DANIEL IN THE CRITICS DEN
Chapter 2
THE "HISTORICAL ERRORS"
OF DANIEL
"THE historical errors" of the
Book of Daniel are the first ground of the critic's attack. Of these he
enumerates the following :-
(I.) "There was no deportation in the third year of Jehoiakim."
(2.) "There was no King Belshazzar."
(3.) "There was no Darius the Mede."
(4) "It is not true that there were only two Babylonian kings - there were
five."
(5.) "Nor were there only four Persian kings-there were twelve."
(6.) Xerxes seems to be confounded with the last king of Persia.
(7.) And "All correct accounts of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes seem to
end about B.C. 164."
Such is the indictment under this head.
Two other points are included, but these have nothing to do with history;
first, that the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar are extraordinary - which may at once
be conceded; and secondly, that "the notion that a faithful Jew could
become president of the Chaldean magi is impossible "-a statement which
only exemplifies the thoughtless dogmatism of the writer, for, according to his
own scheme, it was a "holy and gifted Jew," brought up under the
severe ritual of post-exilic days, who assigned this position to Daniel. A like
remark applies to his criticism upon Dan. ii. 46 - with this addition, that
that criticism betokens either carelessness or malice on the part of the
critics, for the passage in no way justifies the assertion that the prophet
accepted either the worship or the sacrifice offered him.
So far as the other points are concerned, we may at once dismiss (4.), (5), and
(6), for the errors here ascribed to Daniel will be sought for in vain. They
are "read into" the book by the perverseness or ignorance of the
rationalists. And as for (7), where was the account of the reign of Antiochus
to end, if not in the year of his death! The statement is one of numerous
instances of slipshod carelessness in this extraordinary addition to our
theological literature. The Bible states that there was a deportation in the
reign of Jehoiakim the critic asserts there was none; and the Christian must
decide between them. (As
regards (5) and (6), the way "kisses and kicks" alternate in Dr.
Farrar's treatment of his mythical "Chasid" is amusing. At one moment
he is praised for his genius and erudition; the next he is denounced as an
ignoramus or a fool! Considering how inseparably the history of Judah had been
connected with the history of Persia, the suggestion that a cultured Jew of
Maccabean days could have made the gross blunder here attributed to him is
quite unworthy of notice.
And may I explain for the enlightenment of the critics that Dan. xi. 2 is a
prophecy relating to the prophecy which precedes it? It is a consecutive
prediction of events within the period of the seventy weeks. There were to be
"yet" (i.e., after the rebuilding of Jerusalem) "three kings in
Persia." These were Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes Mnemon, and Ochus ; the
brief and merely nominal reigns of Xerxes II., Sogdianus, and Arogus being ignored
- two of them, indeed, being omitted from the canon of Ptolemy. "The
fourth" (and last) king was Darius Codomanus, whose fabulous wealth
attracted the cupidity of the Greeks.)
Nothing can be clearer than the language of Chronicles ; and, even regarding
the book as a purely secular record, it is simply preposterous to reject
without a shadow of reason the chronicler's statement on a matter of such
immense interest and importance in the national history. But, it is objected,
Kings and Jeremiah are silent upon the subject. If this were true, which it is
not, it would be an additional reason for turning to Chronicles to supply the
omission. But Kings gives clear corrobcration of Chronicles. Speaking of
Jehoiakim, it says: "In his days Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, came up,
and Jehoiakim became his servant three years; then he turned and rebelled
against him." Daniels tells us this was in his third year, and that
Jerusalem was besieged upon the occasion. This difficulty again springs from
the habit of "reading into" Scripture more than it says. There is not
a word about a taking by storm. The king was a mere puppet, and presumably he
made his submission as soon as the city was invested. Nebuchadnezzar took him
prisoner, but afterwards relented, and left him in Jerusalem as his vassal, a
position he had till then held under the King of Egypt.
But Dr. Farrar's statements here are worthy of fuller notice, so thoroughly
typical are they of his style and methods. For three years Jehoiakim was
Nebuchadnezzar's vassal. This is admitted, and Scripture accounts for it by
recording a Babylonian invasion in his third year. But, says the critic :-
"It was not till the following year, when Nebuchadrezzar, acting as his
father's general, had defeated Egypt at the battle of Carchemish, that any
siege of Jerusalem would have been possible. Nor did Nebuchadrezzar advance
against the Holy City even after the battle of Carchemish, but dashed home
across the desert to secure the crown of Babylon on hearing the news of his
father's death."
