Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I haven’t posted nearly as much in the past few months as I have previously. Part of the reason for this is because I’m taking several courses this semester with workloads that take up a large proportion of my time. One of these courses is NEJS 113a (“Biblical Aramaic in Context”). The first five weeks of the course were a fast-paced introduction to the grammar of Aramaic, a West Semitic language closely related to Hebrew that was the most widely spoken vernacular language in Mesopotamia and the Levant from around the seventh century BCE to around the third century CE and was also the primary language of administration and public life in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Currently, we are reading the Book of Daniel chapters 3, 6, and 7 in the original Aramaic and, later in the semester, we will be reading Aramaic texts from inscriptions and papyri.
In doing my readings for this course, I’ve been reminded of what I have long thought is possibly the most poorly-conceived law in all of ancient literature: a supposed Achaemenid law that held that no one—not even the king himself—could ever revoke or alter any decree that had been made in his name for any reason under any circumstances. The law is definitely made up; there’s no attestation of it anywhere in any Persian or Greek sources. Nonetheless, it manages to cause all kinds of trouble as a plot device the Books of Esther and Daniel.
In the Book of Esther
The fictional law that no decree issued in the name of the Achaemenid king can ever be revoked first shows up in the Book of Esther, a short prose narrative work that was originally written in Hebrew, most likely in the fourth century BCE or maybe the early third century BCE, although the Hebrew text may have undergone some edits and additions after that point. Critical scholars today generally recognize that the book is a work of historical fiction. Some have characterized the work as a novella.
The story is set in the city of Susa, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, during the reign of King Xerxes I (ruled 486 – 465 BCE), who is the only character in the story who is verifiably based on a real person. In the story, Xerxes’s queen Vashti disobeys him, so he replaces her by marrying an exceptionally beautiful young Jewish woman named Esther and making her his new queen, without knowing that she is Jewish (chapters 1–2).
Meanwhile, Esther’s cousin Mordecai, who raised her, offends the king’s most exalted official Haman by not bowing to him. Haman finds out that Mordecai is Jewish, so he convinces Xerxes into letting him use his signet ring to issue a decree to all the satraps, ordering them to kill all Jews throughout the entire empire (chapter 3).
After learning about what Haman has done, Esther eventually goes to Xerxes, her husband, and asks him and Haman to come to a banquet that she has prepared and then to a second banquet the next day (chapters 4–6). At this second banquet, Xerxes asks Esther what she wants and swears to give her anything she asks for up to half his kingdom. In response, she reveals that she is Jewish and begs him to spare her own life and the lives of her people, naming Haman as the enemy who has ordered the genocide against her people. Xerxes therefore puts Haman to death (chapter 7).
ABOVE: Esther Denouncing Haman, painted in 1888 by the English painter Ernest Normand
With Haman dead, Esther tells Xerxes that Mordecai is her relative and has him brought to the palace. There, Esther begs Xerxes to revoke Haman’s decree (Est. 8:3–6). Xerxes says to her and Mordecai (Est. 8:8, NRSVUE translation):
“You may write as you please with regard to the Jews, in the name of the king, and seal it with the king’s ring, for an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked.”
Because of this absurd law that no decree issued in the name of the king can ever be revoked, even to prevent mass genocide against an entire people, Esther and Mordecai cannot simply revoke Haman’s prior edict ordering to kill all Jews. They work around this problem, however, by issuing a counter-edict saying that the Jews throughout the empire may assemble and take arms to defend themselves from anyone who tries to harm them (Est. 8:9–14).
ABOVE: Esther and Mordecai Write the First Letter of Purim, painted by the Dutch painter Aert de Gelder (lived 1645 – 1727)
In the Book of Daniel
The plot device that no decree issued by the Achaemenid king can ever be revoked doesn’t just show up in the Book of Esther, though; it also shows up in the Book of Daniel.
Of all the books that are included in the canonical Hebrew Bible, Daniel is one of the youngest, if not the youngest. The book most likely developed over time, with various authors revising and adding to it over the course of many years. Most modern critical scholars, however, agree that it is unlikely that any part of the book dates any earlier than the third century BCE. As with the Book of Esther, critical scholars today generally regard the Book of Daniel as a work of fiction and Daniel himself as a literary character.
