PRINCETON, N. J. ^ Shelf Division BS iS^t Section. » XJ.rX... / "O. Number A DANIEL AND JOHN DANIEL AND JOHN: OR THE APOCALYPSE OF THE OLD AND THAT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. ■TV r. . "'■id ^^^ BY PHILIP S. DESPPEZ, B.D., VICAR OF ALVEDISTON, IVILTS. LONDON : C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., i, PATERNOSTER Square. 1878. [ The rifilits of franslation aiui of rcpyoduction jrc rc'scfiuy/.] CONTENTS. DANIEL. PAGE, Introduction by Rowland Williams, D.D. . . . . ix CHAPTER I. Date and Authorship . .... ^ ... \ CHAPTER IL Legends of the Captivity ..... . . 25 CHAPTER III. The Four Great Beasts ........ 45 CHAPTER IV. The Little Horn 61 CHAPTER V. Judas Maccabeus . . . .- 79 CHAPTER VI. The Seventy Weeks 92 CHAPTER VII. Historical Minuteness of Daniel XI 106 CHAPTER VIIL Messianic Ideas 132 b VI CONTENTS. ■ JOHN. PAGE. Introduction 151 Preface 157 CHAPTER I. Date of the Apocalypse 1C3 CHAPTER II. Authorship of the Apocalypse 178 CHAPTER III. The Epistles to the Seven Churches 192 CHAPTER IV. The First Six Seals . . . . . 217 CHAPTER V. The Seventh Seal 231 CHAPTER VI. The Two Witnesses 242 CHAPTER VII. Antichrist 260 CHAPTER VIII. The Seven Vials 274 CHAPTER IX. Babylon 287 CHAPTER X. The Millennium 305 CHAPTER XI. The New Jerusalem 318 CHAPTER XII. The Unreality of the Second Advent 331 Appendix 3gi DANIEL; OR, The Apocalypse of the Old Testament. AN INTRODUCTION, ETC. " Nobis summopere studendum est, ut maneat vera et certa Scripturas intelligentia." — Calvinus in Hoseam. " I leave it to themselves to consider, whether they have in this first point, or not, overshot themselves." — Hooker, Ecc. Pol., last paragraph of Book ii. I. Those amongst us whose recollection goes back to their earliest impressions of the Sacred Volume, can hardly fail to remember that Daniel struck them from the beginning as unlike the rest of the Prophets. We may in some instances, or at some times, have preferred stories of marvel to sublime denunciations : yet the stir awakened in us at the words, " Hear, O Heaven, and give ear, O EartJi, for the Lord hath spoken',' had but faint counterpart in the languid feeling with which we listened to an enumeration of ^^ the princes, tJie gover- nors, and captains, the Judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the riders of the provinces gathered together itnto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up." The one had the trumpet-sound of song ; the other drawled like official prose. If we grew up within the circle of ecclesiastical sayings, other differences could hardly fail to be impressed upon us. Other Prophets had foretold the sufferings and glory of Christ ; Daniel had marked the time of his coming. The Jews might, with some violence, explain the other Prophets away : despairing of Daniel, they had removed him out of the roll of the Prophets into a secondary place. Even Butler, whose sagacity needed only X INTRODUCTION. a larger literary furniture to anticipate many difficulties of our time, and who ought to be quoted on the side of con- science instead of on that of tradition, formally excepted Daniel from the large concessions which he contemplated as possible under the head of Prophetic Interpretation. A question which involved the honour of Christianity could hardly remain a question. If digressions from Babylon to the Ottoman empire and the Church of Rome were unlike the general style of the Prophets, they were the more interest- ing as long as they did not perplex us. Sir John Marsham, whose "Canon Chronicus " seems to have been more valued in foreign countries than in his own, might explain the seven weeks as the period from the commencement of the Captivity (and if he had made this commence at the destruction of the city, B.C. 588, he would have found the period just forty-nine years down to Cyrus, whom the Isaiah of the Return calls the Anointed of God, B.C. 538) ; similarly, he found sixty-two weeks, four hundred and thirty-four years (which, with sab- batical allowances, might be made more exact), down to Antiochus. Collins might go farther in questioning the authorship of the book. Gibbon might write in a feigned name a letter on the subject, not destined to be fully an- swered by Bishop Hurd. " Such objections were as old as Porphyry." It did not always occur to us that Porphyry's judgment as a critic in literature was infinitely superior to that of almost any Christian Father, or that his opportunities of information exceeded our own. Bentley, one of the few scholars of the very highest eminence whom the English Universities have produced, seems to have been unable to prevent himself from taking Porphyry's side, and might have left us fuller disclosures if it had not been for a person who promised to obey him.^ But this great scholar, as Bishop ' " He was so far from being satisfied, that he immediately began to suppose that his disappointment arose from the sacred books of Daniel and the Revelation themselves, and not only from his own, or the Bishop's misunderstanding them. . . . He pretended also that there had never INTRODUCTION. XI Monk has finely observed, does not appear to have lived under the dominion of Christian principles. To Dr. Arnold belongs the merit of first among English clergymen saying outright, and without the possibility of his judgment being ascribed to religious indifference, that the same tests which on the whole vindicate the genuineness of the larger part of the Prophets, compel us to assign to Daniel a lower chro- nological rank, which must affect the degree in which history or prediction enter into its contents. It was not Arnold's desire to draw dangerous inferences ; though he might not have been able to prevent such from being drawn. If any such thing can be conceived as a question affecting religion, yet turning upon literary evidence, and opening one course of investigation to all men independently of religious creeds or theories, such was this question of the Book of Daniel. So the Church of the Reformation con- ceived, when, with a noble simplicity, in an age when such questions were already stirred, she declared her accep- tance of "four Prophets the greater and twelve Prophets the less," but laid no restriction upon investigations as to the interpretation, authorship, and history. Still, if one theory of the book be called Christian, while another is called the Jewish or rationalistic theory, it may be foreseen, that hardly one mind in a thousand will compare evidence been a version of Daniel made by the Septuagint. . . . Nay, when Dr. Bentley was courting his lady, who was a most excellent Christian woman, he had like to have lost her, by stating to her an objection against the Book of Daniel, as if its author, in describing Nebuchadnezzar's image of gold (Daniel vi.) to be sixty cubits high and but six cubits broad, knew no better than that men's height were ten times their breadth, whereas, it is well known to be not more than six times, which made the good lady weep. . . . He aimed also to pick a quarrel with some small niceties in Daniel's chronology, and supposed the book to have been written after the time of Onias, the high priest ; and that Onias was Daniel's Messiah, and that the slaughter of this Otiias at Antioch ivas the cutting off of the Messiah. In short, he was very anxious to get clear of the authority of the Book of Daniel."^ — i Whisto7is Memoirs, 94-5. The passage oddly suggests the antithesis of " a despotism of professors." XII INTRODUCTION. for the two dispassionately. The comfort which men who practise their rehgion derive from it, and the awe with which men who do not practise it regard it, are employed to weight the scales ; until, paradoxical as it may sound, thousands who know nothing of the literary evidence but what some one a little less ignorant than themselves has told them, will not only stake their salvation upon a point of literary chronology, but will imagine this to be the only, or the strongest, reason for believing things of an entirely different kind, which their experience has taught them to value, and without which they would have judged the literary matter differently. If God wrote the Book of Daniel so that it should contain predictions to prove Chris- tianity, a theory which explains the predictions and destroys the proof, may with no greater extravagance than polemists allow themselves, be said to place us in an attitude of defiance toward the Divine Majesty, taking away from man- kind their dearest hopes, or sapping the foundation on which they rest. It is not wonderful that men who have definite duties and indefinite ideas of what criticism means, should shrink from the appearance of such presumption as is thus ascribed to them. Who are we that the evidence which satisfied Sir Isaac Newton should not content us .