_EXTERNAL EVIDENCE AND RECEPTION INTO
THE CANON_
The reception of the Book of Daniel anywhere into the Canon might be
regarded as an argument in favour of its authenticity, if the case
of the Books of Jonah and Ecclesiastes did not sufficiently prove
that canonicity, while it does constitute a proof of the value and
sacred significance of a book, has no weight as to its traditional
authorship. But in point of fact the position assigned by the Jews to
the Book of Daniel--not among the Prophets, where, had the Book been
genuine, it would have had a supreme right to stand, but only with
the Book of Esther, among the latest of the Hagiographa[194]--is a
strong argument for its late date. The division of the Old Testament
into Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa first occurs in the Prologue to
Ecclesiasticus (about B.C. 131)--"the Law, the Prophecies, and the
rest of the books."[195] In spite of its peculiarities, its prophetic
claims among those who accepted it as genuine were so strong that the
LXX. and the later translations unhesitatingly reckon the author among
the four greater prophets. If the Daniel of the Captivity had written
this Book, he would have had a far greater claim to this position among
the prophets than Haggai, Malachi, or the later Zechariah. Yet the Jews
deliberately placed the Book among the _Kethubîm_, to the writers of
which they indeed ascribe the Holy Spirit (_Ruach Hakkodesh_), but whom
they did not credit with the higher degree of prophetic inspiration.
Josephus expresses the Jewish conviction that, since the days of
Artaxerxes onwards, the writings which had appeared had not been deemed
worthy of the same reverence as those which had preceded them, because
there had occurred no unquestionable succession of prophets.[196] The
Jews who thus decided the true nature of the Book of Daniel must surely
have been guided by strong traditional, critical, historical, or other
grounds for denying (as they did) to the author the gift of prophecy.
Theodoret denounces this as "shameless impudence" ἀναισχυντίαν on their
part;[197] but may it not rather have been fuller knowledge or simple
honesty? At any rate, on any other grounds it would have been strange
indeed of the Talmudists to decide that the most minutely predictive
of the prophets--if indeed this _were_ a prophecy--wrote _without_ the
gift of prophecy.[198] It can only have been the late and suspected
appearance of the Book, and its marked phenomena, which led to its
relegation to the lowest place in the Jewish Canon. Already in 1
Macc. iv. 46 we find that the stones of the demolished pagan altar are
kept "until there should arise a prophet to show what should be done
with them"; and in 1 Macc. xiv. 41 we again meet the phrase "until
there should arise a faithful prophet." Before this epoch there is no
trace of the existence of the Book of Daniel, and not only so, but the
prophecies of the post-exilic prophets as to the future contemplate a
wholly different horizon and a wholly different order of events. Had
Daniel existed before the Maccabean epoch, it is impossible that the
rank of the Book should have been deliberately ignored. The Jewish
Rabbis of the age in which it appeared saw, quite correctly, that it
had points of affinity with other pseudepigraphic apocalypses which
arose in the same epoch. The Hebrew scholar Dr. Joel has pointed out
how, amid its immeasurable superiority to such a poem as the enigmatic
Cassandra of the Alexandrian poet Lycophron,[199] it resembles that
book in its _indirectness_ of nomenclature. Lycophron is one of the
pleiad of poets in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus; but his writings,
like the Book before us, have probably received interpolations from
later hands. He never calls a god or a hero by his name, but always
describes him by a periphrasis, just as here we have "the King of the
North" and "the King of the South," though the name "Egypt" slips in
(Dan. xi. 8). Thus Hercules is "a three-nights' lion" (τριέσπερος
λέων), and Alexander the Great is "a wolf." A son is always "an
offshoot" (φίτυμα), or is designated by some other metaphor. When
Lycophron wants to allude to Rome, the Greek Ῥωμή is used in its sense
of "strength." The name Ptolemaios becomes by anagram ἀπὸ μέλιτος,
"from honey"; and the name Arsinoë becomes ἴον Ἥρας, "the violet of
Hera." We may find some resemblances to these procedures when we are
considering the eleventh chapter of Daniel.
