of importance. The erection of a golden image of the gigantic proportion of sixty cubits high in the open plain, Daniel 3, is “something very improbable,” only when, with Bleek, we think on a massive golden statue of such a size, and lose sight of the fact that the Hebrews called articles that were merely plated with gold, golden, as e.g., the altar, which was overlaid with gold, Exo 39:28; Exo 40:5, Exo 40:26, cf. Exo 37:25., and idol images, cf. Isa 40:19; Isa 41:7, etc. Of the seven years' madness of Nebuchadnezzar the narrative of Daniel 4 says nothing, but only of its duration for seven times (עדּנין, Dan 4:20, Dan 4:22, Dan 4:29), which the interpreters have explained as meaning years. But that the long continuance of the king's madness must have been accompanied with “very important changes and commotions,” can only be supposed if we allow that during this period no one held the reigns of government. And the absence of any mentioning of this illness of Nebuchadnezzar by the extra-biblical historians is, considering their very imperfect acquaintance with Nebuchadnezzar's reign, not at all strange, even though the intimations by Berosus and Abydenus of such an illness should not be interpreted of his madness. See on this under Daniel 4. Concerning such and such-like objections against the historical contents of this book, what Kran., p. 47, has very justly remarked regarding v. Lengerke's assertion, that the author lived “in the greatest ignorance regarding the leading events of his time,” or Hitzig's, that this book, is “very unhistorical,” may be here adopted, viz., “that they emanate from a criticism which is astonishingly consistent in looking at the surface of certain facts, and then pronouncing objection after objection, without showing the least disposition toward other than a wholly external, violent solution of the existing difficulties.”
All the opponents of the book of Daniel who have followed Porphyry[1] find a powerful evidence of its being composed not in the time of the exile, but in the time of the Maccabees, in the contents and nature of the prophecies found in it, particularly in this, as Bleek has expressed it, that “the special destination of the prediction extends to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes when that Syrian prince exercised tyranny against the Jewish people, and especially sought by every means to abolish the worship of Jehovah
- ↑ Whose opinion of the contents of the book is thus quoted by Jerome (Proaem. in Dan.): “Quidquid (autor libri Dan.)usque ad Antiochum dixerit, veram historiam continere; si quid autem ultra opinatus sit, quia futura necierit, esse mentitum.”
