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



been examined by Dr. Peake when he wrote his recent commentary, 

 but he was not apparently up to date, and he failed to find out what 

 our author has recognised, that the language of the book of Daniel 

 corresponds in linguistic details with the comparatively recently 

 discovered Assouan and Elephantine papyri which are so elaborately 

 dated during the period 500 B.C. to 400 B.C. 



This is not the first time that the confident assertions of Higher 

 Critics have been negatived by the records preserved in the dry 

 climate of Egypt. Some twenty years ago it was their habit 

 confidently to say that Luke was in error in saying that people 

 went to be enrolled at their own homes, because no such record 

 outside the New Testament was known. A confident argument 

 based on negative evidence is always dangerous, and after this rash 

 denial of St. Luke's accuracy was made, the actual Koman enrolment 

 documents were discovered in Egyptian rubbish heaps, some being 

 of the first century, ordering all to go for enrolment to their own 

 homes. 



Thus in two instances documents have been found in the dry sands 

 of Egypt which contradict the deduction of critics who denied the 

 truth of Scripture. Having proved the Higher Critics false guides 

 in these two instances, is it not wise to decline to follow them in 

 others ? 



We owe a debt of gratitude to our author for proving so conclusively 

 the early date of Daniel, and we trust his paper may be widely 

 circulated and studied. 



The Rev. A. H. Finn said : It would be an impertinence for me to 

 attempt to criticise a paper the greater part of which deals with 

 matters outside the range of my own studies.^ I can only sit humbly 

 at the feet of so erudite a scholar as the writer. Yet there are two 

 little points on which I can offer remarks which may be of some 

 little use. 



(1) Interchange of D and Z (pp. 237-239) : 

 Familiar from my childhood with colloquial Arabic, I can testify 

 to the fact that in Palestinian Arabic the letter Bhal is frequently 

 pronounced as Z. Is it not possible that this may be a survival of 

 the Western Aramaic pronunciation ? That would account for the 

 Z found in the Aramaic of the Egyptian papyri. In that case, it 