It is a serious abuse of argument to pretend, as is done by
Hengstenberg, by Dr. Pusey, and by many of their feebler followers,
that "there are few books whose Divine authority is so fully
established by the testimony of the New Testament, and in particular
by our Lord Himself, as the Book of Daniel."[200] It is to the
last degree dangerous, irreverent, and unwise to stake the Divine
authority of our Lord on the maintenance of those ecclesiastical
traditions of which so many have been scattered to the winds for
ever. Our Lord, on one occasion, in the discourse on the Mount
of Olives, warned His disciples that, "when they should see the
abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing
in the holy place, they should flee from Jerusalem into the mountain
district."[201] There is nothing to prove that He Himself uttered
either the words "_let him that readeth understand_," or even
"_spoken of by Daniel the prophet_." Both of those may belong to
the explanatory narrative of the Evangelist, and the latter does
not occur in St. Mark. Further, in St. Luke (xxi. 20) there is _no_
specific allusion to Daniel at all; but instead of it we find,
"When ye see Jerusalem being encircled by armies, then know that
its desolation is near." We cannot be certain that the specific
reference to Daniel may not be due to the Evangelist. But without
so much as raising these questions, it is fully admitted that,
whether exactly in its present form or not, the Book of Daniel formed
part of the Canon in the days of Christ. If He directly refers to
it as a book known to His hearers, His reference lies as wholly
outside all questions of genuineness and authenticity as does St.
Jude's quotation from the Book of Enoch, or St. Paul's (possible)
allusions to the Assumption of Elijah,[202] or Christ's own passing
reference to the Book of Jonah. Those who attempt to drag in these
allusions as decisive critical dicta transfer them to a sphere wholly
different from that of the moral application for which they were
intended. They not only open vast and indistinct questions as to the
self-imposed limitations of our Lord's human knowledge as part of His
own voluntary "emptying Himself of His glory," but they also do a
deadly disservice to the most essential cause of Christianity.[203]
The only thing which is acceptable to the God of truth is truth; and
since He has given us our reason and our conscience as lights which
light every man who is born into the world, we must walk by these
lights in all questions which belong to these domains. History,
literature and criticism, and the interpretation of human language
do belong to the domain of pure reason; and we must not be bribed
by the misapplication of hypothetical exegesis to give them up for
the support of traditional views which advancing knowledge no longer
suffers us to maintain. It may be true or not that our Lord adopted
the title "Son of Man" (_Bar Enosh_) from the Book of Daniel;
but even if He did, which is at least disputable, that would only
show, what we all already admit, that in His time the Book was an
acknowledged part of the Canon. On the other hand, if our Lord and
His Apostles regarded the Book of Daniel as containing the most
explicit prophecies of Himself and of His kingdom, why did they never
appeal or even allude to it to prove that He was the promised Messiah?
Again, Hengstenberg and his school try to prove that the Book of
Daniel existed before the Maccabean age, because Josephus says that
the high priest Jaddua showed to Alexander the Great, in the year
B.C. 332, the prophecy of himself as the Grecian he-goat in the Book
of Daniel; and that the leniency which Alexander showed towards the
Jews was due to the favourable impression thus produced.[204]
The story, which is a beautiful and an interesting one, runs as
follows:--
On his way from Tyre, after capturing Gaza, Alexander decided to
advance to Jerusalem. The news threw Jaddua the high priest into an
agony of alarm. He feared that the king was displeased with the Jews,
and would inflict severe vengeance upon them. He ordered a general
supplication with sacrifices, and was encouraged by God in a dream to
decorate the city, throw open the gates, and go forth in procession
at the head of priests and people to meet the dreaded conqueror. The
procession, so unlike that of any other nation, went forth as soon as
they heard that Alexander was approaching the city. They met the king
on the summit of Scopas, the watch-tower--the height of Mizpah, from
which the first glimpse of the city is obtained. It is the famous
Blanca Guarda of the Crusaders, on the summit of which Richard I.
