or not, he evidently has ever in view his countrymen pursuing their enterprise and commerce-in some cases buying and selling and getting gain; in others, eating the bread of carefulness, and tempted to murmur against God for the cruel injustice which their rich Jewish neighbours and Countrymen were inflicting upon them. For nothing is more arbitrary than to refer the dragging before the judgment-seats mentioned in ch. ii. 6 to judicial persecution by the Roman State. The very process which is emphasized, viz. the compelling to blaspheme (ch. ii. 7),2 points to something specifically Jewish (comp. Acts xiii. 45; xxvi. 11); and the earlier writers of the Tübingen school, who date the Epistle from the reign of Trajan, are well rebuked by Reuss, whilst even within the school itself a modifying influence has been at work. Nothing could be more emphatic than Hilgenfeld's statement that the reign of Domitian, and not of Trajan, marks the time of composition. The whole contrast, which pervades the Epistle, between the rich and the poor, is best explained, as we have seen, by regarding both as of Jewish nationality. Certainly it crowns the absurdity of the representation of the Epistle as written in the second century, with a conciliatory tendency, to reconcile Jewish and Gentile Christians, the former being "the poor" and the latter "the rich," when we bear in mind that the writer has nothing wherewith to conciliate his opponents than a prophecy of destruction and the thunder of the last judgment.

4

It is not too much to add that the social conditions thus briefly described presuppose a very early period of the apostolic age. In fact, the Epistle does not contain any allusion whatever to the burning question at issue between Jewish and Gentile Christians, as to the admission of the latter to the Church of Christ. Nösgen, indeed, has recently maintained that the silence of the Epistle as to the conditions agreed upon by the Council of Jerusalem, does not of necessity demand such an early date as A.D. 40, since in purely Jewish-Christian communities no question could have arisen of a right relationship towards Gentile believers. But both Nösgen and B. Weiss, who agrees with him in this criticism, are at one in placing the Epistle at a very early date-at the commencement of the fifties.

But if the case stands thus, who was more likely to speak with effect to all classes than James the brother of the Lord? Who was more likely to secure a hearing amongst the rich, and to commend patience to the poor, than James the Just, the head of the Church at Jerusalem,

See the remarks of Professor Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 349.

The context, too, is very Jewish, if we render it "the honourable Name which was called upon you," since the phrase has many parallels in the Old Testament Scriptures (see Beyschlag, ubi supra, p. 111). It is a striking coincidence that this same phrase recurs in the few words of St. James which are recorded elsewhere (Acts xv. 17).

Einleitung in das N. T., p. 541.

Mangold, who rejects 1 Peter, while he still maintains the authenticity of the Epistle of St. James, notes this argument as appealing to him most convincingly (ubi supra, p. 707).

whose esteem was high even amongst his unbelieving countrymen? The writer calls himself "James, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" (ch. i. 1); and the only fair account of this simple and modest title is to be found in the fact that he was the Lord's brother, and therefore stood in no need of distinguishing himself from others who bore the same name. A forger would have been only too anxious to claim such a title and distinction as "the brother of the Lord," if merely to vindicate his authority; but if the readers of the Epistle knew that its author possessed that high distinction according to the flesh, we can understand the reason of its omission and the absence of the self-assertion. It is admitted by Reuss and Renan, who leave the question of the actual authorship of the Epistle an open one, that all its contents agree with what we know or may conjecture of the religious views and character of James, the pillar apostle.1 And if we cannot positively assert that he was a hearer of our Lord, it is at least certain that he would naturally acquaint himself with the side of His teaching so prominent in this Epistle, in which Christianity appears as the fulfilment of the old covenant, and with that aspect of it, in relation to the Law, which would impress the mind of a pious Israelite. On a future occasion an endeavour will be made to show how far the writer was acquainted with the words, the life, and the Person of our Lord.

THE DATE OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL.

BY REV. GEO. DOUGLAS.

