Babylon turned their faces homewards to the land of their fathers, Daniel remained, too old to bear that journey, perhaps unwilling to leave scenes and memories full of self-sacrifice and yet of victory, of firm devotion to his master on earth and of yet firmer adhesion to his God in heaven.

The hand of Providence had so ordered it for the instruction and encouragement of the captives of his race. From the very first, Daniel, like Joseph', won the respect of his guardians and masters by his force of character. His determination, as a boy, to avoid the "defilement of the king's meat" (i. 8) in order to preserve his purity as a Jew; his perseverance, as a man, "concerning the law of his God," to do " as he did aforetime" (vi. 5, 10), are evidences of a fearless trust and strength of character, all the more remarkable when remembered in conjunction with the habits and temperaments of the courtiers of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius. To this kind of character he added God's special gift, "understanding in all visions and dreams" (i. 17, ii. 19). This power-the full importance of which among Babylonians it is almost impossible to exaggerate (see Excursus on ch. ii.)-when exercised, secured to its possessor at different times positions of high official responsibility (ii. 48, iv. 8, v. 29), and gave him a reputation which no change of dynasty could imperil (vi. 2, 28).

Of that long, if interrupted, official career two facts may be certified. (a) Daniel was at once the representative of the true God in the courts of heathen kings and a true child of his people. His unflinching assertion of the nature and attributes of the "great God" in the face of the polytheism of Babylon and the more refined creed of Mazdeism, was widely known. The men of his time compared his "wisdom" and 'righteousness with that of Noah and Job (Ezek. xiv. 14, 20, xxviii. 3);

66

1 The comparison between Joseph and Daniel is in many points an interesting one. It has been well drawn out by Auberlen and Pusey (int. al.), but by no one so tersely and suggestively as by one of the earliest commentators, St Hippolytus (e.g. pp. 170, 173, ed. P. A. de Lagarde).

and in their day of despondency and reverse watched his elevation, and that of men like-minded with him, to positions in which he, above all others, could be their advocate and friend. Captive Israel had, it is true, the comfortable words of the prophets (e.g. Isaiah xiii., xiv.; Jer. xlv., xlvi.) to encourage them in their trials. Ezekiel was also labouring amongst them on the banks of Chebar. But, in the distant future, there were to be periods of, if possible, yet deeper affliction for God's chosen people, and marked by the overthrow and uprising of various heathen powers. Danielthe prophet who lived to witness one of these revolutions, the destruction of the Babylonian monarchy and the rise of the Persian conqueror (v. 30, vi. 28); whose political career had sharpened in him the faculties for weighing and reading the "signs of the times;" whose patriotism, religious purity, and fidelity were above suspicion;-this Daniel was chosen to see the visions of "times of trouble," and to record for the benefit of ages, yet unborn, words of comfort such as might be expected from one so faithful to God and country. (b) If the prophet was this to his own people, it is equally incontestable that his integrity as an official of the highest consideration under successive dynasties was never called in question by the people among whom he lived. Trained in the mysteries of the Casdim, and president of the wise men of Babylon, Daniel demanded and received from the heathen, by virtue of his position, that reverence which was granted, sometimes by superstition, sometimes by affection, to the supposed favourites of the gods. How easy it must have been to have abused that position, or others as great, in courts such as those of the unworthy successors of Nebuchadnezzar or of the weak and flattered Darius, hardly needs illustration. That Daniel would be no party to political intrigue or current licentiousness is clear from recorded facts (vi. 4), and may be conjectured from the otherwise unexplained blank in his history between the close of Nebuchadnezzar's reign and the last days of Belshazzar (see introd. note to ch. v.). Throughout his official life Daniel was the type of incorruptible honour, the

statesman who dared to speak and advise in the interests of monarch and mankind alike (iv. 27, v. 22) when his advice might have cost him his head (cp. ii. 12); and who chose the obscurity of private life (cp. vii. 1) when he felt himself powerless for good.

Daniel died (it is conjectured) in the third year of Cyrus (cp. x. 1), or soon after. His life had been a long and stirring one, as the events recorded in chapters ii., iv., v., and vi., help the reader to conceive; but its close was blessed with singular and bounteous spiritual communion (vii.-xii.) with that God Whom in his early life heathen lips had celebrated under the title of "Revealer of Secrets" (ii. 47). "Thou shalt rest" (xii. 13) is the fitting benediction which closes all that is recorded of that life of earthly usefulness and spiritual-mindedness, and all that is revealed of the intercourse with the Divine vouchsafed to this "man greatly beloved."

