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 R.H. Charles (1855-1931) was Professor of Biblical Greek at Trinity College, Dublin (1898-1906). He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1906, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1910. He was also Archdeacon of Westminster. In 1925 he was the first recipient of the British Academy Medal for Biblical Studies. Charles also received honorary degrees from the Universities of Belfast in 1923 and Oxford in 1928. His publications include: 'The Book of Enoch, ' 'The Book of Jubilees, ' 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ' and 'The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English' (2 vols.).