The musical instruments of Daniel 3 and the question of Greek words

Daniel 3.5 lists the instruments whose sound is to bring about the general prostration before the statue:

“the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music”.

A comparable list recurs in Daniel 3.7, 10 and 15.

This repetition is one of the most visible literary features of the chapter.

It produces a ceremonial effect: the reader almost hears the same official signal return each time the royal command is repeated.

Music is therefore not mere decoration. It is part of the mechanism by which royal authority coordinates the behavior of the crowd all at once.

The text does not describe a concert meant to entertain the participants.

The instruments serve a precise function: their sound gives the signal for prostration.

The decree thus has three stages:

the musical signal is given;

the assembled people bow down;

they worship the statue.

Music makes it possible to synchronize a large crowd without the command having to be repeated individually to each participant.

It thus turns obedience into a collective gesture that is immediately visible.

The modern identification of ancient instruments remains delicate.

An ancient name does not necessarily correspond exactly to a modern instrument. English translations therefore vary from version to version: “harp”, “lyre”, “zither”, “psaltery”, “pipe”, “flute” or “bagpipe”.

These differences do not necessarily mean that the Aramaic text is unstable. They often reflect the difficulty of finding a precise modern equivalent.

Moreover, Daniel’s main aim is not to provide a detailed organological classification, but to describe an instrumental ensemble impressive enough to give the signal for the ceremony.

The first instrument, qeren, basically means “horn”.

The term can refer to an animal horn used as a wind instrument.

The closest equivalent in the biblical world is the trumpet or the horn.

The principle is ancient and widespread: a hollowed-out horn can produce a powerful sound suited to military, religious or ceremonial signals.

Its presence in Daniel 3 therefore raises no particular chronological difficulty.

The term mashroqitha generally denotes a wind instrument, often translated “flute” or “pipe”.

Its name seems to be related to the idea of whistling or breath.

The precise identification of its form remains uncertain.

It could have been a simple flute or an instrument belonging more broadly to the family of wind pipes.

Here again, this type of instrument is very ancient in the Near East.

The Aramaic term qathros is generally compared to the Greek κιθάρα (kithara), which denotes a stringed instrument of the lyre family.

The linguistic connection is clear enough that the word is usually regarded as a borrowing from Greek.

It is one of the terms that have fueled the discussion concerning the date of Daniel.

The presence of a Greek loanword in a text describing the Babylonian court has sometimes been considered incompatible with the sixth century BC.

This conclusion, however, needs to be examined more carefully.

The term pesanterin is generally compared to the Greek ψαλτήριον (psaltērion).

It also denotes a stringed instrument, probably played by plucking the strings.

The word is the origin of the English term “psaltery”.

Here again, the Greek origin of the vocabulary is widely accepted.

The important question is therefore not to deny the existence of the loanword, but to determine what this borrowing actually allows us to conclude about the date of the narrative or of its linguistic form.

The term sumpōnyā has traditionally been compared to the Greek συμφωνία (symphōnia).

The Greek word basically means “agreement”, “harmony” or “concord of sounds”. Its semantic development later allowed various musical uses.

Some ancient and modern translations have understood the Aramaic term as the name of an instrument, sometimes rendered “bagpipe”.

The exact identification, however, remains debated.

Above all, an anachronism must be avoided: the resemblance to the modern word “symphony” obviously does not mean that Daniel describes a symphony in the modern orchestral sense.

The term belongs to a totally different musical world.

The cautious formulation is to recognize at least two names of instruments whose Greek origin is widely accepted:

qathros, compared to κιθάρα (kithara);

pesanterin, compared to ψαλτήριον (psaltērion).

The case of sumpōnyā is also often associated with the Greek συμφωνία (symphōnia), but the questions concerning its exact meaning and its lexical history call for greater caution.

The chronological argument must therefore not be built on the loose idea that Daniel 3 contains a large amount of Greek vocabulary.

The phenomenon is far more limited: it mainly concerns a few technical terms belonging to the field of music.

In the interpretations that place the final composition of Daniel in the second century BC, during the crisis caused by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek terms have often been regarded as important indicators.

The reasoning is simple: after the conquests of Alexander the Great, from the end of the fourth century BC, Greek language and culture spread widely throughout the Near East.

