A'o/t's on flic Aramaic Pari of Daniel. 245 



that Bab)lonia " showed them no mercy," and speaks of " the prey of 

 the tyrant " (meaning the foreign King), and " the furj' of the oppressor." 

 These were themes to arouse an)- story-teller who had even a spark 

 of imagination.' As for the details, the reasons for the persecution, and 

 the manner of it, these were all mere matters of course. There is not 

 a syllable, anywhere in the six chapters, that could reasonably suggest 

 the time of Antiochus Epiphanes to the unbiased reader. On the con- 

 trar\-, the kings described are altogether unlike him. Nebuchadnezzar 

 is a great and admirable monarch in the eyes of this narrator. He is 

 a tyrant, of course, and deals like one, but in the end he humbly con- 

 fesses the God of Israel. Belshazzar is represented as a weakling and a 

 voluptuary— naturally, since he was the one who lost the kingdom to 

 the Medes. He is introduced merely for the sake of the one great scene 

 in which Daniel predicts the fall of the city and the coming of the 

 Medes and Persians. As for Darius, he is pictured as a most admirable 

 king, a friend of Daniel, and in fact blameless except for his single act 

 of carelessness in signing the edict (6 : 7-9). He, too, confesses the 

 God of Israel, and recommends him to his subjects. Nowhere in the 

 six chapters is there any hint that the Jews in general are being perse- 

 cuted, either because of their religion or for any other reason. What 

 is more than all this, there is one passage in which the writer, in a 

 vaticinium ex eventu, manifestl}- brings the history down to his own 

 time ; and the time is not that of Antiochus Epiphanes, but (to all 

 appearance) considerabh' anterior to it. 



It is immensely interesting to compare the two parallel visions, chaps. 2 

 and 7, in this regard. In both cases, the writer aims to put into 

 the mouth of the prophet a plain prediction of the future course of 

 history, in such a way that his hearers will recognize its truth. As in 

 all such cases, the most important part of the vision is the last part, 

 where the contemporary history is reached. Accordingly, in 7:8, 20, 

 24 f the description becomes detailed as the writer reaches that crisis 

 of events which seemed to him and all his contemporaries one of the 

 most momentous in all history— as indeed it was — namely, the day when 

 the religion of Israel clashed for the first time with the purpose of a 

 great foreign power, and the Jewish church was compelled to fight for 



' It is a mistake to suppose that such tales as these were produced only 

 in times of severe persecution. The literary art of that day was not alto- 

 gether unlike our own. The possibility of persecution was always present 

 to the Jews, from the time when they first came under a foreign yoke. 

 Even in a time of great prosperity (and perhaps especially at such a time) 

 the imagination of a writer could create scenes of peril and of suffering for 

 the Hebrew faith. 



