The expedition of Zerah has not yet received any distinct confirmation from monuments. But the recent discovery that there reigned about this time a king called Azerch-Amen in Ethiopia, has removed the difficulties which attached to the name and the description of the invader, and has indicated to the dispassionate and candid student, that here, too, the Jewish historian had probably contemporary records to guide him, and related real facts of history, not figments drawn from his imagination.
A real historical difficulty meets us soon after this, in the sacred narrative, in the invasion of the kingdom of Samaria, by Pul, who is called a "king of Assyria," and is said to have put Menahem to a tribute of a thousand talents of silver.[84] We possess the history of Assyria for this period, apparently in a state of completeness; and this history shows us no monarch at this time (or indeed at any other time), bearing a name in the least resembling that of Pul. The predecessor of Tiglath-pileser on the throne of Assyria, was a certain Asshur-lush (or Asshur-likkis), whose predecessor was Asshur-dayan, who followed on Shalmaneser III. It seems impossible that any one of these kings can be Pul. Moreover, Assyria, in the time immediately preceding the accession of Tiglath-pileser, instead of being a great, aggressive power, capable of marching armies into Palestine, was in a depressed state, troubled by frequent insurrections among her own subjects, and quite incapable of sending out distant military expeditions. Thus "Pul, king of Assyria," constitutes to the modern historical inquirer a real difficulty—a difficulty which it has been proposed to meet in various ways.
The best explanation hitherto suggested is, I think, the following. Pul, who was called by Berosus, the great Babylon historian, "king of the Chaldeans," was probably a monarch who reigned at Babylon, while Asshur-lush was reigning at Nineveh. In the troublous decade of years which preceded Tiglath-pileser's accession, he became a powerful prince, perhaps deprived Assyria of her western provinces, and invaded Syria and Palestine from the quarter from which Assyrian invasions had been wont to come. Presenting himself to the Israelites as the representative of the great Mesopotamian power, with which they had been contending for centuries, they termed him loosely "king of Assyria" when he was in reality a king of Babylon, who had possessed himself of a portion of the Assyrian dominions. In the same way, they subsequently termed Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, and even Darius Hystaspis, "kings of Assyria."[85] A difficulty used to be felt with respect to "Sargon, king of Assyria," who is said to have taken Ashdod by the hand of one of his captains.[86] Sargon's name is not contained in the historical books of Scripture, nor is he mentioned by any of the classical writers, who speak of Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. The occurrence of his name in Isaiah was thought to indicate an irreconcilable difference between the historical data possessed by that prophet and those of the writer of Kings. Even his existence was doubted, and different writers proposed to regard his name as a mere variant for those of each of the three princes just mentioned. The Assyrian inscriptions have completely cleared up all this obscurity. Sargon is found to have been the successor of Shalmaneser; the predecessor and father of Sennacherib. He speaks of having captured Ashdod. All that Isaiah says of him is confirmed; and it appears to have been quite accidental that the writer of Kings, who more than once alludes to him,[87] does not mention his name.
The strictly historical character of the later portion of the Old Testament narrative, especially of that delivered to us in Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and in the contemporary prophets, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Haggai, is generally admitted, even by sceptics. The only writings belonging to this period, whereto exception is taken are the Books of Daniel and Esther, which many still regard as full of historical inaccuracies, and as quite unworthy of credence. I shall therefore conclude my observation on the alleged historical difficulties of the Old Testament, and the light thrown on them by modern discoveries, by a brief consideration of these two books and of the objections taken to them.
The chief historical inaccuracies alleged against Daniel are the following: He is said to have invented two kings, Belshazzar, and Darius the Mede, whose existence is not merely unknown to history, but precluded by it; to have falsely ascribed a government by satraps to the Babylonians; to have incorrectly represented the condition of their "wise men"; to have made Susa a residence of the Persian monarchs when it was not even built; to have wrongly made the last king of Babylon a son of Nebuchadnezzar, and to have misrepresented his fate; to have misconceived the relative position of the Medes and Persians at the time of the capture of Babylon; and to have related an utterly incredible circumstance, viz. that Daniel was admitted among the Babylonian "wise men," and even constituted their head.[88] Now of these charges some are quite incapable of being either substantiated or distinctly refuted from our insufficient knowledge of the times to which they refer. Nothing is really known of the classes into which the "wise men" of Babylon were divided in Nebuchadnezzar's time, excepting what we learn from Daniel himself. The authors supposed to contradict Daniel on this point, write of the state of things in their own day, which happens to be eight centuries later! And they do not write about the Babylonian "wise men" at all, but about the divisions of the Persian magi, an entirely different class. We do not even know enough about the "wise men" to say whether there was anything strange and unusual in a foreigner being placed at their head. We may suspect that it was so, but we have really no sufficient evidence on the subject. The little evidence that we have is to the effect that the "wise men" were a learned, not a priestly, body; and that they admitted foreigners among them—more we do not know; but there is certainly not the slightest difficulty in supposing that the despotic power of a Babylonian monarch would have been amply sufficient to overcome any repugnance which any class of his subjects might have felt towards one of his appointments.
