R, D. V/ilson 
 
 The Present State of tiie 
 Daniel Controversy 
 
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 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 225 
 
 James, that the universe "feels like a real fight," an 
 with Donald Hankey that "True religion means betti 
 one's life that there is a God," and then make tl^*^ 
 venture and plunge into the fight, we shall be able rc'Ni 
 declare, with Paul: "I know whom I have believed, 
 and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which 
 I have committed unto him against that day." 
 
 We are living, we are dwelling, 
 
 In a grand and awful time, 
 In an age on ages telling, 
 
 To be living is sublime. 
 Worlds are charging, heaven beholding, 
 
 Thou hast but an hour to fight; 
 Now the blazoned cross unfolding, 
 
 On, right onward, for the right! 
 
 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
 
THE PRESENT STATE OF THE DANIEL 
 CONTROVERSY 
 
 By Robert Dick Wilson, Ph. D., D. D., Professor of Semitic Philology 
 and Old Testament Criticism, Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 Can a man rationally believe in the book of Daniel? 
 That is, can he beheve that the people mentioned in 
 it existed and that the record of the words and deeds 
 said to have been spoken or done by or to them is 
 true? This article is an attempt to answer this ques- 
 tion in the affirmative. 
 
 In order that there may be no misunderstanding 
 as to what I am undertaking to do, let me say by way 
 of clearly defining my purpose that by "rationally 
 believe" I mean to believe in accordance with those 
 laws of logic and evidence on the ground of which 
 we accept the genuineness and veracity of the state- 
 ments of any alleged historical document, that is, on 
 the ground of its claims, its purpose, language, ideas, 
 and its biographical, chronological, and geographical 
 statements. 
 
 Before entering upon the discussion of our subject, 
 it may be well to clear the ground of two or three 
 possible misapprehensions as to the scope and limits 
 of any investigation of the historical character of a 
 Biblical document, arising from the fact that its nar- 
 ratives contain records of miraculous events. It seems 
 to be taken for granted by many critics of these 
 documents that a record containing accounts of 
 miracles is by that very circumstance rendered in- 
 credible and open to suspicion as to its genuineness 
 and integrity. However, it can be maintained that, 
 on the contrary, an ancient document purporting to 
 
 999 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 227 
 
 be historical, which did not narrate events that were 
 considered by the narrator and his readers to be of a 
 miraculous character, would by this very omission 
 lay itself open to doubt as to its genuineness. For 
 all the peoples of antiquity thoroughly believed in 
 miracles, and their admittedly genuine works are full 
 of accounts of them. The Iliad, Herodotus, Livy, 
 the inscriptions of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, the 
 Old Testament and New Testament historical and 
 prophetical books — all are full of omens and dreams 
 and of the intervention of the gods in whom the people 
 believed. Not merely Ashurbanipal and Nabunaid 
 and Rameses II and Xerxes, but Hezekiah and Alex- 
 ander and all the heroes of early Greece and Rome 
 and the worthies of Israel believed in them and sought 
 for the direct help of the gods in their behalf. 
 
 The dreams and visions, the fiery furnace and the 
 lions' den, of Daniel are in harmony, therefore, with 
 the other historical records of all ancient nations in 
 this respect; and if we reject the Daniel document 
 simply because it contains the records of alleged 
 miracles, we must on the same ground reject almost 
 every supposedly historical document of ancient times. 
 Wherein the alleged miracle consisted, what really 
 happened that the men of those times evidently 
 supposed to be a miracle and that was designated 
 by that name, is a legitimate subject of inquiry. 
 Wherein lay the extraordinary character of the event, 
 its origin, its denouement, and its significance, are 
 proper matters of investigation for the theologian, 
 the philosopher, and the psychologist; but the philolo- 
 gian and the historian have to do merely with the 
 genuineness of the record and not with its metaphysical 
 grounds and its scientific explanations. 
 
