222 REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL : 



important, too, in order to distinguish, say, the English Judge 

 from a native QadI, an EngHsh Paymaster from a native one. 

 The difference was real from several points of view. Nor did 

 it take a considerable number of years before the natives of the 

 country learnt to use the foreign terms. Somewhat similarly 

 the Babylonians would speedily learn to apply Persian titles to 

 Persian officials . At least the Jews in Babylonia would feel no 

 prejudice against applying the new terms soon after the estab- 

 lishment of Persian rule to certain Babylonian officials, when 

 speaking of them a very few years later in Aramaic. It was, 

 110 doubt, an anachronism, yet not one difficult to make allowance 

 for. It implies, doubtless, that Daniel composed the book, even 

 the earlier part of it, after the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. 

 But this is not strange, for the capture of the city is recorded 

 in the book. We do not know how long afterwards Daniel 

 continued to survive, but a few years would suffice. As it is 

 not likely that he spent all the rest of his life in Babylon, but was 

 probably found useful elsewhere, perhaps at Susa (Shushan), 

 where he had been before, his Aramaic might easily adopt a few 

 Persian terms in everyday use at the Persian court at Susa, and 

 very soon, probably, at Babylon too. 



Dr. Driver urges that " The numerous contract-tablets which 

 have come down to us from the age of Nebuchadnezzar and his 

 successors, and which represent the everyday language of com- 

 mercial life, show no traces of Persian influence ; and if the lan- 

 guage of Babylonia was iminfluenced by Persia, that of Israel 

 would be far less likely to be so influenced." {Daniel, Introduc- 

 tion, pp. Ivii, Iviii.) This argument, however, is quite fallacious. 

 For the fact that the Babylonian contract-tablets are in Baby- 

 lonian, the legal and classical language, not in the Aramaic 

 lingua franca, makes the above comparison unjust and unsatis- 

 factory. Moreover, it is not correct to say that even classical 

 Babylonian was in its vocabulary unaffected by Persian. 

 ^Even before the Persian conquest some few words from 

 that language had possibly been borrowed [for example, 

 the Dati (also ditu, diti) already referred to]. Though this 

 word may possibly not be Persian, yet there can be no doubt 

 about certain others. In a tablet of Cambyses' sixth year, lines 

 1, 6, 9, 12 and 18, we find the word Pardlsu, for example. 

 Although Professor Sayce tells us that the Babylonian scribes 

 tried to derive it from a Babylonian source as if it were Par-esu 

 (Sayce, Rel. of Eg. and Bab., p. 272), yet it is the Avestic 