turned away, and did not deem himself worthy to glance at the city
which he was too weak to rescue from the infidel. The Phœnicians and
Chaldeans in Alexander's army promised themselves that they would
now be permitted to plunder the city and torment the high priest
to death. But it happened far otherwise. For when the king saw the
white-robed procession approaching, headed by Jaddua in his purple
and golden array, and wearing on his head the golden _petalon_, with
its inscription "Holiness to Jehovah," he advanced, saluted the
priest, and adored the Divine Name. The Jews encircled and saluted
him with unanimous greeting, while the King of Syria and his other
followers fancied that he must be distraught. "How is it," asked
Parmenio, "that you, whom all others adore, yourself adore the Jewish
high priest?" "I did not adore the high priest," said Alexander, "but
God, by whose priesthood He has been honoured. When I was at Dium in
Macedonia, meditating on the conquest of Asia, I saw this very man in
this same apparel, who invited me to march boldly and without delay,
and that he would conduct me to the conquest of the Persians." Then
he took Jaddua by the hand, and in the midst of the rejoicing priests
entered Jerusalem, where he sacrificed to God.[205] Jaddua showed him
the prediction about himself in the Book of Daniel, and in extreme
satisfaction he granted to the Jews, at the high priest's request,
all the petitions which they desired of him.
But this story, so grateful to Jewish vanity, is a transparent fiction.
It does not find the least support from any other historic source,
and is evidently one of the Jewish _Haggadoth_ in which the intense
national self-exaltation of that strange nation delighted to depict
the homage which they, and their national religion, extorted from the
supernaturally caused dread of the greatest heathen potentates. In this
respect it resembles the earlier chapters of the Book of Daniel itself,
and the numberless stories of the haughty superiority of great Rabbis
to kings and emperors in which the Talmud delights. Roman Catholic
historians, like Jahn and Hess, and older writers, like Prideaux,[206]
accept the story, even when they reject the fable about Sanballat
and the Temple on Gerizim which follows it. Stress is naturally laid
upon it by apologists like Hengstenberg; but an historian like Grote
does not vouchsafe to notice it by a single word, and most modern
writers reject it. The Bishop of Bath and Wells thinks that these
stories are "probably derived from some apocryphal book of Alexandrian
growth, in which chronology and history gave way to romance and Jewish
vanity."[207] All the historians except Josephus say that Alexander
went straight from Gaza to Egypt, and make no mention of Jerusalem or
Samaria; and Alexander was by no means "adored" by all men at that
period of his career, for he never received προσκύνησις till after his
conquest of Persia. Nor can we account for the presence of "Chaldeans"
in his army at this time, for Chaldea was then under the rule of
Babylon. Besides which, Daniel was expressly bidden, as Bleek observes,
to "seal up his prophecy till the time of the end"; and the "time of
the end" was certainly not the era of Alexander,--not to mention the
circumstance that Alexander, if the prophecies were pointed out to
him at all, would hardly have been content with the single verse or
two about himself, and would have been anything but gratified by what
immediately follows.[208]
I pass over as meaningless Hengstenberg's arguments in favour of the
genuineness of the Book from the predominance of symbolism; from the
moderation of tone towards Nebuchadrezzar; from the political gifts
shown by the writer; and from his prediction that the Messianic Kingdom
would at once appear after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes! When
we are told that these circumstances "can only be explained on the
assumption of a Babylonian origin"; that "they are directly opposed
to the spirit of the Maccabean time"; that the artifice with which
the writing is pervaded, supposing it to be a pseudepigraphic book,
"far surpasses the powers of the most gifted poet"; and that "such a
distinct expectation of the near advent of the Messianic Kingdom is
utterly without analogy in the whole of prophetic literature,"--such
arguments can only be regarded as appeals to ignorance. They are
either assertions which float in the air, or are disproved at once
alike by the canonical prophets and by the apocryphal literature of
the Maccabean age. Symbolism is the distinguishing characteristic of
apocalypses, and is found in those of the late post-exilic period.
