Gaster (PSBA, Nov. Dec 1804) announces thediscover>' of an Aram, text of the story of the Dragon in the Chritnulrv of .1 iTTah- mffl. This he claims to be the very text used hj H in revising LXX. It is certainly a striking ilocumunt. Its dialect, both in vocabu- lary and gniminalicul tonus, is that of Unkelos. It is a longer narrative tl)u[i any other, and i^iKsesses some unique readin;:s ; as. e.o., ' flax ' in V.27 ; ' withoutswonl or fpfar,' v.*; 'Daniel was in the den »ev«n days.' v.*l ; 'land of Israel,* v.**; 'and when Ilattakkiik's spirit retume<l to hira,' v.»'\ But the antiquity of its text is, I think, most clearly evinced hy the fact that it contains many reatlings found in the several VSS, but until now <leemed unique ; and thus it seems to he a 'Source.' With the Vulg. only, it reads, * behold now,' v.s ; * what ye
•The Aram, word for 'storm-wind' U Hri;! ; fbr 'pilch,' Kp'i. Is this an acoidentT or does tt not rather IntLcate that the story circulated in Aram., an<l thus 'pitch' was in time substituted for * stonn-wind ' f Cf the omission of V in ^3 for Si';.
268
BELA
BELIAL
worship,' v.*7 ; and * from the den o/ liotis,' v.-*2. With Syr. only, it reads, * and the dragon swallowed them, and died,' v.»7 ; ' Mj/ Lord,* v.^ : ' in one hour,' v.39 ; • who slatuiered Daniel,' v.-*^. With Josippon, it adds that the an^'el took Habakkuk 'with the food that was in his hands," v.3«, and states that Daniel put iron combs in the pitch, and that, when the pilch melted, the combs pierced the viscera of the dragon, and thuB caused ita death, v.^.
Language. — Most scholars, from Eichhom to Konig, have considered the orig. lang. of these stories to be Greek ; but Gaster's discovery looks strongly, if not decisively, in favour of Aramaic. The confusion of n?y,! = storm-wind, and k5'i = pitch, points in the same direction. The awkward word (LXX'*) a<ppayi(jafi(vos — cnn is best explained by supposing that the latter was read for cnD = /cXffiras ; and besides this, many divergent parallel readings yield, when translated, very similar Aram, words, e.g.—
" look at seals, hswx " king rejoiced, ttin " see the guile, inpo ji/of the doomed, K'lam
\ = weptKaddpfiaTa *° inthemidst,Vulg.,iJ3 u /slandered, .Ts-np i>3k
\So Chr, Syr.
safe . . , ? . looked, . threshold, , and 2 rams, .
Kin , ttspa
. U12-I '31
in the den, Chr, . 3J3 /cause of his n•%•\^p K^'y \destruction. So 9, Vulg.
Canonicity. — The Boman Church admits the genuineness of these stories, as of the rest of the LXX ; and in the uncritical age of the early Church, many Gr. and Lat. Fathers quoted them as part of Dn, e.g. Irenoeus, iv. 5. 2 ; Tertnllian, de idololatria, c. 18; and Cyprian, ad Fortunatum, c. 11. Julius Africanus was the first to call the matter in dispute, in his Letter tu Origen. Origen replied ; and in his Stromata, Book x., expounded Susanna and Bel. From this exposition Jerome quotes in his commentary on Dn 13. 14. In his Prw/atio in Danielem, Jerome, while in sympathy with Africanus, conceals himself behind a learned Jew. He says he had heard a Jew deride the Gr. additions to Dn. The Jew asked what miracle, or indication of divine inspiration, there was in a dragon's being killed by a piece of pitch ; or in the detection of the tricks of the priests of Bel. These things were done rather by the prudence of a clever man than by the prophetic spirit. As to Habakkuk's aerial flight, with a bowl of pottage in his hand, the Jew refused to accept Ezk 8* as at all parallel : since Ezk in the spirit saw himself being carried, and ' was brought in visions of God to Jerus.' Still Jerome, in view of the universal acceptance of the • Additions,' decided to publish them ' veru ante- posito.' Other objections urged more recently are (1) the inconsistencies of 6 and LXX, and their many improbabilities. (2) That dragon- worship was unknown in Babylon (so Eichhom, Bissell). This is probably true ; but the Babylonians had a snake deity. Ci. Baudissin in Herzog, art. ' Drache zu Babel,' and Ball, 357. (3) The image of Bel was not destroyed in the reign of Cyrus, but by Xerxes ; Hdt. i. 183.
LiTERATiTRB. — For MSS in which our stories ar« found, see Daniel. The best Com. is Ball's in Spfaki-yg Apocr. Other useful helps are Bissell in Lange's series ; Kritzache, Handbuch tu den Apoc. vol. i. ; Zockler in Kf^f. Koin. 1891 ; Delitzsch, de Ilabacuct vHa cUtjue cetaU, 1842; Schurer, UJP ii. iii. 1S4 fl.; Josippon ben Gonon, ed. Breithanpt, 1710 ; Zunz, Gott^sdietutl. VoTtrage, p. 129 3., 1892; Neubauer, ToUt, Oxford, 1888.
J. T. Marshall. BELA (y'?2).— 1. 'The son of Beor reigned in Edom ; and the name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead ' (Gn 3G'-- s', cf. 1 Ch 1*"). The close resemblance of this name to that of ' Balaam (ojS), the son of Beor,' the seer, is noteworthy, and has given ri.se to the Targ. of Jonathan reading ' Balaam the son of Beor ' in Gi 36»».