To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I HAVE no desire to protract my controversy with Mr. Faber to an unnecessary length; and I have too much respect for Mr. Faber, not to wish, that it were always my fate to fight with him in the same ranks, and, if thought worthy of it, side by side. But as this cannot be in the present imperfect state of our knowledge, it affords me consolation to reflect, that our controversy is carried on in the spirit of Christian charity; that it has the attainment of truth for its object; and that these discussions partake, perhaps, of the nature of that " running to and fro of many" (Dan. xii. 4), by which knowledge shall be increased.-I shall make no further apology for offering some remarks upon Mr. Faber's paper in your Number for January. The first point whereon Mr. Faber and I differ, with respect to the chronology of the vision of Dan. viii. is, whether the vision opens when the Persian empire was in a state of profound peace, or in a state of successful warfare. My arguments, in support of the last of these alternatives, are stated in the Christian Observer for October last, page 597. Mr. Faber replies to my argument from the signification of the word Dy, by asserting, that, upon my scheme, that word " ought to have been entirely omitted, for it serves no other end but to mislead us." But Mr. Faber's reasoning upon this point is founded, rather upon the inconsistency of my interpretation with the common colloquial idiom of the English language, than upon an investigation of the Hebrew idiom.I answer, that in Hebrew the above word is frequently used by way of pleonasm, and to give emphasis. Mr. Parkhurst, after assigning to the word the following general meaning, viz. to continue, subsist, be sustained or supported in the same condition, whether of rest or motion," illustrates its signification by an ex ample from 2 Chron. vi. 12. “ And he (Soloomn) y stood before the altar of Jehovah in presence of the congregation of Israel." Ver. 13. "And he stood upon it (the scaffold) and kneeled upon his knees "y here then" (adds Mr. Parkhurst) "does not mean standing upon his feet, but only being, being present." To the example given by Parkhurst, I shall add one or two more. Deut. x. 8. "At that time the Lord separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord or to stand before the Lord, to minister unto him and to bless in his name unto this day." Isaiah vi. 2. "Above Dy (were) standing the seraphim: each one had six wings with twain he covered his face, and with twain he' covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." Now if Mr. Faber's objection to my interpretation of the standing of the ram were well founded, it would be equally applicable against the form of expression used in each of the foregoing examples. Thus it might be asked (to use Mr. Faber's words), "why the sacred historian so oddly expresses himself as to say, that Solomon was present on the scaffold, and kneeled upon his knees;" for if he kneeled there, he was of course "present." In like manner, "why does the prophet strangely say, that the seraphim were standing at the very time they were flying.' But in truth, Sir, the above objection is of such a nature as I should not have expected from Mr. Faber. I observe, however, in the second place, that "the standing of the ram before the river" has a very impor tant symbolical signification. For though the establishment of the Medo-Persian empire did not take place till the year A. C. 536, its rise may be dated from the year A. C. 559, when Cyrus was appointed commander of the united armies of the Medes and Persians. From that time a species of federal union, of the most intimate nature, was formed between the two kingdoms; and I am now inclined to think, notwithstanding what I said to the contrary in my last paper, that the symbolical ram with two horns, then first arose*. If therefore, Daniel had only left it on record, that he saw the ram pushing, (as Mr. Faber thinks he ought to have done on my scheme), it would have been doubtful, whether the pushing of the ram did not refer to the conquest of Cyrus, by which the empire was established. But Daniel saw the ram standing before the river Ulai, to denote that the Persian empire was at the date of the vision, already firmly established in the provinces to the west of the Ulai, which had before composed the empire of Babylon; and he beheld the ram butting with his horns (for such is the meaning of the word na, and not running), to signify, that the empire was at the opening of the vision, employed in a series of successful wars. And thus the opening of the vision, is plainly limited to the reign of Darius Hystaspes; for at no other period after the establishment of the empire, did it thus push successfully westward, northward, and southward: though the ram continued standing before the river, as is evident from ver. 7, till the A. C. year 330, when he was overthrown by the he-goat, Alexander the Great. to extend my rule to any part of Mr. Faber, indeed, closes his remarks on this point, by saying, that the LXX. begin the 4th ver. of Dan. viii, with a xa, and that most probably the true reading of the Hebrew would insert a 1. Thus, he in effect, admits my rule to be just. But I must object to the legitimacy of all conjectural emendations of the Hebrew text, from the gloss of the LXX. for the purpose of establishing a particular hypothesis. And as I find, on consulting Kennicott, that none of his various readings support Mr. Faber's conjecture of Dan. viii. 4. beginning with a 1, I must conMr. Faber denies the justice of tinue to think that the want of the my remark, with respect to the use, and there being no other partiof the conjunctive particle 1, to mark the successive order of events; and he produces examples to disprove the truth of my assertion, from those chapters in Daniel which are written in the Chaldaic dialect. I am not acquainted with the Chaldee, and I certainly did not intend The modern Roman Empire, composed of many different and independent kingdoms, yet