(6.) The author manifests intimate acquaintance with the historical relations, manners, and customs belonging to Daniel's time. Under this head writers have specified the custom of giving new names to those taken into the king's service (1:7); the threat that the houses of the magi should be made a dunghill (2:5); the different forms of capital punishment in use among the Chaldeans and Medo-Persians; the dress of Daniel's companions (3:21); the presence of women at the royal banquet (5:2), etc. See Davidson's Introduction, p. 920, who sums up the argument thus: "It is improbable that an author in the Maccabean times should have been so _uniformly accurate_ in his narrative, without having been in Babylon itself." 22. The objections urged against the book of Daniel are not of a nature to overthrow the mass of evidence in its favor. They may be considered under the following heads: (1.) Various _chronological and historical difficulties_. It is said that Jewish history knows no expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem in the _third_ year of Jehoiakim. The answer is that an expedition which apparently fell about this time is mentioned in 2 Kings 24:1. The actual capture of the city, however, seems not to have taken place before the _fourth_ year of Jehoiakim; for Jeremiah, in a prophecy dated in this fourth year, speaks in terms which imply that the threatened blow had not yet fallen. Jer. 25:9. Perhaps Daniel, chap. 1:1, dates from the beginning of the expedition, so that it fell partly in the third and partly in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. It was in connection with this expedition of Nebuchadnezzar that he overthrew the army of Pharaoh-necho at Carchemish on the Euphrates; for that event also took place in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Jer. 46:2. We learn from Berosus, as quoted by Josephus (Antiq. 10. 11. 1), that when Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in this expedition, and had already conquered the Egyptians, he received tidings that the throne of Babylon was made vacant by the death of his father. Upon this he hastened with his light troops across the desert to Babylon, leaving the body of his army to return by the ordinary route.