ii. Literary E.stimate. — The judgment of Eichliorn {Eiiileitunr/, 419, ed. 1795), that the Prayer of Azarias is unsuitable to the circum- stances, and that it betrays a lack of literary art to sujifiose that in a liory furnace any man couUl pray as lie does, is endor.sed by most later scholars (I'Vitzsche, 11.5). There are 'no groans, ' 'no per- sonal petitions,' 'no cries for help.' Tlie author makes Azarias review the liistory of the Jewish nation as calmly as an aged saint miglit do under the fig-tree of solitude at the time of evening prayer. On one supposition, however, the Praj'er becomes thoroughly n levant. If we might assume that the author of the Prayer regarded the narra- tive of Dn 3 as a Haggada, a .symbolical, hut not historical, account of the Diibyloiiian captivity: as in Zee 3' the angel says concerning .loslnia the high priest, ' Is not this a brand plucked out of tlie fire ? '— then the Prayer would bo (iiiite suitable. As to the paetiral charnctcr of the Hymn, critics differ. Fritzsche considered the accumulation of doxologies devoid of all literary skill, and the enumeration of the powers of creation, frigid. Ball, however, replies {Sprnker's Com. 307) tliat the very monotony is cflective. ' It is like the monotony of the winds or the waves, and power- fully suggests to the imagination the amplitude and splendour of God's world, and the sublimity
of the universal chorus of praise. The instinct of the Church which early adojitLd the Bencdiiite for liturgical use was right.' Zockler sympathizes so strongly with IJall against Fritzsche that he quotes the above in English. The Hynm is modelled after Ps 136, and lias equal claim to be considered poetical.
iii. Authorship. — The name and date of the compo.ser of the Prayer and Hymn are quite unknown. It is even disputed whether thej' come from the same author. The cliief argument for duiilitv is that v." <**> implies the cessation of Temple worship. ' There is no . . . sacrilice nor place to offer sacrifice before thee ' : whereas in y 81 (M) there is reference to a Temple, and in y 62 (85) tQ priests. The argument is not valid. The Temple in v.^' is the heavenly Temple, where the Lord is enthroned on the cherubim. Further, the priesthood was hereditary. A man did not cease to be a priest when the Temple was de- stroyed ; and hence we note that v." does not say, ' There is no priest.' — It is even more eagerly dis- puted whether the Gr. text is the original, or a translation from Heb. or Aramaic. Eichhom in his first edition favoured Gr. authorship. In his second edition he adduced reasons for regarding it as a translation, but held the evidence to be in- decisive. This uncertainty still remains. Fritzsche, Keil, Bissell, and Schiirer are against a Semitic authorship. Ball attaches more importance than they do Co Eichhorn's indications of translation. The difficulty is this : every extant version is clearly based on the LXX. Where Theod. differs from LXX, it is usually in very small matters of addition or omission. There arc no synonymous, but verbally variant, phrases, indicating that both are translated from the same original. There are no marks that Theod. or any version used a Semitic copy in order to correct LXX. In such cases the only evidence of translation work is to be sought in the awkward, barely intelligible
{)hrases. We have to retranslate these into the lypothetical original, and see if by some slight modification of this we can secure a better render- ing. In the case before us the results tire disaji- pointing. We may premise, liowever, that if there ever was a Semitic original, it would be Heb. and not Aramaic. The orthodox Palestinian Jew con- sidered Heb. the language of heaven, and always used it in prayer and jiraise. — The evidence in favour of Heb. stands thus: (1) The style is intensely Hebraistic, perhaps more so than an Alexandrian Jew would use in original composi- tion. ('2) The names of the three men are their original Hebrew names (Dn 1'), not the .Aramaic names found in Dn S'"- '»• ■•»• »> etc. (3) V." l"' is very obscure. In LXX it reads literally, ' Let our sacrilice be before thee, and may it make atone- ment behind thee ' (^JiXdtrai 6maOiv aov). Theod. reads inrcXiaat ttrtaSiv cov, ' Miij' it make re- quital behind thee.' At the end of the verse in hXX there occurs an incorporated marginal gloss : Tf.\eiw(rai fiviirBh aov, ' let it be perfect behind thee.' These three Gr. verbs seem very diverse, but, if we might assume a Heb. original from which they are a tr., the matter is simplified. These Gr. verbs may represent different forms of the Heb. root oho. The Hiphil C'\\f'n 'to make peace' may account for iiiXdaai. The Piel oVsj* and the Gr. T(\(lu both nuNin to 'pay,' 'requite' ; and the Qal oS\^ means to ' be jicrfect.' We do not attempt to ex|)lain iviaOcv. (4) It might seem that the ]ihrase 'to scatter a covenant' in v.", instead of ' violate,' was a confusion of is and t\b : but the same thing occurs in LXX of Gn 17" and Lv SO''** **. So also tlie use of d7r<i with xaTat<r;^i''i'«(r5ac, ' to be ashamed,' might arise from translating th« Heb. \r) (Eichh. 428) ; but both ix and drd are used