character of De.niel is modelled on that of Joseph. Certainly there are not a few points of rel!emblance between the two OAreere. If Joseph goee down to Egypt a elavo, Daniel goes to Babylon a hoetag£'. If Joseph becomes governor of the land by Inter- preting the dream of Pharaoh, Daniel is admiUed into the counsel of the King of Babylon by not only interpreting a dream which he had, but by telling him also the dream itself. Joseph is made the second person of the kingdom, and Daniel the third. Notwithstnnding all these resemblances, the points of difference are too important to allow us to oseume that the latter history wae imitated from the former. One characteristic of all cases of euch imitation is that in every point where a direct comp:iri110n is of necessity instituted between the original hero and tho hero modelled upon him, the imitator endeavours to make his hero nobler than the original. If we apply this canon, the story of Joseph ought to have been written last. Joseph dropped down to a lower degradation than did Daniel, and from a higher elevation. Further, Daniel did not rise to such an elevation as Joseph; he is only third person in the kingdom, or perhaps one of a board of three, whereas Joseph becomes the second person in the kingdom. The events in Joseph's history which make most impression on the imagination of the reader have no place in the history of Daniel. Joseph's relation to his brethren and to Potiphar's wife are not p:irallcled in the history of Daniel. But more, some, at any rate, of the points of resemblance between the histories have not been pressed as they certainly would have been had "Daniel" been a work of fiction "written up" to Joseph. Like Joseph, Daniel precedes the mass of his countrymen in removal to a foreign land; like Joseph, Daniel has become prominent years before the coming of his kindred; but Daniel is not represented as doing anything to make the coming of bis people to Babylon easier, or their residence there more pleasant. It cannot be answered that the/acts of the Baby Ionian captivity hindered any such invention ; for any one reeding the Talmud or the Jewish commentaries wou!d see that notorious facts are no barrier to Jewish imagination. Joseph kept a.live in his brethren the hope of deliverance from Egypt, and "gave commandment concerning bis bones." In the return of the children of Judah to Jerusalem, Daniel is not represented as taking any part, 1 If the Book of Daniel had been a novel modelled on the hist-0ry of Joseph, the resemblance would have been closer in these critical points. We might go further. If a novel at all, and Daniel an ideal chara.cter, then certainly he would have been represented, if not as actually going to Jol1.lllalem, helping bis fellow-countrymen in their return, and aiding them in Babylon with money and mfluence. Explanations would, at least, have been offered to remove the seeming failure from the Jewish ideal. If, agaia, the Book of Daniel is an approximately contemporary record, the causes which prevented Daniel from accompanying his brethren might-probably would-be so obvious that it would be superfluous to narrate them. Another explanation of the origin of the Book of Daniel is that it was written up to the name-either to the name as significant or as designating a person elsewhere referred to in Scripture. The name may mean either "God is my Judge," or "the judge of God." The only incident in the book that might seem to flow from the first meaniug iB that of the lions' den. Even this incident rather reveals God as the Help and Deliverer of bis saints than as their avenging Judge. Had the name of the prophet been .A.zriel (Jer. xxxvi. 26), there might have been more plausibility in the asserti<Jn that the book was written to the name. Hitzig's contention is that the name 1 It is an example of the strange confusion of intellect under which Dean Farrer
lab0nrs that(' Danitl,' p. 11) he actually brings forward this as an argument against the autl,enticity of Daniel 'l'llE BOOK OF DANIEL. xi