Translator's Preface (2)

Translator's Preface (2)

The system under review is a melancholy off-shoot from the teaching of Luther and his intrepid followers. They led men away from form, and ceremony, and imposture, to rely upon one Book as their Rule of Faith and Duty. They did more — they sifted the chaff from the wheat, and by discarding the Apocrypha, placed before the eager attention of mankind the pure word of heaven. Luther and Calvin held very distinct ideas about Revelation and Justification, and enforced very boldly their views of the only Books which were written by the penmanship of the Almighty. Theirs was a work of purification and of reconstruction on the assertion of the existence of a Divine Revelation, of its being contained in the Old and New Testaments, and of these documents being the only Inspired Records of what we are to believe, and how we are to live. In process of time, each Boole became the subject of separate study — its history, its criticism, and its preservation were respectively examined with intense eagerness — and a vast amount of information was collected, which was totally unknown to the Early Reformers. It soon became apparent that the Reformed Churches were living under a totally different state of things from theft described in the Old Testament. The events, for instance, of this Book of Daniel all seemed so mingled and so intertwined; the ordinary occurrences of every-day life are so interlaced with marvelous dreams and visions, and the conduct and passions of monarchs seem so singularly controlled by an unseen Mind, that the question occurs, Is all this literally true? Did it all actually come to pass exactly as it is recorded? Or, Is it allegorical, or a historical romance, or only partially inspired by Jehovah, and tinged in its style and diction with the natural exaggeration of Oriental imaginary? Such inquiries shew us how the mind seeks to fathom the mysteries of what is offered to its veneration, and have led to the conclusion, that the Sacred Books of the Hebrews are not all pure revelation, but that they contain it amidst much extraneous matter. The writers to whom we refer have ever since the sixteenth century been attempting to define how much of the Hebrew Scriptures is the pure and spiritual Revelation of the Divine Mind to us, and how much is the unavoidable impurity of the channel through which it has been conveyed. With the names of some later critics, the modern Theologian is familiar. Gesenius, Wegscheider, And Rohr, yet retain a powerful influence over the minds of later students, while Schultz at Breslau, Gieseler at Gottingen, Allmann at Heidelberg, Bretschneider at Gotha, De Wette — lately deceased — at Basle, hare at Jena, and Weiner at Leipsic, are writers who worship irreverently at the shrine of human reason, and either qualify or deny the Inspiration of Revelation.

Note 17. See Tollner’s Die heilige, Eingebund der heiligen, Schrift Linden, 1771, quoted in Am. Saintes’ Hist. Rat., 1849.

FALSE SYSTEMS OF SCRIPTURE EXPOSITION

An important change was necessarily made on the minds of the successors of the Reformers, by the more general spread of Classical Literature, and a far better acquaintance with Hebrew philology. Here, we must allow, that some of the disciples of Luther and Calvin were better furnished for the work of Interpretation than their more Christian-minded masters. Ernesti, the learned philologer of Leipsic, in 1761 laid down “The Laws of a wise Interpretation,” and has ever since been considered as the founder of a scholar like system of Scriptural Exposition. His principles are now universally admitted, viz., that we must make use of history and philology of the views of the period at which each Book was written, and of all those appliances which improved scholarship has provided in the case of the Classical Authors of Greece and Rome. Every attentive reader of German Theology must perceive, that too many of their celebrated Critics have rested in this outward appeal to mere reason and. research. Semler and Tittmann, Michaelis and Henke, have pursued this system of accommodation so far, that they have destroyed the very spirit and essence of a Divine Revelation. In the Prophets, and especially in Daniel, whom Semler includes among the doubtful Books, timre is a spiritual meaning only to be comprehended by the moral and religious faculties; and except this spirit be elicited, the merely outward form of prophetic dictation can effect no religious result. Let ROHR and Paulus sneer as they please, at the mysticism and pietism of the Evangelic Reformers, we must still contend, that without a spirituality similar to theirs, all comments are essentially lifeless and profitless to the soul of man. The may display erudition, but they will not aid the spirit which hungers and thirsts after righteousness on its way towards heaven.

