INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. vi. 8, 2; viii. 13, 3; ix. 3, 2; 8, 6; x. 2, 2; 4, 3). Although pre-eminence in this respect was assigned to Moses (Ant. iv. 8, 49), yet Divine authority equally attached to the sayings of the Prophets, and even, though perhaps in a still inferior degree, to the 'Hymns,' as the Hagiographa generally were called from the circumstance that the Psalter stood at the head of them (comp. Philo, De Vita contempl., ed. Mangey, vol. ii. p. 475; St. Luke xxiv. 44). Thus the division of the Bible into three sections-the Law, the Prophets, and the other Writings'-which already occurs in the prologue to the work of Jesus the son of Sirach,' seems to have been current at the time. And here it is of great interest, in connection with modern controversies, that Josephus seems to attach special importance to the prophecies of Daniel as still awaiting fulfilment (Ant. x. 10. 4; 11. 7). 3 That the Rabbis entertained the same views of inspiration, appears not only from the distinctive name of 'Holy Writings' given to the Scriptures, but also from the directions that their touch defiled the hands,2 and that it was duty on the Sabbath to save them from conflagration, and to gather them up if accidentally scattered, and that it was not lawful for heirs to make division of a sacred roll (comp. Shabb. xvi. 1; Erub. x. 3; Chel. xv. 6; Yad. iii. 2–5; iv. 5 [where special reference is made to Daniel] 6). From what we know of the state of feeling, we might have inferred, even if direct evidence had not existed, that a distinctive and superior place would be ascribed to the Books of Moses. In point of fact, the other books of Scripture, alike the Prophets and the Hagiographa, are only designated as Kabbalah (received,' handed down, tradition), which is also the name given to oral tradition. It was said that the Thorah was given to Moses (Jer. Shek. vi. 1) 'in (letters of) white fire graven upon black fire,' although it was matter of dispute whether he received it volume by volume or complete as a whole (Gitt. 60 a). But on the question of its inspiration not the smallest doubt could be tolerated. Thus, to admit generally, that the Thorah as a whole was from heaven, except this (one) verse, which the Holy One, blessed be He, did not speak, but Moses of himself' was to become an infidel and a blasphemer (Sanh. 99 a).5 Even the concluding verses in Deuteronomy had been dictated by God to Moses, and he wrote them down-not repeating them, however, as before, but weeping as he wrote. It will readily be understood in what extravagant terms Moses himself 1 Comp. also 2 Macc. ii. 13, 14. 2 The general statement that this decree was intended to prevent a common or profane use of the Scripture does not explain its origin. The latter seems to have been as follows: At first the priests in the Temple were wont to deposit the Therumah near the copy of the Law there kept (Shabb. 14 a). But as mice were thereby attracted, and damage to the Sacred Roll was apprehended, it was enacted that the Sacred Roll in the Temple rendered all meat that touched it unclean. This decree gave rise to another, by way of further precaution, that even the hands which touched the Sacred Roll, or any other part of the Bible, became unclean (so that, having touched the latter, they could not touch the Therumah). Then followed (in the course of development) a third decree, that such touch defiled also outside the Temple. Finally, the first decree was modified to the effect that the Sacred Roll in the Temple did not defile the hands, while all other Scriptures (anywhere else) defiled them (Chel. xv. 6). The explanation offered to the 3 The difference in the degree of inspiration The proof-passages are quoted in Zunz, 5 At the same time, in Meg. 31 b the .(from Moses himself) מפי עצמו Was 683 APP. APP. 1 was spoken of. It is not only that the expression 'man of God' was supposed to imply, that while as regarded the lower part of his nature Moses was man, as regarded the higher he was Divine, but that his glorification and exaltation amount to blasphemy. So far as inspiration or 'revelation' is concerned, it was said that Moses 'saw in a clear glass, the prophets in a dark one-or, to put it otherwise: he saw through one glass, they through seven.' Indeed, although the opening words of Ps. lxxv. showed, that the Psalms were as much revelation as the Law, yet 'if Israel had not sinned, they would have only received the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua,' and, in the time to come, of all Scripture the Pentateuch alone would retain its place. It was somewhat contemptuously remarked, that the Prophets uttered nothing as regarded practice that had not already been told in the Pentateuch (Taan. 9 a). It was but natural for Rabbinism to declare that the Law alone fully explained its meaning (at least according to their interpretation of it), while the Prophets left much in obscurity. To mark the distinction, it was forbidden to put the Law in the same wrapper with the Prophets, so as not to place perhaps the latter on the top of the former (Tos. Meg. iii.). Among the Prophets themselves there was considerable difference, not only in style and training but even in substance (Sanh. 89 a), although all of them had certain common qualifications (comp. Ab. de R. Nathan, 37). Of all the prophets Isaiah was greatest, and stood next to Moses. Ezekiel saw all that Isaiah saw-but the former was like a villager, the latter like a townsman who saw the king (Chag. 13 b). Jeremiah and Amos were, so to speak, scolding, owing to the violence of their temperament, while Isaiah's was the book of consolation, especially in response to Jeremiah. The Hagiographa or 'Chetubhim' also bear in the Talmud the general designation of 'Chochmah,' wisdom. It has been asserted that, as the Prophetic Books, so the Hagiographa, were distinguished into anterior' (Psalms, Proverbs, Job) and 'posterior,' or else into 'great' and 'small.' But the statement rests on quite insufficient evidence.3 Certain, however, it is, that the Hagiographa, as we possess them, formed part of the Canon in the time of Jesus the son of Sirachthat is, even on the latest computation of his authorship, about the year 130 B.C.3 Even so, it would not be easy to vindicate, on historical grounds, the so-called Maccabean authorship of the Book of Daniel, which would fix its date about 165 B.C. For, if other considerations did not interfere, few students of Jewish history would be disposed to assert that a book, which dated from 165 B.C., could have found a place in the Jewish Canon. would assign a much earlier date to Ecclus. 1 A more terribly repulsive instance of this can scarcely be conceived than in Debar. R. 11, of which the worst parts are reproduced in Yalkut 304 a, b, c. Real 2 Comp. 3 Fürst, u. s. pp. 57-59, quotes Ber. 57 b But, as explained in vol. i. p. 26, we examination, is seen to rest on no certain his- 5 Fürst, p. 56. See also Reuss, Gesch. d. Heil. Schr. A. T. (p. 550), who gives its date as 132. 6 Fürst, who holds the Maccabean origin of the Book of Daniel, so frequently contradicts himself in the course of his remarks on the subject, that it is difficult sometimes to understand him. Where argument is wanting, he assures us that a thing is self-evident (es versteht sich von selbst). Such a selfevident' assertion, for which there is not a tittle of historical evidence-which all runs in the opposite direction-is summarised on page 100, without even an attempt at proof. The word 'self-evident' has no place in his DATE OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL. New Testament is so important, that one or two further remarks may be allowed. Leaving aside most serious critical objections, and the unquestionable fact, that no amount of ingenuity can conciliate the Maccabean application of Dan. ix. 24-27 with the chronology of that period,' while the Messianic interpretation fits in with it, other, and seemingly insuperable difficulties are in the way of the theory impugned. It implies, that the Book of Daniel was not only an Apocryphal, but a Pseudepigraphic work; that of all such works it alone has come down to us in its Hebrew or Chaldee original; that a Pseudepigraphic work, nearly contemporary with the oldest portion of the Book of Enoch, should not only be so different from it, but that it should find admission into the Canon, while Enoch was excluded; that a Pseudepigraphon younger than Jesus the Son of Sirach should have been one of the Chetubhim; and, finally, that it should have passed the repeated revision of different Rabbinic 'Colleges'—and that at times of considerable theological activity-without the suspicion being even raised that its authorship dated from so late a period as a century and a half before Christ. And we have evidence that since the Babylonish exile, at least four revisions of the Canon took place within periods sufficiently distant from each other. The question hitherto treated has been exclusively of the date of the composition of the Book of Daniel, without reference to who may have been its author, whether its present is exactly the same as its original form, and, finally, whether it ever belonged to those books whose right to canonicity, though not their age, was in controversy, that is, whether it belonged, so to speak, to the Old Testament avrileyóμeva. As this is not the place for a detailed discusssion of the canonicity of the Book of Daniel-or, indeed, of any other in the Old Testament canon-we shall only add, to prevent misunderstanding, that no opinion is here expressed as to possible, greater or less, interpolations in the Book of Daniel, or in any other part of the