Unusually, the Book of Daniel was originally written in two different languages. Chapters 1 and 8–12 were originally written in Hebrew, but chapters 2–7 were originally written in Aramaic. Chapters 1–6 of the book consist of a series of six standalone vignettes told in the third-person about the wise man Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These chapters were most likely originally written at various points in the third and second centuries BCE.
Internal evidence indicates that chapters 7–12, which describe a series of apocalyptic visions that Daniel supposedly experienced, date to after 168 BCE when King Antiochos IV Epiphanes of the Seleukid Empire began his persecution of traditional Jewish practices, but before Antiochos’s death in November or December 164 BCE. The section most likely dates to near the end of this period, shortly before Antiochos’s death.
By the late second century BCE at the latest, the Hebrew and Aramaic text of Daniel existed in something resembling the form in which it has been passed down. Then, around this time, the book was translated into Koine Greek. The Greek version of the book contains three long additional sections not found in the older Hebrew and Aramaic version: the “Prayer of Azariah and the Three Holy Children” (Extended Daniel 3:24–90), “Susanna and the Elders” (Extended Daniel chapter 13), and “Bel and the Dragon” (Extended Daniel chapter 14). Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians consider these sections canonical and usually include them in their translations of the book, but Jews and Protestant Christians do not.
ABOVE: Papyrus 967, dating to the third century CE, bearing part of the Greek text of the story of “Susanna and the Elders”
Despite its late composition, the Book of Daniel is set centuries earlier, in the sixth century BCE. The book begins in chapter 1 by describing how King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire sacked the city of Jerusalem in 587 BCE and took members of the Judahite nobility into captivity in Babylon. The book claims that these captives included Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who received the Akkadian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego respectively.
Chapters 2–4 are set during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. Chapter 5 is set during the supposed reign of Belshazzar, whom the book inaccurately portrays as the son and immediate successor of Nebuchadnezzar and the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
In historical reality, Nebuchadnezzar died in October 562 BCE and was succeeded by his son Amel-Marduk, who ruled for just under two years before his brother-in-law Neriglissar murdered him and usurped the throne in August 560 BCE. Neriglissar ruled for just under four years until he died in April 556 BCE and was succeeded by his young son Labashi-Marduk, who only ruled for a month or two until a coup overthrew him and installed a man named Nabonidus, who was the real last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, onto the throne.
In historical reality, Belshazzar was neither the son of Nebuchadnezzar II nor a Neo-Babylonian king in his own right at all, but rather Nabonidus’s son and crown prince, who may have ruled on his father’s behalf as regent during the latter part of his reign. The author of Daniel 5, however, seems completely unaware of any of this complexity.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a relief carving of Nabonidus worshipping the symbols of the moon god Sin, the sun god Shamash, and the goddess Ishtar on the Harran Stele, most likely dating to between c. 542 and c. 540 BCE, currently held in the British Museum
Daniel 6 claims that a king named “Darius the Mede,” who supposedly ruled over a people called the Medes, conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire from Belshazzar. In historical reality, although the Medes were a real ancient people, neither this “Darius the Mede” nor the independent Median Empire that he supposedly ruled ever existed. Instead, it was actually Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Persian Empire who conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire from Nabonidus in 539 BCE.
Cyrus ruled until his death in December 530 BCE. His son Cambyses II succeeded him and ruled for just under eight years until he died childless in July 522 BCE. He was succeeded in turn by his younger brother Bardiya, the son of Cyrus, who ruled only for a month or two before Darius I, a Persian, usurped the throne from him.
Thus, the real King Darius was a Persian, not a Mede, and he came to the throne of the Achaemenid Empire in 522 BCE, a full seventeen years after Cyrus conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The author of Daniel 6 evidently knew that there was a famous and powerful king named Darius who lived sometime around this time, but he seems to have gotten his ethnicities and chronologies mixed up, mistakenly thinking that Darius was a Mede and that he ruled before Cyrus, rather than after.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire as he is depicted in the relief carving from the Behistun Inscription, dating to his reign
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The supposed law that no decree made by the Median or Persian king can ever be revoked plays a major role in the plot of Daniel 6. In this chapter, Darius appoints Daniel as one of three sārkhin (singular: sāreikh) or ministers who are in charge of administering the whole empire. The other two sārkhin and the satraps (i.e., the regional governors) of the empire grow jealous of Daniel because Darius exalts him to such high status (Dan. 6:1–4). They try to find some dirt on him that they can use to bring him down, but they find nothing (Dan. 6:4–5).
As a result of this, the sārkhin and the satraps decide to use Daniel’s piety against him. They flatter Darius into issuing an irrevocable decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being except Darius himself for thirty days will be thrown into a den of lions, knowing that Daniel will continue praying to his God despite the decree (Dan. 6:6–9).
Outside the Book of Daniel, there is no attestation of a person being thrown into a den of lions as a form of punishment anywhere in the ancient Near East in the period before the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean. As a result, scholars have long puzzled over where the author of Daniel 6 got this idea from.
The closest parallel anyone can find to the lions’ den in Daniel is a letter written by an ousted scholar from the Neo-Assyrian court named Urad-Gula during the reign of King Ashurbanipal (ruled 669 – 631 BCE) in which Urad-Gula complains: “[D]ay and night I pray to the king in front of the lion’s pit.” The Biblical scholar Karol van der Toorn argues that the “lion’s pit” in this letter is most likely a metaphor for “the circle of [Urad-Gula’s] former colleagues from which he has been ousted” (van der Toorn, “In the Lions’ Den,” 631–633).
It is possible that the author of Daniel 6 was familiar with similar cases of people using the term “lions’ den” to describe the environment of cutthroat rivalry among scholars and administrators at Mesopotamian royal courts. This, in turn, may have inspired him to write a story about a courtier whose rivals manage to trick the king into throwing him into a literal lions’ den.
ABOVE: Daniel in the Lions’ Den, painted c. 1615 by the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens
Whatever the case may be, in the story, as expected, Daniel continues praying to his God three times every day. Thus, the sārkhin and the satraps go to Darius to remind him of his decree. Daniel 6:16 reads, in the original Aramaic and in my own translation:
“בֵּאדַ֙יִן֙ גֻּבְרַיָּ֣א אִלֵּ֔ךְ הַרְגִּ֖שׁוּ עַל־מַלְכָּ֑א וְאָמְרִ֣ין לְמַלְכָּ֗א דַּ֤ע מַלְכָּא֙ דִּֽי־דָת֙ לְמָדַ֣י וּפָרַ֔ס דִּֽי־כָל־אֱסָ֥ר וּקְיָ֛ם דִּֽי־מַלְכָּ֥א יְהָקֵ֖ים לָ֥א לְהַשְׁנָיָֽה׃”
“Then those men thronged up to the king and said to the king, ‘Know, o king, that it is law for the Medes and Persians that any decree or statute that the king sets up cannot be changed.’”
Darius desperately doesn’t want to throw Daniel into a den of lions, since he is his favorite sāreikh, but he finds that he has no choice, since he cannot revoke or amend his own decree, which Daniel has violated. Thus, he has Daniel thrown into the lion’s den, has a stone placed over the den, and marks it with his seal. Daniel 6:18 emphasizes that, by marking the stone with his seal, the king makes it so that no one can remove it until the morning:
“וְחַתְמַ֨הּ מַלְכָּ֜א בְּעִזְקְתֵ֗הּ וּבְעִזְקָת֙ רַבְרְבָנ֔וֹהִי דִּ֛י לָא־תִשְׁנֵ֥א צְב֖וּ בְּדָנִיֵּֽאל”
“And the king sealed it with his signet ring and the signet ring of his nobles so that nothing could be altered for Daniel.”
The king fasts and stays awake all night with no diversions, hoping that Daniel’s God will save him (Dan. 6:19). Then, the next morning, he goes to the den and shouts to Daniel to ask whether his God has saved him. Daniel promptly shouts back (Dan. 6:22):
“מַלְכָּ֖א לְעָלְמִ֥ין חֱיִֽי׃”
“O king, live to eternities!”
He then explains that his God has “shut the mouths of the lions” and that he is completely unharmed. The king has Daniel brought back up out of the den. Then he has all the sārkhin and satraps who tricked him into throwing Daniel into the den thrown into the den themselves, along with all their wives and children. The lions instantly tear all of them to shreds as soon as they hit the bottom, devour all their flesh, and crush their bones (Dan. 6:25).