Every student who desires to become familiar with these discussions, may consult with advantage the Dissertations of Hengstenberg, who has written fully and ably on The Genuineness of our Prophet. He has sketched, historically, the attacks which have been made, and has answered every possible objection. The impurity of the Hebrew, the words supposed to be Greek, the silence of Siraeh, the disrespect shewn by the Jews, and the position in the Canon of Scripture, are all ably discussed. The miracles have been called “profuse in number and aimless in purpose;” historical errors have been asserted, and statements called contradictory, or suspicious, or improbable; many ideas and usages have been said to belong to later times. These and similar arguments are used to shew the Book to be the production of the times of Antiochus Ephphanes, but they have been fully treated by this orthodox Professor at Berlin. He discusses most ably, and with the most laborious erudition, those marvelous Prophecies of this Sacred Book, which have necessarily provoked a host of assailants. He reminds us that in the earliest ages, Porphyry devoted his twelfth book to the assault upon this Prophet, and that we are indebted to Jerome for a knowledge of his objections as well as for their refutation. He asserted that the Book was composed during the reign of Antiochus Ephphanes in Greek, “and that Daniel did not so much predict future events as narrate past ones.” Though the imperial commands condemned his works to the flames, yet Eusebius of Caesarea, Methodius of Tyre, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, have ably refuted them. In later times, the first scholar-like attack upon the genuineness of various portions was made by J. D. Michaelis. Collins and Semler, Spinoza and Hobbes, had each condemned the Book after his own manner but it was left for Eichorn to lead the host of those later theologians who have displayed their vanity and their skepticism, by the boastfulness of their learning and the emptiness of their conclusions. Hezel and Corrodi treat it as the work of an impostor; while Bertholdt, Griesinger, and Gesenius, have each their own theory concerning its authorship and contents. Other Critics have followed the footsteps of these into paths most dangerous and delusive.

Note 18. Jerome’s Procemiunm in Dan., Op. tom. v. p. 267.

Note 19. Einleitung in A. T.

Having replied to the most subtle objections against the Genuineness of these Prophecies, Hengstenberg proceeds to uphold the direct arguments in its favor. He first discusses the testimony of the author himself, and then enters upon its reception into the Canon of the Sacred Writings. He comments at full length on the important passage in Josephus contra Apion. 1:8, and shews the groundlessness of every assertion which impugns its Canonical value. He next proves that the declaration of our Lord assumes the prophetical authority of the work, and traces its existence in pre-Maccabaean times. The alleged exhibition of these Writings to Alexander The Great and the exposition of their contents to the Grecian Conqueror of the East, form a singular episode in the midst of profound criticism. The incorrectness of the Alexandrine Version and its rejection by the Early Church, who substituted that of Theodotion for it, is turned into an argument against the Maccabaean origin of the original; for certainly, a composition of which the author and the translators were nearly contemporary, might be better translated, than one separated by an interval of many ages. Then the peculiar features and complexion of the original language point out the exact period to which the writing is to be assigned. The historical accuracy, the apparent discrepancies, and yet the real agreement with Profane Narratives, all strengthen the assertion, that the writer lived during the times of the Babylonian and Persian Monarchies. Another argument, as strong as any of the former, is deduced from the nature of the symbolism used throughout the Book. The reasonings of Hengstenberg have now received additional confirmation from the excavations of Layard. The prevalence of animal imagery, rudely grotesque and awkwardly gigantic, is characteristic of Chaldean times, and bespeaks an era previous to the Medo-Persian Sculptures at Persepolis. Summing up his reasonings, the Professor quotes the observation of Fenelon: “lisez Daniel, denoncant a Balthasar la vengeance de Dieu toute prete a fondre sur lui, et cherchez dans les plus sublimes originaux de l’antiquite quelque chose qu’on puisse comparer a ces endroits la!”

