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the last note), are asserted, which alone we wish to consider here, referring to the discussions on this question in my Lehrb. der Einleitung, 133.
Among the external grounds great stress is laid on the place the book holds in the Hebrew canon. That Daniel should here hold his place not among the Nebiyîm the prophetical writings, but among the Kethubîm [the Hagiographa] between the books of Esther and Ezra, can scarcely be explained otherwise than on the supposition that it was yet unknown at the time of the formation of the Nebiyîm, that is, in the age of Nehemiah, and consequently that it did not exist previously to that time. But this conclusion, even on the supposition that the Third Part of the canon, the collection called the Kethubîm, was for the first time formed some time after the conclusion of the Second Part, is not valid. On the contrary, Kranichfeld has not without good reason remarked, that since the prophets before the exile connected the beginning of the Messianic deliverance with the end of the exile, while on the other hand the book of Daniel predicts a period of oppression continuing long after the exile, therefore the period succeeding the exile might be offended with the contents of the book, and hence feel some hesitation to incorporate the book of one who was less distinctively a prophet in the collection of the prophetic books, and that the Maccabee time, under the influence of the persecution prophesied of in the book, first learned to estimate its prophetic worth and secured its reception into the canon. This objection is thus sufficiently disproved. But the supposition of a successive collection of the books of the canon and of its three Parts after the period in which the books themselves were written, is a hypothesis which has never been proved: cf. my Einleit. in d. A. T. §154ff. The place occupied by this book in the Hebrew canon perfectly corresponds with the place of Daniel in the theocracy. Daniel did not labour, as the rest of the prophets did whose writings form the class of the Nebiyîm, as a prophet among his people in the congregation of Israel, but he was a minister of state under the Chaldean and Medo-Persian world-rulers. Although, like David and Solomon, he possessed the gift of prophecy, and therefore was called προφήτης (lxx, Joseph., New Testament), yet he was not a נביא, i.e., a prophet in his official position and standing. Therefore his book in its contents and form is different from the writings of the Nebiyîm. His prophecies are not prophetic discourses addressed to Israel or the nations, but visions, in which the development of the world-