ABOVE: Daniel’s Answer to the King, 1892 color mezzotint print by B. Pratt, after a painting by the British artist Briton Rivière
Conclusion
The moral of this story, I suppose, is that, if you happen to be the king of a vast empire in the ancient Middle East and there’s an age-old law that you cannot revoke or amend your own decrees, you should really work on repealing that law as soon as possible so that it doesn’t result in either you being unable to stop a mass genocide against your own wife’s people or your underlings being able to force you to throw your favorite sāreikh into a den of lions.
Works cited
- van der Toorn, Karel. “In the Lions’ Den: The Babylonian Background of a Biblical Motif.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 60, no. 4 (1998): 626–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43723404.
Missed your postings. Glad you’re working hard!
Thank you! I’m sorry I haven’t been posting every few days like I was back in 2020, but I have a lot of other things going on, including my coursework, so I don’t have as much free time as I used to.
I’m wondering now if this “understanding” had anything to do with Herod Antipas’s reluctance to revoke a promise he made to his stepdaughter, Salome, when he acquiesced to her demand for the head of John the Baptist.
I, too, have a BA in History and my area of concentration was the classical, ancient world, the roots of civilization. So, I can appreciate your scholarship.
Historically speaking, it is highly probable that the author of the Gospel of Mark made up the whole story about Salome getting Herod Antipas to promise her anything she wanted and then demanding that he give her the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter.
Josephus gives a very different account of John’s execution in his Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2, in which he says nothing about the whole supposed intrigue involving Salome and instead says that Herod Antipas had John arrested and executed because he feared that John might try to use his followers to incite a rebellion against the Romans. It would also make great sense for Herod Antipas to have this fear, considering that the Gospels of Mark and Matthew both attest that John was preaching an apocalyptic message. Herod would have remembered all too well that Judas the Galilean had incited a rebellion against the Romans in Judaea in 6 CE based on a similar ideology of apocalypticism.
The author of Mark most likely invented the story about Salome asking for John’s head partly for literary purposes to turn what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward story of Herod having John executed as a potential insurrectionist into an exciting drama of court intrigue. He probably also invented it, though, partly for political reasons in order to shift the blame for John’s execution away from Herod Antipas himself, who was a client king for the Romans, onto his female relatives. This shifting of the blame allows the author of Mark to present John’s execution in a way that would have been more appealing for the largely Greco-Roman audience for which he was writing. He does something very similar in his account of Jesus’s own execution, in which he tries to shift the blame away from Pilate, the Roman governor, and onto the Jewish people.
That being said, the Gospel of Mark’s account of John’s execution most likely draws direct literary inspiration from the Book of Esther, since it portrays Herod Antipas as making the exact same promise to Salome that Xerxes makes to Esther: that he will give her anything she asks him for “up to half [his] kingdom.” The difference, of course, is that Esther uses her wish to ask for something good while Salome uses hers to ask for something bad.
I read that there may be also a Roman inspiration for Mark’s account of John the Baptist’s death: the story of Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, who executed a man during a banquet at the request of a prostitute with whom he was in love (either male or female, depending on the source). The episode is told by several Greek and Roman authors, including Cicero (De senectute 42), Livy (39.42-43), Seneca the Elder (Controversiae 9.2), and Plutarch (Cato the Elder 17.1-5; Flamininus 18.4-9).
Oh excellent! Thank you so much for sharing this! I was not aware of this story. It reminds me of the story that Arrianos, Diodoros Sikeliotes, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Ploutarchos tell about how Alexandros supposedly burned the palace of Persepolis at the instigation of Thaïs the Athenian hetaira.
Thank you for so quickly and thoughtfully replying to my question. This is a series of scenarios I would have entertained before I became a Born-Again Christian, when I was simply a mere historian.
Today, it’s generally a bad idea for me to take the New Testament and do to it what I want. What it explicitly says is taken as God’s Word. I know to the secular set it’s a lot of fear-mongering, superstitious hocus pocus. But the message of the cross transcends all dogma, pro or con the Word as presented in both Testaments. So, it really doesn’t matter the who, what, how, when, why of antiquity as relates to the Bible.
I know I’M the one who asked about Herod’s undelying philosophy for having gone to such an extreme. As plausibly-sounding as your and Josephus’s renditions are, I must regard these speculations as just that. Regardless of who was writing for the benefit or amusement of whom, what the gender-specific ethic of the day may have been, or the most likely reasons for events having come to pass, I shall let your comments percolate, but ultimately compartmentalize them as divorced from and devoid of spiritual considerations.
