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Daniel.
The Preface is interesting as showing the difficulties
caused by the incorporation of apocryphal matter into this book, the
fact that Theodotion’s version, not the LXX., was read in the
Churches, and that the book was reckoned by the Jews not among the
prophets but among the Hagiographa. It was addressed to Paula and
Eustochium about a.d. 392.
The Septuagint version of Daniel the prophet is not read
by the Churches of our Lord and Saviour. They use Theodotion’s
version, but how this came to pass I cannot tell. Whether it be that
the language is Chaldee, which differs in certain peculiarities from
our speech, and the Seventy were unwilling to follow those deviations
in a translation; or that the book was published in the name of the
Seventy, by some one or other not familiar with Chaldee, or if there be
some other reason, I know not; this one thing I can affirm—that
it differs widely from the original, and is rightly rejected. For we
must bear in mind that Daniel and
Ezra, the former especially, were written in Hebrew letters, but in the
Chaldee language, as was5406
one section of
Jeremiah; and, further, that Job has much affinity with Arabic. As for
myself, when, in lily youth, after reading the flowery rhetoric of
Quintilian and Tully, I entered on the vigorous study of this language,
the expenditure of much time and energy barely enabled me to utter the
puffing and hissing words; I seemed to be walking in a sort of
underground chamber with a few scattered rays of light shining down
upon me; and when at last I met with Daniel, such a sense of weariness
came over me that, in a fit of despair, I could have counted all my
former toil as useless. But there was a certain Hebrew who encouraged
me, and was for ever quoting for my benefit the saying that
“Persistent labour conquers all things”; and so, conscious
that among Hebrews I was only a smatterer, I once more began to study
Chaldee. And, to confess the truth, to this day I can read and
understand Chaldee better than I can pronounce it. I say this to show
you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew
contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three
youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon; because, however, they
are to be found everywhere, we have formed them into an appendix,
prefixing to them an obelus, and thus making an end of them, so as not
to seem to the uninformed to have cut off a large portion of the
volume. I heard a certain Jewish teacher, when mocking at the history
of Susanna, and saying that it was the fiction of some Greek or other,
raise the same objection which Africanus brought against
Origen—that these etymologies of5407
| 5407 To split. The
word has no sort of etymological connection with σχῖνος. Susanna 54, 55, 58, 59. When the first elder says the crime was
committed under a mastich tree (schinos), Daniel answers, “God
shall cut thee in two” (schisei). | σχίσαι from5408
σχίνος, and5409
πρίσαι from5410
πρίνος, are to be traced to
the Greek. To make the point clear to Latin readers: It is as if he
were to say, playing upon the word ilex, illico pereas;
or upon lentiscus, may the angel make a lentil of you, or
may you perish nan lente, or may you lentus (that is
pliant or compliant) be led to death, or anything else suiting the name
of the tree. Then he would captiously maintain that the three youths in
the furnace of raging fire had leisure enough to amuse themselves with
making poetry, and to summon all the elements in turn to praise God. Or
what was there miraculous, he would say, or what indication of divine
inspiration, in the slaying of the dragon with a lump of pitch, or in
frustrating the schemes of the priests of Bel? Such deeds were more the
results of an able man’s forethought than of a prophetic spirit.
But when he came to5411
| 5411 In the LXX. the
story of Bel and the Dragon bears a special heading as “part of
the prophecy of Habakkuk.”—Westcott. The angel is said to
have carried Habakkuk with a dish of food in his hand for Daniel from
Judæa to Babylon. | Habakkuk and
read that he was carried from Judæa into Chaldæa to bring a
dish of food to Daniel, he asked where we found an instance in the
whole of the Old Testament of any saint with an ordinary body flying
through the air, and in a quarter of an hour traversing vast tracts of
country. And when one of us who was rather too ready to speak adduced
the instance of Ezekiel, and said that he was transported from
Chaldæa into Judæa, he derided the man and proved from the
book itself that Ezekiel, in spirit, saw himself carried over. And he
argued that even our own Apostle, being an accomplished man and one who
had been taught the law by Hebrews, had not dared to affirm that he was
bodily rapt away, but had said:5412
“Whether in the body, or out of
the body, I know not; God knoweth.” By these and similar
arguments he used to refute the apocryphal fables in the Church’s
book. Leaving this for the reader to pronounce upon as he may think
fit, I give warning that Daniel in Hebrew is not found among the
prophets, but amongst the writers of the Hagiographa; for all Scripture
is by them divided into three parts: the law, the Prophets, and the
Hagiographa, which have respectively five, eight, and eleven books, a
point which we cannot now discuss. But as to the objections which5413
Porphyry raises against this prophet,
or rather brings against the book,5414
Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris
may be cited as witnesses, for they replied to his folly in many
thousand lines of writing, whether with satisfaction to the curious
reader I know not. Therefore, I beseech you, Paula and Eustochium, to
pour out your supplications for me to the Lord, that so long as I am in
this poor body, I may write something pleasing to you, useful to the
Church, worthy of posterity. As for my contemporaries, I am indifferent
to their opinions, for they pass from side to side as they are moved by
love or hatred.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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