If Bible fundamentalists could prove that Daniel was written during the Babylonian captivity, as its author claimed, that would do little to improve its credibility, because the date of authorship is only one of many problems that have led rational people to reject the traditional notion that the author of this book was "inspired of God." In addition to verifiable historical mistakes in the book that have been discussed in response to Everette Hatcher's defense of the traditional view of authorship, there are entirely too many absurdities in Daniel for rational people to believe that it was a divinely inspired work.
The tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace is one of the silliest yarns in the book, if not the entire Bible, and only those whose sense of reality has been warped by religious indoctrination could believe that this is a historically accurate story. According to this fanciful tale, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold that was 60 cubits tall and six cubits broad, set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon, and commanded all his subjects to worship it (3:1-7). A cubit was about 18 inches in length, so the claim is that this golden image was about 90 feet tall and nine feet wide. The story does not state the third dimension of the image, but if its depth were equal to the width, the image would have contained 270 cubic yards of gold, a quantity that would surely have impoverished the supply of gold in the royal treasury for no purpose except to make a gigantic golden image that the king would command all of his subjects to worship.
In all of the royal Babylonian archives that archaeologists have discovered, no reference to such an image as this or any decree to worship it has been found. Since a penalty of death was attached to any refusal to worship the image (3:6), it is unlikely that the erection of a magnificent image like this and the laws attendant to it would have escaped the notice of the royal archivists, who recorded such mundane matters as food allotments for captive kings and less impressive religious ceremonies, but even if we assume that religious superstition was so rampant at the time that a king would squander royal wealth on a project like this, the tale is still too unlikely to believe.
For one thing, the previous chapter had ended with Daniel's successful interpretation of a dream that Nebuchadnezzar had had about another great image, and so impressed was the king that he had said to Daniel, "Of a truth your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings" (2:47). Then out of gratitude for Daniel's service, Nebuchadnezzar gave Daniel "many gifts" and made him ruler "over the whole province of Babylon" and "the chief governor over all the wise men of Babylon" (v:48). The king also "appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon" (v:49). As in the case of the golden image and the king's decree for all people to worship it, no record of "many gifts" given to Daniel or of his and his three friends' promotions to positions of prominence have been found in Babylonian archives, even though they contained meticulous records of royal distributions to other Hebrew captives. Despite the absence of official corroboration of these claims, biblicists expect us to believe that all this happened and that the same king who had been so thoroughly convinced that Daniel's god was "the god of Gods" then turned around and made a 90-foot golden idol and commanded all of his subjects to worship it under pain of death for disobeying the decree. His conversion to belief in Daniel's "true" god was short indeed.
These flaws in the basic premise of the story are minor indeed compared to the absurdities that allegedly happened after the enactment of Nebuchadnezzar's decree. "Certain Chaldeans" reported to the king that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, whom he had "appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon" (v:12), had refused to serve the king's gods or to worship the golden image that he had set up. Upon hearing this, Nebuchadnezzar had the accused brought before him and offered them a chance to acquit themselves of blame. If they would fall down and worship the golden image, the matter would be forgotten, but if they refused to worship the image, they would be cast immediately into a fiery furnace. The three loyal Yahwists refused, of course, and Nebuchadnezzar, in a rage of fury (v:19), commanded that the furnace be heated seven times hotter than normal and that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be bound and cast into it. The heat was so intense that it killed the king's men who carried the three to the furnace and threw them into the flames.
As the story unfolded beyond this point, silliness was piled onto silliness. The king rose up in astonishment and said to his counselors," Did we not cast three men into the midst of the fire?" Assured by his counselors that this was so, Nebuchadnezzar said, "Lo, I see four men walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods" (v:25). A little background music from the Twilight Zone series would be appropriate here. Only three men were thrown into the fire, but four could be seen walking about unharmed in the flames! What else could account for this but the hand of the almighty Yahweh himself?
Nebuchadnezzar then "came near to the mouth of the burning, fiery furnace" (v:26) and called to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: "You servants of the Most High God, come forth" (v:26). Never mind that the heat of the furnace was so intense that it had killed the men who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace. If the Bible says that Nebuchadnezzar went to the mouth of this intensely hot furnace, without being hurt, and told the men strolling about inside to come forth, we are supposed to believe that it happened. It's in the book!