228 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 And what is true of miracles in general is true 
 also of that most wonderful and unique of Old Testa- 
 ment miracles — predictive prophecy. One who denies 
 on philosophical grounds and prepossessions the possi- 
 bility and actuality of all superhuman or divine inter- 
 ventions in the affairs of men may be predisposed to 
 doubt the genuineness of a document containing 
 alleged predictions of events w^hich afterwards occur 
 in surprising harmony with what the prophet had 
 foretold. But no one who believes that God may 
 reveal His thoughts to man, and that as a matter of 
 fact He has at sundry times and in diverse manners 
 made His thoughts known to us to and through the 
 prophets, has any logical, philosophical or scientific 
 ground for contesting the age or integrity of a book, 
 simply because it contains predictive prophecies 
 which have later been fulfilled. On such grounds alone 
 no Mohammedan, Jew or Christian has the right to 
 entertain suspicions as to the genuineness and authen- 
 ticity of the Hebrew prophetical books. On such 
 grounds alone no Christian especially has the right 
 to doubt a book from whose most highly contested 
 portion the incarnate Lord Himself quotes w^ords 
 which He unequivocally attributes to Daniel the 
 prophet. For we must not forget that the funda- 
 mental question of all in regard to a revelation from 
 God is not how or why, or what kind of revelation 
 has been made, but that a revelation has been made 
 at all. 
 
 When one has admitted that a communication has 
 been made by God to man, then will it be in order 
 to consider the time, the manner, the form, the content, 
 and the purpose of the communication, and wherein 
 it agrees with and differs from other similar communi- 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 229 
 
 cations. The persons to whom God speaks, the extent 
 and detailed character of His disclosures, the language 
 that He employs, the means of the communication — 
 the dream, the vision, the ecstacy, the angel of Jehovah, 
 the still small voice or the very Son of God Himself 
 in human form — these and all other non-essential 
 characteristics are all subsidiary to the main fact, that 
 God hath spoken. This is the fundamental, the 
 essential, the supreme factor of a revelation. That 
 God should speak at all was His own prerogative, 
 and no less the manner in which He spake. 
 
 Now just here lies the fallacy of all those who 
 admit that God has revealed His will to man and j^et 
 deny the genuineness of the book of Daniel on the 
 ground of the character of the predictive prophecies 
 contained in it. If, to quote a recent writer, it "con- 
 tains a definite promise of deliverance which was won- 
 derfully fulfilled {cf. 7:25; 8:25f.; ll:45ff.)," who 
 is to set a limit of number to the predictive capacity, 
 or will to reveal, of God? God, or the critics of God, 
 which? For is it not evident that a man who asserts 
 that "the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God is 
 here made known," but that God could not have fore- 
 seen or foretold the course of events in the time of 
 the Seleucid kings is gagging God, reducing Him 
 to the limitations of humanity, and fixing for Him 
 a periphery of knowledge and a radius of revelation 
 beyond which He cannot, or must not, pass? 
 
 But, says the critic, I am doing no such thing. I 
 am simply making Daniel follow "the analogy of 
 all the other biblical writings." "The conditions and 
 circumstances of a prophet's own age are always 
 reflected in his messages; and the promises for the 
 future and predictions of judgment always rest on 
 
230 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 the historic basis of the period to which he belongs, 
 having a practical bearing on present needs." So 
 asserts the modern critic. But how does he under- 
 take to substantiate his assertion about the analogy 
 of the other prophets? By wilfully throwing out from 
 these other prophets all that is analogous to the pre- 
 dictive portions of Daniel, and then affirming that 
 Daniel is not analogous to the portions that remain. 
 Thus they throw out more than half of Isaiah and 
 large sections of Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and 
 Zechariah, largely because the ideas and predictions 
 found in these sections will not harmonize with the 
 theory of the evolution of the history of Israel — that 
 golden image which has been set up in the universi- 
 ties of Germany before which all men are commanded 
 to bow down and worship. For there is no certain 
 evidence external to the Scriptures in favor of these 
 changes from the traditional dates and authors. Nor 
 is there any incontestable evidence in the books, or 
 sections of books, that will justify the charges that 
 they are neither genuine nor authentic. INIuch, it is 
 true, has been claimed on the ground of language, and 
 much has been assumed on the ground of the ideas 
 expressed; but mostly the arguments for interpolation 
 and pseudonomy have been based upon analogy and 
 derived from the very definition, or proposition, that 
 they are meant to prove. 
 
 Now, the force of the analogical argument must 
 be admitted, when it is used to prove the possibility 
 of the occurrence of a like event or of the existence 
 of a similar thing. The argimient for the continued 
 existence of the soul after death is rendered probable 
 to those who beheve in the indestructibility of matter 
 and the conservation of energy. The probability of 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 231 
 
 Old Testament miracles seems strong to those who 
 believe in the Incarnation and the Resurrection. The 
 possibility, or even the probability, of the decrees of 
 Nebuchadnezzar and of Darius the Mede is assured 
 by the numerous similar decrees of other tyrants. 
 
