SOURCE: Davies, P. R. “The Languages of the Book.” In Daniel, pp. 35-39. Sheffield, Eng.: JSOT Press, 1985.

[In the following excerpt, Davies surveys the various scholarly positions on the bilingualism of The Book of Daniel and attempts to date the work on the basis of the languages it uses.]

THE BILINGUAL PROBLEM

The presence, and the distribution, of the two languages in Daniel may be in the end inexplicable. But it has generally been thought to have a bearing on the literary history or structure of the book. The evaluation of this phenomenon depends on whether or not the literary unity of Daniel is taken for granted. An ancient view, for instance, holds that Daniel composed in Hebrew those parts of his book written for his compatriots, and in Aramaic those parts intended for Gentile readers. Among modern commentators many conservative scholars take a similar view, as do some of those who maintain a second-century date for the whole book, such as Otto Plöger and H. H. Rowley; the latter has argued that the author first issued stories (chs. 2-7) in Aramaic for the encouragement of his compatriots, and later added the visions (chs. 8-12) in Hebrew for a more learned audience, binding the two together with a Hebrew introduction (1.1-2.4) which replaced the original Aramaic one. This view is also favoured by Porteous, Delcor and others. Nevertheless, it remains curious on this view that the Hebrew should change to Aramaic at 2.4. Here we read: ‘Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic …’, and what follows is in Aramaic!

S. R. Driver suggested that the author began in Hebrew and switched to Aramaic when reporting direct speech in that language. Now, in Ezra 4.8-23, 5.1-6.18 and 7.12-26 official correspondence is quoted in Aramaic. Indeed, in Ezra 6 the Aramaic overruns the source for several verses. However, in Daniel the overrun extends for six chapters, and Driver's explanation, that the author forgot to revert to Hebrew, is not very convincing. Indeed, we now know that the phrase ‘in Aramaic’ is absent from Qumran fragments of Daniel (which are the earliest manuscripts we have of the book). Instead, there is a space, presumably to draw attention to the change of language at this point. Accordingly, many modern commentators suspect the phrase is a scribal note serving the same purpose.

Another set of solutions becomes available if one presumes that the book was written, whether by one or several authors, originally in one language only. A. A. Bevan surmised that part of the Hebrew original had been lost and was replaced by an Aramaic version. A much more popular view, offered by R. H. Charles, is that Daniel was composed in Aramaic. This proposal has more recently been argued forcefully by H. L. Ginsberg, and is based essentially on the poor quality of the Hebrew and on a number of instances where the Hebrew is explicable only, or better, as a translation from Aramaic. Not all scholars are convinced by Ginsberg's examples, and his argument is made less attractive because it forms part of a complicated reconstruction of the literary history in many stages. Ginsberg's explanation for the partial translation from Aramaic to Hebrew was that it was made to ensure that the book, by beginning and ending in Hebrew, would receive canonical recognition. This explanation (along with Ginsberg's entire thesis) is accepted by Hartman and Di Lella, but Lacocque, while accepting the theory of translation into Hebrew, mocks the proposed explanation: ‘as though the “inspectors” or customs officials would content themselves with a cursory examination of the merchandise’ (p. 14).

The presumption of multiple authorship of the book affords yet more possible explanations. The simplest application of this proposal is that one author wrote in Aramaic and a second added chapters in Hebrew, ch. 1 being composed or translated by the second author, or perhaps by a third. This was the suggestion of C. C. Torrey, which also attracted J. A. Montgomery. However, the strongest evidence for multiple authorship consists in the difference of genre and theology between the stories (chs. 1-6) and the visions (chs. 7-12), and this very distinction cuts right across the language division, since ch. 7 belongs generically with the other visions in 8-12 but linguistically with chs. 2-6. Possibly ch. 7 is the product of some intermediate stage in the literary history of Daniel; some scholars (e.g. Noth, Lenglet) believe that it once formed a conclusion to a collection of stories before the other visions were added. Another explanation sees its ambivalence, as being on the one hand a vision yet on the other hand written in Aramaic, in terms of a redactional device intended to weld together the two parts of the book (Collins).

All of the explanations of the bilingualism mentioned are possible, but they cannot be evaluated in isolation from other considerations regarding the literary structure and history of Daniel. The phenomenon is capable of too many explanations to provide on its own any kind of working hypothesis. In the end, the bilingual phenomenon will have to be explained in a way which fits in best with other evidence about the structure and history of Daniel. It cannot form the starting point for an analysis of the book's composition.