so united by the bonds of a comInon religion and similar institutions, as to form a kind of federal republic, is represent ed by a beast with ten horns. It is agreeable to the analogy of this representation, to suppose that the ram with two horns rose up in the year A. C. 559. cle denoting succession between the standing of the ram in ver. 3, and his pushing in ver. 4, are strong corroborative circumstances in favour of my argument, as to the standing and butting of the ram being contemporaneous. The second, and by far the most important point of difference between Mr. Faber and me, with regard to the chronology of Daniel's vision of the ram and he-goat, has number in Dan. viii. 14. And the respect to the true reading of the determination of this point, in either way, must decide the whole controversy respecting the prophetical periods; for if the Hebrew text and our version contain the true number, then Mr. Faber himself being the judge, the 2300 and 1200 years are elapsed. What I have first to observe is, that this point is to be decided by testimony, and by the usual rules of criticism; and not by a regard to any preconceived hypothesis. This is the only legitimate and safe mode of deciding any doubtful reading; for otherwise, instead of coming to the Scriptures, to take our opinions from them, we in effect make our own preconceived notions to be the criterion, by which to decide what is the true text of the sacred volume. The rejection of those parts of the Gospel History; which relate to the miraculous conception of our Lord, by Dr. Priestly and his followers, is a well known instance of the above fallacious mode of reasoning. Now, Sir, after all the attention I have been able to give to Mr. Faber's reasoning respecting the number in Dan. viii. 14, it does appear to me to be wholly built upon two premises which are assumed without proof: first, that the vision of the ram commences in the year A. C. 536; and secondly, that the 1260 years most probably end in A. D. 1866. Assuredly, Sir, if these premises be granted to Mr. Faber, it must follow, that 2400 is the genuine reading, for the assumed principles include the very point at issue. But I need scarcely add, that both the above premises seem to me to be without evidence; and if only one of them fail of proof, Mr. Faber's whole argument is destroyed. I now proceed to the further investigation of the question respecting the genuine reading of the three different readings in Dan. viii. 14. The reading 2200 has now no existence, and, as I shall endeavour to shew afterwards, it perhaps never had a real existence. There remain, therefore, only the numbers 2300 and 2400. The reading 2300 has in its favour the testimony of every Hebrew copy now extant, as well as of every version ancient and modern, (so far as I know), with the exception only of the Greek version of Theodotion. The reading 2400 has the support of the version of Theodotion only, which, as it is always printed in the volume of the LXX. commonly bears their name. Thus far as to the testimony of the case. Let us next inquire into the previous probability of the case, either in favour of, or against the reading of the Hebrew text. And here we find that a mistake in the Hebrew, supposes the alteration of an entire word, and the substitution of one word for another, to which it is not at all similar: ww for N. On the other hand, a mistake in the Greek text, required only the insertion of a syllable, consisting of two letters, and the omission of one letter in the next syllable: Terpa for трих. Let us suppose, that the author of an unpublished history of England, were to give out his MS. to be copied for the press. We can conceive it probable, that the transcriber should make a mistake, in substituting the name of one town for another, to which it bears a near resemblance; Worcester for Winchester; or London for Lincoln; but not that he should put Bristol for Manchester; or Gloucester for Cambridge. Now a mistake in the Hebrew of Dan. viii. 14. supposes that Bristol has been put for Manchester; an error in the text of the LXX. that London has been put for Lincoln.-Let the reader judge which is most likely to have happened. Hitherto I have argued upon the supposition, that the care and attention of the Greek and Hebrew translators were equal. But I presume that no one will venture to assert, that this was the case. The integrity of the Hebrew Scriptures to the time of Ezra, is acknowledged by Mr. Faber, and is undisputed. From the time of Ezra to the year of our Lord 1030, there was a body of men in the Jewish Church, whose profession it was, to write out copies of the Scriptures, and to guard the purity of the sacred text*: and the very existence of such a body as the Masorites, during the long period of fifteen hundred years, is evidence of the care taken by the Jews, in preserving their Scriptures. Will Mr. Faber say, that equal care, and with equal success, has been employed in maintaining the purity of the text of the LXX. † ; and that the various readings called the Keri in the margins of our common Hebrew Bibles, and those collected by Kennicott, are equal in number, or importance, to those of the Greek Scrip tures. But Mr. Faber says, that the identical transcriptorial mistake, which I deem improbable, not to say impossible, has occurred either in the Hebrew, or the Samaritan Pentateuch, in Gen. xi. 13. In this place (says Mr. Faber), either has been written for why or why for 8. I reply, first, that even admitting the discrepancy between the Hebrew and Samaritan texts, in this passage, to have arisen from error, and not design, it proves nothing against my argument: for the occurrence of a very improbable mistake in Gen. xi. 13, does not render it a whit more probable, that the same mistake should happen a second time, in Dan. viii. 14. Secondly, the alleged error in the former passage, does not include in it the supposition of an equal degree of negligence, as the mistake which * Prideaux's Connect. Parti. Book v. + The reader will find an account of the state of the