-* Whether he examined the evidence, or what he sometimes said upon it, and whether his doctrinal views in general should be our model, is a different thing. But why should w^e forfeit one world, and risk another ; that, too, one in which any hope of an ending of penalties is itself penal .-' Per me si va nella citth dolente, Per me si va tra la perduta gente : Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che 'ntrate. 2. On the other hand, the grave nature of the interests involved in what seemed at first onlv a question of sacred literature, tends to remove it out of the category of curiosity into that of duty. If there are elements in our faith, practical INTRODUCTION. XUl or speculative, which we are justified in refusing to prove, leaving the burden of argument on whoever assails them, a literary position, especially one considered as an outwork, can claim no such immunity from account ; some investigation of the evidence is in this case required by justice to the Jews, whose tradition of the canon has been arraigned ; by loyalty to the faith of which .we are ministers, whose evidences are supposed to be jeopardied ; above all, by reverence for the holy name of God, which if not righteously invoked, has been wantonly paraded. The strong language which the Oxford Regius Professor of Hebrew has permitted himself to use on this subject might not be too strong, though it would be needless, if the critics against whom he directs it had either falsified their statement of the evidence, or violated a sanctity antecedent and paramount to all evidence. There should be some criterion by which the tone of righteous indignation may be distinguished from the gall of bitterness. Most men have some Rubicon of sacredness in regard to revelation : with one it has been the Anglican version ; with another it has been, in one stage of his life, the voice of the English Episcopate, — surely a criterion short of the highest ; with many men it is whatever the Bible shall on due explanation be found to contain ; with others it is the religious element in the Bible ; with others the spirit of the Bible, the life out of which the book sprang, and which in turn it has tended to generate in the world ; with some it is the New Testament, independently of the Old ; with others, it is the mind of Christ, to which the New Testament affords the best approximative clue ; with others, it is the human conscience, placed sensibly in presence of the heart-searching God ; or again, the ultimate evidence, and a great point of sacredness, is the perpetual coincidence between the words of Christ and the voice of our conscience, whenever they are brought fairly into contact : to some, the only trustworthy evidence of revelation seems miracles ; to others, Divine illumination enforcing truth or fitness of doc- trine, appears, in the midst of undoubted miracles, to be alone XIV INTRODUCTION. capable of implanting the faith that saves, and where miracles are questioned, to be not merely their permitted substitute, but the rightful occupant of their place : again, men of phleg- matic thought, without denying the Divine origin of illu- mination, think its effects not different from such mental operations as enable us to embrace moral evidence : almost any of these views, or a combination of them, leaves place for the Church, as harmonizing the consciences, and embodying the convictions, of the community. Can a reason be given why, on any theory of Revelation or of its evidences, one account of the Book of Daniel is to be preferred to another ? Must the preference be such, that the one account has its place on the sacred soil, and within the charmed bower, where none may lift a spear ? or in this, as in other instances, is the life independent of place and time, permitting us to settle history in whatever way the evidence may suggest ? Suppose a person predisposed to believe whatever he ought ; take rather one who believes all the articles of the Christian faith, but who doubts whether a particular account of the Book of Daniel has a place among them ; one who thinks, perhaps, that Christ would not have his disciples seek such knowledge ^ of the times and seasons as one interpretation of the book seems to disclose ; yet one, whose faith in the Divine power of inspiration, the historical reality of miracles, and the prescience of prophecy, may give to inquiries on such subjects an interest vital and absorbing. How is such a person to decide between accounts of the Book of Daniel so conflicting as the one set forth for English readers in the fol- lowing treatise, and another which has the benefit of Dr. Pusey's exposition in a more academic form ? Can he be certain that his choice may not be fatal to his own soul ? Some attempt to answer these questions will be the limited scope of this Introduction ; which must not be understood to imply adoption of the more general views of either one of the two expositors. ' Acts i. 7. INTRODUCTION. XV 3. On opening a common Hebrew Bible, we find three great Prophets, followed by the twelve minor Prophets, in familiar order. Only Daniel is wanting, and has to be sought in a subsequent collection of books. Among its neighbours there are, the Song of Songs, an ancient book, but one reckoned by the Jews semi-canonical ; Ecclesiastes, whose signs of later origin bring it within about two centuries of the Christian era ; Esther, a book unfixed, but falling low in the Persian, if not in the Grecian, period ; the Books of Chronicles, which are allowed to contain genealogies implying interpola- tion or compilation subsequent to Alexander the Great ;i and the collection of Psalms, which is believed (though not with- out dispute, yet) for reasons which cannot be lightly set aside, to contain compositions as late as the Maccabaic period. The " foolish man blaspheming daily " of Psalm Ixxiv. (with which Psalm Ixxix. should be compared) seems a direct allusion to the madman (eVt/iai/?;?) Antiochus. With- out laying undue stress on conjectures, the result of this arrangement of the Book of Daniel is as if the English reader found it half-way between Malachi and St. Matthew. It is not an adequate explanation to say that Daniel, though gifted with prophecy, was excluded as not being a prophet by office. Neither was Amos a prophet, or a son of a prophet ; yet his book is separated but by Joel from Rosea, to whose age he belonged. Daniel would probably have been placed by Ezekiel, if he had belonged to the same age. The infer- ence of a lower date, which is obviously suggested by a place in the canon posterior to that of the prophets, is confirmed by the observation, that neither Zechariah, nor Haggai, following immediately the return from exile, contain any such allusion 1 I Chron. iii. 21-24, where six generations have an appearance of following Zerubbabel (compare Jaddua, in Nehemiah xii. 11). Dr. Pusey (p. 330) " gives to the section the appearance of an ancient gloss," — a solution, which the passage, in common with others, may bear ; but which its sponsor might have been expected to deplore as rationalism, if not to describe as "mere insolent assumption against Holy Scripture, grounded on unbelief" (p. 346). XVI INTRODUCTION. to Daniel or his book, as a career so marvellous, and a book so significant, if they had been known, would have rendered natural, if not necessary. How could Ezra, or more strikingly Nehemiah, describe his own relation to Artaxerxes, and not be reminded of the eminence which Daniel had enjoyed in a Persian court, and of the marvellous revelations by which it had been won ? If their thoughts called them in a different direction, at least an enumeration of all the worthies of Israel would not overlook so famous a name among the fathers that had gone before. Yet the son of Sirach in chapters xlviii., xlix. of Ecclesiasticus, has a word for Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Nehemiah, coming down to Simon the son of Onias ; but with strange ingratitude, or natural uncon- sciousness, omits mention of Daniel. This kind of omission is exclusion, until at least some evidence appear on the other side. Its exclusive tendency will be increased, if Zechariah, without knowing Daniel, can be shown to enfold in germ what Daniel will expand. Among the evidences by which the Old Testament Scrip- tures may to some extent, though not to a high antiquity, be tested, a prominent place belongs to ancient versions. Now, if we turn from a Hebrew canon of the Prophets, in which Daniel does not occur, and from a catalogue of the greater Prophets which does not mention him, to the Greek version, we are met by a singular phenomenon. Daniel is the solitary book of which Jerome' tells us, the Church read a version by Theodotion, in preference to the Septuagint, which required asterisks and obelisks to mark its errors and redundancies, though the censorious of that day, who have so many won- derful parallels in our own, blamed St. Jerome for departing from it. He does not explain why the Septuagint version of this book should be worse than that of others, but if the book did not exist, or had a doubtful and hardly canonical recogni- tion, at the time when the Greek translation is supposed to ' Pref. lib. Dan. INTRODUCTION. XVll have been made, we should have the groundwork of an explanation, the details of which may be filled in hereafter. 