Wilson, Studies in the Book of Daniel

STUDIES facing] IN THE BOOK OF DANIEL A DISCUSSION OF THE HISTORICAL QUESTIONS yBY ROBERT DICK WILSON, Ph.D., d.d. WM. H. GREEN PROFESSOR OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON Zbc Umfcfeerbocfeer press 1917 Copyright, 1917 BY ROBERT DICK WILSON Ube ttnfcJterbocher press, Hew J£orfe INTRODUCTION This volume is concerned especially with the objections made to the historical statements contained in the book of Daniel, and treats incidentally of chronological, geographical, and philosophical questions. In a second volume, it is my intention to discuss the objections made against the book on the ground of philological assumptions based on the nature of the Hebrew and Aramaic in which it is written. In a third volume, I shall discuss Daniel's relation to the canon of the Old Testament as determining the date of the book, and in connection with this the silence ot Ecclesiasticus with reference to Daniel, the alleged absence of an observable influence of Daniel upon post-captivity literature, and the whole matter of apocalyptic literature, especially in its relation to predictive prophecy. method pursued is to give first of all a discussion The _ of some of the principles involved in the objections con- sidered in the pages following; then, to state the objections with the assumptions on which They"are based; next, to give the reasons why these assumptions are adjudged to be false; and, lastly, to sum up in a few words the conclusions to be derived from the discussion. As to the details of my method, it will be observed that I have sought in the case of every objection to confront it with documentary evidence designed to show that the assumptions underlying the objection iv Introduction are contrary to fact. When no direct evidence is pro- curable either in favor of or against an objection, I have endeavored to show by analogy, or the production of similar instances, that the events or statements recorded in Daniel are possible; and that the objections to these events, or statements, cannot be proved by mere assertion unsupported by testimony. In the first chapter, the inadequacy of the argument from silence to prove that the books of the Old Testa- ment contain misrepresentations, is shown by giving a resume of the historical documents of the Hebrews, As- syrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and others, in their relations to one another. A careful reading of this summary of the known evidence ought to convince all unbiased judges that an argument from the silence of one document as to events which are recorded in another, is usually devoid of validity. In many cases, it will be seen that for long periods of time there are no extra- biblical documents whatever; in other cases, there is, for long periods of time, no evidence either biblical or extra- biblical. Again, often when documents of the same time are found, they treat of subjects entirely alien to the subjects treated of in the other, and hence have no bearing on the case. Or, even when they treat of the same subjects, the narrators look at them from a different point of view and one will be intentionally silent where the other enlarges upon the topic. Chapter two discusses the objections made by Dean Farrar to the very existence of Daniel on the ground that his name even is not mentioned on the monuments of his time. Here I show, first, that it is not to be expected that the Jewish name of Daniel would ever have been used in Babylonian documents, inasmuch as Nebuchadnezzar changed it to Belteshazzar on his Introduction v arrival in Babylon ; secondly, that the name Belshazzar, under which form the name Belteshazzar might be written in Babylonian, does occur on the Babylonian tablets as the name of several individuals and that one of these may have been the Daniel of our book; thirdly, that it is difficult to make any possible identi- fication of Daniel, owing to the fact that his ancestors are not mentioned in the Bible; fourthly, that even if his ancestors were known, he could not be identified from the monuments, because on them the father or grandfather is never mentioned in the case of slaves, or even of foreigners, except in the case of kings and their children ; and lastly, that it is unreasonable to expect to find the name of Daniel upon the monuments, first, because the names of slaves are rarely mentioned; secondly, because the names of slaves are never found as witnesses, and those of foreigners but rarely; thirdly, because the annals and display and building inscrip- tions of the kings never mention the names of anybody except occasionally the names of the kings they conquer, of an occasional general, and of the members of their own families. In fact, no better illustration than this of Dean Farrar can be found of the fact that a man, however brilliant as a preacher and as a writer and however accomplished as a classical scholar, is but a blind leader of the blind when he attempts to speak upon such complicated matters as those which are involved in an introduction to the book of Daniel, without having first mastered the languages and the literature of Babylon and Persia. Chapter three treats of the silence of the other biblical documents and of the monuments as to an expedition of Nebuchadnezzar, said by Daniel to have been made against Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim. It vi Introduction will be noted that in this particular case of the alleged silence of other sources, there is a tacit overlooking of the testimony to this expedition afforded by the fragments of Berosus, who states that Nebuchadnezzar was in Palestine at the time when his father Nabopolassar died, which according to the Babylonian system of reckoning the years of a king would have been the third year of Jehoiakim. It will be noted, further, that the critics in their allegations of error against the author of Daniel have failed to consider the whole matter of the different ways of reckoning the regnal years of a king, , and the different times at which, among different na- tions, the year was supposed to begin. This frequently 'renders it very difficult to determine the corresponding months and years of a king's reign in the different countries, and should make us slow in asserting that the third *year of a king in one document might not be the same as the fourth year in another. Again, I show in this chapter that Jeremiah and the books of Kings and Chronicles do not purport to give us a complete history of the times of Nebuchadnezzar, and that, hence, it is not fair to say that an event which is mentioned in Daniel cannot be true because it is not mentioned in these other writings; and, further, that the monuments of Nebuchadnezzar say nothing definite about his military expeditions, except about one to Egypt in his thirty-seventh year, although they do show conclusively that he was king of Syria and many other countries, whose kings are said to do his bidding. Lastly, it is shown that in the fragments of his history of Babylon, Berosus supports the statement of Daniel, that Nebuchadnezzar made an expedition to Palestine before he was crowned I ing of Babylon, and carried away spoils from Judea which were placed in his Introduction vii temple at Babylon, and that there is no statement made in Daniel about this expedition which is in any way controverted by any other direct testimony. Chapter four answers a further question connected with the expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jeru- salem in the third year of Jehoiakim, arising from the charge that the author of Daniel made false inter- pretations of the sources known to him. An exami- nation of the alleged sources of Daniel's information showed that he does not contradict these sources nor make erroneous interpretation of them; but that, on the contrary, it is the critics who, on the ground of their own implications and conjectures and sometimes of their crass ignorance of geography and of the historical situation, have really manufactured or im- agined a case against Daniel. No more astonishing example of the fabrication of evidence can be found in the history of criticism than the use which is made of the statements of the Old Testament with regard to Carchemish, in order to show that Nebuchadnezzar cannot have moved against Jerusalem as long as this fortress was in the hands of the Egyptians. The critics of^ Daniel have^ssumed not merely that the Egyptians had Carchemish in their possession, but also that it lay on the way from Jerusalem to Babylon, so as to cut off, if in an enemy's hands, a possible retreat of Nebu- chadnezzar from Palestine to Babylon. A knowledge of the position of Carchemish and of the lines of traffic from Damascus to the Euphrates should have precluded them from statements so unscientific from a geographical and military point of view. Chapter five investigates the use of the word for king, especially in the Semitic languages. This discussion shows that Nebuchadnezzar may have been called king viii Introduction before his father's death; and will serve also as an introduction to the discussion of the kingship of Belshaz- zar and that of Darius the Mede, in that it illustrates that there might be two kings of the same place at the same time.

Load more