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do not abundantly cover themselves with the historical facts in which they found their fulfilment, and are fundamentally different from the later so-called Apocalypse of Judaism in the Jewish Sibyl, the book of Enoch and the book of Ezra (= Esdras), which are appended to the book of Daniel, is certainly well founded.
What Daniel prophesied regarding the kings of Persian who succeeded Cyrus, regarding the kingdom of Javan and its division after the death of the first king into four kingdoms, etc., could not be announced by him by virtue of an independent development of prophetic thoughts, but only by virtue of direct divine revelation; but this revelation is at the same time not immediate prediction, but is an addition to the earlier prophecies of further and more special unveilings of the future, in which the point of connection for the reference of the third world-kingdom to Javan was already given in the prophecy of Balaam, Num 24:24, cf. Joe 3:6 (4:6). The historical destination of the world-kingdoms does not extend to the kingdom of Javan and the ships of Chittim (Dan 11:30), pointing back to Num 24:24, which set bounds to the thirst for conquest of the daring king who arose up out of the third world-kingdom. The fourth world-kingdom, however distinctly it is described according to its nature and general course, lies on the farther side of the historical horizon of this prophet, although in the age of the Maccabees the growth of the Roman power, striving after the mastery of the world, was already so well known that the Alexandrine translators, on the ground of historical facts, interpreted the coming of the ships of Chittim by ἣξουσι  ̔Ρωμαῖοι. The absence of every trace of the historical reference of the fourth world-kingdom, furnishes an argument worthy of notice in favour of the origin of this book of Daniel during the time of the exile. For at the time of the Babylonian exile Rome lay altogether out of the circle of vision opened up to the prophets of Scripture, since it had as yet come into no relation at all to the then dominant nations which were exercising an influence on the fate of the kingdom of God. Altogether different was the state of matters in the age of the Maccabees, for they sent messengers with letters to Rome, proposing to enter into a league with the Romans: cf. 1 Macc. 8, 12.
The contents of Daniel 9 accord with the age of the Maccabees still less than do the visions of the world-kingdoms. Three and a half centuries after the accomplishment of Jeremiah's prophecy of the desolation of Judah, after Jerusalem and the temple had been