This evanescence of the poetic and impassioned element separates Daniel from the Prophets, and marks the place of the Book among the Hagiographa, where it was placed by the Jews themselves. In all the great Hebrew seers we find something of the ecstatic transport, the fire shut up within the bones and breaking forth from the volcanic heart, the burning lips touched by the hands of seraphim with a living coal from off the altar. The word for prophet (_nabî_, _Vates_) implies an inspired singer rather than a soothsayer or seer (_roeh_, _chozeh_). It is applied to Deborah and Miriam[78] because they poured forth from exultant hearts the pæan of victory. Hence arose the close connexion between music and poetry.[79] Elisha required the presence of a minstrel to soothe the agitation of a heart thrown into tumult by the near presence of a revealing Power.[80] Just as the Greek word μάντις, from μαίνομαι, implies a sort of madness, and recalls the foaming lip and streaming hair of the spirit-dilated messenger, so the Hebrew verb _naba_ meant, not only to proclaim God's oracles, but to be inspired by His possession as with a Divine frenzy.[81] "Madman" seemed a natural term to apply to the messenger of Elisha.[82] It is easy therefore to see why the Book of Daniel was not placed among the prophetic rolls. This _vera passio_, this ecstatic elevation of thought and feeling, are wholly wanting in this earliest attempt at a philosophy of history. We trace in it none of that "blasting with excess of light," none of that shuddering sense of being uplifted out of self, which marks the higher and earlier forms of prophetic inspiration. Daniel is addressed through the less exalted medium of visions, and in his visions there is less of "the faculty Divine." The instinct--if instinct it were and not knowledge of the real origin of the Book--which led the "Men of the Great Synagogue" to place this Book among the _Ketubhîm_, not among the Prophets, was wise and sure.[83]
"In Daniel öffnet sich eine ganz neue Welt."--EICHHORN, _Einleit._, iv. 472.
The author of the Book of Daniel seems naturally to place himself on a level lower than that of the prophets who had gone before him. He does not count himself among the prophets; on the contrary, he puts them far higher than himself, and refers to them as though they belonged to the dim and distant past (ix. 2, 6). In his prayer of penitence he confesses, "Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in Thy Name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers"; "Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His laws, which He set before us by His servants the prophets." Not once does he use the mighty formula "Thus saith Jehovah"--not once does he assume, in the prophecies, a tone of high personal authority. He shares the view of the Maccabean age that prophecy is dead.[84]
