_EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF THE GENUINENESS
UNCERTAIN AND INADEQUATE_
We have seen that there are many circumstances which force upon us
the gravest doubts as to the authenticity of the Book of Daniel. We
now proceed to examine the evidence urged in its favour, and deemed
adequate to refute the conclusion that in its present form it did not
see the light before the time of Antiochus IV.
Taking Hengstenberg as the most learned reasoner in favour of the
genuineness of Daniel, we will pass in review all the positive
arguments which he has adduced.[176] They occupy no less than one
hundred and ten pages (pp. 182-291) of the English translation of his
work on the genuineness of Daniel. Most of them are tortuous specimens
of special pleading inadequate in themselves, or refuted by increased
knowledge derived from the monuments and from further inquiry. To these
arguments neither Dr. Pusey nor any subsequent writer has made any
material addition. Some of them have been already answered, and many of
them are so unsatisfactory that they may be dismissed at once.
I. Such, for instance, are _the testimony of the author himself_. In
one of those slovenly treatises which only serve to throw dust in the
eyes of the ignorant we find it stated that, "although the name of
Daniel is not prefixed to his Book, the passages in which he speaks in
the first person _sufficiently prove_ that he was the author"! Such
assertions deserve no answer. If the mere assumption of a name be a
_sufficient proof_ of the authorship of a book, we are rich indeed in
Jewish authors--and, not to speak of others, our list includes works by
Adam, Enoch, Eldad, Medad, and Elijah. "Pseudonymity," says Behrmann,
"was a very common characteristic of the literature of that day, and
the conception of literary property was alien to that epoch, and
especially to the circle of writings of this class."
II. The character of the language, as we have seen already, proves
nothing. Hebrew and Aramaic long continued in common use side by side
at least among the learned,[177] and the divergence of the Aramaic
in Daniel from that of the Targums leads to no definite result,
considering the late and uncertain age of those writings.
III. How any argument can be founded on the exact knowledge of
history displayed by local colouring we cannot understand. Were
the knowledge displayed ever so exact it would only prove that the
author was a learned man, which is obvious already. But so far from
any remarkable accuracy being shown by the author, it is, on the
contrary, all but impossible to reconcile many of his statements
with acknowledged facts. The elaborate and tortuous explanations,
the frequent "subauditur," the numerous assumptions required to
force the text into accordance with the certain historic data of the
Babylonian and Persian empires, tell far more against the Book than
for it. The methods of accounting for these inaccuracies are mostly
self-confuting, for they leave the subject in hopeless confusion, and
each orthodox commentator shows how untenable are the views of others.
IV. Passing over other arguments of Keil, Hengstenberg, etc., which
have been either refuted already, or which are too weak to deserve
repetition, we proceed to examine one or two of a more serious
character. Great stress, for instance, is laid on the reception of the
Book into the Canon. We acknowledge the canonicity of the Book, its
high value when rightly apprehended, and its rightful acceptance as a
sacred book; but this in nowise proves its authenticity. The history
of the Old Testament Canon is involved in the deepest obscurity. The
belief that it was finally completed by Ezra and the Great Synagogue
rests on no foundation; indeed, it is irreconcilable with later
historic notices and other facts connected with the Books of Ezra,
Nehemiah, Esther, and the two Books of Chronicles. The Christian
Fathers in this, as in some other cases, implicitly believed what came
to them from the most questionable sources, and was mixed up with mere
Jewish fables. One of the oldest Talmudic books, the _Pirke Aboth_, is
entirely silent on the collection of the Old Testament, though in a
vague way it connects the Great Synagogue with the preservation of the
Law. The earliest mention of the legend about Ezra is in the Second
Book of Esdras (xiv. 29-48). This book does not possess the slightest
claim to authority, as it was not completed till a century after the
Christian era; and it mingles up with this very narrative a number