IMPORTANT and interesting light has been thrown upon the date of the Book of Daniel by the excavations which have been made in the East. It transpires that the Assyrians and Babylonians had a singular method of computing their regnal years. Instead of reckoning from the day of accession, they generally counted from the following New Year's Day.s When they had to refer to the year in which a king succeeded to the throne, they called it the year of his accession, or the year in which he began to reign, or simply the year of his reign; and what was technically called his "first year" did not begin till the New Year's Day. The broken year was assigned to the king with whom it began. Their method had this advantage-that in computing a long period they had simply to sum up the reigns of the kings; there was no overlapping. And to a people with an ancient history, and no Anno Domini from which to count, that was of no little consequence. The Jews, on the other hand, reckoned the portion which remained after the day of accession as the "first year," the New Year's Day introducing a "second year."

1 See, too, amongst more recent writers, Bovon, ubi supra, p. 446; and Hort, ubi supra, p. 152.

2 Schmid, ubi supra, p. 374. The whole treatment of the Epistle by Schmid is most valuable. Cf. also Hort, ubi supra, p. 151.

* See Geo. Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, p. 386; and his Assyrian Canon, p. 21.

This difference in method explains an apparent error in the opening verses of the Book of Daniel. It is there said that "in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim King of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it; and the Lord gave Jehoiakim King of Judah into his hand." In Jeremiah the campaign of Nebuchadnezzar in which that siege took place is, on the contrary, referred more than once to the fourth year, and in such a way as to show that in the beginning of the fourth year the siege had not yet commenced. Before the present-day Assyrian explorations, this apparent discrepancy caused much contention. Some held it to be evidence that the Book of Daniel was unreliable as history and of late date; while others invented ingenious theories to prove that the dates were not inconsistent. Even to this day, writers who have not followed the researches in the East continue to range themselves on their respective sides, not knowing that the difficulty has vanished, and that what a prophet in Judah spoke of as a king's "fourth year," a statesman in Babylon, trained in "the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans," called the "third."

Now, the question arises-How did the writer of the Book of Daniel come to use the Babylonian method? If the writer was Daniel himself, the answer is easy; no other method would occur to him-he had been trained to that from his youth, and had used it all his life. But if the author was a Jew in the Holy Land, writing as late as, say, B.C. 168, and laying the scene of his book in Babylon from B.C. 605 downward, how did he come to compute after the Babylonian fashion? It may be thought that, unless he was careless, he could not commit the anomaly of making Daniel write as a Jew in Palestine. But how did he know that it would have been an anomaly for Daniel to say the "fourth year"? It may be supposed that the descendants of the exiles were familiar with Babylonian methods. That, however, is not in keeping with all that we know of them. The Chronicler, e.g., when writing on the period of Nebuchadnezzar's invasions, names the same years for the reigns as the Books of Kings and Jeremiah, instead of adopting the Babylonian style, although it is common to place him a century and a half nearer to the Captivity than was the supposed author of the Book of Daniel. The writer of the First Book of Esdras does the same, and apparently without being conscious that the Babylonians had a style differing from that of the Jews. Indeed, so little acquaintance has he with the relation of his people to Babylon, that he cannot quote from the Chronicler on that subject without misrepresenting important facts. The Chronicler tells us that Nebuchadnezzar bound Jehoiakim "to carry him to Babylon," leaving us to understand, as we might gather from other narratives, that he was never taken thither. But the author of 1 Esdras, like many writers after him, misunderstanding the statement, boldly alters it into "carried him to Babylon." Nor is that a solitary misquotation. When we come to the Book of Judith, however, we find its author so unfamiliar with the country in which his fathers

had their bondage, that he not only calls Nebuchadnezzar habitually by the name of "the King of the Assyrians," but, beginning at the twelfth year of his reign, he makes him rule in Nineveh, and march with his army in and out of that city as his capital, although Nineveh had ceased to exist before ever Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne.