The views of the Jews about Nebuchadrezzar varied. Some writers were
partially favourable to him, others were severe upon him. It does not
in the least follow that a writer during the Antiochian persecution,
who freely adapted traditional or imaginative elements, should
necessarily represent the old potentates as irredeemably wicked, even
if he meant to satirise Epiphanes in the story of their extravagances.
It was necessary for his purpose to bring out the better features of
their characters, in order to show the conviction wrought in them by
Divine interpositions. The notion that the Book of Daniel could only
have been written by a statesman or a consummate politician is mere
fancy. And, lastly, in making the Messianic reign begin immediately at
the close of the Seleucid persecution, the writer both expresses his
own faith and hope, and follows the exact analogy of Isaiah and all the
other Messianic prophets.
But though it is common with the prophets to pass at once from the
warnings of destruction to the hopes of a Messianic Kingdom which is
to arise immediately beyond the horizon which limits their vision,
it is remarkable--and the consideration tells strongly against the
authenticity of Daniel--that not one of them had the least glimpse
of the four successive kingdoms or of the four hundred and ninety
years;--not even those prophets _who, if the Book of Daniel were
genuine, must have had it in their hands_. To imagine that Daniel
took means to have his Book left undiscovered for some four hundred
years, and then brought to light during the Maccabean struggle, is
a grotesque impossibility. If the Book existed, it must have been
known. Yet not only is there no real trace of its existence before
B.C. 167, but the post-exilic prophets pay no sort of regard to
its detailed predictions, and were evidently unaware that any such
predictions had ever been uttered. What room is there for Daniel's
four empires and four hundred and ninety years in such a prophecy
as Zech. ii. 6-13? The pseudepigraphic Daniel possibly took the
symbolism of four horns from Zech. i. 18, 19; but there is not
the slightest connexion between Zechariah's symbol and that of
the pseudo-Daniel. If the number four in Zechariah be not a mere
number of completeness with reference to the four quarters of the
world (comp. Zech. i. 18), the four horns symbolise either Assyria,
Babylonia, Egypt, and Persia, or more generally the nations which
had then scattered Israel (Zech. ii. 8, vi. 1-8; Ezek. xxxvii. 9);
so that the following promise does not even contemplate a victorious
succession of heathen powers. Again, what room is there for Daniel's
four successive pagan empires in any natural interpretation of
Haggai's "yet a little while and I will shake all nations" (Hag. ii.
7), and in the promise that this shaking shall take place in the
lifetime of Zerubbabel (Hag. ii. 20-23)? And can we suppose that
Malachi wrote that the messenger of the Lord should "suddenly" come
to His Temple with such prophecies as those of Daniel before him?[209]
But if it be thought extraordinary that a pseudepigraphic prophecy
should have been admitted into the Canon at all, even when placed low
among the _Kethubîm_, and if it be argued that the Jews would never
have conferred such an honour on such a composition, the answer is
that even when compared with such fine books as those of Wisdom and
Jesus the Son of Sirach, the Book has a right to such a place by its
intrinsic superiority. Taken as a whole it is far superior in moral
and spiritual instructiveness to any of the books of the Apocrypha.
