It has been stated by conservative critics and largely admitted by some more liberal, that the Hebrew of Daniel offers too scanty material from which to draw any conclusions as to the date of its composition. Without here affirming the contrary, it is the object of this paper to present some data in view of which it would seem necessary to modify the above statement. It is well established that such a thing as a historical development in Hebrew syntax is a fact, and investigations in the

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... tongues have shown and are showing every day the marked changes in syntactical structure, which in them also were wrought either by natural decay or the difference in environment as the centuries passed. The greatest drawback to such investigation in Hebrew is the meagreness of the material. While the other Semitic tongues, in general, present such a wealth of literature that the various phases of the development can be traced with tolerable accuracy, such is not the case with the Hebrew writings. And even of those which we have, the date of the majority is very uncertain. Under these circumstances the formulation of any theory of syntactical development is much hampered; first by the lack of material, and second, by the vast periods which intervene between the disputed dates of many of the most extensive products of the literature, so that any theory at all is almost an impossibility till the dates of the books are established with some degree of certainty. Notwithstanding these difficulties which beset the case as a whole, it would seem that in the matter of individual composition certain definite results can be obtained, which offer ground for a legitimate induction. It is with this end in view that an examination of some phases of the syntax of the Hebrew of Daniel has been made, rather than for the mere syntax itself, and as data for comparison were also indispensable we shall be nearly as much concerned with some other books as with Daniel.