21
THE KING’S BUSINESS
lon which have come down from the classical writers of antiquity, and con tradict also the words in Daniel 5., which seem to imply the same view of the hstory, viz.;—“In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldseans slain.” The general account of the fall of Babylon which has come down to us from antiquity may be put in this way: —The classical authorities say that the Babylonians, after one encounter with the troops of Cyrus in which they were worsted, retired within the walls of Babylon, which seemed impregnable, and within which there had been stored up provisions for many years. Cyrus then invested Babylon. He commanded his soldiers to dig deep trenches surrounding the city, as if he were throwing up lines of circumval- lation, but contrived that these trenches should be dug in such a way that at a moment’s notice the waters of the river Euphrates could be turned into them and the depth of the river so much reduced in that part where it flowed through the city that his sol diers should be able to advance up the bed of the river, and enter the city through the unguarded gates. The Babylonians, secure within the walls of Babylon, “took no heed,” Herodotus says, “of the siege,” whilst Xenophon says “they laughed at the Persians and turned them into ridicule,” so the work of digging the trenches went on with out any attempt on the part of the be sieged to interfere with it, and the siege in consequence was carried On “with out fighting.” This bloodless character of the siege as described by the class ical writers—is an important point to note. And Herodotus says that when Cyrus had set these things in order he himself went away with the inefficient part of his army, and employed it in diverting the river at another point into a marshy lake. This absence of
superhuman wisdom in revealing se crets that Ezekiel wrote—and there fore it was not unnatural that the prophet should place him, though a youth, on such a pinnacle of pre-emi nence. Those who believe in the in spiration of the prophets of old would hold of course that the recognition of the powers of Daniel by the prophet Ezekiel was inspired by the same God from whom those powers had come. But to what Daniel, it may be asked, would Critics suggest that Ezekiel was referring—since they set the Daniel of Captivity aside? Prof. Davidson suggests,—“some ancient patriarch, re nowned in the traditions of Israel for his piety and wisdom.” You see how instantly a phantom patriarch—a deus ex machina —is called into existence— and traditions about him are postu lated too. But neither of any such pa triarch or of any such traditions is there a trace to be found. The late Dean Farrar in spite of the fact that his book on Daniel is an impassioned attack on the “traditional” view, no tices with scorn that some critics had referred Ezekiel’s allusion “to an im aginary Daniel who had lived at the court of Nineveh during the Assyrian exile; or to some mythical hero who belonged to ancient days—perhaps like Melchizedek, a contemporary of the ruin of the cities'of the Plain.” Ewald tries to urge something for the former conjecture, “yet,” says Earrar, “neither for it nor for the latter, is there any tittle of real evidence.” Such was the verdict of one who was an ardent friend of the Criticism. II. The Classical Account of the Fall of Babylon. A very usual objection which is brought against the Book of Daniel in the present day is, that the cuneiform Inscriptions of the age of Cyrus, which have come to light in recent times, con tradict the accounts of the fall of Baby
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs