“Historical Errors.” 

        Except incidentally we shall not refer to the allegedly un-historical statements in the book. Those who are interested are referred to the works mentioned in the bibliography. These arguments are not nearly so important as often imag­ined, for the modern scholar has seriously weakened the force of his own attack.

        Though scholars differ in details, virtually all who reject the traditional authorship are agreed that the book in its present form was produced about 168 B.C (For the usual modern view see HDB, article Daniel, Book of; Driver, LOT, ch. XI. Against see ISBE, article Daniel, Book of; Young, ch. XXIV; Lattey: The Book of Daniel and the Bibliography.). The writer attributed his visions to Daniel to get his message, in whose truth he pro­foundly believed, more readily accepted. Charles puts it thus:

“How then from the third century B.C. onward was the man to act who felt himself charged with a real message of God to his day and generation? The tyranny of the Law and the petrified orthodoxies of his time, compelled him to resort to pseudonymity. And if these grounds had in themselves been insufficient for the adoption of pseudonymity, there was the further ground — the formation of the Canon. When once the prophetic Canon was closed, no book of a prophetic character could gain canonization as such, nor could it gain a place among the sacred writings at all unless its date was be­lieved to be as early as Ezra” (Daniel (The Century Bible), p. xvi.).

It should be clear that such a pious imposture could never have succeeded, if the new book had contradicted the already existing Scripture. Now, with only one major exception, the main “historical errors” are contradictions of Scripture as well. Thus the modern view virtually answers its own diffi­culties. Were the book a second-century production, we may guarantee that the writer must have had fully adequate grounds for his apparent contradictions of other Scriptures. The bigger the problem, e.g. the identity of Darius the Mede, the surer we may be that there is an adequate explanation. But the same argument holds if the book is dated earlier. Fiction that hopes to be accepted as history must be meti­culous in its accuracy; how much more if it wishes to be accepted as inspired as well.

        There is a tendency to underrate the critical acumen of the period. The Talmud shows us that the early rabbis were very conscious of discrepancies, real or apparent, in the Scriptures. We may not agree with the means by which they explained them away, but that does not diminish the clear-sightedness by which they saw them.

        In all fairness it must be added that this only meets the charge of specific error, not that of giving a generally false picture of the times described. This is a charge more easily made than proved. Since, however, there is an increasing tendency to attribute the narrative part of Daniel to the fifth century B.C., it should be clear that the charge is not a serious one.