It was profoundly adapted to meet the needs of the age in which it
originated. It was in its favour that it was written partly in Hebrew
as well as in Aramaic, and it came before the Jewish Church under the
sanction of a famous ancient name which was partly at least traditional
and historical. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that in an
age in which literature was rare and criticism unknown it soon came
to be accepted as genuine. Similar phenomena are quite common in
much later and more comparatively learned ages. One or two instances
will suffice. Few books have exercised a more powerful influence on
Christian literature than the spurious letters of Ignatius and the
pseudo-Clementines. They were accepted, and their genuineness was
defended for centuries; yet in these days no sane critic would imperil
his reputation by an attempt to defend their genuineness. The book
of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite was regarded as genuine and
authoritative down to the days of the Reformation, and the author
professes to have seen the supernatural darkness of the Crucifixion;
yet "Dionysius the Areopagite" did not write before A.D. 532! The power
of the Papal usurpation was mainly built on the Forged Decretals,
and for centuries no one ventured to question the genuineness and
authenticity of those gross forgeries, till Laurentius Valla exposed
the cheat and flung the tatters of the Decretals to the winds. In the
eighteenth century Ireland could deceive even the acutest critics
into the belief that his paltry Vortigern was a rediscovered play
of Shakespeare; and a Cornish clergyman wrote a ballad which even
Macaulay took for a genuine production of the reign of James II. Those
who read the Book of Daniel in the light of Seleucid and Ptolemaic
history saw that the writer was well acquainted with the events of
those days, and that his words were full of hope, consolation, and
instruction. After a certain lapse of time they were in no position to
estimate the many indications that by no possibility could the Book
have been written in the days of the Babylonian Exile; nor had it yet
become manifest that all the detailed knowledge stops short with the
close of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. The enigmatical character
of the Book, and the varying elements of its calculations, led later
commentators into the error that the fourth beast and the iron legs
of the image stood for the Roman Empire, so that they did not expect
the Messianic reign at the close of the Greek Empire, which, in the
prediction, it immediately succeeds.[210]
How late was the date before the Jewish Canon was finally settled we
see from the Talmudic stories that but for Hananiah ben-Hizkiah, with
the help of his three hundred bottles of oil burnt in nightly studies,
even the Book of Ezekiel would have been suppressed, as being contrary
to the Law (_Shabbath_, f. 13, 2); and that but for the mystic line of
interpretation adopted by Rabbi Aqiba (A.D. 120) a similar fate might
have befallen the Song of Songs (_Yaddayim_, c. iii.; _Mish._, 5).
There is, then, the strongest reason to adopt the conclusion that the
Book of Daniel was the production of one of the _Chasidîm_ towards
the beginning of the Maccabean struggle, and that its immediate
object was to warn the Jews against the apostasies of commencing
Hellenism. It was meant to encourage the faithful, who were waging
a fierce battle against Greek influences and against the mighty
and persecuting heathen forces by which they were supported.[211]
Although the writer's knowledge of history up to the time of
Alexander the Great is vague and erroneous, and his knowledge of
the period which followed Antiochus entirely nebulous, on the other
hand his acquaintance with the period of Antiochus Epiphanes is so
extraordinarily precise as to furnish our chief information on some
points of that king's reign. Guided by these indications, it is
perhaps possible to fix the exact year and month in which the Book
saw the light--namely, about January B.C. 164.[212]
From Dan. viii. 14 it seems that the author had lived till the
cleansing of the Temple after its pollution by the Seleucid King (1
Macc. iv. 42-58). For though the Maccabean uprising is only called
"a little help" (xi. 34), this is in comparison with the splendid
future triumph and epiphany to which he looked forward. It is
sufficiently clear from 1 Macc. v. 15, 16, that the Jews, even after
the early victories of Judas, were in evil case, and that the nominal
adhesion of many Hellenising Jews to the national cause was merely
hypocritical (Dan. xi. 34).
Now the Temple was dedicated on December 25th, B.C. 165; and the
Book appeared before the death of Antiochus, which the writer
expected to happen at the end of the seventy weeks, or, as he
calculated them, in June 164. The king did not actually die till the
close of 164 or the beginning of 163 (1 Macc. vi. 1-16).[213]
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Jacob Perez of Valentia accounted for this by the hatred of the
Jews for Christianity! (Diestel, _Gesch. d. A.T._, p. 211).
