Reams of conjecture and dubious history and imaginative chronology have been expended upon the effort to give any interpretation of these precise data which can pretend to the dignity of firm or scientific exegesis. Some, for instance, like Keil, regard the numbers as _symbolical_, which is equivalent to the admission that they have little or no bearing on literal history; others suppose that they are _conjectural_, having been penned before the actual termination of the Seleucid troubles. Others regard them as only intended to represent _round numbers_. Others again attempt to give them historic accuracy by various manipulations of the dates and events in and after the reign of Antiochus. Others relegate the entire vision to periods separated from the Maccabean age by hundreds of years, or even into the remotest future. And none of these commentators, by their researches and combinations, have succeeded in establishing the smallest approach to conviction in the minds of those who take the other views. There can be little doubt that to the writer and his readers the passage pointed either to very confident expectations or very well-understood realities; but for us the exact clue to the meaning is lost. All that can be said is that we should probably understand the dates better if our knowledge of the history of B.C. 165-164 was more complete. We are forced to content ourselves with their general significance. It is easy to record and to multiply elaborate guesses, and to deceive ourselves with the merest pretence and semblance of certainty. For reverent and severely honest inquiries it seems safer and wiser to study and profit by the great lessons and examples clearly set before us in the Book of Daniel, but, as regards many of its unsolved difficulties, to obey the wise exhortation of the Rabbis,-- "Learn to say, 'I do not know.'" FOOTNOTES: [716] See too Joel ii. 2. [717] Enoch xc. 16. [718] Rev. xvi. 14, xix. 19. [719] Comp. Matt. xxiv. 6, 7, 21, 22. [720] Such is the reading of the LXX., Vulgate, Peshitta, Symmachus, etc. [721] Zech. xiv. 1-7. [722] Comp. vii. 10: "And the books were opened." [723] Mal. iii. 16. [724] Rev. xx. 12-15. Compare too Phil. iv. 3: "With Clement also, and the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life." [725] "Many sleepers in the land of dust" seems to mean the dead. Comp. Jer. li. 39; Psalm xxii. 29; 1 Thess. iv. 14; Acts vii. 60. For "shame" see Jer. xxiii. 40. The word for "abhorrence" only occurs in Isa. lxvi. 24. The allusion seems to be to the ἀνάστασις κρίσεως (John v. 29), the δεύτερος θάνατος of Rev. xx. 14. Comp. Enoch xxii. [726] Isa. lxvi. 24.