When the men came out of the furnace, the king's satraps, deputies, governors, and counselors, gathered around, saw that the fire had "had no power on their bodies" and that not even "the hair of their heads [was] singed" (v:27). Their clothes had undergone no change and didn't even have the smell of fire on them (v:27). If this tale were found in any ancient document other than the Bible, even Christian fundamentalists would be amused at its silliness, but since it is in the Bible, they believe that it actually happened-- and wonder why skeptics don't.
But the absurdities continue. Nebuchadnezzar, who had already been convinced by Daniel's dream interpretation that Yahweh was the "god of Gods and Lord of kings," got a case of true religion again. After the men had exited the fiery furnace, he said to his official entourage, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him" (v:28). His angel? Ah, so that's who the fourth party in the fiery furnace was! An angel of Yahweh! We should have known. At any rate, Nebuchadnezzar, slow learner that he was, had once again been convinced that Yahweh was the only true god, and so he made a decree that "every people, nation, and language, which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, will be cut to pieces, and their houses will be made a dunghill, because there is no other god that is able to deliver after this sort" (v:29). He then promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon (v:30).
What they were promoted to is anyone's guess, for, as previously noted, Nebuchadnezzar had already appointed them "over the affairs of the province of Babylon" (2:49), but what is even stranger yet is that all of the hundreds of cuneiform tablets discovered in the Babylonian archives of this period made no reference to these three Jewish captives who were promoted to such prominence in the kingdom. Neither has any reference been found to any official decree that Nebuchadnezzar issued, which, in effect, had declared Yahweh to be the national god of the Babylonian empire. Biblicists may claim that this is an argument from silence, but it is certainly a peculiar silence in records that made so many references to the religious practices of the time.
The next chapter is related in the first person, as if Nebuchadnezzar himself was its author. It underscores the king's incredible forgetfulness, for after twice having had the majesty and greatness of the Hebrew god so forcefully demonstrated to him that he declared Yahweh to be "the god of Gods," he apparently suffered another memory lapse, which brought a stern warning from Yahweh in a dream. In the dream, Nebuchadnezzar saw a great tree in the midst of the earth whose height reached to heaven (4:10-11), and as the dream continued, a watcher (angel) descended from heaven and cut down the tree. Daniel, however, came to the rescue again to interpret the dream and inform the king that he had gotten too big for his britches, and so Yahweh was going to drive him from among men to live as a beast in the wild until "seven times" had passed over him and he again realized what he had already recognized twice before, *i. e.,* "the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he will" (v:17). Sure enough, the dream came true, just as Daniel had predicted, and after Nebuchadnezzar had boasted one day of his accomplishments, Yahweh drove him into the wild to eat grass and live as a beast. At the end of the "seven times," assumed to be seven years, Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes to heaven (v:34), and his understanding returned to him as he "blessed the Most High and praised and honored him that lives forever" (v:34). So once again, Nebuchadnezzar had come to realize the greatness of the Hebrew god, and his kingdom was restored to him (v:36). At this point, Nebuchadnezzar dropped out of the book of Daniel, so who knows? Maybe the third time was charmed, and the king remained convinced the rest of his life that Yahweh was "the god of Gods."
Needless to say, Babylonian records made no reference to any
seven-year period of insanity or absence from his official duties
during
the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. As William Sierichs, Jr., pointed out in
his article (pp. 2-4, this issue), there are implications that
Nabonidus, the real father of Belshazzar, may have experienced a period
of mental instability that contributed to his absence from Babylon, but
there is nothing in the records to indicate that Nebuchadnezzar had had
mental problems or that he was absent from his official duties for any
protracted period. Of course, none of this will matter to biblical
inerrantists. If the book of Daniel claims that Nebuchadnezzar was
repeatedly convinced by miraculous demonstrations that Yahweh was "the
god of Gods" but somehow kept suffering lapses that caused him to
forget
it, that's good enough for them. Never mind how silly the stories are
or
how silent the extensive nonbiblical records of the time may have been
about such matters. If it's in the Bible, they are going to believe it.
