John Dyneley Prince and Robert Henry Charles

“ In the angelic explanation in Daniel of Jeremiah’s prophecy, these years were in reality year-weeks, which indicated a period of 490 years. This is the true apocalyptic system. The author takes a genuine prophecy, undoubtedly intended by Jeremiah to refer simply to the duration of the Babylonian captivity, and, by means of a purely arbitrary and mystical interpretation, makes it denote the entire period of Israel’s degradation down to his own time. ”

“ DANIEL, the name given to the central figure [1] of the biblical Book of Daniel (see below) , which is now generally regarded as a production dating from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.) . There are no means of ascertaining anything definite concerning the origin of the hero Daniel. The account of him in Dan. i. has been generally misunderstood. According to i. 3, the Babylonian chief eunuch was commanded to bring “certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the nobles” to serve in the court. ”

“ Had Nabonidus been descended from Nebuchadrezzar he could hardly have failed in his records, which we possess, to have boasted of such a connexion with the greatest Babylonian monarch; yet in none of his inscriptions does he trace his descent beyond his father. Certain expositors have tried to obviate the difficulty, first by supposing that the expression “son of Nebuchadrezzar” in Daniel means “descendant” or “son,” a view which is rendered untenable by the facts just cited. ”

“ All the above evidences are merely internal, but we are now able to draw upon the Babylonian historical sources to prove that Daniel could not have originated at the time of Nebuchadrezzar. There can be no doubt that the author of Daniel thought that Belshazzar (q.v.) , who has now been identified beyond all question with Bel-šar-uzur, the son of Nabonidus, the last Semitic king of Babylon, was the son of Nebuchadrezzar, and that Belshazzar attained the rank of king. [16] This prince did not even come from the family of Nebuchadrezzar. ”

“ Josephus, [2] never doubting the historicity of Daniel, made the prophet a relative of Zedekiah and consequently of Jehoiakim, a conclusion which he apparently drew from the same passage, i. 3. Pseudo-Epiphanius, [3] again, probably having the same source in mind, thought that Daniel was a Jewish noble. The true Epiphanius [4] even gives the name of his father as Sabaan, and states that the prophet was born at Upper Beth-Horon, a village near Jerusalem. The after life and death of the seer are as obscure as his origin. ”

“ It is indeed highly suggestive that just those occurrences which are the most remote from the assumed standpoint of the writer are the most correctly stated, while the nearer we approach the author’s supposed time, the more inaccurate does he become. ”

“ Prince, Dan. p. 29) . ↑ See Bevan, Dan. 28-40, on the Hebrew and Aramaic of Daniel. ↑ According to Lagarde, Mitteilungen, iv. 351 (1891) ; also Gött, Gelehrte Anzeigen (1891) , 497-520. ↑ The latest connected Babylonian inscription is that of Antiochus Soter (280–260 B.C.) , but the language was probably spoken until Hellenic times; cf. Gutbrod, Zeitschr. für Assyriol. vi. 27. ↑ Prince, Dan. 12. ↑ Bertholdt, Dan. 15; Franz Delitzsch, in Herzog, Realencyklopädie, 2nd ed., iii. 470. ”