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the prophetic statements are made, corresponds with the age of the Maccabees. As regards the character of the age, the interchange of the Hebrew and the Chaldee, in the first place, agrees fully with the time of the exile, in which the Chaldee language gradually obtained the ascendency over the Hebrew mother-tongue of the exiles, but not with the time of the Maccabees, in which the Hebrew had long ago ceased to be the language used by the people.[1]
In the second place, the Hebrew diction of Daniel harmonizes peculiarly with the language used by writers of the period of the exile, particularly by Ezekiel;[2] and the Chaldean idiom of this book agrees in not a few characteristic points with the Chaldee of the book of Ezra and Jer 10:11, wherein these Chaldean portions are markedly distinguished from the Chaldean language of the oldest Targums, which date from the middle of the first century b.c.[3]

  1. The use of the Chaldee along with the Hebrew in this book points, as Kran., p. 52, justly remarks, “to a conjuncture in which, as in the Hebrew book of Ezra with its inwoven pieces of Chaldee, the general acquaintance of the people with the Aramaic is supposed to be self-evident, but at the same time the language of the fathers was used by the exiles of Babylon and their children as the language of conversation.” Rosenm., therefore, knows no other mode of explaining the use of both languages in this book than by the assertion that the pseudo-author did this nulla alia de causa, quam ut lectoribus persuaderet, compositum esse librum a vetere illo propheta, cui utriusque linguae usum aeque facilem esse oportuit. The supposition that even in the second century before Christ a great proportion of the people understood the Hebrew, modern critics set themselves to establish by a reference to the disputed book of Daniel and certain pretended Maccabean psalms.
  2. Compare the use of words such as בּזּה for בּז, Dan 11:24, Dan 11:33 (2Ch 14:13; Ezr 9:7; Neh. 3:36; Est 9:10); היך for איך, Dan 10:17 and 1Ch 23:12; כּתב for ספר, Dan 10:21 (Ezr 4:7-8; 1Ch 28:19; Neh 7:64. Est 3:14); מדּע, Dan 1:4, Dan 1:17 (2Ch 1:10; Ecc 10:20); מרעיד, Dan 10:11 and Ezr 10:9; עתּים for עתּות, Dan 9:25; Dan 11:6, Dan 11:13, Dan 11:14 (Chron., Ezra, Neh., Ezekiel, and only once in Isa; Isa 33:6); הצּבי used of the land of Israel, Dan 8:9, cf. Dan 11:16, Dan 11:41, also Eze 20:6, Eze 20:15, and Jer 3:10; זהר, brightness, Dan 12:3, Eze 8:2; חיּב, to make guilty, Dan 1:10, and חוב, Eze 18:7; קלל נהשׁת, Dan 10:6, and Eze 1:7; לבוּשׁ  הבּדּים, Dan 12:6-7, and Eze 9:3, Eze 9:11; Eze 10:2, Eze 10:6-7, etc.
  3. See the collection of Hebraisms in the Chaldean portions of Daniel and of the book of Ezra in Hengstenberg's Beitrage, i. p. 303, and in my Lehrb. d. Einl. §133, 4. It may be further remarked, that both books have a peculiar mode of formation of the 3rd pers. imperf. of הוא: להוא, Dan 2:20,Dan 2:28-29, Dan 2:45 (להוה, Dan 4:22), Ezr 4:13; Ezr 7:26, להון, Dan 2:43; Dan 6:2-3, and Ezr 7:25, and להוין, Dan 5:17, for יהוא, יהון, and יהוין, which forms are not found in the biblical Chaldee, while the forms with l are first used in the Talmud in the use of the imperative, optative, and subjunctive moods (cf. S. D. Luzzatto, Elementi grammaticali del Caldeo biblico e del dialetto talmudico babilonese, Padova 1865, p. 80-the first attempt to present the grammatical peculiarities of the biblical Chaldee in contradistinction to the Babylonico-talmudic dialect), and להוא is only once found in the Targ. Jon., Exo 22:24, and perhaps also in the Jerusalem Targum, Exo 10:28. The importance of this linguistic phenomenon in determining the question of the date of the origin of both books has been already recognised by J. D. Michaelis (Gram. Chal. p. 25), who has remarked concerning it: “ex his similibusque Danielis et Ezrae hebraismis, qui his libris peculiares sunt, intelliges, utrumque librum eo tempore scriptum fuisse, quo recens adhuc vernacula sua admiscentibus Hebraeis lingua Chaldaica; non seriore tempore confictum. In Targumim enim, antiquissimis etiam, plerumque frustra hos hebraismos quaesieris, in Daniele et Ezra ubique obvios.”