DATING THE LANGUAGES

Aramaic, the language of Daniel 2-7, was spoken during many centuries and at times over the entire Middle East. Only in this century, however, has it become possible to attempt to identify the date and provenance of Daniel on the basis of the Aramaic dialect it uses; and the results, if not conclusive, are interesting. At the end of the last century, the corpus of Aramaic literature available was rather small: the ‘biblical Aramaic’ in Ezra and Daniel, the Jewish Targums (from a later period altogether) and inscriptions and texts from beyond the Euphrates. Accordingly, Aramaic was at first rather simply classified into ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ forms. ‘Biblical Aramaic’ was deemed to be ‘western’. This verdict was naturally seized upon by champions of the second-century date. In the words of Driver: ‘the Aramaic of Daniel … is a western Aramaic dialect, of the type spoken in and about Palestine’ (The Book of Daniel, p. lix). Rowley fervently advocated the same view. However, further discoveries of Aramaic texts, such as the Jewish archives from Elephantine in Egypt (early postexilic period) threw doubt upon the simplistic distinctions in vogue; and a development of fundamental importance was the identification of an Aramaic dialect which had been adopted officially by the Persian chancellery. It was dubbed ‘Imperial Aramaic’ (Reichsaramäisch) or Official Aramaic, and it had been in use from the sixth century b.c. until the end of the third. This discovery appeared to invalidate the distinction between eastern and western Aramaic dialects during the centuries in question. Imperial Aramaic was essentially an eastern dialect, and it is now generally acknowledged as the dialect of Biblical Aramaic not only of Daniel, but also of the other specimen of Biblical Aramaic in Ezra, and the Elephantine papyri from Egypt. This being so, it is not possible in the present state of research to determine the geographical provenance of a text in Imperial Aramaic.

Nevertheless, some argument is possible on the question of dating the Aramaic portion of Daniel. Advocates of a second-century date for the whole book are able to point to the presence of Persian and Greek words which, they argue, rule out a sixth-century date for its composition. The Greek words, are, admittedly, confined to technical musical terms, and it has been objected that such these terms, as well as Persian words, might have been available to a sixth-century Jew. But the balance of probability weighs heavily against this argument. Perhaps the most important evidence, linguistically, against such a date is the use of the word ‘Chaldean’ to mean a class of magician in ten of its twelve occurrences in Daniel. Such a usage hardly belongs to the sixth century, when the term was a racial one, denoting the Babylonians. This is its meaning in Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk and twice in Daniel, at 5.30 and 9.1. This kind of consideration leads to the conclusion that the Aramaic portions of Daniel are not the product of a Babylonian Jew under Nebuchadnezzar or his immediate successors.

The Jews deported to Babylonia obviously spoke Hebrew as a first language, and we have a reasonable amount of biblical material from this period. After the return, fluency in Hebrew is certainly less widespread. It appears from Nehemiah 8.8 that the law had to be translated into Aramaic for the people. Yet Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, as well as other biblical books, attest the continuing use of Hebrew as a literary, and almost certainly also a spoken, tongue in Palestine. But even when authors of this period attempt a classical style (Jonah and Esther being good examples) features such as changes in the use of individual words, the structure of clauses and the use of tenses identify what is now commonly referred to as ‘Late Biblical Hebrew’. The Hebrew of Daniel is certainly not the Hebrew of a sixth-century Jewish exile. It reads like the language of one not fluent in Hebrew, one whose first language was Aramaic. But the quality of Hebrew represented by, let us say, Esther, Ben Sira and the Qumran Scrolls is so varied that no more precise dating of Daniel's Hebrew is possible. One may only comment that if the authors of the visions were scribes, as is widely believed, their standard of Hebrew is surprisingly poor (much worse than Ben Sira's, a scribe of the early second century b.c.), and Ginsberg's suggestion that it is a translation must remain a firm possibility, whether or not (as we have warned) this conclusion creates other difficulties.

Further Reading

On the Bilingualism of Daniel:

C. C. Torrey, ‘Notes on the Aramaic Part of Daniel’, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 15 (1909), pp. 241-82.

H. H. Rowley, ‘The Bilingual Problem of Daniel’, ZAW 50 (1932), pp. 256-68.

H. L. Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1948.

H. H. Rowley, ‘The Unity of the Book of Daniel’, in The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old Testament, Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 1965, pp. 249-80. This is in large measure a reply to Ginsberg.

H. L. Ginsberg, ‘The Composition of the Book of Daniel’, VT 4 (1954), pp. 246-75: a response to Rowley.

On Aramaic and Hebrew in the Persian Period:

J. Naveh and J. Greenfield, ‘Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian Period’, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, pp. 115-29 (and bibliography, 421-25).

E. Kutscher, ‘Aramaic’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, III, pp. 259-87.

E. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language, Jerusalem: Magnes Press/Leiden: Brill, 1982.

Other Works Referred to:

A. A. Bevan, A Short Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Cambridge: CUP, 1882.

R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929.