(10) The Wise Men. The term Chaldzan represents also a branch of the order of Baby lonian Magi. In Dan. ii :2 they appear among 'the magicians, and the astrologers and the sorcerers,' who were called for to shcw the king his dream.' In the tenth verse of the same chapter they are represented as speaking in the name of the rest, or otherwise theirs was a general designation which comprised the entire class (Dan. iv:7; v:7) ; a general description of these different orders is found in Dan. v:8, as the king's wise men.' (11) Chaldee Language is the name by which the elder form of the Aramaic idiom is generally distinguished. Whether there is any authority in the Old Testament for applying this designation to the Aramaic language is a question which depends on the sense in which the expression 'tongue of the Chaldees,' in Dan. i :4, is to be taken; and which involves such important historical points that it does not conic within the scope of this arti cle. Avoiding debatable points, however, we ap ply the name Chaldee language to that Aramaic idiom which, in our present text of the Old Testa ment. is employed in the passages of Daniel, from
ii :4 to vii :28; in Ezra, from iv :8 to vi;t8, and vii. from 12 to 26; in Gen. xxxi:47, and in Jer. x t ; as also to that in which several translations and paraphrases of portions of the Old Testa ment, the so-called Targums, are written. The language is thus distinguished, as to the nature of the documents in which it is employed, into Biblical and Targumical Chaldce.
We have already (see ARAMAIC LANGUAGE) no ticed those several features which the Chaldee possesses in common with the Syriac ; and it now remains to define these, certainly not marked, characteristics by which it is distinguished from it. These are; the predominance of the a sound where Syriac has o; the avoidance of diphthongs and of half-silent letters; the use of dagesh forte ; the regular accentuation of the last syllable, and the formation of the infinitives, except in Peal, without the preformative ‘7.. The mode of writing is also much less defective than in Syr iac. (See Vhs.stoNs (, S('RIPTURE, II.)