The traditions which assign to him a martyr's death, or a peaceful end at Ecbatana, or Susa, or Babylon, or even at Jerusalem, are traditions only, without further support than what the mingled piety and enthusiasm of Jewish or Mahommedan or Roman Catholic writers have brought to them.

If Daniel thus influenced the men of his day, heathen and Jew alike, it will be readily supposed that he in his turn was influenced by them. It is this fact amongst others which helps to explain the peculiarities of the book called after his name. It is impossible for any intelligent reader of the book to avoid noticing features which distinguish it, upon comparison, from other books in the Sacred Canon: and until the last few years, the natural explanation of these peculiarities, viz. that they were due in great measure to the natural circumstances of the prophet's life and training, was put forward apologetically rather than confidently. But now that facts laid bare by the sculptured monuments of Babylonia and by cuneiform research have been, in their broad outlines and principles, recognized, that natural explanation-so far as it has reference to the prophet's life among the heathen-comes readily to the front as

the only true solution. On every page are to be found undesigned coincidences with the now known external features of the age and localities in which the book records the prophet to have lived; incidental touches, delicate shades of expression, statements otherwise unintelligible, indicate the hand of one bred and resident at courts and among men with whom the monuments have made the present age familiar. It will be one object of the present commentary to notice the most pertinent of these coincidences, and, by the aid of the writings of Rawlinson, Hincks, Norris, Talbot, G. Smith, Sayce, &c., in England; of Oppert, Ménant, and Lenormant in France; and of Schrader, Mordtmann, and Prætorius in Germany, to illustrate the language employed, the habits described, the facts recorded, the classes named in the book 'Daniel.'

The same kind of influence from without, if perhaps less marked, is to be observed in many of the more purely Jewish features of the book. It forms the intermediate link between the purer Hebraism (as it has been called) of the Law and of the Prophets (Nebi-im), and the Judaism which in later years developed itself against the political might and proselytizing influence of Hellenism. In prophecy, ethical ideas, doctrinessuch as those referring to the Messiah, the resurrection and eschatological ideas,

there are developments upon the simpler views of the prophets and teachers of Judah; but these are also singularly free from the errors and anachronisms, the religious, ceremonial, and moral development which mark the apocryphal literature of the Book of Esdras, the additions to Daniel, Tobit, the Sibylline books, and the like. The bearing of this fact on the often alleged Maccabean date of the book 'Daniel,' will be felt to be of the first importance. The works of the leading Jewish writers-Zunz, Herzfeld, Frankel, Franck, Munk, Derenbourg, Grätz-taken with those of Ewald, Hilgenfeld, Nicolas and others, have happily thrown great light upon much of the obscurity which still rests upon the period during which most of these Apocrypha were composed, and furnished the means for attaining an unbiassed conclusion.

ii. The Reception of the Book of Daniel.

1

§1. Daniel and the post-exilic Prophets. The esteem with which Daniel was regarded by his contemporaries, the pattern of religious consistency, and therefore of worldly success, which his life furnished to them, and for the instruction of the Dispersion in after times, are matters of history. The later or post-exilic prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, do not allude to him by name, but Jewish tradition and the evident influence of his writings upon Zechariah make their indirect testimony the more valuable. An ancient saying declares that "Baruch the son of Neriah,... Daniel,...Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi all prophesied in the second year of Darius," a passage which certainly indicates a sense of what such men must have been to each other. Haggai's subject was not one which would, of necessity, make him refer to the prophecies of Daniel, nor was Malachi's; but Zechariah-in the undisputed section of his book (i.—viii.)—is affected unquestionably by Daniel's vision. The second and last visions of Zechariah (A. V. i. 18, vi.) present many points of parallelism with the visions of Daniel on the four world-powers (ii., vii.), a fact recognized and acknowledged by critics holding different views (e.g. Hoffmann and Stähelin): and Jewish tradition explained the "myrtles" of the first vision (i. 8) to be "Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah" (Dan. i. 11, iii.), who hinder the rider of the red horse (i. e. God) from shed

ding blood. Such resemblances as those of the second and last visions find— without calling in question Zechariah's inspiration-a natural explanation in the influence of the earlier Babylonian prophet upon the mind of an independent thinker.

§ 2. Daniel and the Books of the O.T.

