The Venerable Archdeacon POTTER said that he had listened with great pleasure to Mr. Craig Robinson; the more so as he came from his own old university.

Notwithstanding the undoubted contribution make by the author towards the reconciliation of the conflicting accounts of the taking of Babylon, several difficulties in the narrative still, in his view, remained unexplained. (1) The Book of Daniel called Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar, whereas there were three kings with short reigns between Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus. This could be explained away by assuming that the latter married a daughter of the former, and that the word "father" stood for the word "grandfather," or possibly for "predecessor," but it seemed somewhat strange to omit the name of the real father, Nabonidus, who was apparently a man of some literary distinction. (2) Then the Book of Daniel called Belshazzar the king, whereas he was the son of the king. (3) Moreover the account in this book of Belshazzar's feast gave no hint that at that time the city of Babylon was partly in the hands of the conqueror. Nor was it easy to reconcile with this fact the promise, made to the interpreter of the writing, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom; or the words of the interpretation, "Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." (4) It looked, too, as though the writer of the book had confused. Darius the Mede (Dan. v, 31) with Darius Hystaspes, as the latter did divide the empire into satrapies (see Dan. vi, 1). (5) Moreover the late origin of the book seemed to be demanded by the use of Persian and of Greek words, and by the fact that Jesus, the son of Sirach (B.C. 200), while he mentions all the other prophets, omits Daniel.

Rev. John TUCKWELL, M.R.A.S., felt deeply indebted to the Rev. Craig Robinson for his paper. He thought that, among modern Biblical critics, there was a danger of placing too much reliance upon the Greek historians and upon the tablets. Might they not give equal credit to Scripture? Why, if a statement in Scripture seemed opposed to some Greek writer, or to a Babylonian tablet,

of Babylon" (melek Babel) in the Old Testament when his title is given. Belshazzar, however, is called "King of the Chaldeans " (malkā Kasdāyā or Kasdāāh. Dan. v, 30). Whether this is owing to the text being in Chaldee, and not in Hebrew, is uncertain.

should they at once conclude that the Scripture must be wrong ? In the British Museum we had 150,000 tablets and tens of thousands in other collections all over the world; yet up to the present time he did not know of a single case in which a cuneiform tablet had disproved any historical incident recorded in Scripture. With regard to Belshazzar being called the son of Nebuchadnezzar, among neither the Babylonians nor the Greeks did the expression "son always mean the direct offspring. Nabonidus himself called Naram-Sin the "son" of Sargon, yet we had learnt from a tablet recently discovered that two kings reigned beween them, so that he may well have been a grandson or some other relation. In the first chapter of Matthew, Joram is said to have begotten Ozias; yet he was his great-great-grandfather. We needed to guard against the error of forcing our own narrow meanings upon the expressions of ancient writers, and should seek to find the meaning which the writers themselves intended. It was quite a mistake to suppose that the tablets were infallible; moreover, the records upon the historical tablets, such for instance as those of Sargon and Esarhaddon, were not always arranged in chronological order.

Concerning the suggestion that, because Darius the Mede is. stated to have appointed governors (Dan. vi, 1), he has thereby been confused with Darius Hystaspes, it would be found on page 13 of the present paper that Gubaru is distinctly stated to have appointed "governors in Babylon,"--an expression which does not preclude the possibility that their jurisdiction may have been much wider than the city, and have extended over the whole country.

Col. Van SOMEREN said that, as regarded the deciphering of inscriptions, he felt hardly qualified to take part in the discussion; but he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Might not the title "King of the Chaldeans," given to Belshazzar, be like the title "Prince of Wales" given to the eldest son of the King of England? He would like to ask whether "Tidal, King of Nations," mentioned in Gen. xiv, should not be literally, "Tidal, King of Gutium." If so, was he a King of Media?

Mr. Martin ROUSE believed that the "queen who came in to advise Belshazzar at the banquet whereat his wives were already present, was the true queen, the wife of Nabonidus. This introduction of her as "the queen" without qualification, like the

unexplained promise of Belshazzar that Daniel should rule as "one of three" in the kingdom, was a touch that indicated the contemporary historian.

It was absurd to cavil at the use of the word "father" for "grandfather," as the Hebrews had no word for the last relation, but freely used "father" instead. For instance, in II Samuel ix, 7, both Jonathan and Saul are called the "father" of Mephibosheth.