4. It can hardly be wrong at this stage of our inquiry to say that the external yet Biblical evidence suggests on its first blush a later origin for Daniel, than for the Prophets in general. Will the contents of the book furnish any reason for a contrary conclusion ? That parts of the book are written in Chaldee, that is, in a language differing from Hebrew much as old Lowland Scottish (say in Bishop Douglas's Virgil) differs from English, is not in itself conclusive of one date rather than another between B.C. 600 and B.C. 100. Can we, however, supposing Ezra under Artaxerxes about B.C. 460, and accepting the Targum called of Onkelos as falling at the earliest within the Christian era, detect a variation in the texture of the Chaldee, which would suggest for Daniel a place anterior, or subsequent to Ezra .-* No wide difference need be expected. A clear ten- dency of variation is thought to have been traced. (a) The earliest verse of Chaldee in the Bible (Jer. x. 11) gives LeHoM as the pronoun for to Them. Ezra v. 3, 4, gives for the same, LeHoM, but also v. 2, 3, gives LeHoN. In Daniel the latter form LeHoN habitually occurs, e.g. vi. 3 (comp. V. 2, 3, 23), while the former, whatever may be the reason, has vanished. Now in the Targum of Onkelos on Genesis xl. 22, it is LeHoN, the latter form, the one current in Daniel, which is characteristic, while the former, if ever, does not normally occur. This implies something. More decidedly, the pronoun for to You in the proportion of five times to one throughout Ezra, as in v. 3, and vii. 24, is LeCHoM, whereas in Daniel iii. 4 (comp. ii. 5-9) it is LeCHoN. It is difficult to explain this particular variation otherwise than by supposing Daniel the later book. Turn to Onkelos on Genesis ix. 3 ; the word by which he expresses to Vou is LeCHoN, This is his normal, I believe his in- variable usage. The first six verses of the 43rd chapter of 'Genesis give several instances for comparison of both pro- XVlll INTRODUCTION. nouns, {b) .Again, in Ezra, the words This house of God, are expressed Bciih EloJio DeCH, and Tins city, KiriathaJi DaCH ; the forms DeCH and DaCH representing the Hebrew ZeH and ZoTH. It is not denied that the form DeNaH also occurs in Ezra. The point is, that on turning to Daniel the forms DeCH and DaCH are no longer found ; but are re- placed by DA or DeNah, commonly the latter, as in ii. i8 ; V. 24, 25, and often (not to urge on either side a quasi-adver- bial usage). I have no wish to strain out of this, the most disputable of the differences, more than I fairly ought, but still must adhere to those who see in it a later tendency of language. For how do the Targums, alike of Onkelos and of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, on Genesis v. i, express This Book, Hebr. ZeH SePHeR ? They use the form DeyN SePHaR. Similarly on Genesis xxviii. 16, 17, they express This Place by ATHRa HaDeyN, or ITHRa HaDeyN. The form is even reduplicated into a sort of plural, DeNaN (Gen. xxxi. 38). Let any one accustomed to weigh such transitions say, whether the cardinal letters in the Targums do not retain what is more characteristic of Daniel than of Ezra. It is a partial, but not a complete, answer, that on Gen. xxiv. 65, Onkelos expresses TJiat man by Gavra DeycJii. (c) Once more, the Hebrew word for These is ELeH. So in Jer. x. 11, and in Ezra v. 15, we read for These, ELeH (for Those we read in Ezra v. 9, ILLeCH). Whereas in Daniel we actually find for These the form ILLeN, vi. 7, and its still later equivalent ILLeyN (ii. 44 ; vi. 3 ; vii. 17), with which may be compared INNoN in ii. 44, and vi. 25. This is a most remarkable variation, the nature of which is placed beyond reasonable doubt by the form ILLeyN in Onkelos and Jona- than Ben Uzziel on Gen. ii. 4 ; ix. 19 ; x. i, and wherever, otherwise than by Deuan, the word These is expressed. The reader will have the pith of the argument before him, if he imagine himself opening a Rabbinical Bible, and observing this :— INTRODUCTION. xlx Hebrew Colmnn. Targiuii Column. English. Eleh Toledoth. Illeyn Toledath. These are the gene- rations. Eleh in Ezra and Illen, or Illeyn, in These. Jeremiah. Daniel. This juxtaposition of forms weighs with my idiosyncrasy more than any multiplication of possibilities, or hard words. It is an exact analogy, that the Hebrew for What is MeH or MaH, but the Chaldee is MaN ; and it is a less obvious illus- tration that the Hebrew for Mouth is PeH, but the Chaldee PouM. If any one contends, that in their own homes the Chaldee forms may have been the older, and that here is no euphonical change, nor necessary affinity, but only correspon- dence, my argument^ makes no objection, provided it be allowed that in the Hebrew Scriptures, of which our inquiry is, the Chaldee forms (with the disputed exception of Manna) appear later, and furnish criteria of a book's lateness. The transition from Eleh in the earlier Scriptures and Ezra, to Illeyn in Daniel and the Targums, is complete ; whatever its analogies, fancied or real, in external dialects. Enough of these variations here to show that they are not insignificant ; they may not, apart from all other circum- stances, have a force approaching to demonstration ; their tendency is to indicate in Daniel a stage of language sub- sequent to Ezra, and advancing in the direction of the Targums. The greater the differences are, the more favour- ably shall we be able hereafter to judge of the author's ' Little as my argument needs it, I might suggest a hope of mercy for a philologer who should doubt the doctrine that the singular DeN and the plurals DeNaN and ILLeyN have the same element in their termination ; even if he appealed with dubious success to such forms as Mali and Man, Dagah and Dagan, Nadah and Nadan, Gachah (?) and Gechan, for a different explanation. The question of Daniel and Ezra does not turn on euphonic mutation, but on Biblical priority. If James I. spoke ever so old Scotch, it might be late EngUsh. But, viri docti sententi(Z ut assen- tiar, a me non inipetro. XX INTRODUCTION. directness in writing suitably to his time ; whereas, on tlie less favourable supposition of his designedly imitating Ezra, we might find no differences. A more striking, and for general readers available, charac- teristic of style as indicating age, may be found in the nume- rous Iranian, or Indo-European, words which occur in the book under consideration. An useful list of these has been appended, with the assistance of Professor Miiller, to Dr. Pusey's recent lectures. In order however that the student may derive from this list all the instruction which it is capable of affording, he should remember a circumstance of which neither the divine nor the philologer has informed him, that Persian would have been as strange to Nebuchadnezzar, as Greek. We are not dealing with Ezra, who lived under Artaxerxes, but with an author supposed to represent the Syro-Chaldean age of Babylon. If anything is known of the distribution of languages and races, we know for certain, that the indigenous Babylonians of Nebuchadnezzar's age (if not of all ages, for Mr. Rawlinson's supposed discovery would not here affect us) were of that Syro-Arabian race, at the head of which the Bible places Chesed, father of the Chasdim or Chaldseans, and whose patriarch is Shem.