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL

The speculations which we have hitherto discussed are not confined within the limits of unreadable German Neology they have been transfused into English Philosophy, and presented in a popular form to the readers of our current literature. In a learned and speculative Work, entitled “The Progress of the Intellect, as exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews,” the writer has adopted the untenable hypothesis of the German Neologists. In his second section of a chapter on the “Notion of a supernatural Messiah,” he writes as follows; “During the severe persecution under Antiochus Ephphanes, when the cause of Hebrew faith in its struggle with colossal heathenism seemed desperate, and when, notwithstanding some bright examples of heroism, the majority of the higher class was inclined to submit and to apostatize, an unknown writer adopted the ancient name of Daniel, in order to revive the almost extinct hopes of his countrymen, and to exemplify the proper bearing of a faithful Hebrew in the presence of a Gentile Tyrant. The object of pseudo-Daniel is to foreshow, under a form adapted to make the deepest impression on his countrymen, by a prophecy, half-allusive, half-apocalyptic, the approaching destruction of heathenism through the advent of Messiah. Immediately after the overthrow of the Four Beasts, emblematic of four successive heathen Empires, the last being the Macedonian with its offset, the Syrian; the kingdom would devolve to the ‘Saints of the Most High,’ that is, to the Messianic Establishment of Jewish expectation, presided over by a being appearing in the clouds, and distinguished, like the angels, by his human form from the uncouth symbols of the Gentile Monarchies.” He treats “Messiah” as a “title which hitherto confined to human anointed authorities, such as kings, priests, or prophets, became henceforth, specifically appropriated to the ideal personage who was to be the Hope, the Expectation, and the Salvation of Israel.” He discusses the Seventy Weeks as the fiction of the imaginary Daniel, and terms the accompanying predictions “adventurous,” and as turning out “as fallacious as all that had preceded them.” His fourth section on Daniel’s Messiah is, if possible, more wildly conjectural than the two preceding ones. Daniel’s idea, says he, of a supernatural leader called “Son of Man,” became afterwards “a basis of mystical Christology.” Those glowing passages of this Prophet, which fill the Christian mind with awe and delight, are to this theorist “the earthly or Messianic resurrection of pious Hebrews, which was all that was originally contemplated in the prediction.” In thus attempting to overthrow the Inspired authority of Daniel, he mingles the Books of Esdras and the Jewish Targum, and is eager to catch at ally Jewish fiction as if it were true interpretation of ancient prophecy. He alludes to puerile Rabbinical fables as really explanatory of the Divine Records, and mingles Zoroaster and Maimonides, Gfrorer and Eisenmenger, as of equal value in determining abstruse points of sound criticism! The sections with which we are concerned evince the greatest research and the crudest opinions all hurried together without the slightest critical skill or philosophical sagacity. With materials gathered together in the richest abundance, he has presented us with results which are alike baseless, futile, and injurious. Tobit and Papias, the Book of Baruch and the Book of Enoch, are all treated as on a level with the writings of Moses or Tacitus, Justin Martyr or a German Mystic! The public, too, are in danger of being imposed on by a show of learning and by long Latinized words and phrases, which merely disguise, under classical forms, ideas with which the well-read Divine is already familiar; at the same time, they give such an air of scholarship to these speculations, that the unlearned may be readily deceived by their showy rationalism. The whole work utterly fails in its attempt to explain the rites and symbols of Jewish worship, and to give the slightest explanation of the “theories” and “philosophies” of the Old Testament. The tendency is to reduce it all to mysticism and symbolism, and to any other “theosophy” which leads the mind away from the Christian assurance of one God, one Faith, and one Spirit.

Note 20. By Robert William Mackay. 2 vols. 8vo. 1850.

Note 21. Volume 2: Section 2, “Time of Messiah’s coming,” p. 307.