of particulars thoroughly fabulous and characteristic of a period
when the Jewish writers were always ready to subordinate history to
imaginative fables. The account of the magic cup, the forty days and
forty nights' dictation, the ninety books of which seventy were secret
and intended only for the learned, form part of the very passage from
which we are asked to believe that Ezra established our existing Canon,
though the genuine Book of Ezra is wholly silent about his having
performed any such inestimable service. It adds nothing to the credit
of this fable that it is echoed by Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and
Tertullian.[178] Nor are there any external considerations which render
it probable. The Talmudic tradition in the _Baba Bathra_,[179] which
says (among other remarks in a passage of which "the notorious errors
prove the unreliability of its testimony") that the men of the Great
Synagogue _wrote_ the Books of Ezekiel, the Twelve Minor Prophets,
_Daniel_, and Ezra.[180] It is evident that, so far as this evidence
is worth anything, it rather goes _against_ the authenticity of Daniel
than for it. The _Pirke Aboth_ makes Simon the Just (about B.C. 290)
a member of this Great Synagogue, of which the very existence is
dubious.[181]
Again, the author of the forged letter at the beginning of the Second
Book of Maccabees--"the work" says Hengstenberg, "of an arrant
impostor"[182]--attributes the collection of certain books first to
Nehemiah, and then, when they had been lost, to Judas Maccabæus (2
Macc. ii. 13, 14). The canonicity of the Old Testament books does not
rest on such evidence as this,[183] and it is hardly worth while to
pursue it further. That the Book of Daniel was regarded as authentic
by Josephus is clear; but this by no means decides its date or
authorship. It is one of the very few books of which Philo makes no
mention whatever.
V. Nor can the supposed traces of the early existence of the Book be
considered adequate to prove its genuineness. With the most important
of these, the story of Josephus (_Antt._, XI. viii. 5) that the high
priest Jaddua showed to Alexander the Great the prophecies of Daniel
respecting himself, we shall deal later. The alleged traces of the Book
in Ecclesiasticus are very uncertain, or rather wholly questionable;
and the allusion to Daniel in 1 Macc. ii. 60 decides nothing, because
there is nothing to prove that the speech of the dying Mattathias is
authentic, and because we know nothing certain as to the date of the
Greek translator of that book or of the Book of Daniel. The absence of
all allusion to the _prophecies_ of Daniel is, on the other hand, a
far more cogent point against the authenticity. Whatever be the date
of the Books of Maccabees, it is inconceivable that they should offer
no vestige of proof that Judas and his brothers received any hope or
comfort from such explicit predictions as Dan. xi., had the Book been
in the hands of those pious and noble chiefs.
The First Book of Maccabees cannot be certainly dated more than
a century before Christ, nor have we reason to believe that the
Septuagint version of the Book is much older.[184]
VI. The badness of the Alexandrian version, and the apocryphal
additions to it, seem to be rather an argument for the late age and
less established authority of the Book than for its genuineness.[185]
Nor can we attach much weight to the assertion (though it is endorsed
by the high authority of Bishop Westcott) that "it is far more
difficult to explain its composition in the Maccabean period than to
meet the peculiarities which it exhibits with the exigencies of the
Return." So far is this from being the case that, as we have seen
already, it resembles in almost every particular the acknowledged
productions of the age in which we believe it to have been written.
Many of the statements made on this subject by those who defend the
authenticity cannot be maintained. Thus Hengstenberg[186] remarks that
(1) "at this time the Messianic hopes are dead," and (2) "that no great
literary work appeared between the Restoration from the Captivity and
the time of Christ." Now the facts are _precisely the reverse in each
instance_. For (i) the little book called the Psalms of Solomon,[187]
which belongs to this period, contains _the strongest and clearest
Messianic hopes_, and the Book of Enoch most closely resembles Daniel
in its Messianic predictions. Thus it speaks of the pre-existence of
the Messiah (xlviii. 6, lxii. 7), of His sitting on a throne of glory
(lv. 4, lxi. 8), and receiving the power of rule.
