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



It is hardly possible to answer this question with any certainty, - 

 nor is it necessary. The theories on the subject are many. 

 Paul Haupt, while saying, " I cannot believe that the author 

 regarded Biblical Aramaic as the language of Babylonia," 

 assumes that the book was originally written all in Hebrew, 

 and that a certain part being afterwards lost was replaced from 

 an Aramaic version made by the author soon after writing the 

 original.^^ (Polychrome Bible, sub loco.) That the Aramaic 

 part w^as by the author is not at all a strange supposition, for 

 it was customary, at least in Darius' time, to publish versions 

 in several languages, all with the same authority, as the different 

 versions of Darius' inscriptions at Besitun show. Not a few 

 modern commentators agree in Paul Haupt's suggestion, so 

 we need not say anything more on the point. He may be right, 

 too, in holding that the word " Aramaic " in Dan. ii, 4, is a 

 " later addition to mark the beginning of the Aramaic 

 sections." 



It may be well to call attention, in connexion with Babylonian 

 proper names, to a casual remark of Dr. Driver's about Nebu- 

 chadnezzar's name as given in Daniel. He writes : " Daniel 

 himself, also, it is probable, would not (unlike both Jeremiah 

 and Ezekiel) have uniformly written the name Nebuchadriezzar 

 incorrectly." {Daniel, Introd., p. Ixii.) A slight degree of 

 care in examining the text of Daniel would have prevented 

 Dr. Driver from using this argument against the genuineness 

 of the book, for Ginsburg's edition of the Hebrew Bible in I, 1, 

 and in several other places, gives various readings of the king's 

 name, and shows that some MSS. have Nebuchadrezzar, as in 

 Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But the objection has not much weight 

 in any case, for a modern English writer could not be condemned 

 for writing of the Kaiser as " William," though called in Berlin 

 " Wilhelm."t 



* Such things still occur. For instance, after writing my book entitled 

 YanahV u'l Islam in Persian, I not long afterwards translated it into 

 English (with modifications), and published it in both languages. I 

 mention this to show that Haupt's suggestion is not an unlikely one. 



t Or again a Latin writer about a certain important period of Spanish 

 history could not be accused of ignorance if he used the form Boahdilns for 



the monarch whom Ai-abic writers entitle Abu 'Abdi-'llah \J>^^ -^-^ /• 



In all such cases the popular form would be used in an}^ language but the 

 monarch's own. 



