Nok's on the Aramaic Part oj Daniel. 253 



2 : 4 Sin3- It is preposterous to " emend " this to the hafcl, as 

 Marti does in both grammar and commentary'. The pael is the usual 

 stem in Syriac, and there is no reason why the Jews should not have used 

 both forms, as in so many other verbs. We know very little about the 

 Palestinian Aramaic of this period, and here is a precious opportimity 

 to learn something. It is a somewhat similar case when the hafcl of 

 "^T], found in 3 : 25 and 4 : 34, is altered (simply on the basis of our 

 ignorance to the pad, by Marti, Kittel's Bihlia Hebraica, and others. 

 These instances are typical of a mode of procedure which is unfortu- 

 nately ver}- wide spread at present. 



2 : 5, 8 X*11K- I'his is an adjective with the feminine absolute ending, 

 and it has the meaning " sure.'" So much is made certain by the 

 comparison of these two passages with the Strassburg Aramaic papyrus, 

 published by Euting in the Menioires prcsentes .... a l' Academic 

 dcs Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, Paris, 1903, and since then discussed 

 by numerous other scholars. The word was given this meaning by Kern, 

 in the ZDMG, vol. xxiii (1869), p. 220, but he supposed it to be the 

 simple transfer of the Persian azdci, and the X„ to be the Persian end- 

 ing. This is the view which has been held by the most of those who 

 accept the theory of foreign origin. Recently, another explanation of the 

 word has been given. Andreas, in the Glossary of Marti's Gramniatik 

 der biblisch-araindischen Sprache (1896), interprets it as the Persian 

 noun, with the meaning " Kunde, Nachricht "—although this results in 

 mere nonsense in both of the passages in Daniel. 



In the Jewish papyais from Elephantine which is now in Strassburg 

 the same word occurs, by good fortune, in the form 17>^, without the 

 final a. The phrase in which it occurs is this (col. ii, lines 3—5) : 



]-i;2K ™mK n ni] bnpS jxi^S tn^n^ • ■ • • x^j'n j^ "isrn^ "its jh 



" If it [the matter just stated] shall be certified by the judges, .... 

 then our lord will know that it was just as we have said." In this case 

 also, Andreas holds to his interpretation of the word as a noun [Ephe- 

 meris fiir sentitische Epigraphik, ii, 214, note 2), and Lidzbarski, 

 who accepts his guidance, renders thus: " Wenn zuverlassige Nachricht 

 seitens der Richter .... gegeben wird, dann wird sie (die Nachricht) 

 sich unserm Herrn als iibereinstimmend mit dem herausstellen, was wir 

 gesagt haben " (Jbid., pp. 216 f.). But the comparison of the passages 

 in Daniel makes it certain, on the contrary, that we have here also 

 a predicate adjective. It is an adjective, not a noun, that the sense 

 demands : " If it shall be made sure ;" ^ and since in this case the 



' "With a noun meaning '' Nachricht, Kunde,'' etc. the verb ISi?]^'' would 

 not have been used. 