Old Testament. We must here bear in mind that the moral view taken of such interpolations, as we would call them, was entirely different in those times from ours; and it may perhaps be an historically and critically not unwarranted proposition, that such interpolations were, to speak moderately, not at all unusual in ancient documents. In each case the question must be separately critically examined in the light of internal and (if possible) external evidence. But it would be a very different thing to suggest that there may be an interpolation, or, it may be, a re-arrangement in a document (although at present we make no assertions on the subject, one way or the other), and to pronounce a whole document a fabrication dating from a much later period. The one would, at any rate, be quite in the spirit of those times; the other implies, besides insuperable critical difficulties, a deliberate religious fraud, to which no unprejudiced student could seriously regard the so-called Pseudepigrapha as forming any real analogon. But as regards the Book of Daniel, it is an important fact that the right of the Book of Daniel to canonicity was never called in question in the ancient Synagogue. The fact that it was distinguished as 'visions' (Chesjonoth) from the other 'prophecies has, of course, no bearing on the question, any more than the circumstance that later Rabbinism, which, naturally enough, could not find its way through the Messianic prophecies of the book, declared that even Daniel was mistaken in, and could not make anything of the predictions concerning the latter days' torical discussions, where only that is evident which rests on historical grounds. 1 This is admitted even by Mr. Drummond (Jewish Messiah,' pp. 246, 254-257, 260). Mr. Drummond's book is here quoted as the 685 APP. V APP. V (Ber. R. 98).1 On the other hand, Daniel was elevated to almost the same pinnacle as Moses, while it was said that, as compared with heathen sages, if they were all placed in one scale, and Daniel in the other, he would outweigh them all. We can readily understand that, in times of national sorrow or excitement, these prophecies would be eagerly resorted to, as pointing to a glorious future. But although the Book of Daniel was not among the Antilegomena, doubts were raised, not indeed about the age, but about the right to canonicity of certain other portions of the Bible. Thus, certain expressions in the prophecies of Ezekiel were questioned as apparently incompatible with statements in the Pentateuch * (Men. 45 a), and although a celebrated Rabbi, Chananjah, the son of Chiskijah, the son of Garon (about the time of Christ), with immense labour, sought to conciliate them, and thus preserved the Book of Ezekiel (or, at least, part of it) from being relegated among the Apocrypha, it was deemed safest to leave the final exposition of the meaning of Ezekiel till Elijah come,' as the restorer of all things. 3 The other objections to canonicity apply exclusively to the third division of the Old Testament, the Chetubhim or Hagiographa. Here even the Book of Proverbs seems at one time to have been called in question (Ab. de R. Nathan 1), partly on the ground of its secular contents, and partly as containing supposed contradictory statements' (Shabb. 30 b). Very strong doubts were raised on the Book of Ecclesiastes (Yad. iii. 5; Eduj. v. 3), first, on the ground of its contradiction of some of the Psalms (Shabb. 30 a); secondly, on that of its inconsistencies (Shabb. 30 b) ; and, thirdly, because it seemed to countenance the denial of another life, and, as in Eccl. xi. 1, 3, 9, other heretical views (Vajjikra R. 28, at the beginning). But these objections were finally answered by great ingenuity, while an appeal to Eccl. xii. 12, 13, was regarded as removing the difficulty about another life and future rewards and punishments. And as the contradictions in Ecclesiastes had been conciliated, it was hopefully argued that deeper study would equally remove those in the Book of Proverbs (Shabb. 30 b). Still, the controversy about the canonicity of Ecclesiastes continued so late as the second century of our era (comp. Yad. iii. 5). That grave doubts also existed about the Song of Solomon, appears even from the terms in which its canonicity is insisted upon (Yad. u. s.), not to speak of express statements in opposition to it (Ab. de R. Nathan 1). Even when by an allegorical interpretation it was shown to be the 'wisdom of all wisdom," the most precious gem, the holy of holies, tradition still ascribed its composition to the early years of Solomon (Shir haSh. R. 1). It had been his first work, and was followed by Proverbs, and finally by Ecclesiastes. But perhaps the greatest objec3 For ex. Prov. xxvi. 4, 5. 