 So, also, it is a good argument from analogy to 
 argue from the character of one or more of the 
 prophecies in favor of the possibility, or even the 
 probability, of other prophecies of a like nature. But, 
 so far only can analogy take us. It proves at most 
 a strong probabihty. For the indestructibility of 
 matter and the conservation of energy do not prove 
 that the soul will exist after death. The occurrence 
 of some miracles does not prove that others occurred. 
 That some tyrants have made cruel decrees does not 
 prove that others did. And so the fact that some 
 prophecies are of a certain kind does not prove that 
 all must have been of that kind. It proves only that 
 other prophecies may have been of that kind. 
 
 It is a pure assumption, therefore, to assert that, 
 because certain prophecies reflect "the conditions and 
 circumstances of a prophet's own age," all other 
 prophecies must reflect them, and them only. This 
 would be making prophecy nothing but a human 
 product. The Christian, however, must ever believe 
 that God spake through the prophets "by divers por- 
 tions and in divers manners" and that "no prophecy 
 ever came by the will of man; but men spake from 
 God, being moved by the Holy Ghost." This speak- 
 ing from God as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 
 is the fundamental condition of a true prophet of 
 Jehovah, which the conditions and circumstances of 
 the prophet's age may modify in form, but not in 
 essence. That is, the persons and events of which 
 
232 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 the prophet speaks will be predominantly those of 
 his own time, or of times preceding his own; and the 
 language will give indelible marks of his age, his 
 education, and his environment; the descriptions of 
 manners and customs, the garments worn, the weapons 
 of war used, the heathen gods worshiped, the festivals 
 kept, the administration of government and the officers 
 thereof, the chronology, the geography, the literary 
 forms in dates, titles, contracts, letters, decrees, and 
 subscriptions — all these will indicate the time at which 
 the author wrote. 
 
 But with the fullest use of all these and of all 
 other human marks and indications of the date of a 
 document we must stop. To attempt to determine 
 the genuineness and date of a document which pur- 
 ports to contain a revelation from God, by fixing 
 arbitrarily a time limit for such a revelation, is a 
 superhuman endeavor that borders on blasphemy. 
 This sounds like strong and unwarranted language, 
 but by what other term can we stigmatize the action 
 of those who claim that the primary reason for im- 
 pugning the genuineness of Isaiah 24-27 is that this 
 section contains ideas that are new to Isaiah? The 
 greatest of these new ideas is what Isaiah says about 
 the Resurrection. But does he say this of himself? 
 No; he represents God as saying it. It was not 
 Isaiah's idea at all. It was God's. The modern 
 critic, however, asserts that the idea of a resurrection 
 is of purely human origin and that the Hebrews never 
 thought of such a thing as the possibility of a resur- 
 rection till the post-captivity times ; and that even then 
 they must needs derive the idea from the Persians 1 
 
 A fig for such so-called scholarship! Shame on 
 any Christian who will sell his birthright of divine 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 233 
 
 revelation for such a mess of evolutionary pottage I 
 Derived from the Persians, forsooth! Why not from 
 the Egyptians, who for thousands of years had lived 
 with and for this great idea? Why not from their 
 own hearts as they agonized over the stark forms 
 of their beloved dead? "If a man die, shall he live 
 again?" Was Job the first to utter such thoughts 
 as this? No, no. The heart of every parent who 
 has loved a child "long since and lost a while" must 
 agree with me that the first homo sapiens that ever 
 sat and wept "for the touch of a vanished hand and 
 the sound of a voice that is still" must have said as he 
 looked at the still form of the departed: Shall he 
 live again? And shall we see him as he was wont 
 to be? 
 
 When we apply these criteria of the critics to the 
 book of Daniel we find it fulfilling them as well as 
 we have any reasonable right to expect; for the con- 
 ditions and circumstances reflected in it are those at 
 Babylon in the sixth century B.C., the age of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar and Cyrus. The eight dates given are 
 all from the accession's year of the former to the 
 third year of the latter. The first six chapters are 
 certainly meant to meet, and do meet, the conditions 
 and circumstances of the sixth century B.C., rather 
 than those of the second. In the last six chapters, 
 however, and especially in the eleventh chapter, there 
 is a detailed and accurate account of some events in 
 the history of the Seleucids and Ptolemies, and an 
 elaboration of certain doctrines, on the ground of 
 which it is claimed that the whole book (for its unity 
 is generally admitted) must have been written no 
 earlier thari 165 b.c. As these accounts of events 
 are said in the book itself to have been made known 
 
