The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 15

Ilut it is urged that there are late words in Dani«il, Professor Bevan has made out a li~L uf eight words. ,ve think any one will recognize the relatively small number of these words. In four verses from Ben Sira we found 1e11en, and could easily have increased the number. Surely eight in six chapters, containing a hundred and fifty- seven verses, is no very extraordinary number. But when we examine these alleged "late" words, we are compelled to lessen their number as evidence of the late date of Daniel. Three of these, '7-J, "age," ::i;:;:i, "guilty," and c•)Jl;,J, "herbs," occur in the first chapter, and therefore, though they might afford an evidence of the age of the ..mitor, afford no evidence-0f the age of the original book. Further, the first two of these occur in the speech of Ashpen&z (Abiesdri), and are therefore r11ally instances in which the Aramaic of the document, from which the prologue was condensed, shines through. The third case is probably a scribal .blunder. Although c•)Jl;,J occurs in eh. i. 16, in eh. i. 12 we have c•p,r, which consonant.ally is a common word. Origin- allr, both words would be the same, and it was more likely that a scribe would by a bhrnder write the more recent form t.o which he was accustomed, than the more ancient :11>ith which be bad little acquaintance. Two others, C'Jl:??I? and r:i!?!!, occur in the eleventh chapter, the authenticity of which we deny. Even if we take them as t~ey stand, with regard to the first of these the reading seems to be corrupt. IC:J in .Aramaic, both Eastern and Western, means not " to lay up n as treasure, but " to lie in'wait" (e.g. Exod. :u:i. 1,3)-a meaning unsuitable here. The LXX. render .,.o,..os, 'fhe latter is a technical word, and therefore might well be introduced in regard to the thing. lt is Semitic, according to Fiirst; it is certainly not Greek, although it is precisely a case where a Greek technical word would have been expected. The.re are still three wo1ds which remain, -i;i;,;ii;i::i, "to be moved with anger" (eh. viii. 7), 1""';'~, "to be decreed" (eh. ix. 24); c~;,, "to write" (eh. x. 21). In regard to the first of these the case is not a strong one; the verb -ry.,, "to be grieved," is not a very rare verb: it is used in kal, niphaJ. pie!, and hiphil elsewhere, if not in hitbpael. The second case is suspicious, for the LXX. seem to have had another reading. But even if we admit this a.nd C~"J, ther:e is not much on which to build a theory. Two words in four chapters-for necessarily the first and eleventh chapters fall to be excluded-are much less than seven words in four verses, Professor Bevan adds n1•:i~ (eh. viii. 22), "kingdoms," but the LXX. read c•:;,';,z;,, as they render fJa.o-,M,s. Theudolion had the sam~ reading, a.s he has the same renderiDg, The Peshitta. has ~~• showiDg that it too read 0'?71?, not nd,o. But Professor Bevan bas another list of eight words, which he says are used in Daniel in other theg.their classic:d Hebrew meaning. The first of these is c•;11?~• The references he gives are chs. L 4 and i't 2. He says that while in all other parts of Scripture c-;t,:.i 'ii the name bf a nation, in Daniel only it is the name of a caste. In the first of the' ~eferences, "the tongue of the Cha.ldees," it is not necessarily any other than a national name; and, if we accept the reading of the Septuagint in tLe second case, it is so also. The next instance he \Jriiigs is C'DP.!, which is "sad" in Gen. xi. 6, and .. badly nourished" in Dan. L 10, but the meaning in Daniel is more primitive. It is mid that c~!,lp,r. is believed to be of Egyptian origin, and in the Pentateuch is used onl_y ·or t~e- ~gicill.Ils o'r Egypt.· In Dan.iel it means "magicians in general." Filrsli d~lares.thf ~yptii~. derivation to be without foundation, Even if we gr~nted the Egyptia.n origin c,f .the word, the pe_at intercourse between Egypt and Assyria, proveJ. by tLe Tel-el-A~~ tab~e_ts bei,ng in Assyrian, would make it no imposs'.~~e thing _thn; the word migl,t be transferred to ~syria.. The fourth case, ilJ?"i?-, ID secunty (d1. viii. 25), uccurs in a notoriow.ly corrupt passage, which it is imr;ossible to interpre~  TIIE DOOK OF DANIEL. xi:c