Mr. Ball, who quotes these passages from Wünsche's _Bibliotheca Rabbinica_ in his Introduction to the Song of the Three Children,[369] very truly adds that many Scriptural commentators wholly lack the _orientation_ derived from the study of Talmudic and Midrashic literature which is an indispensable preliminary to a right understanding of the treasures of Eastern thought. They do not grasp the inveterate tendency of Jewish teachers to convey doctrine by concrete stories and illustrations, and not in the form of abstract thought. "_The doctrine is everything; the mode of presentation has no independent value._" To make the story the first consideration, and the doctrine it was intended to convey an after-thought, as we, with our dry Western literalness are predisposed to do, is to reverse the Jewish order of thinking, and to inflict unconscious injustice on the authors of many edifying narratives of antiquity. The part played by Daniel in the apocryphal Story of Susanna is probably suggested by the meaning of his name: "Judgment of God." Both that story and Bel and the Dragon are in their way effective fictions, though incomparably inferior to the canonical part of the Book of Daniel. And the startling decree of Nebuchadrezzar finds its analogy in the decree published by Antiochus the Great to all his subjects in honour of the Temple at Jerusalem, in which he threatened the infliction of heavy fines on any foreigner who trespassed within the limits of the Holy Court.[370] FOOTNOTES: [327] The false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah were "roasted in the fire" (Jer. xxix. 22), which may have suggested the idea of this punishment to the writer; but it was for committing "lewdness"--"folly," Judg. xx. 6--in Israel, and for adultery and lies, which were regarded as treasonable. In some traditions they are identified with the two elders of the Story of Susanna. Assur-bani-pal burnt Samas-sum-ucin, his brother, who was Viceroy of Babylon (about B.C. 648), and Te-Umman, who cursed his gods (Smith, _Assur-bani-pal_, p. 138). Comp. Ewald, _Prophets_, iii. 240. See _supra_, p. 44. [328] Malcolm, _Persia_, i. 29, 30. [329] Both in Theodotion and the LXX. we have ἔτους ὀκτωκαιδεκάτου. The siege of Jerusalem was not, however, finished till the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar (2 Kings xxv. 8). Others conjecture that the scene occurred in his thirty-first year, when he was "at rest in his house, and flourishing in his palace" (Dan. iv. 4). [330] _Records of the Past_, v. 113. The inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar are full of glorification of Marduk (Merodach), _id._, v. 115, 135, vii. 75.