214 



MISS A. M. HODGKIN ON 



sal dominion till the Stone cut out without hands shall smite 

 the image, and He shall come whose right it is, and take unto 

 Him His great power and reign, and the earth shall be full of 

 the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 



The Second Babylonian Empire. 



If the critics can be said to have been entirely unanimous 

 about anything, that one thing is their common judgment re- 

 garding Daniel. Its supposed late date — about 168 B.C. under 

 Antiochus Epiphanes — and its unhistorical character, have been 

 confidently asserted. But Assyriologists have a good deal to 

 say about this matter, and much that has been set down as 

 fable turns out to be fact. 



The presence of certain Greek words in this book were held 

 to make it impossible for it to have been written until " after 

 the dissemination of Greek influences in Asia through the con- 

 quests of Alexander the Great." The supposed Greek words 

 never numbered more than eleven, and now, through the pro- 

 gress of the study of languages, the words that are actually 

 Greek have been reduced to the names of two, or at the most 

 three, instruments of music. It was held that it was impossible 

 for these instruments to have found their way into Babylon in 

 B.C. 600. But the widespread intercourse between East and 

 West before that time is now fully admitted, and Prof. Petrie, 

 speaking of the city of Tahpanhes in Egypt, with its Greek 

 colony, says that " probably many a kaithros, psanterin, and 

 sum phony ah, as they called the Greek musical instruments, had 

 been traded over to Jerusalem, and were well known before we 

 find them in Jewish literature."* Moreover, the seven-stringed 

 harp, invented by the Greek poet Terpander, is sculptured upon 

 a monument of Assui'banipal's. That monarch died in 625 b.c. 

 Thus we have certain knowledge that it reached the Babylonian 

 court within twenty-five years of its invention ! f 



The personality of Nebuchadnezzar has been famihar to us 

 from childhood, but the book of Daniel is the only literature 

 that gives it to us. There we see his regal spirit, his love of 

 display, his pride in his buildings; and the fact that, though an 

 idolator and a polytheist, yet he brings the sacred vessels into 



the house of his god," as though he were a monotheist. 



The character thus drawn is abundantly confirmed by the 

 monuments. He has one favourite god, Bel-Merodach, and his 

 inscriptions are mostly occupied with praises of this deity. 



Merodach, the great lord, has appointed me to the empire of 



* " Egypt and Israel," p. 88. 



t See Urquhart's " New Biblical Guide," Vol. VIII.. p. 249. He 

 quotes from Lenormant. 