^ So the priests or astrologers (chap. ii. v. 4) are made to address the king ' This is fully discussed in i Vater's Adelung, with which may be compared Rosenmiiller's Note on Habbacuc i., the opinion in Layard's Nineveh, ii. p. 237, and the Article by Mr. Bevan on Tongues^ Dispersion of, in Smith's Bibl. Diet. The most recent philologer on the Kurdish side seems to be M. Renan, whom I might hesitate to contradict, if I had not observed (Lang. S^m,, p. 66), that he quotes among his authorities Mr. Layard, who has expressly summed up for the Semitic theory ; while the difficulty, to my own mind very great, of making Abraham a Kurd, and the weight of the Mosaic genealogies, which I am not ncologist enough to desert with Dr. Pusey, unless much graver reason compelled me, con- firmed too, as these are by the Aramaic of Daniel, almost conclude the question. In truth, M. Kenan's undoubted accomplishments as an Orientalist do not preserve him from a proneness to conjecture in more provinces than one. He does not make the Chaldccs priests ; so that his alliance with Dr. Pusey is imperfect. INTRODUCTION. XXI AraniitJi, or Hvptcrrl, and (not to dwell on Strabo's identifica- tion (lib. xvi.) of the terms Syrian and Assyrian) the existence of our Aramaic Chaldee in large portions of this book is both significantly dramatic and conclusive as to the author's conception of Chaldaean ethnology. The supposition of an intrusive warrior caste of Kurds, though it has had an occasional place among the conjectures of scholars, and though it is now convenient to a class of writers who lately called it " infidel," is on wider grounds more justly set aside. Those who hold it, can least explain, how a position like that of the Turkish troops under the Arabian Caliphs could be that of a learned caste of astronomers. How then are we to explain the occurrence of Iranian, ie. Indo-European, words in Daniel .-' The opening verses give, in connection with a decree of Nebuchadnezzar's, partemim {i.e. nobles), akin to the Sanscrit prathama, Pehlvi pardom. There are many others, an explanation of which was attempted by Dr. Jahn in his excellent Introduction to the Old Testament, and gently criticised by his episcopal editor in America. It was taken from Dr. Jahn by Dr. Mill in his publication as " Christian Advocate," and is taken from Dr. Mill by Bishop Cotton,^ of Calcutta, who now sends it from Asia to Europe as a novel discovery, which it is only won- derful should not be known to an essayist who had considered and, out of respect for some of its advocates, passed it over in silence. No chronology brings Cyrus to Babylon before 540. Suppose him there in 536. Daniel would be at least eighty, approaching ninety years of age (i. 1-3). If he equalled the highest historical instances of longevity, it would be a strange employment for one on the brink of the grave, first to ' I prefer a glance at Bishop Cotton's philological discoveries to one at his personal judgments ; though the latter, especially in so far as they blame a clergyman for imputing to ''the great body of believers " certain exaggerations, which the clergyman had complained of as exceptionally exacted from himself, in an age when the great body of educated believers had expressly or tacitly surrendered them, exemplify in a memorable measure what the good bishop justly calls "the guilt of misrepresentation." c XXll INTRODUCTION. learn Persian, then to translate into it portions of his former work, and the edicts of Nebuchadnezzar. Would such a procedure be even consistent with inspiration .'' Without wearying the reader on this point, I trust a moment's reflec- tion will show him, that Iranian words, e.g. Partemim, Sagan, Sarbal {i.e. bracccz, Gr. aapd^apa), Achashdarpenim (satraps), etc., etc., tend greatly to strengthen any previous presumption in favour of the later date assigned to the Book of Daniel. We have not yet exhausted our linguistic indications. Having never myself consented to vote for depriving the word kitharas of its Greek citizenship, I rejoice to see Professor Miiller set aside the desperate attempts to make it Persian. Here the question is not, whether a stray Greek term might float from Ionia to Babylon ; but. how came other books of the Bible, even those written at Babylon, to call a harp by its Hebrew name kinnor (comp. Cinyras), and only the one which external evidence places after Alexander's conquest, to use the Greek word kithara (in what was probably its genitive form, though punctuated caythros) } Ezekiel, captive by Chebar's stream, wrote kinoraych, thy harp ; those daughters of Zion who remembered their past tears at Babylon, had hung, they say, '' kinorotheynoic, our harps," upon the trees that were there. In Daniel the Hebrew word has vanished ; a Greek substitute appears. If this were not enough, we find the word pesanteeryn, or psatiteryoti, which, whether its peculiar form be certainly, or but probably, connected by Gesenius with the Macedonian use of N for L (mentioned by Gregory of Corinth) must in any case be a modification of the Gr&tk psalterion.^ That a gentleman has ' Compare the Homeric yeVro for eXero. Doric ^(vtIov for ^ekriov, ^evTKTTos for 0f\Ti(TTos. Thc DoHC usagc does not exclude the Mace- donian, but renders it probable. The word ■^a\Tr)piov could not have come from the Dorians, for it was not a Dorian name, but was a com- paratively modern substitute for the older name /xdyaStr, which meant the lyre with some special number of strings. See Athenaeus, xiv. p. 636 (v. 309, Schweighauser). Dr. Pusey must pardon this correction, which I would have spared, if his extreme confidence had not taken such a tone INTRODUCTION. XXlll been found to suggest a Semitic root PSaL, proves so little about the Greek inflexion, which was the point, that it is difficult to imagine the suggestion serious, though Reviews applaud it. The word SamBuCa retains too much trace of its Asiatic original to be urged, though it is probably on its return as a visitor from Greece, as our own adoption from France of bob'e {bibcrc), if for an illustration's sake I may so far follow Voss, does not prevent our restoring it in the form la biere. A more certain word is Soumphonia, of which, notwithstanding the alternative writing Siphonia, I should feel the force needed no argument, if it were not eminently significant, that Polybius (Athenae, x. p. 439) mentions Antiochus (the tyrant symbolised by Nebuchadnezzar) as dancing to the sympJiony, whether one instrument, or more ; Polybius, I think, meant it of one ; as also did Livy. But what shall we say of Ashaphim ; the wise men, or diviners ? Hebrew lexicographers seldom scruple to invent roots, and in the comparatively modern coUuvies, called Syriac, the word has been adopted out of Daniel. No Semitic warrant for it approaches within ages the time required for a precedent unless any one chooses to make it a dialectic variation of the Hebrew CasliapJi. A more probable clue is furnished by the frequent recurrence of a6(f)0(; in the LXX. Ashaph, I suspect, can only be Sophos, and it bears to its Greek original the same relation as the Hebrew Am, a ship, bears to its Greek and Sanscrit cognate Nau-s. I will not urge barer possi- bilities ; if the above instances exhaust the Greek words in Daniel, they present, standing alone, a chronological sugges- tion, which with accompanying circumstances may be a link of proof. If they were possible under Nebuchadnezzar, they are natural after Alexander. 5. To the common sense of the multitude a consideration of the subject-matter of the book may furnish plainer ground. There will be found in the following treatise abundant evi- of rebuke, not sparing even St. Gregory, a bishop and a Father, as well as a grammarian. XXIV INTRODUCTION. dencc that the four kingdoms described in symbol by Daniel are Babylonian, Persian, and Macedonian, with either a Median as the second, or the Seleucid dynasty of Syria (and possibly its Egyptian contemporaries) as the fourth. Either alternative leaves the "little horn" as the well-known, widely- acknowledged, representation of Epiphancs, who in his love of Greek fashion thought to change Semitic times and sea- sons, and who raised by his insults the splendid outburst of fanatical valour which is the glory of the Maccabees. Ex- positors so unlike as Porphyry and Jerome ^ agree so nearly as this : the one supposes Daniel to describe Antiochus ; the other prefers Antichrist under the type of Antiochus ; in either view, a knowledge of Antiochus is presupposed. All introductions into the text of the Ottoman empire or the Pope — as a primary meaning — as an historical form which the writer gives to his thought, may safely be set aside. Some few scholars may conceive allusion to Antiochus a proof that the book was as late as his age ; a far larger number of divines imagine the predictive form in which the allusion is conveyed abundantly demonstrative that the book existed earlier ; otherwise, they say it would be deceptive.