The Pe r sona l i t y of D a n i e l 1 and t h e F a l l o f Baby l on 1 By A ndrew C raig R obinson , M.A.
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"Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God .”—Ezekiel 14:14. "Behold thou are wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee ."— Ezekiel 28:3. I. The Personality of Daniel.
1st Maccabees clearly shows, that whilst the age was indeed an age with out a prophet it was nevertheless an age which was longing for a prophet to appear. So also we see that in the time of our Lord—when the same le galism was perhaps even still more rampant—the people were perfectly ready to receive a prophet.— They “all” held “John” the Baptist “as a prophet” (Matt. 21:26) Matthew tells us that Herod would have put John to death but that he feared “the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet” (14 :5 ); and Luke re ports the Pharisees as deliberating among themselves as to how they should answer an embarrassing ques tion of our Lord, “But and if we say, of men;.all the people will stone us, for they be persuaded that John was a prophet” (Luke 20:6). There was no reason in the world why, if there were a prophet in the days of the Mac cabees—as the Critics allege there was —“the brilliant visionary” (as Dr. Charles calls him) should not come forward openly and speak living words to encourage the people;—the voice of a real living prophet would do more to put courage into the hearts of the peo ple than twenty Daniels in masquerade. The assumed writer of the Book of Daniel is supposed to have written his work in 167-165 B.C., whilst the revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes was go-
HE theory of Modern Criticism in regard to the authorship of the book of Daniel is that it is the
lQ^= = g ^lil work of a writer who lived in the days of the Maccabees— 167-165 B. C. and wrote under the pseudonym “Daniel.” It is needless to remark that of any such brilliant genius living in the dull age of the Maccabees as the writer of the sublime Book of Daniel would have been—there is not a vestige of record or tradition. The supposed writer is a mere creature of the Critics’ imagination—of his personality there is not in Jewish literature a single trace. It may well be asked—Why should such a prophet if he existed write un der a pseudonym ? The reason as given by a recent commentator on Daniel—Dr. Charles, Fellow of Mer ton,f—is, that in the days of the Mac cabees the tyranny of legalism was so great that there was no room for a prophet—a prophet would not be list ened to ( Daniel, p. xii). But this is really an utter misrepresentation of the state of feeling in the Maccabaean Age. On the contrary the Book of 1. L ecture delivered before th e University of Dublin in th e Chapel of T rin ity Col lege, by Rev. Andrew C raig Robinson, M. A., D onnellan L ec tu re r (fu rn ish ed by th e lec tu re r). +Now Canon of W estm inster.
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