The presence of Greek words in Daniel would therefore seem, at first sight, particularly natural in a text from the Hellenistic period.

This observation has some value.

It is not enough, however, to prove that such words were impossible several centuries earlier.

The Greek world did not appear in the Near East with Alexander the Great.

Long before his conquests, Greek populations maintained commercial, military and cultural contacts with Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt and the great eastern empires.

Greek mercenaries also served powers of the ancient Near East.

The exchange of goods, techniques and people naturally allows vocabulary to circulate.

There is therefore no linguistic rule according to which a Greek word could enter an eastern language only after 330 BC.

Musical terms are precisely a category of vocabulary likely to be borrowed.

When an instrument passes from one culture to another, its name can travel with it.

This phenomenon can be observed in many languages.

It is therefore not surprising that the vocabulary of an international musical ensemble should contain terms from different languages.

This observation is particularly relevant in Daniel 3, since the ceremony brings together representatives of a multinational empire.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire had absorbed peoples from many regions.

The deportations practiced by the Mesopotamian rulers themselves helped to move craftsmen, soldiers, administrators and specialists.

Daniel 3 insists precisely on the imperial character of the gathering.

It is therefore not necessary to imagine the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar as a linguistically closed environment in which no foreign term could be known.

The presence of a few foreign names of instruments is compatible with a court environment in which people, objects and practices from different regions circulated.

Recognizing these contacts does not mean that the Greek words are chronologically of no interest.

For a loanword to be used in a language, sufficient cultural contact must have made the word available.

The relevant question therefore becomes historical: can we establish when a particular Greek musical term began to circulate in the East?

The difficulty is that the earliest surviving written attestation of a word does not necessarily correspond to the date of its creation or of its first spread.

The surviving ancient documents represent only a tiny fraction of the texts that actually existed.

An argument based solely on the first known occurrence must therefore remain probabilistic.

Another methodological distinction is necessary.

Even if it were shown that a particular term belongs to a linguistic phase later than the sixth century BC, that would not automatically suffice to prove that the event narrated is fictional.

An ancient narrative can be handed down, copied and undergo certain lexical adaptations.

Conversely, asserting that an event belongs to the sixth century does not automatically prove that every lexical form preserved in the manuscripts corresponds exactly to the vocabulary used at the time of the event.

The historical dating of the events and the history of the linguistic transmission of the text are two related but distinct questions.

The book of Daniel also contains several terms of Persian origin, notably in the administrative vocabulary.

This is particularly visible in the lists of officials.

The mixture of Semitic vocabulary and borrowed terms corresponds to the complex history of a text set successively under Babylonian and then Medo-Persian rule and transmitted over several centuries.

It would therefore be methodologically dangerous to date the whole book on the basis of a single, very small group of words.

The whole body of linguistic data - Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian and Greek - must be considered together.

Daniel could simply have written: “when you hear the music”.

He chooses instead to repeat the list of instruments almost in full.

This repetition probably has a literary function.

It reproduces the mechanical character of the ceremony.

Each time the formula sounds, the same behavior is expected.

The succession of instruments, followed by the prostration of the crowd, gives the impression of a perfectly organized ritual.

The three Judeans appear precisely as the exception that interrupts this mechanism.

Everyone receives the same signal.

Everyone is expected to perform the same gesture.

Three men remain standing.

The text never condemns music in itself.

The instruments are not presented as evil.

The problem lies in their use as the signal for an imposed act of worship.

It would therefore be wrong to draw from Daniel 3 a negative theology of instrumental music.

The narrative is about the object of worship and the coercion exercised by royal power, not about the legitimacy of instruments.

This distinction is important in order to avoid attributing to the chapter a polemic that it does not contain.

The presence of musical terms of Greek origin in Daniel 3 is a linguistic datum that should be neither denied nor exaggerated.

It shows that Greek musical vocabulary entered the terminology used in the Aramaic text.

It is perfectly understandable in the Hellenistic period, but it is not enough, on its own, to prove that the narrative was created in the second century BC.

To turn these loanwords into decisive proof of a late date, it would be necessary to show that the terms concerned could not have been known or transmitted in the Near East before the Hellenistic period.

Such a demonstration is far more difficult than simply noting their Greek origin.