The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 13

and diplomacy, The change that had become marked in the de.ye of Neheminh may woll have been exemplified in men like Daniel, though living in an earlier generation. Any one who, unaware of the history of the poets, p&lleed from the study or the Oanterbury To.lea' to peruse 'Piers the Ploughman,' would be ready to assert the Jntter-nnmed poem to be one of a very much earlier date than the other; yet we kno,v they were contemporary poems. The renson was that Chaucer, living in the court, accustomed to foreign ways, wrote in the style that was on the way to become provo.lent, whereas Langland (or Langley) he.cl a homely muse, and retained the older forms of phrase and modes of versification that were fast disappearing. So too Spenser and Shakespeare present the same contrast-the old and disappearing as over against the new and rising characteristics of the language. Thus it is not a proof that Daniel is later than Haggai and Malachi that in some respects his language seems more akin to the later Hebrew the.n theirs. He is like Geoffrey Chaucer in the court, and engaged iD diplomacies with foreign courts; they are more like Langland, with homelier wits and surroundings. Although we thus can fix the de.ta when'old Hebrew passed into middle Hebrew, it is not so easy to fix when it passed from middle Hebrew to new Hebrew. There e.re no complete bool1s in Hebrew extant, universally acknowledged to belong to the period of the Greek domination. Of course, from a priori grounds and internal evidence, severe.I of the psalms are called Maccabean. To us the evidence seems utterly insufficient. But even if the critical decision were granted in regard to the Psalms, verse retains archaic forms that have been long disused by prose. The next mass of Hebrew is not reached till we come as far down as the age of the Mishna, that is to say, A,D, 200. Although we have, as we have said, no complete Hebrew works from the period of Greek supremacy, we have, fortunately, considerable fragments of a very famous work written in Hebrew iD the period in question. The Book of Ecclesiasticua was trans- lated into Greek by the grandson of the author. There is certainly a doubt as to the date at which this translation was me.de, whether B.c. 130 or B.c. 230; although we think the balance of evidence is in favour rather of the earlier than of the later date, we will not contest the matter, The Hebrew from which it was translated was thus probably written B.o. 180, if not B.o. 280. This is a work which has disappeared as a whole, but there remains, as we have said, considerable quotations from it in various tracts of the Talmud, and in other Rabbinic writings. The fact that even when the treatises in question are in Aramaic, the quotations from Ecclesia.sticua--or to give the book its Rabbinic name, Ben Sira--are iD Hebrew, shows that Hebrew was the language in which the book was written. These quotations have been collected by various hands. We shall make use of two-that iD Dukes' ' Blumenlese,' and that iD an article by Dr. Schechter, in the Jewish Quarterly (June, 1891). The number of these quotutions is not very large, amounting in all to whe.t would be equal to a some- what long chapter. But for purposes of comparison we would lessen the number still further. We would take only ihose quotations which are not only attributed to Ben Biro., but which we are able to identify in one or other of the three versions, and those which, when quoted, are iutroduced by the formula, "It is written in the Book of Ben Sire.," or some such phrase. When there is a variation in the quotation, we would prefer the more archaic forms, as any change towards modernization might be the result of a copyist's blunder, Even of those that remain we shall restrict ourselves to a few specimens. The first of those we select is the fourth of the quotations brought together by Dr. Schechter, and_the eighth iD the collection of Dukes. It occurs in' :ij:agigah,' 13 (a).  xvi INTRODUOTION TO --------------------- ----·····------- Thie is the twelfth trRctate or &der Moed, the second division of the Talmud, It le Riso quot(ld in the Rabbinic treatise on Genesis, Bereshith Rabba, and by Yalkut on Job. These very from the Talmudic form of the quotation, but only to a very slight degree- rn-i.-,oi::1 po~,~ J'lt p1::ir,:, r,•r.,-,,:,i, :,o::i -,,pr,r, ~H 700 :,01::10::i, r.,,,,n ~H 700 H~D,o::i, "Into thnt which is too wonderCul for thee, do not search; into that which is veiled from t.hce, do not inquire ; upon that which is permitted, reflect : thou hast no business with secret things" (Eoclus. iii. 21, 22). The versions agree fairly well with this, and it is quoted ss from "the Book of Ben Sira." Vi'hen we compare this sentence with Biblical Hebrew, we at once feel how far we arc removed from the Hebrew of the age of Nehemiah and Esther, not to say that of Daniel. There is a resemblance to the language of Ecclesiastes, which, with the similarity of subject, a.uggests that EcclesiBSticus is an imitation of Ecclesiastes-an idea that is confirmed by the name of the Greek translation. If we look at the Hebrew word by word, we :find that in these two verses there are three words that are not in use in Biblical Hebrew. In the first verse we find tt~n,o, "a wonder." The root tt~~ occurs frequently in Scripture, but the noun above never occurs at all. The cognate form, l"lti?i;>t:/ occurs in Job; the common word is It~~- nt;i, "to permit;" in Ezra iii. 7 there is a derivation from it, 1i•~:,, "permission." In Biblical Hebrew JMl would have been used. It is frequent in Rabbinic, and in the Aramaic form occurs in the Targum. PS'P., "business," is another word unknown to Biblical Hebrew, but frequent in Rabbinic. Buxtorf says the Biblical equivalent of this is i::i,. Further, there is one construction used which only occurs in Ecclesiastes, -r; :,~. In Daniel there is no instance of the short relative; it is always the long, 1f~,, that is used. Here then, in the short space of two verses, we have three words not used in Biblical Hebrew, and one construction that is found only in Ecclesiastes. These words do not represent any rare thought or thing, but have common equivalents in the Bible, and so too with the construction. To show that our conclusion is not based on merely one instance, we shall consider the seventh in Dr. Schechter's list, which is the next that suits our requirements. It is a quotation of Ecclus. xlii. 9, 10, and is found· in Sanhedrin 100 (b), the fourth tractate in Seder N•zeeg_een, the fourth qivision of the Talmud. '£his passage is all the more interesting because it is assigned as a reason why the Book of Ben Sira was not allowed to be read. It is (14) in Dukes. The passage is- NDI!' .n.o n..,n ttOl?I nrn,p:c nn!lM ttne, Mlll!lp::i r&,::i I"" tt~ :,in~c ttill' m1ol!lo n•::itt~ n::i o•El::i ,1e,pn NDI!' ;u,p1n c•i:i n, w,, tt, MDII' Mttll''J ttZOJ•ntt,, "A daughter is for her father a vain treasure; care for her does not suffer him to sleep in the night; when she is little, lest she be seduced; in her girlhood, lest she should commit fornication; in her maturity, lest she should not be married; when she is married, lest she should not have sons; when she is old, lest she should practise witchcraft." Here there is certainly some variation between the versions and the Hebrew we have just given. The Greek is, "A daughter is for her father a watchful care, and anxiety for her te.keth away sleep-in her youth, lest she pass the flower of her age; and having been married, lest she be !:iated ; in her virginity, lest she be shameless and become with child in her father's house; and having a husband, lest she transgress; and being married, lest she should be barren." Both the Latin and the Syriac have been largely modified by the Greek, though several of the renderings seem to indicate that they had before them a text like the Hebrew above given. The Greek shows traces of confusion and repetition, which are awanting in the Talmudic quotation. When we take this passage clause by clause, we :find again how far removed we ll,f4!  nm TIOOK OF DANIEL. xvii