THE RECENT EASTERN DISCOVERIES

The strongest of all possible arguments against these fallacious theories has lately been derived from Eastern discovery. Fresh importation’s of sculptured rock are daily arriving in Europe, from the sepulchers of those cities amidst which our Prophet dwelt. The more this new vein is worked, the richer it becomes. Are we to be told by Bleek that the writer of this Book transferred the events of which he was a spectator to the more ancient times of Assyria and Babylon? and that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were but fabulous characters, of which the original types were Antiochus and Alexander? Are Eichhorn and Bertholdt to make Daniel another Homer, or Virgil, or AEschylus? Then let us appeal to the testimony of Mm. Botta and Layard let us visit the British museum, and under the guidance of Rawlinson and Hincks, let us peruse, in the arrow-headed characters, the history of the Monarchs of Assyria and Babylon, and observe how exactly those memorials of antiquity illustrate the Visions of our Prophet. The assistance which these excavations afford, for the elucidation of our subject, is too important to be passed over, and we must venture upon such arguments as may properly enter into a General Preface, while they vindicate the historical accuracy of the interpretation which Calvin has so elaborately set before us in the following Lectures.

Note 22. Rosemuiller Procem., p. 26.

ANCIENT ASSYRIAN REMAINS

The order of the Visions suggests the propriety of treating, first, The Ancient Assyrian Remains; then those of Babylon and Persepolis with such notices of the Egypt Of The Ptolemies as the connection of the history may require.

The earliest memorials of Assyria have not been preserved in the records of literature, but by durable engravings on marble and granite. Within the last fifty years the Pyramids of Egypt have been compelled to open their lips of stone to speak for God’s Word, and the Rosetta table suggested to Young and Champollion an alphabet by which they read on sarcophagus and entablature the history of the earliest dynasties of the Nile. What Lepsius and Bunsen have done for Thebes and Memphis, Dendera and Edfou, Layard and Rawlinson are now accomplishing for the long lost Nineveh, the majestic Babylon, and the elegant Persepolis. It has lately been revealed to astonished Europe, that a buried city lies, in all its pristine grandeur, beneath that huge mound which frowns over Mosul on the banks of the Tigris. Khorsabad and Koyunjik, Nimroud, and BEHISTUN, are now giving up their black obelisks, their colossal bulls, and their eagle-headed warriors, to become “signs and wonders” to our curious generation. In this general sketch we must avoid details, however interesting we can only allude to the first Assyrian monuments discovered by M. Botta, in 1843, as containing a line of Cuneiform Inscriptions amid winged kings and their warlike chariots. They are deposited in the Louvre, and form the most ancient of its esteemed collections. The elegant volumes of Layard, and the more tangible proof of his untiring labors, now deposited in the British Museum, have thrown new light upon the prophetic portion of the Elder Covenant. Two-coned Conquerors, winged Chiefs, carrying either the gazelle or the goat, sacred trees, and their kneeling worshippers —

Note 23. See his letters to M. Mohl in the Journal Asiatique for 1843; April 5, June 2, October 31, and also March 22, 1844.

The life-like statue and the breathing bust,
The column rescued from defiling dust —

