15. Why Daniel May Have Used Persian Words

Why Daniel May Have Used Persian Words That Daniel may have used the so-called Persian words in a document dating from the latter part of the sixth century B.C. is manifest when we remember that the children of Israel from the kingdom of Samaria had been captive among the Medes for two hundred years before the time of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, and that the Jews had been carried to the banks of the Chebar and other localities where Aramaic was spoken nearly two generations before Daniel died. The Medes spoke a dialect of the Persian, and, having overthrown Nineveh in 606 B.C., had ruled over large numbers of Aramaean tribes on the upper Tigris ever since that time. Such Medo-Persian terms as are found in Daniel, being mostly official titles like governor and names of persons, are the ones which would most readily be adopted by the subject nations, including the Aramaeans and Jews. That the words satrap and Xerxes were taken directly from the Medo-Persian and not from the Greek is shown by the fact that the Hebrew and Aramaic spelling of these names in Daniel is exactly the equivalent of that in the original language and not such as it must have been if these words had been taken over indirectly through the Greek historians.

Before leaving this subject of language, attention must be called to two matters that the critics have made of supreme importance in their attempts to settle the dates of the documents of the Old Testament. The first matter is that of the value, as evidence of date of the occurrence, of Aramaic words in a Hebrew document; and the second is the value, as evidence of date, of Hebrew words that occur but once, or at most a few times, in the Old Testament and that reoccur in the Hebrew of the Talmud.