dreams, and by means of this gift brought help and deliverance to their people:[1] in all details, however, Daniel is so different from Joseph, that the delineation of his portrait as found in this book cannot be regarded as a copy of the history of Joseph. Still less can we think of the narratives of Daniel as poetical compositions; for the characters of Nebuchadnezzar and of Darius the Mede are essentially different from the prevailing views of Judaism concerning the heathen. The relation of both of these genuine heathen kings to the revelations of God shows a receptivity for the control of the living God in the lot of men, as is predicated before and after the exile in no Jewish writing of a single heathen. Such representations of character cannot be invented; they are drawn according to life, and can only be understood if the wonders of divine omnipotence and grace which the book of Daniel relates truly happened.
But as in the historical narrations, so also in the visions of Daniel, there is wanting every trace of any tendency pointing to Antiochus Epiphanes. This tendency is derived only from the view already (p. 513) shown to be incorrect, that all the prophecies of Daniel extend only down to this king, and that with his death the destruction of the God-opposing world-power and the setting up of the Messianic kingdom of God is to be expected. But if the opponents of the genuineness of this book derive support for their views from the relation of the prophecies of Daniel to the pseudepigraphic products of the Jewish Apocalyptics, so also, on the other hand, Zündel (Krit. Unter. p. 134ff.) has so conclusively proved the decided difference between the prophecies of Daniel and the Sibylline Oracles, which, according to Bleek, Lücke, and others, must have flowed from one source and are homogeneous, that we may limit ourselves to a brief condensed exhibition of the main results of this proof (p. 165ff.).
First, the subject of the two writings is perfectly different. In Daniel the seer stands in moral connection with the vision; this is not so with the Sibyl. Daniel is a pious Israelite, whose name, as we see from Ezekiel, was well known during the Chaldean exile, and whose life-history is spent in inseparable connection with his prophecies; on the contrary, the Sibyls withdraw their existence from all historical control, fore they date back in the times of
- ↑ Chr. B. Michaelis thus brings together the analogies between the events in the life of Joseph and of Daniel: ”Uterque in peregrinam delatus terram, uterque felix somniorum interpres, uterque familiae ac populi sui stator, uterque summorum principum administer, uterque sapientum sui loci supremus antistes.”
