The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DanielFarrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Daniel
Farrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Bible. Daniel -- Commentaries
Taking Hengstenberg as the most learned reasoner in favour of the
genuineness of Daniel, we will pass in review all the positive
arguments which he has adduced.[176] They occupy no less than one
hundred and ten pages (pp. 182-291) of the English translation of his
work on the genuineness of Daniel. Most of them are tortuous specimens
of special pleading inadequate in themselves, or refuted by increased
knowledge derived from the monuments and from further inquiry. To these
arguments neither Dr. Pusey nor any subsequent writer has made any
material addition. Some of them have been already answered, and many of
them are so unsatisfactory that they may be dismissed at once.
I. Such, for instance, are _the testimony of the author himself_. In
one of those slovenly treatises which only serve to throw dust in the
eyes of the ignorant we find it stated that, "although the name of
Daniel is not prefixed to his Book, the passages in which he speaks in
the first person _sufficiently prove_ that he was the author"! Such
assertions deserve no answer. If the mere assumption of a name be a
_sufficient proof_ of the authorship of a book, we are rich indeed in
Jewish authors--and, not to speak of others, our list includes works by
Adam, Enoch, Eldad, Medad, and Elijah. "Pseudonymity," says Behrmann,
"was a very common characteristic of the literature of that day, and
the conception of literary property was alien to that epoch, and
especially to the circle of writings of this class."
II. The character of the language, as we have seen already, proves
nothing. Hebrew and Aramaic long continued in common use side by side
at least among the learned,[177] and the divergence of the Aramaic
in Daniel from that of the Targums leads to no definite result,
considering the late and uncertain age of those writings.
III. How any argument can be founded on the exact knowledge of
history displayed by local colouring we cannot understand. Were
the knowledge displayed ever so exact it would only prove that the
author was a learned man, which is obvious already. But so far from
any remarkable accuracy being shown by the author, it is, on the
contrary, all but impossible to reconcile many of his statements
with acknowledged facts. The elaborate and tortuous explanations,
the frequent "subauditur," the numerous assumptions required to
force the text into accordance with the certain historic data of the
Babylonian and Persian empires, tell far more against the Book than
for it. The methods of accounting for these inaccuracies are mostly
self-confuting, for they leave the subject in hopeless confusion, and
each orthodox commentator shows how untenable are the views of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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