1 And yet there are frequent indications that Rabbinism sought guidance on these very subjects in the prophecies of Daniel. Thus, in the Pirké de R. Elieser there are repeated references to the four monarchiesthe Persian, Median, Macedonian, and Roman -when, in the time of the fifth monarchy, that of the children of Ishmael-after a terrible war against Rome, the Messiah would come (comp. Pirké de R. El. 19, and especially 28, 30, and 48). 2 Among them the following may be mentioned (Chull, 34 6): Ezek. iv. 14 &c., and (Men. 45 a), Ezek. xliv. 31 were regarded as suggesting that these prohibitions applied only to priests; (Moed K. 5 a) Ezek. xxxiv. 10, seemed to imply that an ordinary Israelite might perform sacrificial service, while Ezek. xlv. 20 appeared to enjoin a sacrifice nowhere mentioned in the Pentateuch. 8 4 As for ex. Ps. cxv. 17 compared with Eccl. iv. 2 and ix. 4. 5 For ex. Eccl. ii. 2 comp. with vii. 3; and again, viii. 15, or iv. 2 comp. with ix. 4. 6 The school of Shammai was against, that of Hillel in favour of the Canonicity of Ecclesiastes (Eduj. v. 3). In Tos. Yad. ii. Ecclesiastes is said to be uninspired, and to contain only the wisdom of Solomon. 7 But it must be admitted that some of these conciliations are sufficiently curious. 8 But on this subject opinions differ very widely (see Shir haSh. R. 1, ed. Warshau pp. 3b and 4 a), the only point on which all are agreed being that he wrote Ecclesiastes lastRabbi Jonathan irreverently remarking, that when a man is old he utters divré havalimvain words! CRITICAL REVISION OF THE TEXT. tions were those taken to the Book of Esther (Meg. 7 a). It excited the enmity Two points still require brief mention. Even from a comparison of the LXX. Version with our Hebrew text, it is evident that there were not only many variations, but that spurious additions (as in Daniel) were eliminated. This critical activity, which commenced with Ezra, whose copy of the Pentateuch was, according to tradition, placed in the Temple, that the people might correct their copies by it, must have continued for many centuries.1 There is abundant evidence of frequent divergences-though perhaps minute-and although later Rabbinism laid down the most painfully minute directions about the mode of writing and copying the rolls of the Law, there is such discrepancy, even where least it might be expected, as to show that the purification of the text was by no means settled. Considering the want of exegetical knowledge and historical conscientiousness, and keeping in view how often the Rabbis, for Haggadic purposes, alter letters, and thus change the meaning of words, we may well doubt the satisfactory character of their critical labours. Lastly, as certain omissions were made, and as the Canon underwent (as will be shown) repeated revision, it may have been that certain portions were added as well as left out, and words changed as well as restored. For, ancient tradition ascribes a peculiar activity to certain Colleges 'as they are termed-in regard to the Canon. In general, the well-known Baraita (Baba B. 14 b, 15 a) bears, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the book (Prophecies?) of Balaam, and Job; Joshua the work that bears his name, and the last eight verses of Deuteronomy; 3 Samuel the corresponding books, Judges and Ruth; David with the 'ten Elders,' Adam, Melchisedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah, the Psalter; Jeremiah wrote his prophecies, Lamentations, and Kings; King Hezekiah and his Sanhedrin compiled, or edited, the Prophecies of Isaiah, Proverbs, the Song, and Ecclesiastes; and the men of 'the Great Synagogue' the Prophecies of Ezekiel, of the twelve Minor Prophets, and the books of Daniel and Esther; Ezra wrote his own book and Chronicles, the work being completed by the son of Nehemiah. The last verses of Joshua were written by Eleazar and Phinehas; the last chapters of Samuel by Gad and Nathan.1 Loose and uncritical as these statements may appear, they so far help our investigations as to show that, according to tradition, certain portions of Scripture were compiled or edited by one or another Rabbinic College,' and that there were several 'Colleges' which successively busied themselves with the codification and revision of the Canon. By these Colleges,' however, we are not to under 1 In Jer. Taan. 68 a we read of three codices of the Pentateuch, respectively named after one word in each codex, the reading of which was either rejected or adopted on comparison with the others. 2 Thus, we have different notices about the number of verses in the Bible, the arrangement of the Psalter, the medial letter and medial word in the Pentateuch, and the number of its sections and chapters (Kidd. 30a; Yalkut i. § 855). But the sum total of verses in the Bible (23,199) differs by 99 from that in our present text. Similarly, one of 3 But comp. an opinion, previously quoted, 4 History of the Jewish Nation,' p. 418. 687 APP. V |