if he made the restoration of his countrymen the price of what in him can hardly be called his treason, very few people will be found to condemn him.
There can be no doubt, but that if the story of Daniel had been met with in a history of the Chinese or the Hindoos, or of any nation where religious prejudice had not beclouded the understanding, all historians would have instantly seen, that the Assyrian despot was justly punished for his egregious folly, in making a slave, whose country he had ruined, one of his prime ministers, and for entrusting him with the command of his capital when besieged by his enemies—by persons professing the same religion as his minister. Upon any other theory, how are we to account for Daniel’s being, soon after the capture of Babylon, found to be among the ministers of its conqueror?
I suspect that Daniel was a Chaldee or Culdee or Brahmin priest—a priest of the same order of which, in former times, Melchizedek had been a priest.
The gratification of that spirit which induced Darius, Cyrus, and their successors, to wage a war of extermination wherever they came against the temples, &c., of idolaters, would probably greatly aid Daniel in pleading the cause of his country. But it is worthy of observation that, although the temples, altars, and priests, were restored, both in Judæa and Samaria, yet the country was kept in a state of vassalage to the Persian kings. They had no more kings in Judea or Samaria, till long after the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.[1]
5. Perhaps in the Old Testament there is not a more curious book than that of Esther. It is the only remaining genuine specimen of the ancient chronicles of Persia.
The object of putting this book into the canon of the Jews is to record, for their use, the origin of their feast of Purim. Michaelis is of opinion, from the style of the writing and other circumstances, that the last sixteen verses of this book were added at Jerusalem. This seems very probable. It is pretty clear, from this book, that the religion of Persia in the time of Ahasuerus, as he is named in scripture, had begun to fall into idolatry; and that it was reformed by Mordecai, who slew seventy-five thousand of the idolaters, and restored it to its former state, when it must have been in all its great features like that of the Jews, if not identically the same. A very ingenious writer in the old Monthly Magazine,[2] supposes, “that Ezra was the only Zoroaster, and that the twenty-one books of Zertusht were the twenty-one books of our Hebrew Bible; with the exception, indeed, that the canon of Ezra could not include Nehemiah, who flourished after the death of Ezra, or the extant book of Daniel, which dates from Judas Maccabeus, or the Ecclesiastes, which is posterior to Philo: and that it did include the book of Enoch; now retained only in the Abyssinian canon.”
6. No person who has carefully examined will deny, I think, that all the accounts which we have of Zoroaster are full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Plato says, he lived before him 6000 years. Hyde or Prideaux and others, make him contemporary with Darius Hystaspes, or Daniel. By some he is made a Jew; this opinion arose from the observation of the similarity of many of his doctrines to those of the Jews. Now, what is the meaning of the complicated word
- ↑ Cyrus is described as a Messiah or Saviour. He restored the temple, but not the empire. He saved the priests, though he kept the country in slavery; therefore, he was a Messiah, a holy one of God. This is natural enough, and gives us the clue to all the Jewish sacred books. They were the writings of the priests and prophets or monks, not of the nation. An established priesthood generally cares nothing for the nation; it only cares for itself. Though the nation be kept in slavery, if the tithes and altars be restored, all is well; and its conquerors are Saviours, Messiahs. When Alexander conquered Palestine and arrived at Jerusalem, (if he ever did arrive there,) we are told, that the high priest went out to meet him with the keys of the city,—thus renouncing the race of Messiahs who had formerly restored his temple and religion. And in this treachery the pious Rollin sees great merit: thus what weak people miscal religion obscures the understandings of the best of men.
- ↑ No. CCCLXXXV. Aug. 1823.