^ A middle, and a ' Hieron. in Dan. vii., viii. ^ A most reverend writer has said upon St. Luke : "It is painful to re- mark, how the opinions of many commentators who refuse tojix the date of this Gospel earlier than the destruction of Jerusalem, have been in- fluenced by the determination that nothing like prophecy shall be found in it. Believing that our Lord did really prophesy that event, we have no diffiailty in believing tliat an evangelist reported the prophecy before it was fulfilled." Now, supposing his grace to know by inspiration, or otherwise, the motives of commentators, who might have deduced their apparent axiom from previous instances, the laws of thought still permit us to see a correspondent assumption on his grace's side. Granting that there arc truths to which our assent properly commences in volition, it is not clear that the existence of a prediction for near half a century before an event, if it is not attested until half a century after the event, belongs to such an order of truths. At all events, the acceptance of such a pre- diction is too much a result of faith or volition, to be a foundation. It does not furnish that proof, for the sake of which it was alleged. I only borrow here an illustration of reasoning, the two cases being manifoldly unlike in themselves. INTRODUCTION. XXV moderate, course is, to ask on behalf of a book, for which prediction is claimed, that some evidence, or a probability, however slight, of its existence anterior to the event, should be shown. We have seen, in the case of Daniel, the external evidence against a date earlier than Antiochus. While this remains so, it is respectful to hope the " intention " was not " deceptive," in a practice which even Christian poets, Tasso, and our own Spenser, and Geoffry, who was a bishop, have sanctioned ; and which can hardly surprise us in a lower age, two centuries before the Christian era, when it is known to have existed largely among Jews and Gentiles. The books of the Sibylline Prophecies,^ formerly ranked by Church authority with David's Psalms, may exemplify the habit for the Greeks, the Book of Enoch (the date of which I do not presume to fix) for the Jews, and Virgil's sixth JEndd for the Romans. If the divinest inspiration is shown by many in- stances to include the free spontaneity of poetry, parable, apologue, patriotism, and passion, we cannot, antecedently to investigation, assume that it must exclude a play of imagina- tion in prose, which we might call dramatic, but consistent with the modes of thought of that age, and of many ages. At least, on the side of " evidences," the predictive or symbolical form, in which the Book of Daniel enfolds its allusions to the period of Antiochus, is not sufficient to counteract the ten- dency of those allusions in fixing the date as contemporary or subsequent to Antiochus. It would be a departure from the principles which govern this inquiry (and are inculcated by me elsewhere) to assume that the presence of miracles in a narrative disproves its genuineness or its authenticity. Still, there are narratives in Daniel, which even upon comparison with other miracles in the Old Testament retain a certain air of strangeness ; and in proportion as things are strange, they require more evidence ; whereas here the evidence is less than usual ; thus the book being on other accounts questioned, if we proceed to ask what ' Oracula Sibyllina. Friedlieb. Lipsiee, 1852. XXVI INTRODUCTION. inherent verification is afforded by such narratives as repre- sent the fire not burning, and the hons not rending, the answer can hardly avoid a tone of suspicion, which would make us rejoice to find such an interval of elapse between the author and his subject-matter, as on independent grounds we have already found. This would be stated more strongly by those who magnify the presumption in favour of an Order of Nature into a certainty that exceptions from that order are precluded by its Divine Author's all-sufficing omniscience. There is so little likelihood of that view's being confounded by any sincere mind with my own, that I may venture to say, it does not appear to me contemptible. It deserves more respectful treatment than the triple series of prejudications, — Miracles are necessary ; Miracles must have occurred ; All records of Miracles must be placed, even without evidence, in such an order of time as may render them available proofs. There is more consistency in saying with the ph)'sical philo- sopher, Miracles, as we enlarge our grasp upon Nature, be- come less probable ; and with the critical historian, Records of miracle ought to be vigilantly scrutinised ; yet in no less maintaining, as a Christian divine, Nothing is impossible with God ; and, at the same time, if all the miracles of the Bible are undoubted and literal history, our faith in the Super- natural does not depend upon them, since to ground faith in sensuous miracle is that very materialism which Christ re- buked in Nicodemus' (St. John iii. 2, 5, 10). ' If Bishop Warburton and Arclidcacon Hare (conip. ''Mission of the Comforter," pp. 212, 354-68) are adequate representatives of the two schools, to one of which the foundation of faith seems phenomenal, and to the other spiritual, we not only see that both schools are equally bound to produce historical evidence, and to limit their affirmations in accord- ance with it, so that it is the merest polemical artifice to ascribe to the spiritualist rather than the phenomcnalist any "assumptions" derogatory to history ; but in fact the spiritual school has often been the stronger on the historical ground. We shall not arrive at an understanding, until the impartial neutrality of the intellect is guaranteed by an habitual distinc- tion between things historical or ratiocinative, which are subject-matter of INTRODUCTION. XXVU I hasten reluctantly by many questions of interest con- nected with Daniel, a discussion of which would swell this Introduction into a treatise. It is disputed, whether the emphasis with which almsgiving and ascetic practices are prescribed, marks a stage of Judaism intermediate between the Old Testament and the New. At least it is in perfect consonance with a period, when the received interpretation of righteousness as almsgiving (See Beza, Mill, Elsley, on St, Matt. vi. i) shows the natural sentiment of a "blessing on him who considereth the poor" passing into that more formal code on the subject, which finds countenance in the infant Christianity of the Gospels, and which, though firmly rejected by St. Paul, has been revived in parts of Christendom. A more difficult inquiry is, how far Zoroastrianism appears .-' So much is certain, that names and other distinctions of an angelic hierarchy come forward in a way unknown to the older Scriptures ; if this change may be ascribed to a fresh revelation, it is more naturally explained by contact with a faith likely to have suggested it, and of high antiquity, although the books which now present it to us do not yet admit a settlement of their age or interpretation. The bear- ings of a great argument are not affected by the possibility of complicating its collateral or supplementary details. The tendency, as it seems to me, of research up to our own days, from the time when Dean Prideaux ^ conceived of Zoroaster as an apostate Jew, is to magnify the antiquity, importance, and spiritual force of the impulse which the East received, when the great Bactrian reformer scattered the night of Nature from eyes sealed in the slumber of Vedic infancy, and out of the contrast of light and darkness evoked the person- alities, or foreshadowed the conflicts, of Milton's Paradise Lost. belief, and things spiritual, which are objects of faith ; the latter being tests of character, inasmuch as our relation to them is affected by volition. ' Conn. O. N. T. i. 4, with which his account of Judith, i. i, is curious enough to bear comparison. (Comp. Pusey, p. 97.) XXVIU INTRODUCTION. To those who would prosecute this part of the subject, Heeren's Asiatic Researches, cap. ii., Lassen's hidischc Alter- tJiiimskunde, and the brilliant chapters in Gibbon, and in Milman's History of Christianity, with the authorities cited therein, will afford the means of doing so. Von Lengerke's Daniel, and Dr. Pusey's Lectures, may be considered in re- spect of our entire book as the two authorities standing to each other in strongest antithesis. The view taken by Mr. Desprez occupies an intermediate and moderate position. Those who wish to contrast the two sides, treated moderately, with exact equipoise of ability (and after reading adverse criticisms I can add, with considerable erudition and acumen), may compare two editions of Dr. Davidson, — the first, 1856, maintaining the earlier, and the second, 1863, the later date. 6. There is one branch of evidence, hitherto but glanced at, which deserves consideration from divines of all schools. It depends upon no modern theory, or scholar; is not only "as old as Porphyry," but older. The Greek version, ^ edited from the Vatican and Alexandrian MSS., whether it were originally part of the Septuagint, or were borrowed from any one else, presents in its existing form a Book of Daniel between Ezekiel and the Maccabees. This Book of Daniel commences with the apocryphal narrative of Susannah; proceeds subsequently, so as not to need remark, to the third