The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 142

moreover, by Professor Whitehouse, that tlio are moro mn.rked th,m in others, bnt in word ie probolily derived from the East; every caso they aro numerous cn,mah to indeed, ho flxee on Phamicio as its source, mnke any stress on inrlividuol word• l~ghly It must bo observod that he maintains that, hazo.rdous. While these mriationa o.re while origine.lly Phoonicie.n, the form it known and chronicled, there is no security ossumcs in Do.niel proves it to have come that no Vttrintions occurred even before tho to the a.uthor of Do.Diel from Greek.' types of the text separate,] from each other. The word ma.y ho.ve been modifierl from In such a case as this, altbo11gh it woul,1 bo its more ancient to its more recent form, for unscientific, on the ground of this unce,r- tho sake of readers. One of the suggestions tainty, to proceed to change the text to of those who oppose the antiquity of the what seems to mo.ke better sense, it is Dook of Do.niel is that 7l;> (lcinnor) is the equally unscientific to lo.y any evidential word tho.t would hove been used by a weight on single words. gcnuino Aramo.ic writer of Doniel's period, Ilnt, further, no words are, in one respect, os lcin'TIO'I' and qitl1aros (~r qathros) repre- lees evidential than musical terms. They sent one and the so.me metrument ; but, are changed and modified with o. freerlom unfortunately for this, in the Peshitto. we applied to few other things. Thus we ho.ve hove both terms, the one after the other. "comet-a-piston" figuring also as " corno- Tho other wo!'ds, ~!l.\oz:m,, <Tvµ.,powla, ond pean," two words like each other in sound, l':iDll:2~ (p'santerin), supposed to be equi- of the same meaning, but of widely different derivation. Theypaas from country to country valent to ,j,a>..,.,,plo11, are on a different with greater freedom than most other terms. footing. To infer, then, that the writer of Daniel In the first pince, any one who has studied wrote under Greek domination, because the o.pocalyptic writings, m~st see ½ow certain Greek musical terms occur in the peculi11rly liable they are to mterpolation. present Massoretic text, is rll.ih in the There is hardly one that is not lo.rgely and extreme, and would, it seems to us, be obviously interpolated. No one cun deny universally regarded so, were there not an that this has taken place with Daniel. The object to be gained by assuming tho.t evi- apocryphal additions are too well known dence drawn from them was liable to no for any one to mo.intain the opposite opinion. doubt. New Testament critics have taught When, moreover, one begins to compare the us to suepect who.t o.re called tendenz Massoretio text with the more ancient docunients, i.e. documents that have an versions, the Septuagint, the Peshitta, and overweening bias towards one side of a that of Theodotion, we at once see that the con trove ray : there is such a thing as e. changes which the text ho.s undergone have tendenz jndgment. The judgment of the not been confined to Io.rge interpolations, CJ·itics in re!f,U'd to the evidential value of but all through there are words and phrases these musical terme is a tendenz judgment, where the versions differ from the Masso- which we should say is even more to be retie text and from each other. The text suspected than the contents of ~ tendeiur especially from which the Septuagint trans- document. lation has been made, must have presented The history of the argument from the mo.ny and important verbal differences from alleged presence of Greek terms in Dn.niel that adopted by the Massoretes. Even is ulso instructive. The nuniber of Greek Theodotion, though his version agrees more terms that Hitzig and some earlier critics closely with the Maesoretio text than does saw was large. Gradually they ho.d to the Septu11gint, differs from it in ways and abandon all but those coming in the list in o. degl'ee than can at times be explained of musical instruments here. Of these only only on the supposition that the text before four could be claimed as really Greek. him was not identical with that adopted by However, one of these had soon to go, ~:;i::i~; the Massoretes. The supposition that Theo- it we.s m11into.ined to be derived from tho dotion has been altered from the Septua- <Taµ.f3/,KTI, It was found tho.t this Greek gint has been hazarded, and in a few cases it word wo.s really derived from an Eastern, may ho.ve some semblance of probo.bility, but probably an Assyrian, source. Next, it hll.i in other cases it is destitute of every shodow been acknowledged by Canon Dl'iver, as of likelihood. The Peshitto. is another above st11ted, that much stress cannot bo sourco of various readings. Its variations lnid on o'iJ:,~ (1C16lpa), seeing it is an instru- o.ro independent of either of the other two versions. In some chapters these vo.riations ment of such ancient do.te in Greece, that it might e11sily have drifted eastward, no.nm 1 Thie cannot, however, be maintained an,! thmg, to Dabylon. The matter is fw-ther complico.tcd by the fact tho.t tho absolutely, for o7n!l (Jer. xliv. 1), which is word, in all probability, is not Gree·k, to exactly paro.llcl with D7np, is not e. namo begin with, but Enstern, prohiuly rhrnni- of Greek but of Egypti11n origin. citm. 104 Tl:IE BOOK OF DANIEL. (en. nr. 1-30.