SOME LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE REGARDING ITS DATE. 251 



thirty years ago since I contributed a series of articles to a theological 

 magazine, since defunct, on the Aramaic of Daniel. As at that time 

 the papyri of Assouan and Elephantine were as yet undiscovered, 

 my efforts were directed to prove that the Aramaic of Daniel was 

 older than that of Ezra and very much older than that of the 

 Targurns. Shortly after I was employed by the editor of the Puljrit 

 Commentary to write that on Daniel, which was published some 

 four and twenty years ago. All these things gave me a very special 

 interest in Dr. Tisdall's paper. 



The paper itself has more than justified my expectation. The 

 numerous illustrations from Persian and from the cuneiform 

 inscriptions were decidedly refreshing and make me regret that 

 Dr. Tisdall's lecture had not been published twenty-five or thirty 

 years, so that I might have benefited by it in my commentary on 

 Daniel. Dr. Tisdall will, I am sure, pardon me when I venture a 

 few criticisms. I understand Dr. Tisdall to hold that in Babylon 

 it was only the foreign and trading population (p. 220, 1. 10 from the 

 bottom) who spoke Aramaic. I am under the belief that Baby- 

 lonian — the language of the inscriptions — had long ceased to be 

 spoken, and it seems to me that the fact that, while the contract 

 tables are in the Babylonian language and in cuneiform character, 

 the doquets are usually in Aramaic proves this. A parallel case 

 may be found in Scotland. Certain deeds in connexion with the 

 transference of land were, about two hundred years ago, usually 

 written in Latin and in black letter, but the doquets were always in 

 English. The natural interpretation of this, it seems to me, is 

 that Aramaic was the language spoken by everybody^ but that 

 documents of importance were ™tten in Babylonian. This is the 

 decision of Dr. Hugo Winckler in his History of Babylonia and 

 Assyria (p. 179), writing of the reign of Asshur-nazir-pal — 

 *' Aramaic soon became the language of social intercourse in nearly 

 the whole of Mesopotamia and expelled the Assyrio -Babylonian, 

 which continued only as a literary tongue." It is possible that 

 Dr. Tisdall does not mean to restrict the speaking of Aramaic 

 merely to '* the foreign and trading community " of Babylon ; if so, 

 I crave pardon for misunderstanding him. There is another point 

 I wish Dr. Tisdall had taken into consideration, i.e. the fact that 

 the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra is Western, not Eastern, Chaldee — 



