The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 41

tbe.t, 68 a rule, the evidence of e. manuscript is to be preferred to tbe.t of a quote.Lion 1 yet there are me.ny exceptions to this rule. Thus, in regard to the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer, the uncial manuscript L, d!lted by Tregelles in the ninth century --i.e. three centuries earlier than the manuscript before us-has the doxology; but Tertullian, 'De Ore.tione,' quotes each sentence of the prayer, but omits the doxology. Here the e,·idence of the quotation is clearly right, and the manuscript cleo.rly wrong. Further, there is sometimes a tendency in a copyist to amend the language of the writer he is copying, and oonform it to a classic standard; thus in 1 Cor. xv. 33 we have in the Reccptus XP.,...,.11, changed into XPTJtrff, It is at least a possibility that this manuscript represents a classically amended recension. There are a large number of various readings placed in the margin of the manuscript before us, which indice.tes an uncertainty ss to the true reading-precisely the state of me.tters when the editorial copyist would feel himself free to exercise his skill. This suspicion is confirmed by the way that at times all the versions are united against the text of the manuscript before us. To take the second verse of the fragment-the first cited by Canon Driver-it begins c•:rn:) c~::i ~It '"-'JID, In rege.rd to this clause, all the versions unite in e.dding a qnalifying adverb to the adjective, the Greek adds tr,poBpm, the Syriac l~l, and the Latin v~. The Latin is here independent of the Greek; the verse equivalent to this is not, ss in the Greek and Syriac, the sixteenth, but the twenty-first, and, moreover, the Latin wants the latt.er half of the verse. The fact that the Syriac ad verb here used means "together," led Professor Margoliouth to think that an Aramaic word-very like the Syriac one-which meaus "very," he.d stood there. For our part, the preponderance of evidence seems in favour of Professor Margoliouth's contention that there is a word omitted in the text of the manuscript, and that word was Aramaic. For further argu- ment in this line we must refer the reader to Professor Margoliouth'a article in the E:r;positor for August, 1896. Our contention may be supported by another argument. If the text of tbe recently discovered fragment accurately represents the original of Ben Sire., and if we can fix the date of a document by its language, then Ecclesiasticus must have been written a long while before Ecclesiastes. Canon Driver says of the language of this fragment, "Instead of being more debased. than that of Ecclesiastes, it is considerably less so." If, then, debasement of language be a proof of late date, and the want of it of an early date, then Ecclesiastes must have been writteu considerably later than the Book of Ben Sire., not, as Canon Driver modestly says, "about the same time." But the Greek title given to the translation, presumo.bly by the translator him- Eelf, the grandson of the author, implies that he regarded his grandfather's book as an imitation of Ecclesiastes. From this two things follow-first, that Ecclesiastes ho.d been so long translated into Greek that its position was quite assured,-therefore that its Hebrew original must be very much older than that of Ben Sire.; second, that the Hebrew of Ben Sira must have been like that of Ecclesiastes. Hence it follows that the difference of the language in the fragment before us from that of Ecclesiastes is due either to classical emendation of EcclesiasticUB or to corruption of Ecclesiastes. Tha first seems the simpler hypothesis in the light of the quotations from Ben Sira. in the Talmud. If both texts a.re approximately in their primitive condition, then the absurd result follows that Ecclesiastes was at the same time very much earlier and very much later than EcclesiasticUB. At the same time, Canon Driver does admit that there are three late non-Biblical words in this fragment. One of these is the frequent word in rabbinic, p011, "busi• ness," another is p•Dnl"I, "to supply," and nrvm, "contention." AB the reader of the above Introdu.ction will aee, the l!ebrew words il:1 Daniel, otherwise unexampled in  THE BOOK OF DANIEL. xlix