SOME LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE REGARDING ITS DATE. 



209 



much earlier than the date (332 B.C.) assigned by Dr. Driver as 

 the very earliest possible for the composition of Daniel, on the 

 groimd of its containing two Greek words. Moreover, these words 

 in the papyri are not the names of two musical instruments among 

 a group of the same kind, as in Daniel. One is the name of a Greek 

 coin, a second that of a colour, the third denoting an article of 

 Greek dress. Nor are the words found all together in a group : 

 they are scattered in different manuscripts. If we apply Dr. 

 Driver's argument to them, it breaks down utterly. Is not the 

 same conclusion inevitable when applied to the Book of Daniel? 

 If the occurrence of three, or even four, Greek words in these 

 papyri does not (and cannot, because of the dates of the docu- 

 ments) prove their date to be that of Alexander the Great, or 

 perhaps much later, how can tivo Greek words in Daniel 

 " demand " the assignment of the book to a late date ? 

 It can hardly surprise us if a few Greek words found 

 their way in return into, not the cultivated Babylonian ver- 

 nacular, but the colloquial Aramaic, the lingua franca of the 

 mercantile community of the Jews resident in Babylonia in the 

 latter part of the sixth centur}^ before our era. At an}^ rate, even 

 if the date of Daniel be held to be more recent than this, the 

 existence of Greek words in the book cannot " demand " its 

 relegation to the period after the Macedonian conquest of Pales- 

 tine. The Book of Daniel may well belong, even on the grounds 

 chosen by Dr. Driver for argument, to somewhat the same time 

 as the writing of the Assouan-Elephantine papyri. 



What period was this ? and what certainty of the date can there 

 be ? It is not a matter of conjecture but of certainty. Many of 

 the Assouan-Elephantine papyri have the date of writing given 

 in them even more precisely than our modern letters and other 

 documents. They mention not only the year but the month 

 (often in two calendars, the Egyptian as well as the Hebrew- 

 Aramaic) and the day of composition. In some cases, the papyri 

 being somewhat torn or worm-eaten, the date can no longer be 

 read ; but the number of documents in which these particulars 

 . are preserved is sufficient to shew that they all belong to the period 

 between 500 and 400 B.C. Thus, taking Arthur Ungnad's little 

 collection entitled Aramdische Papyrus aus Elephantine^ 

 the first document — a letter from the Jewish community of 

 Yeb (Elephantine) to Bagoas (in the original Bagohi), Persian 

 Governor of Judaea (mentioned by Josephus in Ant. of Jews, 

 XI, vii, 1), complaining in forcible language of the destruction of 



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