246 Charles C. Torrey, 



its life. He alludes to Antiochus Epiphanes, and to the desperate strait of 

 the chosen people, in unmistakable terms ; and in the subsequent chapters 

 he keeps returning to this theme in a way that shows the supreme place of 

 importance which it held in all his thought. But how different is the 

 case in chap. 2 I There, when the vision reaches its lower end, and 

 the writer has occasion to present to his readers the most essential 

 and striking characteristics of the power under whose rule they lived 

 (vss. 40—43), the one interesting thing which he knows about the Greek 

 empire is this, that it is not holding together, but because of its geo- 

 graphical division and the heterogeneous character of its parts it is on 

 the way to complete disintegration, in spite of the great strength of one 

 portion of it, and the attempt to preserve its coherence by means of 

 marriage alliances (vs. 43) ! It is perfectly plain that this writer had 

 never even dreamed of such a time as that of the Maccabees. In his 

 day, the Jewish people and the Seleucid ruler were only distantly in- 

 terested in each other. 



The conclusion follows, from all this concurring evidence, that the 

 book of Daniel consists of tzuo entirely distinct parts, the work of 

 different authors, one of whom lived in the Maccabean period, and 

 the other some time earlier. It is even possible to determine, within 

 a very few years, the time when the earlier author lived and wrote. The 

 important passage 2 : 43, of which mention has already been made, 

 alludes to events (unquestionably, recent events' which had seemed to 

 the narrator and his contemporaries to be of more than ordinar}' im- 

 portance. The empire of Alexander was in the process of breaking up, 

 but an attempt had been made to arrest the process by means of 

 marriage alliances. Our author and his fellows had witnessed the 

 failure of the attempt : " They shall mingle through the seed of men, 

 but shall not cleave together, even as iron does not mingle with clay." 

 The author of chaps. 7—12, also, in his remarkable summar}- of the 

 Seleucid history, mentions, in passing, this same royal wedding from 

 which much was hoped but little resulted. In ll:4f., after speaking 

 of the division of the Greek empire upon Alexander's death, and the 

 might of certain of the rival kings, he proceeds in vs. 6 : "And after 

 certain years they shall be associated, and the daughter of the king of 

 the South shall come to the king of the North, to make an alliance ; 

 but she shall not possess power, nor shall he stand, nor his power ; ' 

 but she shall be given up," etc. This, as is well known, is an allusion 

 to the marriage of Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy II Philadelphus 



' The Greek of Theodotion renders here *\Ji'y{, " his seed, " instead of i2?"|T 

 "his arm." 



I 