As far as blaming the Jews for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth, I have to say that there was no reason whatsoever for Pilate to have rocked the boat in Judea at the time, especially in this way. One would have to conclude that the only purpose it would serve was for Pilate to simply be asking for trouble. The Pharissees had had enough of this challenge to their spiritual (and material) supremacy and cushy position, and trumped up ANY charge they could to eliminate their Nemesis. I’m reminded of a passage from Paul Johnson’s “Jesus: A Biography from a Believer”, in which the trial and execution of Jesus Christ is summed up in terms of the motives and misdeeds of men:
“Take ye Him, and crucify Him: for I find no fault in Him” (John 19: 4-6). Thus occurred the greatest miscarriage of justice in history, the exemplary and archetypal betrayal of law, of legal procedure, of the rules of evidence and proof, and of all the orderly processes whereby a verdict is reached. Every vice and weakness which vitiates justice was present, from cowardice and perjury to mob rule. Both Jews and Romans, in their different traditions, revered the law. They were the two greatest law-makers of all time. But here they combined to enact a joint travesty, which has tolled through the centuries as the antithesis of law. It is hard to say who was more to blame for this huge evil: Caiaphas, the accuser, or Pilate, who had the power.”
The quality of your posts is as sky-high as ever. Thank you very much!
I didn’t know that Daniel was originally written in two different languages. Super interesting to know. Are there other parts of the Bible which were originally written in Aramaic?
Yes! The Book of Ezra is mostly in Hebrew, but Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26 are in Aramaic. The Book of Jeremiah is entirely in Hebrew except for one sentence (Jer. 10:11) that is randomly in Aramaic. The Book of Genesis 31:47 contains an Aramaic phrase consisting of two words. There are also various Aramaic loanwords scattered throughout other books of the Hebrew Bible.
All the works of the New Testament were originally written in Koine Greek, but the gospels contain a number of Aramaic sayings that they attribute to Jesus, most of which occur in the Gospel of Mark. For instance, Mark 5:41 portrays Jesus as saying “Talitha koum,” which the gospel writer translates from Aramaic into Koine as “Little girl, I tell you to stand up!”
Thank you! I knew about a few phrases in the NT, such as the very famous “Eli, Eli, lama sabactani?” (which I am probably spelling wrong), said to be among Jesus’ last words.
Spencer, fascinating post, as usual.
With your interest in stories, you may enjoy this recent piece I wrote:
Best wishes
Ian
Esther and Daniel are interesting works in terms of how the LXX and MT differ not only textually as expected but also complete changes to the story and/or additions to them.
Not sure if the URL registered in the body of the Reply.
Have re-sent it in the website box.
Ian
Great stuff, as usual from you! The title really grabbed one’s interest!
I hope your studies are going well! Are you specialising for anything currently (I do not know that much about how grad school works? I’m thinking that studying Aramaic is not something done by all Classicists.
One wonders if this law was commonly believed in Jewish folklore, considering it features in two different books? Also, the discussion of the “lion’s den” is really interesting!
As for mixing up Persians and Medes, it seems a lot of early Greek authors did that too.
Also, I’m curious about you consistently referring to the author of Daniel 6 as “he”. I understand it would be more likely for the author to be male, but can we categorically exclude a woman from having written it? You do not seem wary of using singular they otherwise
Almost no classicists ever study Aramaic; the fact that I’m studying it is highly unusual. I’m studying it partly because I’m academically interested in ancient Greek interactions with cultures of the ancient Near East. Since Aramaic was, as I mention in the post above, the most widely spoken vernacular language in Mesopotamia and the Levant from around the seventh century BCE to around the third century CE and was also the primary language of administration and public life in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, it makes sense as a language for me to learn.
I’ve also long felt that the fact that most classicists don’t know any ancient languages other than Greek and Latin is a serious problem for both individual scholars and the field as a whole because it can limit our perspectives and force us to see the ancient world through a wildly distortive Greco-Roman-centric lens. There are vast corpora of surviving texts from the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean written in languages that the vast majority of classicists cannot read and, as a result, classicists tend to be ignorant of those texts. By studying an ancient language that is not Greek or Latin, I’m hoping to broaden my perspective and the range of sources I am able to work with.
I’m glad that you found the bit about the lions’ den interesting! I deliberately included that part because I wanted to give more context about Daniel 6’s highly tenuous at best relationship to actual legal systems of the ancient Middle East.