Xenophon, alone among the Greek writers, mentioned the fact recorded in the Annals that Gôbryas, or Gubaru, was the chief leader of the final attack upon Babylon in which the "king's son perished. Since he alone gave this name correctly, why should wo suppose him to be romancing when he says that after the capture of Babylon, Cyrus visited Ecbatana and there told Cyaxeres, King of Media, that a house "had been chosen for him in Babylon and a ruler's palace, so that when he went thither he might come to this, as to his own household" (Cyrop. viii, 5, 17). Josephus tells us that, before Cyrus himself, his kinsman, Darius, King of Media, son of Astyages, reigned for a while, and that he was "known to the Greeks by another name "; no doubt the name that Xenophon suppliesCyaxeres. He, therefore, and not Gôbryas, a mere deputy of Cyrus, was probably that "Darius the Mede" who "took the kingdom." Darius the Mede is called "king" a score of times in Dan. vi, and his final decree is quoted as made for "every dominion of his kingdom," and intended to be read in "all languages." It was noteworthy that in Dan. v and vi we read of "Medes and Persians"; but at a later period in Esther i, we find Persia set before Media [Moreover a Greek scholiast tells us that the Persian gold coin, the "daric," was so called after an earlier king than Darius Hystaspes, and Lenormant points out that in Babylonian and Chaldean contracts, Cyrus is designated only "king of the nations" in the first and second years after the capture of the city, but thereafter is called "King of Babylon" as well.]*

In answer to Archdeacon Potter's objection that certain Greek words occur in Daniel, these are confined to three, or at most four, musical instruments bearing Greek names, and may well have been imported from the great Greek cities on the coasts of Asia Minor.

* Added subsequently.

The Greek poet Terpander invented the seven-stringed cythara about the year 650 B.C., and the Assyrian bas-reliefs show it in use as early as the reign of Assurbanipal (668–625 B.C.).

Professor LANGHORNE ORCHARD complimented the lecturer very heartily on the lucidity of his paper, in which he had solved a difficulty. The paper contained a warning against forming conclusions on insufficient evidence; that so highly competent a scholar as Professor Sayce should have fallen into the error of supposing the statement "without fighting" necessarily implied that there was no siege of Babylon, and no capture of it, was a warning to others to be on their guard lest their conclusions should be unstable, ready to be overturned by a fresh fact.

The CHAIRMAN proposed a hearty vote of thanks to the Rev. A. Craig Robinson, and called upon him to reply.

The LECTURER was very grateful for the kind reception which had been given him; he was glad that he had been able to clear up a difficulty. Above all he felt grateful to God, and in every work of this kind he sought His help and looked to Him for direction and light. He had felt sorry to have to contest any conclusion reached by Professor Sayce, for he had the highest appreciation of the splendid services which, by his many researches, he had rendered to our understanding of Holy Scripture. He fully concurred with the points which Mr. Rouse had brought before them. "Son " often simply means "successor"; thus on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser, Jehu is called the "son of Omri," although so far from being the son or descendant of Omri, he was the usurper who brought his dynasty to an end. No doubt Mr. Rouse was correct in his suggestion that the queen who came into the banquet house at Belshazzar's feast was none other than the wife of Nabonidus; also in thinking that Darius the Mede was Cyaxeres; the old traditions mentioned by Josephus very specially connected Daniel with Media.

SUBSEQUENT COMMUNICATIONS.

The Rev. Chancellor LIAS writes:-
:-

The Members of the Institute are indebted to Mr. Robinson for showing that the Annalistic Tablet, fairly interpreted, confirms, instead of contradicting, the history of the fall of Babylon given in the Book of Daniel and in the Greek historians. There is no

improbability in the idea that Gôbryas may have captured the portion of the city on the west bank of the Euphrates, and may have received instructions from Cyrus to delay further operations till he arrived. There seems some doubt about the translations "assault," and "king's son." But surely, as matters stand at present, the translations which harmonize with the statements of the Hebrew and Greek authorities are more likely to be correct than those which place these statements in direct opposition to one another.

Mr. JOHN SCHWARTZ, Jun., writes:

Our lecturer's new point of view that the Persians only entered without opposition into the western side of Babylon, while the eastern main portion resisted for some months, is very ingenious. The classical account of the lowering of the level of the Euphrates by diverting trenches, receives some support from the fact that this river, like the Nile, rises considerably during the summer months, when the snows around its source are melting, but in the month of November, when the entry was effected, it would be at its lowest. There are, however, difficulties; the Euphrates was a very rapid stream, so rapid that in those days navigation against stream was impossible, and it seems very doubtful whether such a stream could be rendered fordable even by a stupendous diversion of water. It is also difficult to imagine that such work could be carried on without the knowledge of the besieged. Passing over the fact that it is rather straining language to state that a force is "not fighting when besieging a city, the statement quoted from the Annalistic Tablet, "on the 14th day of the month, Sippar was taken without fighting.. on the 16th . . . the soldiers of Cyrus, without fighting entered Babylon," surely points to the abdication of Nabonidus, who had usurped the throne and incurred the hatred of the local priesthood by forcing the cult of Merodach as supreme. Professor Sayce's statement that the editor of Dan. v could not have been a contemporary was based on much more vital points than those referred to by our lecturer. The monuments show that the editor was incorrect in stating that Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, that he was a king of Babylon, and that he was succeeded by Darius the Mede. Professor Sayce seems to me to demonstrate that the editor was mixing up the siege of Babylon by Darius Hystaspes later on, with this earlier war.