The Book of Enoch especially, which was much read at the time of Jesus,[1] gives us the key to the expression "Son of Man," and to the ideas attached to it.

The ages of these different books, thanks to the labors of Alexander, Ewald, Dillmann, and Reuss, is now beyond doubt.

Every one is agreed in placing the compilation of the most important of them in the second and first centuries before Jesus Christ.

The date of the Book of Daniel is still more certain.

The character of the two languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated announcement of events, which reach even to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the incorrect descriptions of Ancient Babylonia, there given, the general tone of the book, which in no respect recalls the writings of the captivity, but, on the contrary, responds, by a crowd of analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of the time of the Seleucidae; the Apocalyptic form of the visions, the place of the book in the Hebrew canon, out of the series of the prophets, the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of Chapter xlix.