chapter, in which a long prayer of Azarias is introduced, and the song which we call " the Song of the Three Children." Nebuchadnezzar hearing them sing, is astonied (as he might well be), and rises up in haste. The book then proceeds until the end of the twelfth chapter, when Astyages the Mede (whom the writer probably identified with " Darius ") dies, and Cyrus the Persian suc- ceeds. Then comes the story of Bel and the Dragon, followed by that of Habbacuc the Prophet, who is borne through the air by the hair of his head, in order to carry food to Daniel in the den of lions. A brief recital of Daniel's deliverance closes the book. When Porphyry read this collection of stories, he ' Oxonii, MDCCCXVii. Accedit Introductio Carpzovii. INTRODUCTION. XXIX fairly argued, that it must have been written in Greek, since the first tale of Susannah contains two Greek puns {aylvov and aylaei, irplvov and 'irpiaai). His argument is adopted by our orthodox apologists, as a reason to the Church of Rome for our not accepting the Apocrypha. Jerome fairly answered, that the Greek puns in Susannah do not affect the portion of Daniel which is found in the Hebrew. His answer is gene- rally accepted. Still, he did not explain, why in the third chapter Nebuchadnezzar was astonied and rose up in haste — ■ a phenomenon, of which the Greek, with its Song of the Three Children, supplies an account : while the Hebrew, with its omission of that song, supplies none. Hence it is an open though neglected, question, whether the Greek be not, after all, the original of Daniel ; or to speak more closely to pro- bability, whether it does not represent an ancient collection of stories, out of which the Hebrew compiler in the Macca- bean age selected the most dignified for the purpose of encouraging his countrymen to trust in the Lord God of their fathers ; not expecting them to inquire, nor nicely inquiring for himself, how much was documentary, and how much tra- ditional. This view would explain, why Citharas appears in the genitive case ; why such words as Sophos are retained ; es- pecially, why Upharsin is absent from the Greek text, though introduced into the Hebrew ; its absence being more consis- tent than its presence, with the conception, originally native to the writer, that the Iranian dynasty in Babylon began with the Medes, and was transferred to the Persians. Why should it be more startling for Greek elements to find a way into the Hebrew Canon, than for the New Testament to be in Greek } or to take a more exact analogy, for the Greek of Aquila and Theodotion to be imitated or replaced, as is believed, by the Hebrew transformations ^ of Onkelos and Jonathan .'' Can any better explanation be given of the circumstance, that Daniel's interpretation, v. 26-28, corresponds with the three ' Geiger, pp. 162-163, Urschrift. Breslau, 1857. Compare Carpzovius, as above, p. Ixxxvii. XXX INTRODUCTION. words of the Greek, but not with the four words of the Hebrew and English ? Priority on part of the Greek would be an explanation; and more so, if we remember the Hebrew fondness for rhythmical response. Tempting as may be that hypothesis, it would have diffi- culties of its own, and should not divert us from certainties ; especially since to native inheritors of the Hebrew, who claim a Hebrew original even for Susannah, it will hardly be wel- come. At all events, the incorporation of legendary stories in the Greek Daniel proves how little the idea of sacredness prevented such a thing, on the strictest theory, in this case ; or need have prevented it in the case of the older Prophets, on the theory of their having received Daniel as a late addition. The argument from " deception," the most invidious of all to answer, is destroyed by our Deutero-Canonical books, especi- ally by such as the Book of Wisdom, called of Solomon, the author of which writes with every appearance of piety, yet docs not scruple in his eighth and ninth chapters to personate the son of David. An older, a more absolutely canonized, instance of the same practice is presented in the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is entitled " The words of the Preacher, the Son of David, king of Jerusalem." Some may restrict the force of this title by understanding it to imply only a repre- sentation of the character of Solomon : that the authorship does not belong to Solomon, is allowed too generally for argument upon it to be needful. If the adoption of character seem more innocent than the invention of incidents, I am not contending for the latter ; although examples of it, without going so far as the Cyropa^dia of Xenophon, abound in Jewish books of the period to which Daniel probably belongs. A friend once pointed out to me that the force of these considerations is much increased by a comparison of the Coptic version of Daniel. On proceeding to an examination of this, I found it framed upon the basis of the Greek, and divided into thirteen divisions, of which Susannah is the first; although it seems that by an act of judgment which, without INTRODUCTION. XXXI disrespect to a man of learning, it may be permitted to think mistaken, the portions absent from the Hebrew have been placed in Archdeacon Tattam's edition of the Coptic ^ at the end, under the head oi '' Additions to Daniel^ The most remarkable point is, that at the end of the thirteenth vision appears a fourteenth, in which the four Empires are re-cast into the forms of the Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Saracenic. Whether the writer of this fresh vision were inspired, or uninspired (though it is hard to say, why that Spirit which taught all nations of the earth their languages should have any of its gifts confined to one language, or two), he conceived of Daniel, as of a book to which such an addition might not irreverently be made, and thereby gave some indication of what nature he conceived the book to be, and rendered it easier for us to throw off the invidious topic of deception. Nothing is more usual with Rabbinical writers, both Jewish and Christian, than to re-adapt prophecies, whose aspect was originally contemporaneous, to fresh events and new enemies ; but this Coptic addition is more creative in its spirit, and its place in Daniel eminently suggestive. On returning from a comparison of the Versions, and of the Deutero-Canonical books, to the Daniel of our Canon, the reader will be less surprised at the fragmentary and half- coherent plan on which this is composed. Since he is told, " not even a rationalist now believes " that the materials of the work are not all of the same age, he may be less disturbed on finding such an impression suggested to him by the book itself; at least, the unchronological order in which visions belonging to Belshazzar's period follow the mention of Darius, and the third year of Cyrus is appended to a career which ' Prophetce Majores, in dialecto ling. ^gypt. Memphitica sen Coptica edidit Henricus Tattam, S.T.P. Oxonii,MDCCCLil. In the third chapter, the Editor has permitted the cause of Nebuchadnezzar's astonishment to appear more fully than in the Hebrew. The word Upharsin in chap. v. is wanting. As this passes through the press, I observe a possible subject for comparison, in the Persian Targum mentioned by Mr. Deutsch at p. 1664 of Smith's Did. Bibl. XXXll INTRODUCTION. had been previously implied to end in the first of Cyrus, may be observed as indications of such a thing, however much a loose unity may seem given by the final compiler. Also, the important suggestion arises, that although our Church, in search of a boundary which should limit sources of necessary doctrine, determined wisely to make that boundary conter- minous with the Hebrew Canon, we are not justified on grounds of religious philosophy, or of literature, in making all within that boundary Divine, nor all external to it destitute of a Divine element. Let us at length learn, the Spirit bloweth where it listeth. The English reader, who imagines that a book invariably retains the shape in which it first left its author's hand, may be asked to consider some instances to the contrary. It is said, though I have not ascertained it by comparison, that Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying underwent consider- able changes in the edition after the Restoration. I have observed in Professor Blunt's Sketch of the English Reforma- tion, a gradual raising of the ecclesiastical tone in successive editions, from the old Anglican Protestantism of the earlier to the pronounced Anglo-Catholicism of the later; yet the change is produced by very minute variations of phrase. A more marked instance is Dr. Cooke Taylor's Manual of Modern History. Numerous passages, containing reflections or anec- dotes, chiefly of that kind which