Then spoke the Chaldeans to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever: tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Syriac. It was originally the same as the Chaldean. Daniel understood this language, as well as Hebrew and writes in it what concerned the Chaldeans, to Chap. viii. This shows his accuracy, as he makes his speakers use their own tongue. Spinosa ignorantly asserts, that all the seven first chapters are in Chaldean and taken from the records of that nation by Judas Maccabeus. How then did Matthathias become acquainted with the contents?
Up to this point what we have read has been recounted in Hebrew. From this point on until the vision of the third year of King Balthasar [Belshazzar] which Daniel saw in Susa, the account is written in Hebrew characters, to be sure, but in the Chaldee language, which he here calls Syriac.