(ii) Still less can we attach any force to Hengstenberg's argument
that, in the Maccabean age, the gift of prophecy was believed to
have departed for ever. Indeed, that is an argument in favour of the
pseudonymity of the Book. For in the age at which--for purposes of
literary form--it is represented as having appeared the spirit of
prophecy was far from being dead. Ezekiel was still living, or had
died but recently. Zechariah, Haggai, and long afterwards Malachi,
were still to continue the succession of the mighty prophets of their
race. Now, if prediction be an element in the prophet's work, no
prophet, nor all the prophets together, ever distantly approached
any such power of minutely foretelling the events of a distant
future--even the half-meaningless and all-but-trivial events of four
centuries later, in kingdoms which had not yet thrown their distant
shadows on the horizon--as that which Daniel must have possessed, if
he were indeed the author of this Book.[188] Yet, as we have seen, he
never thinks of claiming the functions of the prophets, or speaking
in the prophet's commanding voice, as the foreteller of the message
of God. On the contrary, he adopts the comparatively feebler and more
entangled methods of the literary composers in an age when men saw
not their tokens and there was no prophet more.[189]
We must postpone a closer examination of the questions as to the
"four kingdoms" intended by the writer, and of his curious and
enigmatic chronological calculations; but we must reject at once the
monstrous assertion--excusable in the days of Sir Isaac Newton, but
which has now become unwise and even portentous--that "to reject
Daniel's prophecies would be to undermine the Christian religion,
_which is all but founded on his prophecies respecting Christ_"!
Happily the Christian religion is not built on such foundations of
sand. Had it been so, it would long since have been swept away by
the beating rain and the rushing floods. Here, again, the arguments
urged by those who believe in the authenticity of Daniel recoil with
tenfold force upon themselves. Sir Isaac Newton's observations on the
prophecies of Daniel only show how little transcendent genius in one
domain of inquiry can save a great thinker from absolute mistakes in
another. In writing upon prophecy the great astronomer was writing
on the assumption of baseless premisses which he had drawn from
stereotyped tradition; and he was also writing at an epoch when the
elements for the final solution of the problem had not as yet been
discovered or elaborated. It is as certain that, had he been living
now, he would have accepted the conclusion of all the ablest and
most candid inquirers, as it is certain that Bacon, had he now been
living, would have accepted the Copernican theory. It is _absurdly_
false to say that "the Christian religion is all but founded on
Daniel's prophecies respecting Christ." If it were not absurdly
false, we might well ask, How it came that neither Christ nor His
Apostles ever once alluded to the existence of any such argument, or
ever pointed to the Book of Daniel and the prophecy of the seventy
weeks as containing the least germ of evidence in favour of Christ's
mission or the Gospel teaching? No such argument is remotely alluded
to till long afterwards by some of the Fathers.
But so far from finding any _agreement_ in the opinions of the
Christian Fathers and commentators on a subject which, in Newton's
view, was so momentous, we only find ourselves weltering in a chaos of
uncertainties and contradictions. Thus Eusebius records the attempt of
some early Christian commentators to treat the _last_ of the seventy
weeks as representing, not, like all the rest, seven years, but seventy
years, in order to bring down the prophecy to the days of Trajan!
Neither Jewish nor Christian exegetes have ever been able to come to
the least agreement between themselves or with one another as to the
beginning or end--the _terminus a quo_ or the _terminus ad quem_--with
reference to which the seventy weeks are to be reckoned. The Christians
naturally made great efforts to make the seventy weeks end with the
Crucifixion. But Julius Africanus[190] († A.D. 232), beginning with
the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Neh. ii. 1-9, B.C. 444), gets only
four hundred and seventy-five to the Crucifixion, and to escape the
difficulty makes the years _lunar_ years.[191]
Hippolytus[192] separates the last week from all the rest, and
relegates it to the days of Antichrist and the end of the world.
