the Jewish synagogue as well as of the Christian church to the genuineness of the book, or its composition by the prophet Daniel, rests on a solid foundation. In the whole of antiquity no one doubted its genuineness except the well-known enemy of Christianity, the Neo-Platonist Porphyry, who according to the statement of Jerome (in the preface to his Comment. in Daniel) wrote the twelfth book of his λόγοι κατὰ Χριστιανῶν against the book of Daniel, nolens eum ab ipso, cujus inscriptus nomine, esse compositum, sed a quodam qui temporibus Antiochi, qui appellatus est Epiphanes, fuerit in Judaea, et non tam Danielem ventura dixisse, quam illum narrasse praeterita. He was, however, opposed by Eusebius of Caesarea and other church Fathers. For the first time with the rise of deism, naturalism, and rationalism during the bygone century, there began, as a consequence of the rejection of a supernatural revelation from God, the assault against the genuineness of the book. To such an extent has this opposition prevailed, that at the present time all critics who reject miracles and supernatural prophecy hold its spuriousness as an undoubted principle of criticism. They regard the book as the composition of a Jew living in the time of the Maccabees, whose object was to cheer and animate his contemporaries in the war which was waged against them by Antiochus Epiphanes for the purpose of rooting up Judaism, by representing to them certain feigned miracles and prophecies of some old prophet announcing the victory of God's people over all their enemies.[1]
The arguments by which the opponents of the genuineness seek to justify scientifically their opinion are deduced partly from the position of the book in the canon, and other external circumstances, but principally from the contents of the book. Leaving out of view that which the most recent opponents have yielded up, the following things, adduced by Bleek and Stähelin (in their works mentioned in
- ↑ Cf. the historical survey of the controversy regarding the genuineness of the book in my Lehrb. d. Einleit. in d. A. Test. 134. To what is there mentioned add to the number of the opponents of the genuineness, Fr. Bleek, Einleitung in d. A. Test. p. 577ff., and his article on the “Messianic Prophecies in the Book of Daniel” in the Jahrb.f. deutsche Theologie, v. 1, p. 45ff., and J. J. Stähelin's Einleit. in die kanon. Bücher des A. Test. 1862, §73. To the number of the defenders of the genuineness of the book as there mentioned add, Dav. Zündel's krit. Untersuchungen ueber die Abfassungszeit des B. Daniel, 1861, Rud. Kranichfeld and Th. Kliefoth in their commentaries on the Book of Daniel (1868), and the Catholic theologian, Dr. Fr. Heinr. Reusch (professor in Bonn), in his Lehr. der Einleit. in d. A. Test. 1868, §43.
