1 



250 Charles C. Torrcy, 



since the Aramaic book had already been in circulation. He accordingly 

 made a dove-tail joint which was both as simple, and as eflfective, as 

 anything of the kind that can be found in all literature. He wrote the 

 first of his Visions, chap. 7, /;/ Aramaic; it is thus inseparable, on the 

 one hand, from the preceding chapters, while on the other hand its 

 contents and necessary connection with the following visions of the series 

 render it quite inseparable from chaps. 8—12. But even this was not 

 enough ; the dove-taiUng process had need of another step, in order to 

 be absolutely finished. He translated Into Hehrevo the introductory 

 part of the older narrative. By so doing he united the beginning of 

 the book most securely to the later chapters which he himself had 

 written, while on the other hand this introduction was indispensable to 

 the stories which immediately followed it ! This is all very well planned ; 

 but his skill appears to the best advantage in the way in which he 

 effects the transition from Hebrew to Aramaic. Where could he finish 

 with the one, and begin with the other, with the least detriment to the 

 appearance of literary unit}' r His answer to this question is the best 

 possible, and a vtry obvious one — now that we have it before us. He 

 continues the Hebrew to the point where the *' Chaldeans " begin their 

 address to the king, in 2:4. From that point on, he leaves the Aramaic 

 as he found it.' 



^ We could not expect to find in the Hebrew of chap. 1 traces showing 

 that it is translated from the Aramaic. The writer was at home in both 

 languages, the narrative was of the simplest, and he was under no obligation 

 to render closely. Nevertheless, I believe that slight traces of the process 

 can really be seen. Aramaic idioms abound, of course, in all the Hebrew 

 of Daniel, but there is no chapter, nor extended passage, in the book in 

 which the Aramaisms are so heaped upon one another as in chap. 1. See, 

 in support of this statement, the list of noteworthy words and constructions 

 in the Hebrew of Daniel collected by Driver in his Introduciion. Most noticeable 

 of all, perhaps, is the barbarism pfl^'^ *1^K' ^^ ^^- ^^- Regarded as an exact 

 transfer of the common Aramaic plJisS ^*7' " ^®^^ " (®- S- Ezra 7 : 23), it is at 



T 



once fully explained. I do not believe that a writer who was composing in 

 Hebrew a simple^ popular prose 7iarrative of this nature would ever have used 

 this phrase. But the translators of that period often stuck ridiculously close 

 to their originals, as we know. Another phrase which may be mentioned is 



in vs. 9 : c^cnDH ^t' ^je'? D^i^nnbi ^ZiVh bx^n nx ^''Th)itT[ jn^i ; 



"And God gave Daniel favor and compassion before the prince of the eunuchs " 

 (notice especially the use of the preposition ^). We know that this was a 

 stock idiom in the Aramaic of the Persian period, for in the copy of the letter 

 from Elephantine, published by Sachau (Drei aramdische Fapyntsurkunden, p. 7), 

 line 2, we find words which exactly correspond to those in Daniel : r^n"n7l 