434 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 by God to Daniel in visions designed to reveal the 
 future, we leave the decision as to the weight of this 
 objection to the judgment of the reader. If he 
 believes that God could not, or would not, reveal 
 such an account, he will be wasting his time by read- 
 ing farther in this article. For he will have decided 
 the case on a preconceived opinion and not on the 
 evidence. And in deciding this case on the ground 
 of this opinion let him know that he has rejected also 
 the predictions of Christ and all revelation of future 
 events as well. 
 
 But if he believes that God could unveil the 
 future, if He would, let him proceed with me to a 
 consideration of the four doctrines, the enunciation 
 of which by Daniel is said to imply that the book 
 cannot have been composed till the second century, 
 B.C. These doctrines concern angels, the resurrec- 
 tion, the judgment, and the Messiah. It is claimed 
 that Daniel has some ideas on each of these four 
 subjects that are new to Hebrew literature and dif- 
 ferent from what is to be found in the earher prophets, 
 that these new ideas were derived from the Persians, 
 that they are similar to the ideas of apocalyptic litera- 
 ture, and that they at least indicate that the book 
 was not written till late in the Greek period. 
 
 Three of the specifications in this charge may be 
 admitted, to wit, that some of Daniel's ideas are new 
 in certain characteristics, that the statements about 
 them differ in some respects from those in earlier 
 books, and that they are similar in some particulars 
 to those found in the apocalyptic literature of later 
 times; but the two important specifications bearing 
 upon the date of Daniel, that is, that these ideas 
 were derived from the Persians, and that they indicate 
 
The DANIEL CONTROVERSY 235 
 
 a second century origin of the document, are abso- 
 lutely incapable of proof. For, first, the author of 
 Daniel claims that what he has to say about these 
 ideas was made known to him in the visions of God; 
 second, there is no indication in the language of Daniel 
 bearing on these subjects, or in any Persian, Baby- 
 lonian, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian or other 
 document, that any such influence was ever exerted 
 by the religion of Persia upon the religious ideas of 
 those who were the subjects of the Achaemenid kings; 
 third, the only Old Persian documents that have come 
 down to us render it extremely improbable that the 
 religion of the Avesta, in which these ideas are found, 
 was the religion of the Achaemenid kings; fourth, no 
 one knows when the Avesta was written, and it is 
 more probable that its author derived his ideas from 
 the Hebrews than vice versa; fifth, even if these ideas 
 had been derived by the Hebrews from the religious 
 teachings of the Zoroastrians, they may have been 
 derived long before the time of Cyrus, since the 
 Israelites had been settled in the cities of the Medes 
 since the middle of the eighth century; sixth, there 
 is no doubt that the doctrines of a resurrection and 
 of a judgment may have been taken over from the 
 Egyptians and those of angels from the Babylonians, 
 among whom the Hebrews lived so long and with 
 whom they had had intimate relations from the 
 earliest periods of their history, nor, without doing 
 the utmost violence to what purport to be early records 
 of the Hebrews themselves, can we deny that a 
 doctrine of a Messiah had been held among them from 
 the earliest times. Besides, even if it could be shown 
 that the idea of these doctrines had been suggested to 
 Daniel, directly or indirectly, by the religious teach- 
 
236 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 ings of the Persians, his treatment of them is so 
 different as to require us to call it a renovation, a 
 re-creation or, at least, an adaptation to the religion 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 But the first of the points made above, to wit, 
 that Daniel received his ideas on these subjects by 
 revelation from God, will satisfy all the demands of 
 origin and time. If he did not thus receive them, 
 his book is a forgery, and the ideas contained in it 
 are of purely human origin, expressing merely fancies 
 and longings about subjects concerning which God 
 alone can know. It is satisfying to know that all 
 that the wisest of men can say about the derivation 
 of these ideas is pure conjecture without any scrap of 
 evidence in its favor. 
 