[195] Comp. Luke xxiv. 44; Acts xxviii. 23; Philo, _De Vit. Cont._,
3. See Oehler in Herzog, _s.v._ "Kanon."
[196] _Jos. c. Ap._, I. 8.
[197] _Opp._ ed. Migne, ii. 1260: Εἰς τοσαύτην ἀναισχυντίαν ἤλασαν
ὡς καὶ τοῦ χόρου τῶν προφήτων τοῦτον ἀποσχοινίζειν. He may well add,
on his view of the date, εἰ γὰρ ταῦτα τῆς προφητείας ἀλλότρια, τίνα
προφητείας τὰ ἴδια;
[198] _Megilla_, 3, 1. Josephus, indeed, regards apocalyptic visions
as the highest form of prophecy (_Antt._, X. xi. 7); but the great
Rabbis Kimchi, Maimonides, Joseph Albo, etc., are strongly against
him. See Behrmann, p. xxxix.
[199] It has been described as "ein Versteck für Belesenheit, und ein
grammatischer Monstrum."
[200] Hengstenberg, p. 209.
[201] Matt. xxiv. 15; Mark xiii. 14.
[202] 1 Cor. ii. 9; Eph. v. 11.
[203] Hengstenberg's reference to 1 Peter i. 10-12, 1 Thess. ii. 3, 1
Cor. vi. 2, Heb. xi. 12, deserve no further notice.
[204] Jos., _Antt._, XI. viii. 5.
[205] There is nothing to surprise us in this circumstance, for
Ptolemy III. (_Jos. c. Ap._, II. 5) and Antiochus VII. (Sidetes,
_Antt._, XIII. viii. 2), Marcus Agrippa (_id._, XVI. ii. 1), and
Vitellius (_id._, XVIII. v. 3) are said to have done the same. Comp.
Suet., _Aug._, 93; Tert., _Apolog._, 6; and other passages adduced by
Schürer, i., § 24.
[206] Jahn, _Hebr. Commonwealth_, § 71; Hess, _Gesch._, ii. 37;
Prideaux, _Connection_, i. 540 ff.
[207] _Dict. of Bible_, _s.v._ "Jaddua." See Schürer, i. 187; Van
Dale, _Dissert. de LXX. Interpr._, 68 ff.
[208] This part of the story is a mere doublet of that about Cyrus
and the prophecies of Isaiah (_Antt._, XI. i. 2).
[209] Mal. iii. 1. LXX., ἐξαίφνης; Vulg., _statim_; but it is rather
"unawares" (_unversehens_).
[210] That the fourth empire could not be the Roman has _long_ been
seen by many critics, as far back as Grotius, L'Empereur, Chamier, J.
Voss, Bodinus, Becmann, etc. (Diestel, _Gesch. A. T._, p. 523).
[211] See Hamburger, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "Geheimlehre," ii. 265.
The "Geheimlehre" (Heb., _Sithrî Thorah_) embraces a whole region of
Jewish literature, of which the Book of Daniel forms the earliest
beginning. See Dan. xii. 4-9. The phrases of Dan. vii. 22 are common
in the _Zohar_.
[212] "Plötzlich bei Antiochus IV. angekommen hört alle seine
Wissenschaft auf, so dass wir, den Kalendar in den Hand, _fast den
Tag angeben können_ wo dies oder jenes niedergeschrieben worden ist"
(Reuss, _Gesch. d. Heil. Schrift._, § 464).
[213] For arguments in favour of this view see Cornill, _Theol. Stud.
aus Ostpreussen_, 1889, pp. 1-32, and _Einleit._, p. 261. He reckons
twelve generations, sixty-nine "weeks," from the destruction of
Jerusalem to the murder of the high priest Onias III.