copies of the LXX. in common use in the age of Origen, in Prideaux's Connect, part ii. book i.; and the preface to the Cambridge edition of the LXX. printed in 1665, contains the following character, both of the ancient and present state of that version : "Quoniam autem hæc seniorum versio etiam S. Hieronymi tempore corrupta fuit atque violata danda est opera ut ei pristina puritas restitui et redintegrari possit. Certum est exemplaria quæ habemus Complutense, Aldi num, Romanum plurimum inter se et ab Alexandrino discrepare, alios etiam codices aliquarum S. Scripturæ partium satis antiquos, nunc cum eorum aliquo nunc cum nullo convenire." CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 113. Mr. Faber charges upon the Hebrew text in Dan. viii. 14; for the last part of the 11th chap. of Gen. contains a list of names and numbers, and we all know that in copying such lists, errors are much more apt to occur, than in copying a single and insulated number like that in Dan. viii. 14. In the third place, the integrity of the Samaritan Pentateuch is not to be compared with that of the Hebrew. For leaving out of question the well known and wilful corruption of the Samaritan text in Deut. xxvii. 4, and the forged interpretation in the 20th of Exodus; if I may believe the authors of the Ancient Universal History*, there are in the different copies, both of the Samaritan and Septuagint, many various readings in the ages of the patriarchs; while among the Hebrew copies and the Chaldee paraphrases, the most undeviating agreement exists. But in the fourth and last place, I observe, that the differences in the years of the postdiluvian patriarchs (as recorded in the 11th of Gen.) which exist be tween the Hebrew text and the Samaritan, are of such a nature as to exclude the possibility of their having arisen from the errors of transcribers. They have plainly originated in design. For while the sum total of the years of each patriarch is the same both in the Hebrew and Samaritan; the particulars of which that sum total is made up, differ in the two copies. Thus in the Hebrew, Arphaxad is said to have been 35 years of age at the birth of his son Salah, and to have lived 403 years after that event: these two numbers being added together, make the age of Arphaxad when he died 438 years. In the Samaritan, Arphaxad is said to have been 135 years old at the birth of Salah, and These numbers being added, give to have lived 303 years afterwards. life of Arphaxad as the Hebrew the same sum of years for the whole text, viz. 438. There is the same discrepancy between the two PenVol. I. pp. 146. 257. 2 P 280 Talib in Reply to Faber on the 2300 Years of Daniel. periods; for if the Hebrew text and our version contain the true number, then Mr. Faber himself being the judge, the 2300 and 1260 years are elapsed. What I have first to observe is, that this point is to be decided by testimony, and by the usual rules of criticism; and not by a regard to any preconceived hypothesis. This is the only legitimate and safe mode of deciding any doubtful reading; for otherwise, instead of coming to the Scriptures, to take our opinions from them, we in effect make our own preconceived notions to be the criterion, by which to decide what is the true text of the sacred volume. The rejection of those parts of the Gospel History; which relate to the miraculous conception of our Lord, by Dr. Priestly and his followers, is a well known instance of the above fallacious mode of reasoning. Now, Sir, after all the attention I have been able to give to Mr. Faber's reasoning respecting the number in Dan. viii. 14, it does appear to me to be wholly built upon two premises which are assumed without proof: first, that the vision of the ram commences in the year A. C. 536; and secondly, that the 1260 years most probably end in A. D. 1866. Assuredly, Sir, if these premises be granted to Mr. Faber, it must follow, that 2400 is the genuine reading, for the assumed principles include the very point at issue. But I need scarcely add, that both the above premises seem to me to be without evidence; and if only one of them fail of proof, Mr. Faber's whole argument is destroyed. [MAY, well as of every version ancient and modern, (so far as I know), with the exception only of the Greek version of Theodotion. The reading 2400 has the support of the version of Theodotion only, which, as it is always printed in the volume of the LXX. commonly bears their name. Thus far as to the testimony! of the case. Let us next inquire into the previous probability of the case, either in favour of, or against the reading o And here we the Hebrew text. find that a mistake in the Hebrew supposes the alteration of an entire word, and the substitution of one word for another, to which it is not at all similar: ww for y28. On the other hand, a mistake in the Greek text, required only the inser tion of a syllable, consisting of t for letters, and the omission of one lette in the next syllable: rɛrpa Let us suppose, that the author an unpublished history of England were to give out his MS. to copied for the press. ceive it probable, that the transcr ber should make a mistake, in sub stituting the name of one town another, to which it bears a nea resemblance; Worcester for W chester; or London for Lincoln; by not that he should put Bristol f Manchester; or Gloucester for Cat bridge. We can con Now a mistake in th Hebrew of Dan. viii. 14. suppost that Bristol has been put for Man chester; an error in the text of th LXX. that London has been put f Lincoln.-Let the reader judge whit is most likely to have happened. th Hitherto I have argued upon I now proceed to the further in- supposition, that the care and atter vestigation of the question respect- tion of the Greek and Hebrew trans ing the genuine reading of the three lators were equal. But I presum different readings in Dan. viii. 14. that no one will venture to asser The reading 2200 has now no ex had a real existence. that this was the case. The inte istence, and, as I shall endeavour to grity of the Hebrew Scriptures to th year |