enable us to guess at the exploits of a long line of kings before the age of Saul or Priam. The name of Sardanapalus is now rescued from traditional disgrace, and ennobled in the midst; of a hardy race of ancestors and successors. Our progress in interpreting these arrow-headed mysteries, enables us to assign the date 1267 B.C. for the founding of Nineveh as a settled point in Asiatic chronology. The earliest historical document in the world is that on the north-west palace of Nimroud built by Assar-Adan-Pal. He informs us of the existence, and celebrates the exploits of Temen-Bar the first, the founder of Haleh, at a time when the Hebrews were just entering the promised land, and the Argives were colonizing the virgin valleys of Hellas! The familiar names of Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, are found incised upon the enduring masonry; and it is now possible to ascertain who founded the Mespila of Xenophon, who constructed the towers in the south-west palace of Nimroud and who stamped his annals on the clay cylinders in the British Museum. The Nimroud obelisk becomes a precious relic, since it enables us to ascertain, for the first time, the events of those nine centuries, during which Nineveh existed from its rise to its overthrow. We are mainly concerned with the manner in which it confirms the truthfulness of the Prophets of the Hebrews, and with the unanswerable arguments which it supplies against the subtleties of German Neology. The credibility of one Prophet is intimately bound up with that of another. Whatever confirms either Isaiah or Ezekiel, throws its reflected light upon Daniel and Hosea. The god Nisroch, in whose temple Sennacherib was slain, (2 Kings 19:37, and Isaiah 37:38,) is, repeatedly mentioned on the obelisk as the chief deity of the Assyrians. The “Sargon king of Assyria” (Isaiah 20:1) is most probably the monarch who founded the city excavated by M. Botta; and the occurrence of the name “Yehuda,” in the 33rd number of the British Museum series, leads Interpreters to consider the passage as alluding to the conquest of Samaria. The very paintings so graphically described by Ezekiel, (Ezekiel 23:14, 15,) have reappeared upon the walls of these palaces. They are, perhaps, the very identical objects which this Prophet beheld, for he dwelt at no great distance from them on the banks of the Khabur, and wrote the passage about thirteen years after the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. The prophecy bears the date B.C. 593, and “the latest Assyrian sculpture on the site of Nineveh must be as early as B.C. 634.” We would gladly linger over these proofs of the truthfulness of the ancient Prophets; but further details must be inserted in those Dissertations which accompany the text, and we close this rapid sketch of these Assyrian remains in the touching words of their enterprising Discoverer. “I used,” says Mr. Layard, “to contemplate for hours these mysterious emblems, and to muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temple of their gods? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature, by men who sought, unaided by the light of Revealed Religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a Supreme Being? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge, than the head of a man; of strength, than rite body of the lion; of ubiquity, than the wings of the bird. The winged-human-headed lions were not idle creations;, the offspring of mere fancy; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races which had flourished 3000 years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars, long before the wisdom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and had furnished its mythology with symbols long recognized by the Assyrian votaries. They may have been buried, and their existence may have been unknown, before the foundation of the Eternal City. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and they now stood forth once more in their ancient majesty. But how changed was the scene around them! The luxury and civilization of a mighty nation had given place to the wretchedness and ignorance of a few half-barbarous tribes; the wealth of temples, and the riches of great cities had been succeeded by ruins and shapeless heaps of earth. Above the spacious hall in which they stood, the plough had passed and the corn now waved. Egypt had monuments no less ancient and no less wonderful, but they have stood forth for ages, to testify her early power and renown, while those before me had but now appeared to bear witness in the words of the Prophet, that once The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. His height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long, because of the multitude of the waters which he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations; for now is ‘Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness, and flocks lie down in the midst of her; all the beasts of the nations, both the cormorant and the bittern lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice sings in the windows, and desolation is in the thresholds.’”

Note 24. See Major Rawlinson’s Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 57, and his references to the various plates of the British Museum series.

Note 25. See Vaux’s Ninevah and Persepolis, p. 263, edition. 2nd.

Note 26. Vaux, p. 221.

ANCIENT BABYLONIAN REMAINS

As we travel onwards in time, and southward in place, our attention is attracted to those Babylonian antiquities which vindicate the correctness of the Comments of Calvin.

After centuries of extensive empire, Nineveh yielded to a younger rival. The army of Sennacherib had been annihilated by the angel of the Lord; Esarhaddon, his son, had planted his heathen colonizes in the fertile plains of Samaria. Nebuchadonosor had won the battle of Rhagau; Phraortes had been slain, and his son, Cyaxares in alliance with Nabopalassar, had taken Nineveh, and destroyed for ever its place in the history of Asia. Palaces of black basalt, bas-reliefs, and hawk-headed heroes, covered with legends of unbounded triumphs, no longer rose at the bidding of the servants of Bar, and the worshippers of Assarac, Beltis, and Rimmon. No more

Her obelisks of buried chrysolite

proclaimed her far-famed majesty; for her new masters transferred the scat of their empire to the banks of the Euphrates. The renowned son of Nabopalassar now commences the era of Babylonian greatness. This enterprising chieftain is no creation of poetic fancy. Herodotus and Berosus have recorded his exploits, and we have now the testimony of recent discovery to confirm the assertions of Daniel, and to throw fresh light upon his narrative.