 But some of those who might admit that the ideas 
 of Daniel may have originated among the Hebrews 
 or have been derived from the Egyptians or Baby- 
 lonians, or even from the Medo-Persians before 550 
 B.C., will perhaps claim that the absence of the influence 
 of these ideas upon post-captivity literature proves 
 that Daniel can not have been written till long after 
 the captivity. Such a claim rests upon two violent 
 and unwarranted assumptions: First, that a large 
 part of the Old Testament which purports, or at 
 least was supposed by the Jews, to have been written 
 before the captivity was in fact composed after it; 
 and, second, that the admittedly post-captivity litera- 
 ture ought naturally to show deeper and more dis- 
 tinct traces of the influence of Daniel's ideas, provided 
 that they had originated and been promulgated as 
 early as the sixth century B.C. 
 
 In answer to the first of these assumptions, it may 
 be said that it will be time to discuss the traces of 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 237 
 
 ideas concerning angels, the resurrection, the judg- 
 ment, and the Messiah, in the so-called priestly portion 
 of the Pentateuch, in the Psalter, etc., when the fact 
 of the late origin of the latter has been conceded. As 
 to the second assumption, it is to be said that it can- 
 not reasonably be expected that such books as 
 Chronicles should show the influence of such a book 
 as Daniel, even if it were admitted that the latter was 
 composed long before the former, inasmuch as the book 
 of Chronicles treats only, with the exception of the 
 last two verses, of historical matters preceding 580 B.C. 
 Nor is the fact that the history and doctrines of 
 Daniel are not quoted, or referred to, in post-captivity 
 literature before 200 B.C. as wonderful as some would 
 have us believe. Chronicles purports only to give 
 us the history of Israel up to the captivity. Ezra 
 and Nehemiah and Esther have a definite purpose in 
 view and they tell us only of events and persons 
 connected with their histories. They seldom refer 
 to the past and scarcely mention doctrines. Haggai 
 is a mere fragment treating of a single event, and no 
 sensible person would expect to search in it for 
 references to his predecessors. Zechariah does men- 
 tion angels and the Messiah, and in many particulars 
 of form and substance closely resembles Daniel. 
 
 In the failure of Ben Sira to mention Daniel in 
 his list of the heroes of Israel a more serious diffi- 
 culty confronts us, but not one that is insuperable. 
 For the fact that he does not put in this list the 
 names of Mordecai and Ezra shows conclusively that 
 he did not intend it to be inclusive of all of whom 
 he must have known, nor of all that we might deem 
 worthy to be placed in it. We must remember that 
 this list is Ben Sira's and not ours. He gives more 
 
238 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 space to the description of the garments and func- 
 tions of a certain high priest named Simon than to 
 the words and acts of any of the patriarchs, kings or 
 prophets. We would, doubtless, have done differently. 
 He gives seventeen verses to Aaron and a line or 
 two to all the Minor Prophets together. He praises 
 Nehemiah and ignores Ezra. In my opinion — and it 
 is only an opinion — he most probably intentionally 
 ignored Daniel because of the doctrines which the 
 latter held. Daniel was essentially a Pharisee, 
 whereas Ben Sira was just as essentially a Sadducee. 
 The former expresses openly his belief in angels, 
 resurrection, a judgment after death, a Messiah, 
 and a universal kingdom with Christ as king; whereas 
 the latter never mentions angels except in citations, 
 believes only in an immortality of fame, and does 
 not refer to a judgment or a Messiah. Lastly, when 
 Ben Sira says that there never was a man like Joseph, 
 he adds "in this respect, that his bones were mustered." 
 How an intelligent critic can use such a statement as 
 a proof that Ben Sira knew nothing about Daniel 
 and his dreams is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps 
 he never read Ben Sira. 
 
 It is asserted further, by the critics, that the place 
 of Daniel in our Hebrew Bibles is a proof that it 
 was written late and after the canon of the prophets 
 had been closed. Since Zechariah, Haggai, and 
 Malachi are in this prophetical part of the present 
 canon and as this part is said to have been canonized 
 before 200 B.C., Daniel must, so it is affirmed, have 
 been written after that time. This is a very specious 
 argument. The principal thing against it is that, so 
 far especially as Daniel is concerned, it has not a 
 single scrap of direct evidence in its favor. It will 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 239 
 
 be admitted that all of the prophets were canonized 
 and that they were probably translated into Greek 
 before 200 B.C., but this does not prove that Daniel 
 was not one of them. It is admitted, also, that 
 Daniel does not appear among the prophets in any 
 of, the printed Hebrew Bibles, nor in any of the 
 Hebrew sources later than 200 a.d. On the contrary, 
 the Gospel of Matthew, the Ascension of Isaiah, 
 Josephus, and Melito, all class him as a prophet, and 
 the last three expressly put him among the prophets, 
 the Ascension and Melito by name and Josephus by 
 description and numeration. 
 