I refer to the author of Daniel 6 as “he” just because the author was most likely a man and scholars usually refer to the author as a man. Referring to the author as “they” would probably be more accurate, since we can’t definitively rule out the possibility that the author was a woman (or something else).
I see! It might give you some advantage then as a (future) scholar then. As you might have noticed I am also quite interested in connections between Greco-Roman cultures and Middle Eastern cultures, though personally I should probably improve my Latin and learn Greek before attempting Aramaic.
Indeed, I would think it very fruitful to see Mediterranean Antiquity from another point of view. I was quite fascinated to learn for instance that cuneiform tablets continued to be written in the Seleucid and even the Roman period, though I have been aware of the Antiochus Cylinder for a while.
Oh yes, that is a good example of the book not being very knowledgeable on the period it is said to depict, though it seems they had some connection. It seems that Biblical texts generally are rather often pseudepigraphically written, or edited and compiled by several authors, compared to ‘pagan’ Greek and Roman works (though there are Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius and the Historia Augusta of course)
I guess that makes sense. Technically there are countless people in ancient history who could have had another gender identity as male, but calling everyone ‘they’ might be cumbersome
I heard that there is a push to include Aramaic in Classical Studies. One scholar on the “Byzantium and Friends” podcast argued that it should be considered as one of the important lingua franca of the Roman Empire, along with Greek and Latin. I don’t know how much traction this has gotten in academia.
Unfortunately, the view you’ve described here has gained extremely little traction in mainstream classics whatsoever and it is unlikely that it will ever become a reality, in part because there are virtually no classicists who can read Aramaic and even fewer who can teach it.
Not teaching it because nobody already knows it sounds like circular reasoning that gets nowhere.
I think you’re misunderstanding the issue here. To some extent, I do think there is an element of most classicists assuming that, since they don’t know Aramaic and they don’t know any classicist who does, it must be useless for classicists. That’s not the main issue, though; the main issue is a practical one. Quite simply, when almost no one in the field knows Aramaic, it is practically extremely difficult or impossible to start teaching it, since there is simply no one who can teach it.
Hello, Spencer. Yeah, that’s fair, and now that I think about it, it was actually Syriac, which is derived from Aramaic but not the same (kind of like what Coptic is to ancient Egyptian). As I understand it, while Aramaic is more unknown, Syriac still has some speakers.
Really intriguing. I wish you success in your studies in Biblical Aramaic.
I was pretty blown away by the lion’s den connection to Urad-Gula’s metaphor. Bestial imagery in this book has great symbolic significance – for example, in Dan 4, Nebuchadnezzar boasts of the greatness of his newly rebuilt city and is humbled, turning into a wild man – like Enkidu subverting the Epic of Gilgamesh – living in the wild for a while and eats grass in. Humans who exult themselves (becoming their own gods) ultimately become sub-human voracious chaos monsters in this ironic twist of corruption and pride. This is a trend of Jewish apocalyptic literature. It is used in the Book Revelation with the antagonist being called the Beast.
I always found it very strange why the king had no power to revoke his own laws in Esther and Daniel. I would guess that this is a deliberate exaggeration on the biblical author’s part. It could be a device to critique the inerrancy of the divine human Near Eastern king’s power. Whatever they claim, it is right and good because he is appointed by the gods as a ruler of an empire. They had the final word and just like the god’s power (words have power) he held sway over his kingdom. His power couldn’t be revoked. However, what if the king’s own words of power become a liability and threat? Then they’re in trouble. I think this is how this law is operating narrative-wise. Humans in power are setting themselves up for failure unless someone righteous steps in (like Daniel and Esther) to save the day. The story of Daniel especially is recycling the melody of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis, where the proto-Babylonian culture aims to transcend into the heavens to become powerful by making a name for themselves. So, this absurd law I think is a literary device used for a theological polemic (usurpingly) to attack the hubris of these kings. That’s my guess.
The story about Nebuchadnezzar turning into a wild man and living in the wilderness among animals in Daniel 4 is actually a development of a story attested in earlier sources about Nabonidus. Because Nebuchadnezzar II was the Neo-Babylonian king who sacked Jerusalem, though, he was the king of that empire who was best known to Jewish writers in the Hellenistic Period when Daniel 4 was composed. As a result, the Neo-Babylonian king in the story changed from Nabonidus to Nebuchadnezzar.