The idea of dashing across the desert from Carchemish to Babylon is worthy of a
board-school essay! The critic is here adopting the record of the Babylonian
historian Berosus, in complete unconsciousness of the significance of his
testimony. We learn from Berosus that it was as Prince-royal of Babylon, at the
head of his father's army, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Palestine. And, after
recording how in the course of that expedition Nebuchadnezzar heard of his
father's death, the historian goes on to relate that he "committed the
captives he had taken from the Jews" to the charge of others, "while
he went in haste over the desert to Babylon." Could corroboration of
Scripture be more complete and emphatic? The fact that he had Jewish captives
is evidence that he had invaded Judea. Proof of it is afforded by the further
fact that the desert lay between him and Babylon. Carchemish was in the far
north by the Euphrates, and the road thence to the Chaldean capital lay clear
of the desert altogether. Moreover, the battle of Carchemish was fought in
Jehoiakim's fourth year, and therefore after Nebuchadnezzar's accession,
whereas the invasion of Judea was during Nabopolassar's lifetime, and therefore
in Jehoiakim's third year, precisely as the Book of Daniel avers.
It only remains to add that Scripture nowhere speaks of a general
"deportation" in the third year of Jehoiakim. Here, as elsewhere, the
critic attributes his own errors to the Bible, and then proceeds to refute
them. The narrative is explicit that on this occasion Nebuchadnezzar returned
with no captives save a few cadets of the royal house and of the noble
families. But Dr. Farrar writes: "Among the captives were certain of the
king's seed and of the princes." Nor is this all: he goes on to say,
"They are called 'children,' and the word, together with the context,
seems to imply that they were boys of the age of from twelve to fourteen."
What Daniel says is that these, the only captives, were "skilful in all
wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science." What
prodigies those Jewish boys must have been! The word translated
"children" in the A.V. is more correctly rendered "youths"
in the R.V. Its scope may be inferred from the use of it in i Kings xii. 8,
which tells us that Rehoboam "forsook the counsel of the old men, and took
counsel with the young men that were grown up with him." This last point
is material mainly as showing the animus of the critic.'
( The question of course arises how this battle should have been fought
after the successful campaign of the preceding year. There are reasonable
explanations of this, but I offer none. Scripture has suffered grievously from
the eagerness of its defenders to put forward hypotheses to explain seeming
difficulties.)
But the Scripture speaks of King Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of Jehoiakim,
whereas it was not till his fourth year that Nabopolassar died. No doubt. And a
writer of Maccabean days, with the history of Berosus before him, would
probably have noticed the point. But the so-called in. accuracy is precisely
one of the incidental proofs that the Book of Daniel was the work of a
contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar. The historian of the future will never assert
that Queen Victoria lived at one time in Kensington Palace, though the statement
will be found in the newspapers which recorded the unveiling of her statue in
Kensington Gardens.
(The only reason for representing Daniel as a mere boy of twelve or fourteen
is that thereby discredit is cast upon the statement that three years later he
was placed at the head of "the wise men" of Babylon. It is with a
real sense of distress and pain that I find myself compelled to use such
language. But it would need a volume to expose the errors, misstatements, and
perversions of which the above are typical instances. They occur in every
chapter of Dr. Farrar's book.)
The references to Jeremiah raise the question whether the book records the
utterances of an inspired prophet, or whether, as Dr. Farrar's criticisms
assume, the author of the book wrote merely as a religious teacher. This
question, however, is too large to treat of here; and the discussion of it is
wholly unnecessary, for the careful student will find in Jeremiah the clearest
proof that Scripture is right and the critics wrong. The objection depends on
confounding the seventy years of the "Servitude to Babylon" with the
seventy years of "the Desolations of Jerusalem "- another of the
numerous blunders which discredit the work under review.' "The
Captivity," which is confounded with both, was not an era of seventy years
at all.
(The careful reader of Dr. Farrar's book will not fail to see that his
references to the Scriptures generally imply that the prophecies came by the
will of the prophets; whereas Holy Scripture declares that "No prophecy ever
came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 20, 21).)
The prophecy of the twenty-fifth chapter of Jeremiah was a warning addressed to
the people who remained in the land after the servitude had begun, that if they
continued impenitent and rebellious, God would bring upon them a further
judgment - the terrible scourge of "the Desolations." The prophecy of
the twenty-ninth chapter was a message of hope to the Jews of the Captivity.
And what was that message? That "after seventy years be accomplished for
Babylon, I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you
to return to this place." And that promise was faithfully fulfilled. The
Servitude began in the third year of Jehoiakim, B.C. 606.1 It ended in B.C.
536, when Cyrus issued his decree for the return of the exiles. By the test of
chronology, therefore - the severest test which can be applied to historical
statements - the absolute accuracy of these Scriptures is established.
(These "seventy years" dated, not from their deportation to
Babylonia as captives, but from their subjection to the suzerainty of Babylon.
That is, the year beginning with Nisan, B.C. 6o6, and ending with Adar, B.C.
6o5.)
Owing to the importance of this Jehoiakim "error" I have added an
excursus upon the subject. See Appendix I.
See Chapter 3