 Any inference as to the date of a book to be 
 derived from its place in our printed Hebrew Bibles 
 is rendered nugatory by the fact that the first time 
 that the books of the Old Testament were ever put in 
 their present order was in the edition printed in 1526. 
 Of forty-three lists of these books that I have pub- 
 lished, and to which I can now add several others, no 
 two give the same order. Of thirty-four lists and 
 classifications made before 600 a.d., from both Jewish 
 and Gentile sources, all but the one in Baba Bathra 
 include Daniel among the prophets. Of these 
 sources. Second Maccabees, Philo, Matthew, Luke, 
 Josephus, the Ascension of Isaiah, Mehto, and 
 Jerome are all, directly or indirectly, of Jewish 
 origin, and the authors of all, with the possible excep- 
 tion of Luke and Melito, knew Hebrew. All the 
 Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, and 
 Coptic (?) sources (the authors of some of which 
 knew Hebrew) place Daniel among the prophets. 
 
 As to Baba Bathraj the only dissentient from the 
 general agreement, it was written some time after 
 the Jews had made their selection of sections, called 
 
240 . THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 Haplitaroth, to be read in their synagogue services; 
 and as no part of Daniel had been selected for this 
 purpose, the whole book was probably removed from 
 its proper and earlier place among the other prophetical 
 books and placed among the books for more private 
 reading. The books containing the selections for 
 public reading would thus be put together, simply 
 for greater convenience in use, just as Ruth and 
 Lamentations were separated from among the prophets, 
 where they originally belonged, and arranged, 
 along with Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and 
 Esther, in the portion called Megilloth, because these 
 five books were read at the five great festivals of the 
 Jews. We conclude, therefore, that the position 
 assigned to the book of Daniel in a list composed 
 about four hundred years after the time of the Macca- 
 bees and nearly seven hundred and fifty years after 
 the death of Cyrus affords no evidence as to the date 
 of its composition and the genuineness of its contents. 
 As to the attack upon the trustworthiness of the 
 historical statements contained in Daniel, it may be 
 said that they have all been satisfactorily met, except 
 that which concerns the identification of Darius the 
 Mede. As to this, the most likely suppositions are 
 that he was the same as Gobryas, whom Cj^rus 
 appointed governor of Babylon just after the time of 
 its conquest by the Medo-Persian army ; or that Darius 
 was a sub-king under Cyrus, the king of kings, having 
 Gobryas under him as governor of the province of 
 Babylon. Either of these views will harmonize with 
 the Persian system of government and with all the 
 statements of the book of Daniel. For we know that 
 nearly all of the kings of Persia had two names, one 
 a regnal name received at the time of their assumption 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 241 
 
 of the sovereignty, and the other their pre-regnal 
 cognomen. That no tablets have been found with the 
 name of Darius in their dates is not extraordinary, 
 since the same is true of all the other sub-kings and 
 governors of the empire during, or after, the reign of 
 Cyrus. That Darius may have appointed one hun- 
 dred and twenty satraps under himself is assured by 
 the fact that Gobryas is said to have appointed satraps 
 under him in the city of Babylon, and by the meaning 
 of the word, which denotes no more than "protector 
 of the kingdom." That Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis 
 are said by Greek historians to have appointed fewer 
 has nothing to do with the case, for a satrap might 
 have satraps under him, just as a king had kings 
 under him. 
 
 That Darius the Mede may have been a reflection 
 of Darius Hystaspis, or of other kings, is controverted 
 by the fact that no resemblance between them can be 
 shown either in character or works. That he was a 
 confusion of several of the kings of Persia is a wild 
 and utterly unjustified assertion, amounting to little 
 more than saying that he was a man and a king and 
 that consequently he had both the virtues and the 
 weaknesses common to all men who are also kings. 
 That Daniel has confused his Darius the Mede, the 
 son of Xerxes (/. e., Ahasuerus), with Darius 
 Hystaspis, the father of Xerxes of Thermopylae and 
 Salamis, has not a shred of evidence in its favor; 
 but, on the contrary, shows a clear discrimination of 
 the author as between the two Dariuses. To speak 
 of John Smith, the son of Peter, does not show that 
 one does not know of Peter Smith, the son of John; 
 much less that one does not know of the latter. It 
 proves rather the opposite. For if there were only 
 
