The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 19

particle r,: occurs in Diblical Hebrew; as frequent In the Targume is "'I!• This does not occur in Biblical Are.me.ic; its ple.ce is ta.ken by '!"'I!· In the Targums the negative of this is n•~; in Daniel and Ezra we have instead •i:,•t;t~~. In Dibllcal Aramaic Ji'.! is the word for "if," which does not occur in Targumio. On the other hand, •11 is the word commonly used in the Targums, which age.in does not occur in the Dible. 1::1 i's a form occurring in inscriptions. Closely akin to this is J::t'?, "therefore," which, occurring in Biblical Aramaic, dors not occur in the Targums. 1'hese particles are, as every one knows, the most conclusive indications of the age of a document. Almost as important are pronouns. We have already referred to the relo.live ,, and im relation to the still older form .,_ It is to be noted that in Diblice.l Are.mai~ ,, is always written plenum, never in the ~ntracted form"'• 1 which, age.in, is the more comn:i.on form in the Targnms. It would be impossible, as we have said above, to regard the contracted form as resulting from a soribal modification of'!, which, however, may easily be the genesis of the Biblical •,:,. The first personal prononn in Biblical Aramaic is ;'1)!), which does not occur in the Targums, where the regular form is MJ~, sometimes contracted ~ The form ;uN is also found in Sindschirli along with the Phcenician 7111 and the Hebrew '=llN, an intermingling which we find in all early Aramaic. Not improbably the two cases where NJN occurs in Biblical Aramaic are due to the copyist having mistaken 'IJ for It, letters which are very like in the older Aramaic script. The Biblical Aramaic plural is~• whereas the common Targumic is JU!' or 1111;11, which do not occur in the Aramaic of the Bible. The pronoun of the second person singular is in Daniel and Ezra ~. in the Targums the most common form by far is 1;111, which does not occur in the A~;maic of the Bible. The pronoun of the second plural i~ -Biblical Aramaic is Jv.p~ whereas in the Targums the invariable form is rr-1~. The third person masculine, the only form that occurs in Biblical Aramaic, is the same as in the Targums; it seems to have been the same in Sindschirli. The plural of the demonstra- tive in Biblical Hebrew is sometimes ,',tt, a form that occurs in inscriptions, but never in the 'l'argums. The prenominal difference between Daniel and the Targums is thus very considerable. Fnrther, there are differences iD verbal forms. In Biblical Aramaic all the verbs that in Targumic are w', are r,-',. The aphel of Targumic verbs appears in Biblical Aramaic as J,,a,phd, the characteristic n being in some cases carried through the whole inflexion. The one aphel case is probably due to scribal change. Instead of the ittaphal, the Targumic passive of the aphel, we have a huphal form. Professor Bevan quotes an inst.ance of what seems to be a uphal from the Palmyrene, He admits himself it may be aphel, and moreover it does not touch on the presence of the h-forms in Biblical Aramaic as distinct from that of the Targums. These n-forms are characteristic of the oldest fol'IllB of Aramaic; e.g. they occur in the Sindschirli Inscriptions. Professor Bevan dismisses all these a.s merely cases of orthography. For our part, we thought that when a cockney dropped bis h's it was more than a question of orthography. Further, the older orthography thus preserved, despite every tendency to change, does not lose its evidential value. Another case which, though it may be dismissed on the same plea-incompetent, as we think it-yet has some cogence. The distinction is still preserved in Biblical Aramaic between c, and kl, a distinction which had die.appeared in the Targumic. From their origin the Targums of necessity represented a form of Aramaic probably much more ancient than the date at which they were committed to writing would imply. Formerly the efi'ortll of critics were directed to show that the Aramaic of Ezra was more ancient than that of Daniel; that attempt is abandoned now, and the plan now is  nm DOOK OF DA~IEL. x,iii