Eusebius himself refers "the anointed one" to the line of Jewish
high priests, separates the last week from the others, ends it with
the fourth year after the Crucifixion, and refers the ceasing of
the sacrifice (Deut. ix. 27) to the rejection of Jewish sacrifices
by God after the death of Christ. Apollinaris makes the seventy
weeks begin with the birth of Christ, and argues that Elijah and
Antichrist were to appear A.D. 490! None of these views found
general acceptance.[193] Not one of them was sanctioned by Church
authority. Every one, as Jerome says, argued in this direction or
that _pro captu ingenii sui_. The climax of arbitrariness is reached
by Keil--the last prominent defender of the so-called "orthodoxy" of
criticism--when he makes the weeks not such commonplace things as
"earthly chronological weeks," but Divine, symbolic, and therefore
unknown and unascertainable periods. And are we to be told that it
is on such fantastic, self-contradictory, and mutually refuting
calculations that "the Christian religion is all but founded"? Thank
God, the assertion is entirely wild.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] Hävernick is another able and sincere supporter; but Droysen
truly says (_Gesch. d. Hellenismus_, ii. 211), "Die Hävernickschen
Auffassung kann kein vernunftiger Mensch bestimmen."
[177] See Grimm, _Comment., zum I. Buch der Makk., Einleit._,
xvii.; Mövers in _Bonner Zeitschr._, Heft 13, pp. 31 ff.; Stähelin,
_Einleit._, p. 356.
[178] Iren., _Adv. Hæres._, iv. 25; Clem., _Strom._ i. 21, § 146;
Tert., _De Cult. Fæm._, i. 3; Jerome, _Adv. Helv._, 7; Ps. August.,
_De Mirab._, ii. 32, etc.
[179] _Baba Bathra_, f. 13_b_, 14_b_.
[180] See Oehler, _s.v._ "Kanon" (Herzog, _Encycl._).
[181] Rau, _De Synag. Magna._, ii. 66.
[182] _On Daniel_, p. 195.
[183] "Even after the Captivity," says Bishop Westcott, "the history of
the Canon, like all Jewish history up to the date of the Maccabees, is
wrapped in great obscurity. Faint traditions alone remain to interpret
results which are found realised when the darkness is first cleared
away" (_s.v._ "Canon," Smith's _Dict. of Bible_).
[184] See König, _Einleit._, § 80, 2.
[185] "In propheta Daniele Septuaginta interpretes multum ab Hebraica
veritate discordant" (Jerome, _ed._ Vallarsi, v. 646). In the LXX. are
first found the three apocryphal additions. For this reason the version
of Theodotion was substituted for the LXX., which latter was only
rediscovered in 1772 in a manuscript in the library of Cardinal Chigi.
[186] _On the Authenticity of Daniel_, pp. 159, 290 (E. Tr.).
[187] Psalms of Sol. xvii. 36, xviii. 8, etc. See Fabric., _Cod.
Pseudep._, i. 917-972; Ewald, _Gesch. d. Volkes Isr._, iv. 244.
[188] Even Auberlen says (_Dan._, p. 3, E. Tr.), "If prophecy is
anywhere a history of the future, it is here."
[189] See Vitringa, _De defectu Prophetiæ post Malachiæ tempora Obss.
Sacr._, ii. 336.
[190] _Demonstr. Evang._, viii.
[191] Of the Jews, the LXX. translators seem to make the seventy
weeks end with Antiochus Epiphanes; but in Jerome's day they made
the first year of "Darius the Mede" the _terminus a quo_, and
brought down the _terminus ad quem_ to Hadrian's destruction of the
Temple. Saadia the Gaon and Rashi reckon the seventy weeks from
Nebuchadrezzar to Titus, and make Cyrus the anointed one of ix. 25.
Abn Ezra, on the other hand, takes Nehemiah for "the anointed one."
What can be based on such varying and undemonstrable guesses? See
Behrmann, _Dan._, p. xliii.
[192] Hippolytus, _Fragm. in Dan._ (Migne, _Patr. Græc._, x.).
[193] See Bevan, pp. 141-145.