conductors of educational establishments a quarter of a century ago thought proper, but which amidst the stronger ecclesiasticism of our day seem less proper, have been gradually withdrawn. Some of these changes (neither the authority nor ^fitness of which do I for a moment question), have been made subsequently to the author's death. If it be said that books employed in educa- tion enjoy a peculiar license of epitome, the Chronicles of our Middle Ages present a more striking and instructive instance. Any one who compares the Flares Historiarum and other specimens from Bedc to Rudborne, many of them edited by Dr. Giles, will find large passages adopted by the later from INTRODUCTION. XXXUl the earlier, but with such freedom of recasting as the later writer's opportunities or inclination suggested. The circum- stances under which some of our chronicles were written, in religious societies, or with an eye to some special cause, with little care to preserve the author's name, and with occasional conjecture to supply the absence of record of authorship, are so analogous, if not parallel, to those under which our Canon- ical and Deutero-Canonical writings came in succession into being, that some resemblances in the uncertainty of author- ship or compilation cannot surprise us. My reader will be good enough to observe, that I am here introducing only an illustration. The proof of the thing illustrated is to be found in a comparison of the Book of Daniel, as our Bible gives it, with the other versions : e.g. with either the Vulgate or the Septuagint ; the last mentioned has been done in the Appen- dix to Dr. Pusey's volume, though not nearly in so instruc- tive a manner as any intelligent reader will do it for himself. It may be asked, are not the words Canon, Ca7ionical, Deiitero-Canonical, a sufficient condemnation of such ideas as are here suggested, whether a Greek original, or traditional stories, or even innocent compilation, or gradual addition .-* Certainly, if the word canonical meant, as we have been told, "written by the special and miraculous interposition of the Almighty," we should be driven to imagine that the interpo- sition, although miraculous, had taken place with a singular adaptation to the appearance of a natural occurrence. Again if there were the slightest colour of any other than a rheto- rical foundation for the statement that Canonicity is by the native pregnancy of the term a synonym for Inspiration, the last word being taken in the most exaggerated sense, we might seem forbidden to investigate the instrumentality of circumstance, with'which He, who is the Foreseer and Arbiter of events, as well as Inspirer of thoughts, introduced his mani- fold lessons into the world. Unfortunately for all such theories — which, even if a violent straining of law could have extorted authority for them, XXXIV INTRODUCTION. would have remained without foundation in Hteraturc — but happily for the truth of religion, and welfare of the Church, the well-known meaning of the word Canon, in relation to objects enumerated under it, is a list. When Ptolemy placed in his " Canon " the names of certain Babylonian kings, he was not aware that by making these monarchs canonical, he was constituting them, for the province of York, plenarily inspired. He ignorantly thought, he was only stamping them genuine, by placing them in the list. Sir Henry Raw- linson and his brother equally give us canons, i.e. lists, of Assyrian kings, but have not yet inferred inspiration from their canonicity. Within the Christian Church, the historical sense, as distinct from devout rhetoric formerly, and litigation of late, has never been doubtful. Athanasius spoke of books canonised, and un-canonised ; thereby showing the subject- matter of canonisation to be not " the faith and manners of Christians," but the books en-listed, or enumerated. Bishop Marsh, whose authority may be higher in criticism than in doctrine, laid down with a direct eye to both sides of the question, that ' in the writings of the Fathers of the fourth and following centuries, after the number of sacred books which were to be read in the churches had been determined by public authority, the word canon signifies a list, or a cata- logue." After exemplifying this from Gregory, of Nazianzus, he proceeds : " Canonical books signify properly those ad- mitted by public authority into the catalogue of writings destined for the service of the Church ; and (though their divine origin was considered as a necessary qualification to entitle them to this admission, yet) the words Canonica/ and Inspired are by no means synonymous." i Michaclis, pp. 375, 376. A writer, who passes as Cranmer, though his materials, but not their arrangement, may have come from the Archbishop, says, " We believe the holy canon of the Bible, because that the primitive Church of the Apostles and eldest writers, and next to their time, approved them in their REGISTER, that is, in their writings, which partly saw and INTRODUCTION. X'XXV partly heard them from the Apostles." Cojifut. Umvr. Veri- ties, p. 59. Here with a writer, whose slightly Genevan tone already verges more toward the identification of the Word and the Record, than either our General Exhortation and Absolution, taken together, or the habitual recognition by Cranmer and Latimer of the Gospel as the Word, or the spirit of Hooker's second book would suggest, we still find register used either as the synonym, or, on the least favourable con- struction, as the determinant of the canon. Such is in con- nexion with Scripture, the historical, as distinct from the polemical, meaning of the word canon I have too recently argued this verbal question under singularly painful circum- stances to care to linger over it. The thoughtful reader will understand, that the Church, as other societies, enjoys a right to enumerate the books which she will read in her assemblies, or stamp with doctrinal authority ; that as a religious society she would naturally place on her list, books fullest of the spirit of that faith which it is her mission to keep alive ; that there may be a probability, greater in the eye of her children than in that of mere enquirers, that her selection will be divinely guided, or proceed upon a well-weighed claim of ante- cedent sacredness ; yet that the mere canonicity, or enrolment on the list of the Church, in itself determines nothing as to the inherent quality, whether human or divine, of the book enrolled ; that the canonization of books of different kinds, a history, a tradition, a chronicle, a psalm, a parable (and though I hardly like to add it, possibly a legend ^), recom- ' Has any one shown why a legend need be less inspired than a genea- logy, or a chronicle ? Might it not be more so ? especially if uncon- sciousness of feigning be what distinguishes it from moral tale. Among a people of strong idioms of speech, such as " bowing down to idols," " passing through fire and water," being " saved out of the mouth of the lion," the literature may be so tinged by them, as to make interpretation more a feeling than a certainty. All I would ask, in such a case, is that things of the highest spiritual import should not be made dependent upon doubtfulness, or literary possibility. My own question is rather of fidelity of statement. XXXVl INTRODUCTION. mends to us each on its own ground, and leaves us free to discriminate each ; not wilHngly excluding any from that breath of God, by which all things noble and pure live, and have being ; yet suffering us to think that the fierceness of man in some parts praises God less acceptably than the more excellent way in others ; and that as the liveliest record of an inspired community left us in either Testament discloses traces of infirmity (i Cor. xiv. 23-32), so analogous traces of a humanity not bereft of God, but working imperfectly under his influence, may stamp the sacred writings of the Canon. Thus, if the Church of the Maccabean period had seen her afflicted children roused by tales current among them of by-gone suffering or deliverance, she might enroll a well- weighed selection of such tales in her list, for future edification ; thus the book, especially if its tales of older tyrants were cast into parables with a vein of covert allusion to the living tyrant, would mark the history of the time w^hich adopted it, if only the traditions of an older time. I do not write with a view of unduly exalting the Church, still less a special order within it ; nor do I apprehend the question of inspiration to be in this stage of our enquiry affected ; whatever theory of inspir- ation we hold, from the strongest to the weakest, it is certain that the inner gift was accompanied by Divine Providence with an outward instrumentality of circumstance ; and reli- gious societies, even if the cry of their guilt in crushing the personal conscience has gone up horrible before God, have yet played an important part in educating individuals, collect- ing their devotions, elaborating their experiences in the form of an historical canon. Our business was with testimony as to the age of the Book of Daniel ; but the question was diffi- cult to disentangle from various ecclesiastical considerations. 