242 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 one John Smith, or one Peter Smith, it would be 
 perfectly obvious which of them was meant. So, if 
 there had been but one Darius, or one Xerxes; but 
 with half a dozen of the former and three or more of 
 the latter, the author has thought it best to state 
 clearly which of the Dariuses he meant/ 
 
 That there was no Median empire, embracing 
 Babylon within its bounds, between the reign of 
 Nabunaid and that of Cyrus does not militate against 
 the book of Daniel; for its author never says that 
 there was a Median empire at all. He never says 
 that Darius the Mede was either king of Media or 
 of Persia, but simply that he received the kingdom 
 of Belshazzar, the Chaldean king of Babylon. 
 
 All of the essential points which have been dis- 
 puted concerning the kingship of Belshazzar have 
 been satisfactorily explained. The last allegation — 
 that he cannot have been king because he is not 
 called king on the tablets — has been dispelled since 
 Mr. Pinches published the tablet showing that oaths 
 were taken in his name. On the tablets from the 
 earliest to the latest times we have oaths recorded and 
 they all, with the exception of a few in the name of 
 the sacred city of Sippar, are in the name of a god, 
 or a king, or of both together. The objections made 
 to Daniel's statements about the expedition of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, and the critics' alleged evidence in 
 support of these objections derived from chronology 
 and geography, may be shown to have been founded 
 on the ignorance of commentators or upon the mere 
 silence of docimients. That he may have been mad 
 for seven "times" is manifest from the fact that 
 
 *For a full discussion of the objections to the historical statements 
 of Daniel and for the evidence bearing upon these objections the reader 
 is referred to the writer's book entitled Studies in the Book of Daniel. 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 243 
 
 there are two or three periods of his reign, covering 
 about seven years each, from which no documents 
 of his have come down to us; and especially from the 
 fact that 'iddan, the word for time in the Aramaic 
 of Daniel and a word used nowhere else in the Old 
 Testament, is indisputably a common Babylonian 
 term to express an appointed, or fixed, time, being 
 employed scores of times in the astronomical tablets 
 and elsewhere in this sense. That the terms for king, 
 wise man, and Chaldean are used by the author in 
 a sense proper to the second century B.C., but impos- 
 sible in the sixth, has been shown by a more complete 
 induction of the facts not to be the case. In a tablet 
 of the Yale collection, lately published by Professor 
 Clay, the Babylonian word for Chaldean will be 
 found in the midst of a list of seers and priests, thus 
 confounding finally the unfounded and strenuously 
 asserted assumption of the "scholars" who have exulted 
 in this so-called evidence of the lack of genuineness 
 on the part of Daniel! 
 
 As regards the claim, put forward by the late Dr. 
 Driver and reaffirmed with a great array of alleged 
 but absolutely irrelevant evidence by Professor Gray 
 of Mansfield College, Oxford, that it was "unnatural 
 and unnecessary," as well as "contrary to contem- 
 porary usage," for a writer of the Persian period to 
 have employed the title "king of Persia," the readers 
 of this article are left to their own judgment based 
 upon the facts below, which no amount of quibbling 
 or shifting of the issue or indulgence in personalities 
 can possibly annul. 
 
 The facts and the evidence as to the use of the 
 title in Persian times are as follows : There are thirty- 
 three instances of its occurrence in extra Biblical docu- 
 
244 THEBIBLICALREVIEW 
 
 ments between 535 and 400 B.C. It is found in the 
 Persian, Susian, Babylonian, Greek, Hebrew, and 
 Aramaic languages, and is said by Herodotus to 
 have been used by the Ethiopians. It was used in 
 localities as widely separated as Babylon, Ecbatana, 
 Athens, and perhaps Siene. It was used by nineteen 
 different authors in twenty different documents. 
 Nabunaid, king of Babylon, employs it of Cyrus; 
 Darius Hystaspis, of himself; the Babylonian sub- 
 jects of Xerxes, once at least alone, of him. Aeschylus, 
 who fought at Salamis, Xenophon, who led the retreat 
 of the Ten Thousand, Herodotus, who had traveled 
 throughout the bounds of the Persian Empire, who had 
 been born at Halicanarsus in Asia Minor while it was 
 subject to Persia, and whose history was read before 
 the assembled multitude of knowing and critical 
 Greeks at Olympia, all call the kings of Persia by 
 this title. Are we, then, to asperse the genuineness 
 of the Daniel document, because an eminent German 
 professor, who lived before the age of Assyriology, 
 and an Oxford professor and his followers unite in 
 affirming that it was "contrary to contemporary 
 usage" to employ it? In this age of democracy we 
 might agree that it seems "unnatural and unneces- 
 sary," but we are compelled to admit that his Roj^al 
 and Imperial Majesty, the war lord of Prussia and 
 Germany, and his superman subjects, might object. 
 The space allotted me for this article forbids that 
 I should more than state succinctly the results of 
 investigations as to the linguistic characteristics of 
 the book and their bearing upon the date of Daniel. 
 Let it suffice to say that the virulent assaults upon 
 the genuineness of the book along the line of language 
 have failed of their purpose. The proper names. 
 