Super interesting, I didn’t know that. What are those earlier sources?
The Prayer of Nabonidus, discovered at Qumran
Thank you very much!
Yes, thank you for answering Nicolás’s question; I was busy and forgot to respond.
But it would be fine for me to have that law becuase I never make mistakes.
If your not posting but the reason is a happy one, like being kept busy in a good way, then I am glad.
Thanks, that was an intresting read. Yes, that is a really bad fictional law (one that I think some would believe becuase they get certain ideas of ancient emperors as supremely powerful) but intresting seeing how it was used. What the lions story may have been playing off was a pleasant allegory (I hope that is the word) to learn about.
I am the guy (former professor) who worried about you being capable of keeping up with your studies when researching posts so deeply. It seems that your studies have finally caught up with your capacity! (Which is a good thing. I have always felt that college students should have a goal of finding their limits. You can’t expand them if you don’t know what they are.)
Regarding your main point, consider the authors of books of the Bible. Were they scribes or temple officials dictating to scribes? Were they sole scholars working in secret? Consider what their sources of information were, especially upon the law of other kingdoms. They had no Internet, no Encyclopedia Britannica, they had religious scrolls and then several libraries.
How would you research such a law? Send a scribe to the Temple Library to look it up? Write a colleague in Alexandria? Write a colleague in the Persian Empire? I assume they succumbed to the “we all know” syndrome and just went with it.
Thanks for this interesting discussion.
It reminds me of Genesis & how Isaac was tricked into giving a blessing to Jacob.
It seems a bad form of estate law that a blessing that in practice had the legal effect of a binding last will and testament is so final, even if it was based on fraud.
As always, great post. You really do a great service to the world with the quality of your posts.
Very minor corrigendum. You quote Daniel 6:22 but write Daniel 16:22 for “O king, live to eternities”
Thank you for pointing this out! I’m really not sure what happened there. I definitely meant to write “Daniel 6:22.” I’m sorry for the mistake and have now corrected it.
Lions aren’t actually known for living in pits. Surely “the lions’ pit” could not exist as a metaphor unless a pit that contained lions was something monarchs might plausibly possess:
Hi Spencer,
I enjoyed reading your article and it’s great to see that you’re still writing, despite other commitments.
As an aside, I suspect that the account of Bel and the Dragon preserves an earlier form of the lions’ den story in Daniel. The sealing of temple doors and the reason for Daniel’s incarceration in Bel makes considerably more sense than the sealing of a stone in Daniel and the highly artificial explanation of his death sentence. Additionally, the Greek court tale – which displays no interest in historical situation (the Old Greek refers only to the ‘king of Babylon’) – seems to reflect a relatively settled period and a more detached interest in intellectual puzzles (as an early example of a “locked door” detective mystery) than the Danielic version of the story, sharing these characteristics with its companion tale: Susannah.
If this is the case, then the slightly ridiculous plot devices of the unchangeable law and the prohibition on prayer are probably part of a deliberate thematic shift to highlight the conspiracy of the hero’s powerful rivals (in Bel, Daniel is understandably sentenced to death for destroying the idol of Bel and its priesthood, along with a living serpent deity). As with other themes in Daniel’s court tales applicable to the mid-second century context of the book (e.g., the theft of temple vessels, forced worship under penalty of death, a “mad” king), this is probably a veiled indictment of the political rivals who assassinated Onias III – a legitimate high priest of the period. Daniel twice alludes this event in the final visions of the book (9:26, 11:22).
Incidentally, the New Testament gospels appear to reuse this story to flesh out their passion week narratives. In Matthew this becomes overt through its use of the sealed stone motif, but the other gospels also refer to angelic visitations, an early morning visit, and miraculous deliverance from the den/tomb in the same way that they highlight a political conspiracy, an arrest associated with prayer, a ruler reluctant to administer the death sentence, and – in the case of Bel and the dragon – a crowd that bays for the blood of the hero.
Thank you so much for the additional insight! It’s great to see you reading and leaving comments on my posts again, since you have such a depth of knowledge about Biblical scholarship.
As you have probably gathered from the fact that I’m taking a course in Biblical Aramaic, I’ve learned quite a lot more about the Bible since the days when I was writing on Quora. I’m also trying to cite and engage with more secondary scholarship in my posts.