Page 18 - Daniel

Baruch; Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs; Apocalypse of Adam, Elijah, and
Zephaniah; and Testament of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Because higher criticism is of ten opposed to supernatural revelation
in symbolic form, it tends to deprecate apocalyptic books in the Bible
and equate them with the sometimes incoherent and extreme symbolism
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of the pseudepigrapha. But there is really no justification for this. Even
a casual reader can detect the difference in quality between scriptural

and non-scriptural apocalyptic works. Frequently, the apocalypses of
scriptural writings are attended by divine interpretation that provides
the key to understanding the revelation intended. The fact that a book is
apocalyptic does not necessarily mean that its revelation is obscure or
uncertain, and conservative scholarship has recognized the legitimacy of
apocalyptic revelation as a genuine means of divine communication. If
close attention is given to the contextual interpretive framework,

apocalyptic books can yield solid results to the patient exegete.

LANGUAGES

An unusual feature of the book of Daniel is the fact that the central
portion (2:4–7:28) is written in biblical Aramaic rather than Hebrew. A

similar use of Aramaic is found in Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Jeremiah
10:11; and the two words of the compound name Jegar-sahadutha in
Genesis 31:47. The use of Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of
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Daniel’s period, was related to the fact that the material concerned the
Gentile world rather than Israel directly. The fact that there are similar

portions elsewhere in the Bible should make clear that there is nothing
unusual or questionable about the Aramaic section in Daniel. As pointed
out by Brownlee, the shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic and back again in
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Daniel are found in the scrolls of Daniel at Qumran, supporting the
legitimacy of this feature of the Masoretic text commonly used in English
translations.

The argument that the Aramaic of Daniel was western and not used in
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Babylon, as popularized by S. R. Driver, has now been clearly shown to
be erroneous by later archeological evidence. As Martin observes,

relative to Driver’s contention, “When he [Driver] wrote, the only
material available was too late to be relevant. Subsequently, R. D.