7. Let us sum up the case. Our masters of reasoning, whether profound as Butler, or narrowly acute as Whately, have taught us that practical conviction may depend, not on a single line of proof, but on an accumulation of particulars, some of them collateral to each other. So the proof of the INTRODUCTION. XXXVll later of the dates assigned to the Book of Daniel does not depend solely on the testimony of the Jewish Church, though that Church placed it among her latest writings ; it is not merely the silence of witnesses anterior to the Maccabees, though some one of the Canonical writers, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, or of the Deutero-Canonical, as the Son of Sirach, in giving a sort of list of the Prophets, might well have mentioned the book, if it had been known to them ; it is not only that if allusions are at all traceable, it is rather from Daniel back to Zechariah ; it is not that the Chaldee of Daniel permits itself to be marked off by clear shades of variation from that of Ezra ; nor that Iranian words stand out with significant prominence upon a page to which the earlier date would suppose them unknown ; nor even that Greek words, and those not merely musical names, defy all attempts to explain them away ; again, it is not merely that prediction requires some slight indication of its existence anterior to the event predicted : (far less will any one who habitually governs his affirmations by evidence, ascribe to the author of the present argument any assumption of the im- possibility, or even a priori unlikelihood of prediction :) nor is it only, that some of the narratives in Daniel are peculiarly strange, and unlike most of the Old Testament miracles, but like those of the secondary canon, with which also the ex- ternal evidence of the age of their record associates them : (far less has the present author given reason for being seriously supposed to deny the possibility, or historical reality of miraculous occurrences, or shown any wish to disprove them :) nor again, is it merely that the ancient Versions, the Greek and Coptic, and the Vulgate in its representation of Theodotion present in the case of Daniel peculiar and ex- ceptional phenomena ; and that these are of a kind suggest- ing the idea of a collection of stories, rather than the unity of a contemporaneous record ; nor is it altogether, that the manners are Persian more than Babylonian, the religion Judaising rather than Hebrew, the angelic names novel and d XXXVlll INTRODUCTION. possibly of Zoroastrian suggestion ; nor simply that the history, though put in such a predictive form as the third book of the Sibylline Oracles, contemporary with the Macca- bees, exemplifies, is still history, written with a patriotic object, and history reaching to about that date, at which the external evidence of the Hebrew Church (and of Hebrew scholars, who are not bold to accumulate exploded errors), would lead us to place the origin of the book — the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes — the death of the heroic' and anointed Maccabee — the struggle, still dubious, for the free worship of God in Zion, against a foolish man blaspheming daily ; nor once more, is it only that Livy and Polybius ascribe to Antiochus what Daniel ascribes to Nebuchadnezzar, while Psalms apparently contemporaneous illustrate, and receive light from, this view of the origin of the book, to which so many particulars tend in convergence — it is the accumulation of all these things in the aggregate which constitutes some- thing very like a proof of the later date of the book ; a proof of such a kind as our Maker has rendered it difficult for the human mind to resist : one to which we may resign ourselves without fear that He who knoweth whereof we are made, will blame his children for so doing ; and in reliance upon which we turn from partisan maledictions, saying to Him, Lord, tliougJi tJicy ciirsCy yet bless TJioii. Our trust in doing so will be justified, in proportion as our enquiry has been upon legitimate ground, without assumption opposed to any part, or evidence, of revelation. We should have still to learn the meaning of Revelation at the feet of Christ, if we fancied it ' The 30th chapter of Livy's 41st book is in favour of "the anointed one cut off without help, or successor," being Seleuciis Philopator. " Seleucus insidiis Hehodori, unius ex purpuratis, oppressus intcriit." Nor is the description of Antiochus in the two follovving chapters unim- portant : "Antiochus . . . pravus et inconsultus fuit . . . ipse statim cumpocnlo ct SYMPHONIA improvisus adcrat, commissabundus et lasciviens," etc. It is not, however, unreasonable to prefer applying the term Anointed to a Jewish prince or priest ; and Mr. Dcsprcz believes himself to have found one appropriate. (This view has been since abandoned.) INTRODUCTION. XXXIX to imply merit or duty in swerving an iota from historical probability. But is there nothing on the other side .'' There is a passage in Josephus, A. J. xi. 8, which declares that the high-priest Jaddua, having appeared in a dream to Alexander, while yet in Macedonia, and encouraged him to conquer Asia, subse- quently on his march from Tyre to Jerusalem showed him also the Book of Daniel, in which he had been predicted. I can add nothing to what two historians of Greece, the first manfully,^ the second enigmatically, have suggested upon this passage. But if we consider that the military compan- ions of Alexander, so far as their testimony is delivered to us through good writers, knew nothing of this march to Jerusalem, or of its results, and that Arrian may be inter- preted as negativing it, we may wonder how Josephus, four centuries afterwards, was able to dress up the particulars so fully ; say, we admit some act of grace to have furnished a foundation for the tradition, and even go so far as to imagine any part of the Old Testament shown to Alexander, it does not follow that Josephus might not conjecture Daniel as a part likely to be shown ; and when we add the obliquity of the man's character, atoning for flattery of the Romans, by exaggerations as to the country and creed which he had deserted, the whole passage becomes suspicious for reliance, if not damaging. It has been attempted to find a testimony of a far different order in the language of the New Testament. We read in ' Mitford, chap, xlviii. § iv. (vol. vii. p. 534) ; Thirlwall, chap. i. (vol. vii. p. 206) ; Comp. Lord A. Hervey, in Jaddua, Diet. Bibl. Some features in Josephus's account of the Fall of Jerusalem (such as the ixera^aivcofjiev evrevdeu) are suspiciously like some in Alexander's siege of Tyre, though doubtless common in many ancient cities ; as Servius teaches on yEneid, ii. 358 : (Excessere omnes adytis arisque relictis Di, quibus imperium hoc steterat ; succurritis urbi Incensae) where Burmann makes the parenthesis stop too soon. xl INTRODUCTION. Matt. xxiv. 15 (corroborated by a doubtful rcadini^ in Mark xiii. 14) that "the abomination of desolation" which the Jews should see in the last days of Jerusalem had been " spoken of by Daniel the Prophet." This passage is em- ployed, as if it brought the whole authority of Christ and of God into the field in favour of the earlier date of the book, and of such interpretations as exclude a proper reference to the times of Antiochus. Is not such employment of it a carrying of the Ark of God, unbidden, into the battle .'' Certainly the passage proves the canonical reception of Daniel at the time of the Gospel's being written, and wc may fairly assume, at that of Christ's speaking ; but that such canonical reception was then established, and had been so for a full century, is what no critic calls in question. The pas- sage may also prove that the standards of Titus on the walls, or the statue of Caligula in the Temple, brought home to the Jews a vivid fulfilment of an old prophetic saying. I discern no approach to even an indication, that the book had origi- nated in the time of Nebuchadnezzar rather than of Epi- phanes ; or that the "abomination of desolation" was not formally recognised by our Lord as denoting acts of Anti- ochus which were before the eyes of the writer of the Book of Daniel, and which accurately typified those of Caligula and Titus. 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