The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 10

Thie e~ent he.ppened in the yee.r B.o. 168, the date when, e.ccordlng to critics, Daniel was written. If it be granted that the same mistaken idea, as led to the dise.ster to which we have just referred, might be supposed to be dominant in the mind of the writer of Daniel, it is, on the.t supposition, impossible to explain the almost immediate po~ulari ty of the book. It incu Ice.tea passive resistance ; and passive resistance, wlule the only mode of resistance open to those in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, woe not the method fitted to be successful in regard to Antiochus Epiphanes, This alleged purpose must, we think, be abandoned. As,. however, no composition or compilation ever is made without some purpose, what 1s the probable purpose for which "Daniel" was compiled? The ea.non of the Old Testament is mainly the history of Divine dealings with a particular race, in order to fit them for the office assigned-that of being the race of which Obrist was to come. Every crisis in their history is narrated to us under prophetic sanction. No greater crisis in the history of the Jewish people had occurred than that of the Baby- lonian captidty. The capture of Jerusalem, the desolation of the temple which God bad promised to make his dwelling-place for ever, the overthrow of the Davidio monarchy which, like the temple, had been promised an unending duration,-all were fitted to sap their faith in God. Moreover, they had been led captive by one who ascribed a.11 his victories to the favour of his owu gods. To Nebuchadnezzar his conquest of Jerusalem a.nd plunder of its temple was· a. demonstration that the God of the Jews wa.s very inferior to Meroda.oh (Ma.rduk). Certainly the prophets of Jehovah had threatened the king and the people with vengeance, because they ha.d forsaken the worship of Jehovah. In the reign of Manasseh the Jews bad worshipped Baal and ell the host of heaven; that worship had been abandoned for that of Jehovah under Josiah, The prophets of Ba.al would denounce the judgments of Baal on the people for aban- doning that worship. Which set of prophets were right? Disaster had been foretold by both sets of prophets. W a.s the disaster due to the abrogation of the worship of Jehovah by Manasseh, or to the abrogation of that of Baal by Josiah? The miracles related in Daniel amply decided that question, and they alone must have settled it. The nation that went to Babylon were prone to idolatry, prone to abandon their national God Jehovah; they ea.me back fanatical monotheists a.nd fanatical wor- shippers of Jehovah. It could only be some special demonstrations of the supreme Godhead of Jehovah that could do this--deeds of wonder like those narrated in the first chapters of the Book of DanieL It would, however, have value for this end only if it were a record of facts, not a moral roman,;e. Its popularity is explicable only on the ground that it was regarded as history. No such book as Daniel ever wa.e popular unless on the idea. that it was a series of accounts of real events. It is a. series of disconnected accounts of events and visions written, some in one language, some in another. It has few graces of com- position; the rhetorical passages we find in some parts being in so many cases sus- picious, since they are not in a.ll the versions, that the remaining instances are suspicious also. If it is a. record of facts, and regarded to: be such, this popularity is thoroughly intelligible. No novel of Covenanting times in Scotland ever had the popularity among the Scottish people tba.t Howie's ' Scots W ortbies' had, and that was because, simple and rough in its style as it is, it wa.s looked upon a.s a. statement of facts, 3. The linguistic peculiarities of the Book of Daniel. We have referred to the fact that there a.re in Daniel two languages used. There have been several different expla- nations of the two languages. (1) Some of these explanations are logical, a.s that of Keil, which declares that the first, tbe Aramaic pa.rt, F;ives us the development of the world-power in relation to the  THE BOOK OF DANIEL. .1.ili