SOME LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE REGARDING ITS DATE. 233 



of these are given in a contracted form, the final element being 

 omitted. The same thing still occurs in colloquial Arabic, 

 where we hear 'Abdul for 'Abdu'llah, Bu-Mahmad for Abu- 

 Muhammad, etc. This renders it possible to suspect the same 

 system to be the explanation of something similar in the few 

 Babylonian names in Daniel, as we shall soon point out. 



Among common nouns derived from Babylonian we have 

 the following, as well as others, in the papyri : — Eru, and Erzu, 

 kinds of cedar-tree ; Tappu, breadth, coping (of wood) ; khinnu, 

 part of a ship ; kitinnu, cotton ; khalluru, a small part of a 

 shekel ; babu, gate, door ; rubu, interest on money ; appuna- 

 (ma), to the utmost ; She'u, one one-hundred-and-eightieth 

 part of a shekel ; dmu u dababu, judgment and speech ; etc. 

 Others doubtless occur which are not recognizable through the 

 fragmentary nature of the papyri ; but the Babylonian element 

 in the language of the papyri seems to be slighter than in Daniel. 

 Were Daniel later than the papyri, one would expect the con- 

 trary to be the case, as the Babylonian words would tend to 

 become fewer with the length of time that had elapsed since the 

 departure of the Jews from Babylon. 



If the Higher Critics are right in assigning a very late date to 

 Daniel, then, remembering the free way in which the book 

 admits the adoption of Persian official titles, it is astounding 

 that we utterly fail to find in it a single Greek ofiicial title. The 

 Assouan-Elephantine papyri, too, exhibit the same phenomenon. 

 This is natural, because their dates show that they were com- 

 posed long before the Macedonian conquest of Palestine and 

 Egypt. Is the explanation of the omission of Greek titles in 

 Daniel due to the fact that the book was written long before 

 the same event ? What other explanation can be offered ? 

 If the author, writing (according to the critics) about 167-165 

 B.C., was careless enough to betray himself by using Persian 

 titles, is it not strange that he was so clever as to see that the 

 employment of Greek titles must be avoided for fear of disclosing 

 the fraud ? 



Some critics still venture to affirm that the occurrence of the 

 word " Aramaic " in Dan. ii, 4, implies that the writer of the 

 book was of opinion that Aramaic was then the vernacular of 

 Babylon ! This is obviously an impossible explanation of the 

 word ; for, even about 167-165 B.C., the supposed date of the 

 book (according to the Higher Critical hypothesis), the Baby- 

 lonian tongue was still spoken there, and the assumed Palestinian 



