Daniel

 As I read the first two chapters of the book of Daniel in English this week, I said to myself that these stories sound like folktales.  The idealized and formal conversations, the drama of the miraculous deliverances of Hananiah, Michael, and Azariah from the furnace and Daniel from the lion's den, the way that the foreign kings all come to eventually acknowledge the supremacy of the God of Israel, all suggest a polished narrative with a specific moralistic agenda. Some scholars believe that the Book of Daniel was written by Daniel at the end of his life, when he was about 90.  That could account for the folk-tale like flavor of the stories--an old man recounting the exploits of his youth.  Other scholars believe that it was written many years later, in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews in the Holy Land, and some scholars believe that the book of Daniel was written to give the people under persecution hope that God was still with them and could do miraculous things for them.  

Whether the stories were written by Daniel or by later people recounting folk tales of the Babylonian Captivity, the message of the book of Daniel ties in really well with the main message of the book of Jeremiah. Last week I wrote about Jeremiah's main message, i.e. that the God of Israel had followed his people as they were taken from Jerusalem, and continued to sustain them in captivity.  In a way, the stories of Daniel are well placed directly following Jeremiah, because they illustrate his point perfectly. Daniel and his friends are the ultimate example how to survive and thrive in captivity without giving up your belief in the God of Israel. 

These stories are some of the best known Bible stories that every Sunday School child learns.  Reading them in Hebrew brought only one of two small insights.  One is that they are not written all in Hebrew.  As I read Chapter 2 of Daniel, whenever the king spoke, his words were in Aramaic.  Later in the book part is written in Greek. This is one of the reasons scholars think they must have been written later, because the Greek Language didn't really exist in the 6th century BCE.  Another small idea I had never thought of before concerns Chapter 1.  Daniel and his friends were captured in Jerusalem and taken to be groomed to be wise men in the land of Babylon.  They were entrusted into the head of the eunuchs. I always assumed that was because they were very young when they were captured, even pre-adolescent and thus belonged with "the women".  One of the podcasters this week suggested another reason.  Maybe when they entered into the king's service they were neutered and became eunuchs.  A argument in favor of this assumption is that none of them are ever mentioned to have taken a wife. I don't know why that fact should be particularly important but, to me, it made their service in the court of the King seem like an even greater sacrifice.