216 



MISS A. M. HODGKIN ON 



Dr. Kyle hazards the suggestion that "it is not at all im- 

 possible that the Cyaxares of Xenophon, Gobryas of Nabonidus, 

 and ' Darius the Mede,' are one and the same person. He 

 would be a hardy critic indeed, who would dare to say that 

 ' Darius the Mede ' is impossible."* 



We do well to remember that Belshazzar was at one time 

 considered an impossibility, before the inscriptions confirmed 

 his mention in Daniel. 



Ezra gives us the decree of Cyrus permitting the Jews to 

 return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. The Annalistic 

 Tablet, discovered by Prof. Pinches, tells how Cyrus collected 

 and restored various peoples to their habitations, and returned 

 the gods, whom Nabonidus had brought to Babylon, in peace 

 to their own sanctuaries. These two accounts are in full agree- 

 ment. In the case of the Israelites, who had no idols, the 

 sacred vessels of the temple are restored. 



The cuneiform inscription at Persepolis identifies the 

 Ahasuerus of Esther with Xerxes ; and the book of Esther gives 

 us a picture of that monarch in his home which corresponds 

 exactly with his character in history in his life abroad. To have 

 pictured this unique personality on an entirely different field, 

 200 years after the event, as the critics suggest, and with every 

 line of the picture corresponding to the palace at Shushan, 

 which had meanwhile been destroyed, seems indeed beyond the 

 power of fiction. 



The French explorer, Dieulafoy, excavated the whole of this 

 palace, and every detail throws light upon the book of Esther, 

 and proves its historic accuracy. The scenes recorded fit the 

 palace at Shushan as they would fit no other known palace of 

 the ancient world, and the customs described fit no other court 

 than that of Perisia. 



The Empiee of Greece. 



The witness of the Grecian Empire to the Old Testament is a 

 negative one. 



We have already seen that the presence of two or three Greek 

 words in the book of Daniel does not prove it to have been 

 written after the conquests of Alexander the Great. But in- 

 versely, the absence of Greek words — except these two — and of 

 Greek thought and influence is a strong argument against the 

 book of Daniel having been written at a time when the eastern 

 world was saturated with Greek thought. 



With regard to the New Testament the evidence is positive. 

 The view that New Testament Greek was corrupt and ungram- 

 matical, and that the idioms were the result of over-literal 



* " The Deciding Voice of the Monuments," p. 289 