"The Books of the Old Testament," says the Venerable Archdeacon Rose, "are divided by our Saviour (St Luke xxiv. 44) into three classes: 1, The Law, 2, The Prophets, and 3, The Psalms". Notwithstanding our reverence for this, the only authoritative division, we may be permitted, for critical and exegetical purposes, to consider these precious stores of divine knowledge under another aspect. For such purposes, it is very convenient sometimes to arrange the Books of the Old Testament under the following heads: 1. The Law and the Book of Joshua. 2. The Books of the Regal Period. 3. The Books of the Captivity.

"The first and the last of these divisions belong chiefly to transition periods in the history of the people of Israel; and both these periods were marked by a great outpouring of the Spirit of God. The first, including the Book of Joshua, was the season in which God by a stretched-out arm and a mighty hand brought Israel out of the dominion of the heathen, while the last was that in which God, for the disobedience of His chosen people and their disregard of their high privileges, subjected them again to heathen rulers, and chastened them by the Captivity of Babylon. But God visited His people during the Captivity with a great outpouring of His Spirit. Of the four greater Prophets, three belong to this period, and two of them prophesied in the lands of the Captivity itself. Had it not been for Ezekiel by the river Chebar and Daniel in Babylon, the Captivity would have been almost a blank in the history of the Jews.

"The literature of the Captivity has a certain analogy with that of the Exodus.

5 The first book of the Ketubim (Hagiographa) is specified as the representative of the whole class: see later on. (J. M. F.)

The history of the children of Israel in these two periods touches secular history far more closely than in the Regal period, during which the narrative for the most part is entirely confined to Palestine. That narrow strip of land, lying between the Jordan and the Great Sea, was contiguous to all the great nations of antiquity, but mysteriously screened off from them. It was accessible to all, but scarcely a highway for any, except when Syria and Egypt were ranged against each other in arms. Syria and Egypt, however, were very little brought into collision before the Syro-Egyptian kingdoms had been developed from the Macedonian. In the case of collision also between Egypt and either Syria, Babylon, or Persia, Palestine formed a practicable route for the armies of the contending powers. Accordingly, in the Books of the Regal Period the points of contact with secular history are comparatively few, and the history is almost entirely that of the land destined to be the nursing-home of the Faith. These considerations, and others like them, will immediately suggest one advantage of this division. It will easily be perceived by a thoughtful mind how exactly the standing-point of each of these periods is reflected in the literature which professes to belong to it. Many attempts have been made by modern critics (e.g. by Gesenius, Hartmann and others) to arrange the books of the Old Testament in chronological order by arguments from the so-called history of the Hebrew language, but they signally fail. Critics differ in their estimates, and strive to establish contradictory conclusions from the same premisses. The tests, in fact, are insufficient and frequently repose on inaccurate statements. Thus the attempt of Gesenius to prove the Book of Deuteronomy later than the rest of the Pentateuch, rests on ten words, of which six are inapplicable. The test here suggested is broader but more trustworthy. The range of ideas and the horizon of the writers really belong to the times in which they are represented to have written. A writer of the age of the Captivity, in forging Deuteronomy, would inevitably have betrayed himself by exhibiting a false standing-point, and the same would be true, we believe, of a

writer who in Maccabean times attempted to simulate Daniel.

"The first and the last of these periods, coming more frequently into contact with secular history, have difficulties of a special kind, arising from the necessity of identifying the persons named in Scripture with those otherwise known to us, and reconciling the narratives of the one with those of the other. No part of Scripture history is more fully charged with difficulties of this class than the Book of Daniel. But some of these, however formidable they may appear at first sight, are easily surmounted, while others admit of no solution which seems to meet with general approbation; and our choice must lie among conflicting probabilities."

It is in the spirit of these concluding words that the position of the book 'Daniel' in the literature of the O.T. must now be considered.

$3. Daniel and the Canon.

In accordance with subjective views of arrangement, the book Daniel is placed by the LXX. version and the English Bible after Ezekiel. This, it is well known, is not the place which it occupies in the order of the Hebrew Bible. The Jews divide the Bible into three great sections; the Law (Thorah), the Prophets (Nebi-im), and Writings (Ketubim). Daniel, as the work of a prophet, might naturally be expected to have its place in the second division, that of the Nebi-im', with Ezekiel and the writings of the post-captivity prophets, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi : but, as a matter of fact, it is placed in the third division, or Ketubim. The question therefore arises: Is it possible to account for this position?

The Ketubim include the remainder of the books of the present Hebrew canon; and Talmudic tradition' places them in