But, it may be asked, while some educated Jews of the late centuries after the Exile knew little of Babylon, may not the writer of the Book of Daniel have had access to documents which are now unknown? Berosus. a Chaldean priest, e.g., wrote annals from which Josephus quotes. May this author not have had the use of such? Well, Josephus, with all his use of Berosus, knew nothing of the Assyrian method of reckoning time, and he has made many errors in his history of the period in consequence; but still there is nothing to prove that our author did not learn the system of dates from old documents; and if he was an artful writer, he might, while telling us (Dan. ix. 2) that he had specially studied Jeremiah's numbers, use in his own opening sentence a number which had the appearance of differing from that of the older prophet. And to make the artifice more complete, he might refrain from stating that his Babylonian “third year” was the same as Jeremiah's "fourth." But is that probable ? It may yet further be suggested that the Babylonian "third year may, after all, not have been intended here; that the "third" may have been a mere blunder on the part of the writer, or even of a copyist; and that it may be only by a piece of singularly good fortune that, after having puzzled the scholars of all the centuries, it turns out, under modern Assyriology, to coincide with the Jewish "fourth year." Or, the writer may have correctly, but ignorantly, copied the date from a Babylonian list. That, however, is not the only coincidence in the book. As we read on in the first and second chapters, we come upon another, to which none of these suggestions will apply. It is said next that Nebuchadnezzar carried off Daniel and his friends, and gave instructions to have them trained three years, so that they might stand before the king; that after the three years the king communed with them; and, lastly, that in the king's "second year" Daniel interpreted his dream. Here the old discrepancy reappears, and this time in an aggravated form, for the variance is not now between two passages in different books, but between two verses in the same passage. When Nebuchadnezzar carried those youths to Babylon, he was himself hastening home to secure the throne on the death of his father. His sovereignty, therefore, and their captivity began together; and the question is-How could he be in the "second year his reign after they had been "three years" in training? According to the Jewish method of counting, it would have been impossible; but to a Babylonian nothing was simpler. Their first year of training fell in the king's "accession year;" their second, in his so-called "first year,” and their third, in the "second year of his reign." Now, these are not numbers which could have been stumbled upon by accident. Nor are they ancient

of

blunders made correct by modern research. Nor could they have been culled from Berosus or other Chaldean historians, for they could hardly have come within the scope of their annals. We are driven, in fact, to the conclusion that our author, unlike the Jews of his supposed late time, was familiar with the Babylonian method of counting, and so familiar that that method came to his pen more readily than the Jewish.

But the greatest difficulty of all remains. What of the readers? The writer is supposed to be addressing men of the time of Antiochus. That was a century and a half after the date commonly ascribed to the Chronicler, who used the Jewish method alone, perhaps not even knowing that for a short period of their history his ancestors counted after a different fashion. It was, moreover, approaching the time when educated Jews, such as the authors of the First Book of Esdras and the Book of Judith, had so completely lost the knowledge of Babylonish matters of the period of the Exile as to make blunders like those mentioned. It was approaching the time when so well-informed a writer as Josephus was ignorant of a Babylonish method of computation, and was unable to handle his facts in consequence. And yet our writer presumed upon such familiarity with these things on the part of his readers, that he did not think it necessary to explain that when, in his opening sentence, he wrote the "third year," he meant the same as Jeremiah, who called it the "fourth;" and that in a book in which he calls special attention to Jeremiah's numbers by saying that he has been devoting himself to their study; and, above all, when the numbers given by Jeremiah are connected with the year under consideration.

In conclusion, many questions have to be considered in settling the date of the Book of Daniel. The present paper has occupied itself only with one-a question which its writer has not seen discussed elsewhere. If a late date is assumed for the book, he does not see how the difficulty submitted is to be met. But once allow that the author was a statesman in Babylon, trained in the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans, and using their methods all his life, and that his readers resided in or around the same capital,—then in connexion with this question all is plain.

EXPOSITORY THOUGHT.

SOME PROMINENT DIFFICULTIES IN THE GOSPELS.

V. THE TWO GENEALOGIES.

BY REV. PROFESSOR A. ROBERTS, D.D.

THOSE Who delight to discover and parade so-called discrepancies in the Gospels, find a large amount of various material presented to them, without any trouble, in the two genealogies of Christ which are set forth by the evangelists. Writers like Strauss seem to rub their hands with glee