The second period of the epoch, during which Jerusalem is to be peopled and built, and at the end of which the Messiah is to be cut off, is much more difficult to determine. The key to the problem lies undoubtedly in the last statement regarding the overthrow of the Messiah or Anointed One. Such a reference coming from a Maccabean author can only allude to the deposition by Antiochus IV. of the high-priest Onias III., which took place about 174 B.C., and the Syrian king’s subsequent murder of the same person not later than 171 (2 Macc. iv. 33-36). The difficulty now arises that between 537 and 171 there are only 366 years instead of the required number 434. It was evidently not the author’s intention to begin the second period of sixty weeks simultaneously with the first period, as some expositors have thought, because the whole passage shows conclusively that he meant seventy independent weeks. Besides, nothing is gained by such a device, which would bring the year of the end of the second period down to the meaningless date 152, too late to refer to Onias. Cornill therefore adopted the only tenable theory regarding the problem; viz. that the author of Daniel did not know the chronology between 537 and 312, the establishment of the Seleucid era, and consequently made the period too long. A parallel case is the much quoted example of Demetrius, who placed the fall of Samaria (722 B.C.) 573 years before the succession of Ptolemy IV. (222), thus making an error of seventy-three years. Josephus, who places the reign of Cyrus forty to fifty years too early, makes a similar error.
The last week is divided into two sections (26-27), in the first of which the city and sanctuary shall be destroyed and in the second the daily offering is to be suspended. All critical scholars recognize the identity of this second half-week with the “time, times and a half a time” of vii. 25. This last week must, therefore, end with the restoration of the temple worship in 164 B.C.
This whole prophecy, which is perhaps the most interesting in the Book of Daniel, presents problems which can never be thoroughly understood, first because the author must have been ignorant of both history and chronology, and secondly, because, in his effort to be as mystical as possible, he purposely made use of indefinite and vague expressions which render the criticism of the passage a most unsatisfactory task.
The Book of Daniel loses none of its beauty and force because we are bound, in the light of modern criticism, to consider it as a production of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, nor should conservative Bible-readers lament because the historical accuracy of the work is thus destroyed. The influence of the work was very great on the subsequent development of Christianity, but it was not the influence of the history contained in it which made itself felt, but rather of that sublime hope for a future deliverance of which the author of Daniel never lost sight. The allusion to the book by Jesus (Matt. xxiv. 15) shows merely that our Lord was referring to the work by its commonly accepted title, and implies no authoritative utterance with regard to its date or authorship. Our Lord simply made use of an apt quotation from a well-known work in order to illustrate and give additional force to his own prediction. If the book be properly understood, it must not only be admitted that the author made no pretence at accuracy of detail, but also that his prophecies were clearly intended to be merely an historical résumé, clothed for the sake of greater literary vividness in a prophetic garb. The work, which is certainly not a forgery, but only a consolatory political pamphlet, is just as powerful, viewed according to the author’s evident intention, as a consolation to God’s people in their dire distress at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, as if it were, what an ancient but mistaken tradition had made it, really an accurate account of events which took place at the close of the Babylonian period.[1]
Literature.—See bibliography in Bevan, Daniel 9, and add Kamphausen, Dan., in Haupt’s Sacred Books of the Old Testament; Behrmann, Dan. (1894); J. D. Prince, Dan. (1899); G. A. Barton, “The Compilation of the Book of Daniel,” in Journ. Bibl. Lit. (1898), 62-86, against the unity of the book, &c., &c.; J. D. Davis, “Persian Words and the Date of O.T. Documents,” in Old Testament and Semitic Studies: in Memory of W. R. Harper (Chicago, 1908). (J. D. Pr.)
Additions to Daniel.—The “additions to Daniel” are three in number: Susannah and the Elders, Bel and the Dragon, and The Song of the Three Children. Of these the two former have no organic connexion with the text. The case is otherwise with regard to the last. In some respects it helps to fill up a gap in the canonical text between verses 23 and 24 of chapter iii. And yet we find Polychronius, early in the 5th century, stating that this song was not found in the Syriac version.
Susannah.—This addition was placed by Theodotion before chap. i., and Bel and the Dragon at its close, whereas by the Septuagint and the Vulgate it was reckoned as chap. xiii. after the twelve canonical chapters, Bel and the Dragon as xiv. Theodotion’s version is the source of the Peshitto and the Vulgate, for all three additions, and the Septuagint is the source of the Syro-Hexaplaric which has been published by Ceriani (Mon. Sacr. vii.). The legend recounts how that in the early days of the Captivity Susannah, the beautiful and pious wife of the rich Joakim, was walking in her garden and was there seen by two elders who were also judges. Inflamed with lust, they made infamous proposals to her, and when repulsed they brought against her a false charge of adultery. When brought before the tribunal she was condemned to death and was on the way to execution, when Daniel interposed and, by cross-questioning the accusers apart, convinced the people of the falsity of the charge.
The source of the story may, according to Ewald (Gesch.3 iv. 636), have been suggested by the Babylonian legend of the seduction of two old men by the goddess of love (see also Koran, Sur. ii. 96). Another and much more probable origin of the work is that given by Brüll (Das apocr. Susanna-Buch, 1877) and Ball (Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 323-331). The first half of the story is based on a tradition—originating possibly in Jer. xxix. 21-32 and found in the Talmud and Midrash—of two elders Ahab and Zedekiah, who in the Captivity led certain women astray under the delusion that they should thereby become the mother of the Messiah. But the most interesting part of the investigation is concerned with the latter half of the story, which deals with the trial. The characteristics of this section point to its composition about 100–90 B.C., when Simon ben Shetaḥ was president of the Sanhedrin. Its object was to support the attempts of the Pharisees to bring about a reform in the administration of the law courts. According to Sadducean principles the man who was convicted of falsely accusing another of a capital offence was not put to death unless his victim was already executed. The Pharisees held that the intention of the accusers was equivalent to murder. Our apocryph upholds the Pharisaic contention. As Simon ben Shetaḥ insisted on a rigorous examination of the witnesses, so does our writer: as he and his party required that the perjurer should suffer the same penalty he sought to inflict on another, so our writer represents the death penalty as inflicted on the perjured elders.
The language was in all probability Semitic-Hebrew or Aramaic. The paronomasiae in the Greek in verses 54-55 (ὑπὸ σχῖνον . . . σχίσει) and 58-59 (ὑπὸ πρῖνον . . . πρίσει) present no cogent difficulty against this view; for they may be accidental and have arisen for the first time in the translation. But as Brüll and Ball have shown (see Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 324), the same paronomasiae are possible either in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Literature.—Ball in the Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 233 sqq.; Schürer, Gesch.3 iii. 333; Rothstein in Kautzsch’s Apocr. u. Pseud. i. 176 sqq.; Kamphausen in Ency. Bib.; Marshall in Hastings’ Bible Dict.; Toy in the Jewish Encyc.
Bel and the Dragon.—We have here two independent narratives, in both of which Daniel appears as the destroyer of heathenism. The latter had a much wider circulation than the former, and is most probably a Judaized form of the old Semitic myth of the destruction of the old dragon, which represents primeval chaos (see Ball, Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 346-348; Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, 320-323). Marduk destroys Tiamat in a similar manner to that in which Daniel destroys the dragon (Delitzsch, Das babylonische Weltschöpfung Epos), by driving a storm-wind into the dragon which rends it asunder. Marshall (Hastings’ Bib. Dict. i. 267) suggests that the “pitch” of the Greek (Aramaic זיפא) arose from the original term for storm-wind (זעפא).
- ↑ Prince, Dan. 22-24.
