248 Charles C. Torrey, 



the Jews, they were then under the Egyptian rule, and presumably 

 favored the cause of Ptolemy Euergetes. The author of these popular 

 tales of Daniel wrote during the reign of this king ; at any later time, 

 his comparison would have been pointless, for such a contrast of iron 

 and clay was not seen again in the historj' of those lands. His book, 

 then, the original " Book of Daniel," must be dated between 245 and 

 225 B.C.* This was simply a stor}'-book, composed just as stories are 

 composed in modern times, and published for the purpose of interesting 

 and edifying the reading public, and the Jewish youth in particular, 

 just as didactic tales are circulated at the present da)'. It included 

 chaps. 1-6 of our book, in a form which probably differed but slightly 

 from that which we have. 



To this older collection of tales, the apocalyptist of the Maccabean 

 time attached his " Visions of Daniel," chaps. 7—12, designed to en- 

 courage his compatriots in their desperate conflict with the Syrian king. 

 He preserved the original storj^-book entire,"^ and we have the whole of 



' This being the case, it may well be— and I myself believe it to be the 

 fact — that the allusions to Daniel in Ezek. 14 : 14, 20, and 28 : 3 are based 

 on this Aramaic story-book. I have for many years felt certain that the 

 book of Ezekiel is a pseudepigraph, written in Judea in the latter part of 

 the Greek period. Nearly all the evidence, external and internal {all, in 

 fact, excepting the claim of the book itself J, points to this conclusion. We 

 have the best of reasons for believing that the fact of its very late origin 

 continued to be a matter of tradition among the Jewish scholars until the 

 first centuries A.D., namely their hesitation to admit it to the number of 

 the sacred books. It is true that in still later times this hesitation was 

 " explained " as due to the fact that " Ezekiel disagreed with the Penta- 

 teuch " ; (!) but this is a characteristic obfuscation of the true state of 

 things, just such a statement as we should expect to see made after the 

 book had been admitted to the canon. If Ezekiel had disagreed seriously 

 with the Pentateuch (which is not the case), any and every Jewish scholar 

 who believed it to be really an ancient book — as old, say, as Haggai and 

 Zechariah — would have clung to it and exalted it all the more because of 

 its originality. When and where do the many discrepancies in the Old 

 Testament cause the rabbinical mind any uneasiness ? It took delight in 

 just such things. The only thing that could possibly account for the tempo- 

 rary rejection of Ezekiel is the persistence of the tradition that it was 

 written at a very late date. Judging from the manner of its allusions to 

 the prophet Daniel, it cannot have been written much earlier than 200 B.C. 

 It appears to be the work of a single hand. The statement is often made 

 that it gives evidence of having been written in Babylonia : but this is not 

 at all the case. 



- I have not the least doubt that the "Additions to Daniel," namely the 

 Song of the Three, the Story of Susanna, and the tale of Bel and the Dragon, 



