world; in Daniel it comes out into the greatest clearness, and is realized by Christianity. This prophetic world-thought the Sibyl has destroyed, i.e., has religiously spiritualized and politically materialized it. “Not the living and holy covenant God Jehovah, who dwells on high and with the contrite in heart, but Godhead uncreated and creating all things, without distinction in Himself, the invisible God, who sees all things, who is neither male nor female, as He appears at a later period in the teaching of the school of Philo, is He whom the Sibyl in very eloquent language declares to the heathen. But of the God of Israel, who not only created the world, but who also has a divine kingdom on the earth, and will build up this kingdom, in a word, of the God of the history of redemption, as He is seen in His glory in Daniel, we find no trace whatever.” The materialistic historic prophecy of the Sibyllist corresponds with this religious spiritualism. He seeks to imitate the prophecies of Daniel, but he does not know the prophetic fundamental thought of the kingdom of God over against the kingdom of the world, and therefore he copies the empirical world-history: “first Egypt will rule, then Assyria, Persia, Media, Macedonia, Egypt again, and then Rome.”
Thus the Sibylline Apocalyptic is fundamentally different from the prophecies of Daniel.[1]
Whoever has a mind so little disciplined that he cannot perceive this difference, cannot be expected to know how to distinguish between the prophecies of Daniel and the philosophical reflections of the book of Koheleth.[2]
If Koheleth brings forward his thoughts regarding the vanity of all things in the name of the wise king Solomon, then is this literary production, which moreover is so very transparent that every reader of the book can see through it, altogether comprehensible. If, on the other hand, a Maccabean Jew clothe his own self-conceived ideas regarding the development of the war of the heathen world-powers against the people of God in revelations from God, which the prophet
- ↑ This may be said also of the other apocryphal apocalypses of Judaism, which we have no need, however, here specially to consider, because these apocalypses, as is generally acknowledged, originate in a much later time, and therefore have no place in discussions regarding the genuineness of the book of Daniel.
- ↑ The Deuteronomy which Bleek and others quote along with the book of Koheleth cannot be therefore taken into consideration as capable of supplying analogical proof, because the supposition that this book is not genuine, was not composed by Moses, is no better grounded than is the supposed non-genuineness of the book of Daniel.
