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



Tenia, Egypt, and some other places. Dr. Driver, however, 

 makes far too much of this matter when he styles it "A 

 particularly clear indication that the Aramaic of Daniel was 

 not that spoken in Babylon in the fifth century B.C." (Dan., 

 Introduction, p. Ix). The fact is that, though (as we have said) 

 ZI is generally used in these papyri, it is not always employed. 

 The same may be said with reference to the demonstrative 

 pronoun, which in Daniel and Biblical Aramaic in general is 

 dek, dikken, m. ; dak, /. ; denah, com., da,/. ; but in Egyptian and 

 Cappadocian Aramaic zek, m. ; deka, dek!,/. ; zenah, zenak, com. 

 Dr. Driver holds that the difference is distinctive as shewing 

 that (1) the forms with a Z are older than those in D, and (2) 

 that they are Palestinian, whereas those with Z are Babylonian. 

 Hence he thinks the Book of Daniel cannot have been composed 

 anywhere but in Palestine, nor can it belong to an early date. 

 But the papyri, when carefully studied, seem to me to refute 

 the second conclusion and seriously to modify the first. For 

 we find forms in D here and there in the papyri, as : — In P. 13478, 

 line 9, and in P. 13491, line 23, we have denah ; and in P. 27198, 

 lines 7, 11, 16 (dated 10th of the month Mesere, — 3rd of 

 Chisleu, in the nineteenth year of King Artaxerxes, i.e., 446 B.C.) 

 dilaJcl is used, not zllahl (Cowley and Sayce, Aramaic Papyri 

 from Assouan, pp. 40, 41). In a papyrus dated thirteenth of 

 Ab, in the twenty-fifth year of Artaxerxes (440 B.C.), fragments 

 6 and 9 respectively, deka and dekl occur. The B.D.B. Hebrew 

 Lexicon itself admits this. Hence it follows that at the time of 

 the writing of these papyri, which were not written in Palestine, 

 nor in the Macedonian period, both the forms in Z and those in 

 D were in use. But the difference between the two forms was 

 this, that the Z form represents the older way of writing such 

 words, and was generally retained in writing long after the D 

 form had taken its place in ordinary speech. The tendency 

 was for the latter gradually to win its way into writing also. 

 But we are dealing not with two dialects, but merely with the 

 older and the later way of writing. There can be no doubt 

 at all as to the relative antiquity of the Z and D forms, as in the 

 xA^ssyrian and Babylonian dockets in Aramaic affixed to Cunei- 

 form documents the D never occurs, only the Z form. Hence 

 we may grant that, if genuine, the Book of Daniel must have 

 originally had the Z, not as at present the D forms. But it 

 would be a natural thing to adopt the D forms throughout the 

 book, instead of the older method of spelling, when the older 



