The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 18

cannot be fixed with anything like absolute certainty, but it appeMs to have been about the middle of the second century. '1.'he Peshitta is nearly contemporary, but a. shade later. Last of all cotnes the Vulgate in Jerome's revision. Of these the last i 3 in closest agreement with the Maseoretic text, the Peshitta next, '1.'heodotion further removed, though none of them is nearly so wide of the Massoretic as is the Septuagint. With these evidences of variation, it is rash to rest any argument for the recency of the Book of Daniel on alleged traces of recency in the Aramaic. There are, however, other evidences of this modernizing process being at work en the Aramaic portions of Daniel. The two words in ancient Aramaic inscriptions that from their frequency strike moat readily the reader as different from more recent Aramaic, either Eastern or Western, are i for "land MpiM for M]r1M, The line which divides the inscriptions which use the older form from those which ase the more recent is about the beginning of the Christian era. The earliest inscription in the ' Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum,' which has '1 is one of .Aretas, n,n (A.D. 4), and the latest in which '1 occurs is in an Egyptian inscription dated by Comte de Vogue," the time of the Ptolemies." If the differences were due simply to a change wrought by time, then we should have to take our choice between asserting that the Aramaic portion of Daniel was not written till at earliest the beginning of our era, or that the text was modified. The former hypothesis is impossible from the reference to the Aramaic portions of Daniel in the dying speech of Mattathias and in the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles. Canon Driver thinks this peculiarity part of the official style of Egypt, Babylon, etc. It so happens that the geographical line between these styles coincides pretty nearly with the temporal. New inscriptions may, as Canon Driver has said, alter the complexion of the question very much. The ease with which i could be altered to ., is obvious, and the fact that in Biblical Aramaic the contracted form -;i never occurs which could not arise from '!, seems to confirm us in the belief that such an alteration has taken place. What we have said of •, applies also to 11pi1t, with this difference-that we have an example of what we think has ta.ken place in Daniel and Ezra, in the Aramaic verse in Jeremiah (x. 11). There the word "earth" occnrs twice in our English Version. In the first case the word represents 11piat, in the second 111n1; but in none of the versions is there any indication that a different word wss before the translator. The same may be said in regard to the Ta.rgum of Jonathan ben Uzziel on this passage. The probability is that here we have a change begun, but not completed. The change in the case alike of'! and of 1tpi11 was an easy one. 1 Notwithstanding all the efforts at modernization, there is still a long distance between the Aramaic of Daniel and that of the Ta.rgums. The most obvious point of difference is the almost total absence of n•, the sign of the accusative, from Biblical Aramaic, and its frequency in all the Targums, not only Jewish, but Samaritan also. The only case in which it occurs in Biblical Aramaic is Dan. iii. 12, where it is used to give the oblique case of a pronoun. It is remarkable that in one of the inscriptions from Sindschirli we have n, = n• used in a similar way (Mi, Hadad Inscr., I. 28), and this is the only case in which it occurs. Another common word in the Ta.rgums is ,,11, meaning "that," " in order that," or "because." This word does not occur in Biblical Aramaic at all : instead of it we have the cumbrous phrase •~::ip...l:,::-a phr:ise that does not occur in the Targums in this sense : ~::ip ~::i in Targumic means " over against" (Ruth iv. 4). Every reader. of Hebrew knows how frequently the verbal 1 The transition in the case of 11piN is the easier that in Phamici:J.n p was it> and J.' 0. According to 'Bereshith Ilabba,' Np7N meant "th~ curth at winter solstic~." xxii INTRODUCTION TO