90 The Fundamentals by numerous arguments, mostly conjectural, all worthless and, in a recent publication, a few designedly delusive. The imaginary Jew is termed “pious” because lofty re- ligious ideas mark the book, and “learned” because he exhibits so intimate an acquaintance with the conditions and environ- ments of the Babylonian court four centuries before his date. But as no man, however learned, can write an extended his- tory out of his own imagination without some inaccuracies, the critics have searched diligently for mistakes. The chief of these supposed mistakes will be considered below. We meet a difficulty at the threshold of the critics hypothesis. Dan. 9 :26 predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the templè; a calamity so frightful to the Jewish mind that the Septuagint shrank from translating the Hebrew. What sort of. encouragement was this? The hypothesis limps at the threshold. Having Antiochus Epiphanes in chapter 8 the rationalistic critics try to force him into chapter 7. They find a little horn in chapter 7, and struggle to identify him with the very little horn” of chapter 8. There is no resemblance between them. The words translated “little horn” are different in the differ- ent chapters. The little horn of chapter 7 springs up as an eleventh horn among ten kings. He is diverse from other kings. He continues till the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven and the kingdom which shall never be destroyed is set up. Antiochus Epiphanes, the little horn of chapter 8, conies out of one of the four horns into which Alexander s kingdom resolved itself. He was not diverse from other kings, but was like scores of other bad monarchs, and he did not continue till the Son of Man. These divergencies render the attempted identification absurd, but an examination of the two sets of prophecies in their entirety shows this clearly. Chapters 2 and 7 are a pro- phecy of the world’s history to the end. Chapters 8 and 11 refer to a crisis in Jewish history, a crisis now long past.
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