age, would he have written thus respecting events so interesting and important? In like manner Daniel (x. 1, seq.) tells us, that in the third year of Cyrus, Daniel mourned and fasted three weeks. But not a word is said to explain the occasion of this peculiar and extraordinary humiliation. If we turn now to Ezra iv. 1-5, we shall find an account of a combination among the enemies of the Jews to hinder the building of the city walls, which was successful, and which took place in the third year of Cyrus' reign, i. e. the same year with Daniel's mourning. There can scarcely be a doubt that this was the occasion of that mourning; for certainly it was no ritual, legal, or ordinary fast. The manner now in which ch. x. is written plainly imports that the writer feels no need of giving explanations. He takes it for granted that his readers will at once perceive the whole extent of the matter. But how, in the Maccabean age, could a writer suppose this knowledge within the grasp of his readers?

"In Dan. ii., the dream is interpreted as indicating the destruction of the Babylonish empire by the MedoPersians. Abydenus, in his singular account of Nebuchadnezzar's last hours, represents this king as rapt into a kind of prophetic ecstasy, and in this state as declaring his fearful anticipations of the MedoPersian conquest. How came such a coincidence?

6

"In Dan. iv. 30, Nebuchadnezzar is introduced as saying, Is not this great Babylon which I have built? Recent critics allege this to be a mistake. Ctesias,' they tell us, 'attributes the building of Babylon to Semiramis (Bähr Ctes., p. 397, seq.), and Herodotus (i. 181, seq.) ascribes it to Semiramis and Nitocris.'

My answer is, that Ctesias follows the Assyrian tradition, and Herodotus the Persian. But Berosus and Abydenus give us the Babylonian account; which is, that Nebuchadnezzar added much to the old town, built a magnificent royal palace, surrounded the city with new walls, and adorned it with a vast number of buildings. Well and truly might he say that he had built it, meaning (as he plainly did) its magnificent structures. It was not any falsehood in his declaration which was visited with speedy chastisement, but the pride and vain-glory of his boasting gave offence to heaven. But how came a writer of the Maccabaan period to know of all this matter? No Greek writer has told anything about Nebuchadnezzar or his doings. To Berosus and Abydenus, a writer of the Maccabæan age could hardly have had access. Herodotus and Ctesias told another and different story. Whence, then, did he get his knowledge of the part which Nebuchadnezzar had acted in the building of the city? And yet the account of it in Daniel accords entirely with both Berosus and Abydenus. Even the account of Nebuchadnezzar's madness is virtually adverted to in these writers.

"In Dan. v. 10-12 is introduced a personage styled the queen, not because she was Belshazzar's wife, for the latter was already in the banquetingroom (v. 3, 23), but probably because she was a queenmother. Not improbably this was the Nitocris of Herodotus; and Berosus, Diod. Sic. (ii. 10), and Alex. Polyhist. (in Chron. Armen.), all say that Nitocris was a wife of Nebuchadnezzar. If so, she might have had much to do with ornamenting the city both before and after Nebuchadnezzar's death; and this will

account for the great deference paid to her by Belshazzar, as related in ch. v. 10-12. It is one of those accidental circumstances which speaks much for the accordance of Daniel with the narrations of history. It is, moreover, a circumstance about which a writer of the Maccabean age cannot well be supposed to have known anything.

"And since we are now examining ch. v., it may be proper to note another circumstance. We have seen, that at Babylon the wives and concubines of the king were, without any scruple, present at the feast. But in Esth. i. we have an account of the positive refusal of queen Vashti to enter the guest-chamber of Ahasuerus. In other words, this was, and is, against the general custom of the East. How came a writer of the Maccabæan period to know this distinction between the customs of Babylon and of Persia? The author of the Septuagint Version, a contemporary of this period, knows so little of such a matter that he even leaves out the passage respecting the presence of women at the feast. Why? Plainly because he thought this matter would be deemed incredible by his readers. In Xen. Cyrop. (v. 2, 28) is an account of a feast of Belshazzar, where his concubines are represented as being present. Not only so, but we have elsewhere, in Greek and Roman writers, abundant testimony to usages of this kind, in their accounts of the Babylonish excesses. But how comes it about, that the forger of the book of Daniel, whose familiarity with those writings is not credible, should know so much more of Babylonish customs than the Septuagint translator?

"Of the manner in which Babylon was taken, and

Belshazzar slain, Daniel has not given us any minute particulars. But he has told us that the Medes and Persians acquired the dominion of Babylon (v. 28), and that Darius the Mede succeeded Belshazzar. The manner in which he announces the slaying of Belshazzar (v. 30), shows that the event was altogether sudden and unexpected. Now Herodotus (I. 190) and Xenophon (Cyrop. VII.) have told us, that Cyrus diverted the waters of the Euphrates, and marched in its channel into the heart of Babylon, and took the city in a single night. They tell us that the Babylonians were in the midst of feast-rioting that night, and were unprepared to meet the enemy, who were not expected in the city. How entirely all this harmonizes with Daniel is quite plain. Gesenius himself acknowledges that this is sehr auffallend, i. e. very striking. He has even acknowledged, in a moment of more than usual candour and concession, that Isa. xliv. 27, has a definite reference to the stratagem of Cyrus in taking the city. In connection with a prediction concerning Cyrus, Jehovah is here represented as saying to the deep, 'Be dry; yea, I will dry up thy rivers.' So in Jer. 1. 38, A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up;' and again, li. 36, 'I will dry up her sea [river], and make her springs dry.' If the book of Daniel is to be cast out as a late production, and as spurious, because it seems to predict the sudden capture of Babylon in one night, by the Medes and Persians, what is to be done with these passages of Isaiah and Jeremiah ? Even the Neologists, although they maintain a later composition in respect to those parts of the prophets which have just been cited, still do not venture to place that composition post eventum.

If not, then there is prediction; and this, too, of a strange event, and one so minute and specific, that guessing is out of the question. If, then, Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted, why might not a Daniel also predict?

"Another circumstance there is also in which all three of these prophets are agreed. According to Dan. v., Babylon was feasting and carousing on the night of its capture. In Isa. xxi. 5, we have the like: 'Prepare the table. . . . . Eat, drink; arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield, i. e. rise up from your feasttable, and make ready for assault. So Jer. li. 39, ‘I will prepare their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord.'

"If now a writer of the Maccabean period had undertaken to write the story of the capture of Babylon, is there any probability that he would have hit upon all these circumstances, so peculiar and so concordant? Conversant with the native Greek historians we cannot well suppose him to have been; for Greek literature was regarded as reproachful by the Jews of that period, and even down to the time of Josephus, who speaks strongly on this subject.

"Daniel (v. 30) relates the violent death of Belshazzar when the city was taken. In this particular he is vouched for by Xenophon (Cyrop. VII. v. 24, 30). So do Isa. xiv. 18-20; xxi. 2—9. Jer. 1. 29-35; li. 57, declare the same thing. But here Berosus and Abydenus dissent, both of them representing the Babylonish king as surrendering, and as being treated humanely by Cyrus. How comes it, if the forger of the book of Daniel wrote about B.c. 160,