy years seem to be drawing to a close he
humbles himself with prayer and fasting. But Gabriel comes flying to
him at the time of the evening sacrifice, and explains to him that
the seventy years is to mean seventy _weeks_ of years--_i.e._, four
hundred and ninety years, divided into three periods of 7 + 62 + 1. At
the end of seven (_i.e._, forty-nine) years an anointed prince will
order the restoration of Jerusalem. The city will continue, though
in humiliation, for sixty-two (_i.e._, four hundred and thirty-four)
years, when "an anointed" will be cut off, and a prince will destroy
it. During half a week (_i.e._, for three and a half years) he will
cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease; and he will make a covenant
with many for one week, at the end of which he will be cut off.
Here, again, we shall have reason to see that the whole prophecy
culminates in, and is mainly concerned with, Antiochus Epiphanes.
In fact, it furnishes us with a sketch of his fortunes, which, in
connexion with the eleventh chapter, tells us more about him than we
learn from any extant history.
In the tenth chapter Daniel, after a fast of twenty-one days, sees a
vision of Gabriel, who explains to him why his coming has been delayed,
soothes his fears, touches his lips, and prepares him for the vision
of chapter eleven. That chapter is mainly occupied with a singularly
minute and circumstantial history of the murders, intrigues, wars, and
intermarriages of the Lagidæ and Seleucidæ. So detailed is it that in
some cases the history has to be reconstructed out of it. This sketch
is followed by the doings and final overthrow of Antiochus Epiphanes.
The twelfth chapter is the picture of a resurrection, and of words of
consolation and exhortation addressed to Daniel.
Such in briefest outline are the contents of these chapters, and
their peculiarities are very marked. Until the reader has studied the
more detailed explanation of the chapters separately, and especially
of the eleventh, he will be unable to estimate the enormous force of
the arguments adduced to prove the impossibility of such "prophecies"
having emanated from Babylon and Susa about B.C. 536. Long before the
astonishing enlargement of our critical knowledge which has been the
work of the last generation--nearly fifty years ago--the mere perusal
of the Book as it stands produced on the manly and honest judgment
of Dr. Arnold a strong impression of uncertainty. He said that the
latter chapters of Daniel would, if genuine, be a clear exception to
the canons of interpretation which he laid down in his _Sermons on
Prophecy_, since "there can be no reasonable spiritual meaning made
out of the kings of the North and South." "But," he adds, "I have
long thought that the greater part of the Book of Daniel is most
certainly a very late work of the time of the Maccabees; and the
pretended prophecies about the kings of Grecia and Persia, and of the
North and South, are mere history, like the poetical prophecies in
Virgil and elsewhere. In fact, you can trace distinctly the date when
it was written, because the events up to that date are given with
historical minuteness, totally unlike the character of real prophecy;
and beyond that date all is imaginary."[155]
The Book is the earliest specimen of its kind known to us. It
inaugurated a new and important branch of Jewish literature, which
influenced many subsequent writers. An apocalypse, so far as its
literary form is concerned, "claims throughout to be a supernatural
revelation given to mankind by the mouth of those men in whose names
the various writings appear." An apocalypse--such, for instance, as
the Books of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, Baruch, 1, 2 Esdras,
and the Sibylline Oracles--is characterised by its enigmatic form,
which shrouds its meaning in parables and symbols. It indicates
persons without naming them, and shadows forth historic events under
animal forms, or as operations of Nature. Even the explanations which
follow, as in this Book, are still mysterious and indirect.
II. In the next place an apocalypse is literary, not oral. Schürer, who
classes Daniel among the oldest and most original of _pseudepigraphic
prophecies_, etc., rightly says that "the old prophets in their
teachings and exhortations addressed themselves directly to the people
first and foremost through their oral utterances; and then, but only as
subordinate to these, by written discourses as well. But now, when men
felt themselves at any time compelled by their religious enthusiasm to
influence their contemporaries, instead of directly addressing them in
person like the prophets of old, they did so by a writing purporting
to be the work of some one or other of the great names of the past, in
the hope that in this way the effect would be all the surer and all the
more powerful."[156] The Daniel of this Book represents himself, not
as a prophet, but as a humble student of the prophets. He no longer
claims, as Isaiah did, to speak in the Name of God Himself with a "Thus
saith Jehovah."
III. Thirdly, it is impossible not to notice that Daniel differs
from all other prophecies by its all-but-total indifference to the
circumstances and surroundings in the midst of which the prediction
is supposed to have originated. The Daniel of Babylon and Susa is
represented as the writer; yet his whole interest is concentrated,
not in the events which immediately interest the Jews of Babylon in
the days of Cyrus, or of Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, but deals with
a number of predictions which revolve almost exclusively about the
reign of a very inferior king four centuries afterwards. And with
this king the predictions abruptly stop short, and are followed by
the very general promise of an immediate Messianic age.
We may notice further the constant use of round and cyclic numbers,
such as three and its compounds (i. 5, iii. 1, vi. 7, 10, vii. 5,
8); four (ii., vii. 6, and viii. 8, xi. 12); seven and its compounds
(iii. 19, iv. 16, 23, ix. 24, etc.). The apocalyptic symbols of
Bears, Lions, Eagles, Horns, Wings, etc., abound in the contemporary
and later Books of Enoch, Baruch, 4 Esdras, the Assumption of Moses,
and the Sibyllines, as well as in the early Christian apocalypses,
like that of Peter. The authors of the Sibyllines (B.C. 140) were
acquainted with Daniel; the Book of Enoch breathes exactly the same
spirit with this Book, in the transcendentalism which avoids the name
Jehovah (vii. 13; Enoch xlvi. 1, xlvii. 3), in the number of angels
(vii. 10; Enoch xl. 1, lx. 2), their names, the title of "watchers"
given to them, and their guardianship of men (Enoch xx. 5). The
Judgment and the Books (vii. 9, 10, xii. 1) occur again in Enoch
xlvii. 3, lxxxi. 1, as in the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs.[157]
FOOTNOTES:
[152] Among these critics are Delitzsch, Riehm, Ewald, Bunsen,
Hilgenfeld, Cornill, Lücke, Strack, Schürer, Kuenen, Meinhold,
Orelli, Joël, Reuss, König, Kamphausen, Cheyne, Driver, Briggs,
Bevan, Behrmann, etc.
[153] Renan, _History of Israel_, iv. 354. He adds, "L'essence du
genre c'est le pseudonyme, ou si l'on veut l'apocryphisme" (p. 356).
[154] Lagarde, _Gott. Gel. Anzieg._, 1891, pp. 497-520, stands
almost, if not quite, alone in arguing that Dan. vii. was not written
till A.D. 69, and that the "little horn" is meant for Vespasian. The
relation of the fourth empire of Dan. vii. to the iron part of the
image in Dan. ii. refutes this view: both can only refer to the Greek
Empire. Josephus (_Antt._, X. xi. 7) does not refer to Dan. vii.;
but neither does he to ix.-xii., for reasons already mentioned. See
Cornill, _Einleit._, p. 262.
[155] Stanley, _Life of Arnold_, p. 505.
[156] Schürer, _Hist. of the Jew. People_, iii. 24 (E. Tr.).
[157] On the close resemblance between Daniel and other apocryphal
books see Behrmann, _Dan._, pp. 37-39; Dillmann, _Das Buch
Henoch_. For its relation to the Book of Baruch see Schrader,
_Keilinschriften_, 435 f. Philo does not allude to Daniel.