220 EEV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL I 



not only as to let himself be detected through the use of two quite 

 unnecessary Greek words, but also to be oblivious to the fact that 

 his use of some twenty Persian terms would render him liable to 

 suspicion. On the other hand, we might say that the comparative 

 smallness of the number of Persian words in Daniel, and the almost 

 total absence of Greek, form a good argument in favour of the 

 authenticity and genuineness of the book. 



It has been argued that there is an utter absence of Persian in 

 the Babylonian tablets before the Persian acquisition of that 

 country. If this were correct, and not merely comparatively so, 

 it w^ould not be a matter for surprise. Cuneiform Babylonian, 

 as now known to us, was an old and long established literary 

 language, which would admit foreign words only very gradually 

 and with great reluctance. Aramaic was the lingua franca 

 of the day, which, though reduced to writing long before, had not 

 yet become the language of any considerable literature. Proper 

 attention has not yet, to our knowledge, been paid to this most 

 important fact. Yet a parallel case may easily be cited. In 

 China there is a considerable difference between the literary 

 language written in the characters handed domi by literary 

 men for many hundreds of years and the vernacular of the 

 various provinces. English and other foreign terms may effect 

 an entrance into the spoken tongue, but it will be far harder to 

 acclimatise them in the literary tongue. Again, in vernacular 

 Englishwefindit easy to speak and write of the Alake of Abbeokuta, 

 the Sheikhs of Arabia, the Maliks of Baluchistan, the Mullds 

 (mad or otherwise) of the Soudan, the Shah of Persia, the Sultan 

 of Turkey or oi Egypt. But if we were writing in a classical f ongue 

 like Latin or Greek, it would be hard to compel ourselves to admit 

 such words into our composition. Latin in this case represents 

 the classical cuneiform Assyrio-Babylonian tongue, while Enghsh, 

 whether spoken at home or abroad, assumes the place of the 

 Aramaic language commonly used by the foreign and trading 

 community of the great city. The Aramaic dockets attached to 

 cuneiform tablets found in Babylon long before Daniel's time 

 attest this fact. 



It has been assumed that Persian words cannot have been used 

 in Babylon until a considerable time had elapsed after the Persian 

 supremacy had been estabhshed in that city. But this is by no 

 means certain. The Babylonians had come into close contact 

 with the Medes and Persians (who spoke dialects of one and the 

 same language) hundreds of years before that time. Contact 