THE DANIEL CONTROVERSY 245 
 
 being as they are, Siimerian, Babylonian, Persian, 
 Aramaic, and Hebrew, suit the time of Cyrus and 
 the provenance of Babylon. So, also, do the common 
 names of foreign origin; for every unprejudiced 
 scholar will admit that by the time of Cyrus Medo- 
 Persian words (for the Medes spoke substantially the 
 same language as the Persians), especially govern- 
 mental terms, may easily have injected themselves 
 into the language of the Hebrews, of whom many 
 had been settled in the cities of the Medes for about 
 two hundred years. Moreover, it is a question that 
 I would like to have the critics answer, why there 
 are none of the so-called Persian words of Daniel in 
 either Ben Sira or the Zadokite Fragments; and why 
 we meet with not one of them anywhere in the 
 Bible, except in Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, and 
 Esther. If Daniel were written in June, 164 B.C., 
 right in the midst of the Maccabean struggle for 
 freedom, and his work could be accepted as patriotic 
 and proper, notwithstanding the large number of its 
 foreign vocables, why is it that Jonah and Joel and 
 the numerous parts of Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Jere- 
 miah, and Proverbs, and the half of the Pentateuch 
 called P, and the one hundred and forty-nine Psalms, 
 more or less, that are assigned by these literary 
 critics to the period of the Persians and of their 
 Greek successors — why is it, I say, that the authors of 
 all of these anonymous interpolations and pseudepi- 
 graphs have eschewed utterly all of these so-called 
 Persian words, which the author of Daniel thought it 
 proper to use in a popular work designed to restore 
 the decadent faith and courage of a disheartened nation ? 
 As to the Greek words in Daniel, the inscriptions 
 of Sargon and Sennacherib show us that a hundred 
 
246 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 
 
 years before the birth of Daniel the Greeks of Cyprus 
 and Cilicia had been subject to the Assyrian power; 
 and the inscriptions at Abu Simbal in Egypt and 
 the Greek historians show that Greeks had been serv- 
 ing as soldiers in the armies of Egypt and Babylon 
 long before Daniel wrote his book. Thousands of 
 Greeks must have been taken prisoners by the kings 
 of Assyria and Babylon and have been sold into 
 Babylonia. Thousands must have been bought from 
 slavery in Syria and Mesopotamia and Assyria and 
 the Lydians and Phenicians. These pitiful exiles from 
 the land of music, poetry, and song may have hung 
 their Ijtcs and their psalteries on the same willow on 
 which the Hebrew poet hung his harp and may have 
 wept as they remembered Athens. 
 
 Finally, has it never struck the critics as some- 
 what singular that, if Daniel were composed in Mac- 
 cabean times, he should have so many resemblances 
 to Ezekiel, Ezra-Xehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther, 
 both in grammar and vocabulary, and so few to all 
 that numerous list of pseudepigraphic, pseudonymous, 
 and anonymous writings which they have violently 
 wrested from their supposed authors, ages, and back- 
 ground and dumped into the period of the Seleucids? 
 Why has no one of the literary critics attempted t' 
 show the resemblance of Daniel to Ecclesiasticus 
 If the manner and method of comparison of tl. 
 critics were as infallible as they claim, these two grea 
 works should be much alike in ideas, vocabulary, an( 
 grammar. But they, unfortunately for the mannei 
 and the method, are not merely not alike, but much 
 unlike. Hinc lachrymae illae! Hence that gloomy 
 sadness that now beclouds the critic's brow as he 
 gazes on the dissolving shadows of his exploded theories 
 
 Pbikcetox, New Jemet. 
 
PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
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 Stockton, Calif. 
 
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