With the exception of Dr. Montgomery in his Commentary in the International Critical Commentary Series, all my forerunners in the study of Daniel have been handicapped in many respects owing to the lack of an Aramaic grammar which dealt with the historical development of the language. . . . Accordingly a large section of the Introduction is devoted to the grammatical development of Aramaic idioms, so far as these have any bearing on the Aramaic of our text. . . . Again I may remark that though many of the greatest Semitic scholars have edited Daniel, not one of them seems to have had a first hand knowldge of the characteristics of Apocalyptic outside Daniel. . . . In publishing this Commentary my chief claim is, so far as possible, to recover the oldest form of the text, and to interpret that text in conformity with the usages of Jewish Apocalyptic. --from the Preface
