GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BOOK

4. The Style of the Book

The style of the Book of Daniel is new, and has very marked characteristics, indicating its late position in the Canon. It is rhetorical rather than poetic. "Totum Danielis librum," says Lowth, "e poetarum censu excludo."76 How widely does the style differ from the rapt passion and glowing picturesqueness of Isaiah, from the elegiac tenderness of Jeremiah, from the lyrical sweetness of many of the Psalms! How very little does it correspond to the three great requirements of poetry, that it should be, as Milton so finely said, "simple, sensuous, passionate"! A certain artificiality of diction, a sounding oratorical stateliness, enhanced by dignified periphrases and leisurely repetitions, must strike the most casual reader; and this is sometimes carried so far as to make the movement of the narrative heavy and pompous.77 This peculiarity is not found to the same extent in any other book of the Old Testament Canon, but it recurs in the Jewish writings of a later age. From the apocryphal books, for instance, the poetical element is with trifling exceptions, such as the Song of the Three Children, entirely absent, while the taste for rhetorical ornamentation, set speeches, and dignified elaborateness is found in many of them.

This evanescence of the poetic and impassioned element separates Daniel from the Prophets, and marks the place of the Book among the Hagiographa, where it was placed by the Jews themselves. In all the great Hebrew seers we find something of the ecstatic transport, the fire shut up within the bones and breaking forth from the volcanic heart, the burning lips touched by the hands of seraphim with a living coal from off the altar. The word for prophet (nabî, Vates) implies an inspired singer rather than a soothsayer or seer (roeh, chozeh). It is applied to Deborah and Miriam78 because they poured forth from exultant hearts the pæan of victory. Hence arose the close connexion between music and poetry.79 Elisha required the presence of a minstrel to soothe the agitation of a heart thrown into tumult by the near presence of a revealing Power.80 Just as the Greek word μάντις, from μαίνομαι, implies a sort of madness, and recalls the foaming lip and streaming hair of the spirit-dilated messenger, so the Hebrew verb naba meant, not only to proclaim God's oracles, but to be inspired by His possession as with a Divine frenzy.81 "Madman" seemed a natural term to apply to the messenger of Elisha.82 It is easy therefore to see why the Book of Daniel was not placed among the prophetic rolls. This vera passio, this ecstatic elevation of thought and feeling, are wholly wanting in this earliest attempt at a philosophy of history. We trace in it none of that "blasting with excess of light," none of that shuddering sense of being uplifted out of self, which marks the higher and earlier forms of prophetic inspiration. Daniel is addressed through the less exalted medium of visions, and in his visions there is less of "the faculty Divine." The instinct--if instinct it were and not knowledge of the real origin of the Book--which led the "Men of the Great Synagogue" to place this Book among the Ketubhîm, not among the Prophets, was wise and sure.83

[76] Reuss says too severely, "Die Schilderungen aller dieser Vorgänge machen keinen gewinnenden Eindruck.... Der Stil ist unbeholfen, die Figuren grotesk, die Farben grell." He admits, however, the suitableness of the Book for the Maccabean epoch, and the deep impression it made (Heil. Schrift. A. T., p. 571).

[77] See iii. 2, 3, 5, 7; viii. 1, 10, 19; xi. 15, 22, 31, etc.

[78] Exod. xv. 20; Judg. iv. 4.

[79] 1 Sam. x. 5; 1 Chron. xxv. 1, 2, 3.

[80] 2 Kings iii. 15.

[81] Jer. xxix. 26; 1 Sam. xviii. 10, xix. 21-24.

[82] 2 Kings ix. 11. See Expositor's Bible, Second Book of Kings, p. 113.

[83] On this subject see Ewald, Proph. d. A. Bundes, i. 6; Novalis,Schriften, ii. 472; Herder, Geist der Ebr. Poesie, ii. 61; Knobel,Prophetismus, i. 103. Even the Latin poets were called prophetæ, "bards" (Varro, De Ling. Lat., vi. 3). Epimenides is called "a prophet" in Tit. i. 12. See Plato, Tim., 72, a.; Phædr., 262, d.; Pind., Fr., 118; and comp. Eph. iii. 5, iv. 11.