Similarly, we have no sufficient knowledge of the Babylonian governmental system to say that it was not, at any rate, to some extent, satrapial. A satrapial system is simply one in which governors are appointed over the provinces, instead of their being suffered to remain under the rule of native kings. Our present Indian system is in part satrapial, in part a government by means of kings. The Assyrian government was one of the same kind; and, on the whole, it is most probable that so was the Babylonian. Gedaliah, who succeeded to King Zedekiah in Judea, was a "governor,"[89] that is, a satrap, appointed by Nebuchadnezzar; and Berosus speaks of a "satrap of Egypt, Cœle-Syria, and Phœnicia," as holding office under Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar's father. Thus there is no "inaccuracy" in Daniel's speaking of Nebuchadnezzar as summoning, among his other great officers, his "satraps."[90] That the word, which is Persian, was not used in Babylonia is probable; but Daniel, writing for Jews under Persian government, who were perfectly familiar with the term, employed it for a corresponding Babylonian expression.
The charge that Daniel misapprehended the relative position of the Medes and Persians at the capture of Babylon, regarding the supremacy of the Medes as still continuing, is unjust, and rests on an omission to look carefully to the original text. It is true that the Medes are placed before the Persians in the words of the handwriting upon the wall, and also in the formula, "according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not." But this honorary precedence assigned to the Medes is a mere trace of their ancient supremacy—a trace much more strongly marked in Greek writers, who actually call Cyrus and his successors "Medes"—and is not an indication of its continuance. Daniel twice marks very strongly the subordinate position of the Medes, stating in one place[91] that Darius the Mede "received the kingdom"—i.e., was given it by another; and further declaring that he "was made king over the nation of the Chaldæans,"[92] using in this case an expression which distinctly implies that he derived his position from some superior authority, which made him king.[93] The notion that Susa, or at any rate, its palace, was not built at the time when Daniel says that he saw himself in vision there, rests wholly upon a statement made by Pliny, six hundred years later, that "Susa, the ancient regal city of the Persians, was built by Darius Hystaspis."[94] Now this statement, one of very weak authority, had we nothing to set against it, is contrary to the declarations of various other classical authorities, among them notably of Herodotus; and is completely disproved by the Assyrian inscriptions, which show that Susa was one of the most ancient of all the Mesopotamian cities, and that its "palace" was famous for many centuries before the time of Daniel. The truth which underlies Pliny's statement, is the fact that Darius Hystaspis was the first Persian monarch to build a palace at Susa after the Persian fashion; but the ancient residence of the Susian kings, the Memnonium, as the Greeks called it, had existed for considerably more than a thousand years when the son of Hystaspes began his edifice.
Of the two remaining charges, which concern Darius the Mede, and Belshazzar, one—and that the more important of the two—has been completely rebutted by the evidence of the Babylonian monuments. These monuments show that Nabonnedus (or Labynetus), the king of Babylon attacked by Cyrus, had a son named Bel-shar-ezer, or Belshazzar, whom during some years he associated with him in the government. This son may well have been on the mother's side descended from Nebuchadnezzar, as Daniel says that Belshazzar was;[95] he may have played the part in the siege which Daniel states that he did, while his father (as Berosus mentioned) defended the fortress of Borsippa; and he may have fallen in the general massacre during the night in which Babylon was taken, while his father was subsequently made prisoner, and kindly treated by Cyrus. All the supposed contradictions of profane history by Daniel in connection with this matter, are entirely removed by one little document, exhumed in our own day from the soil of Mesopotamia, by the exertions of an English gentleman.
With respect to Darius the Mede, nothing has been as yet discovered. It is clear from Daniel that he was not a king in his own right, but a viceroy set up by Cyrus. He held his government probably for not more than two years. Perhaps he is to be identified with Astyages, the Median king, whom Cyrus deposed but treated kindly; perhaps he was merely a Median noble, whom Cyrus advanced, as he did other Medes, to a position of trust and importance. The monuments have not at present thrown any light on this matter; but he would be a bold person, who, after the discovery with respect to Belshazzar, would undertake to say that there may not, ere many years are past, be as much light thrown upon the obscure history of this monarch, as has been recently thrown on the history, formerly at least as obscure, of his predecessor.
I cannot leave this matter and turn to another without strongly advising those who have any doubts as to the genuineness and authenticity of the Book of Daniel, which have been of late so fiercely attacked, to study carefully the recent work of Professor Pusey upon the subject. They will find in it a complete answer to all the objections, historical, and critical, which have been urged against this portion of Scripture.