Chapter Fourteen

Chapters 13 and 14 are translated from the Greek, because they are absent in the Hebrew text.

Known from the LXX translation (Chisian codex) and many manuscripts of the Theodotion translation, but not found in the Hebrew text of the book of the prophet Daniel, the account of Bel presents many oddities that suggest its legendary character. Such is first of all the beginning of the account according to the LXX reading: “from the prophecy of Habakkuk the son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi. There was a man, a priest, named Daniel, son of Abal, a companion of the king of Babylon.” Judging from this superscription, the account is drawn from an unknown apocryphal work attributed to the prophet Habakkuk. The principal character is not the prophet Daniel, descended from the tribe of Judah (Dan 1:3-6), but some unknown priest Daniel (cf. Ezra 8:2). In the Theodotion translation, the account begins differently: “King Astyages was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian took his kingdom. And Daniel lived with the king.” The account is thus placed in connection with the canonical content of the book of the prophet Daniel, but it differs from it in the remark about Astyages: it was not he who was the contemporary of Daniel, but Darius (Dan 5:31), and in the unusual closeness of the prophet to Cyrus.

It also raises doubts that Cyrus was a worshiper of the Babylonian idol Bel (Dan 14:3-4). True, the Babylonians had the idol Bel (Isa 46:1), but Cyrus, a sun-worshiper, who, like all Persians, had no idols, could hardly have worshiped them. The history of Bel concludes with the “destruction” of his idol and even the “temple” by Daniel with Cyrus’s permission (Dan 14:22). Yet according to the testimony of Herodotus, this temple existed even after Cyrus, under Xerxes, by whom it was plundered. It is also strange that the temple was destroyed by Daniel alone. Catholic exegetes see here a partial destruction of some kind of vestibule or floor of the temple (cf. and Pesotsky, p. 457, note 1), but the text does not warrant this.

Doubtful from the point of view of historical reliability is also the second half of chapter 14—the account of the dragon. Its obvious implausibility is evident from the fact that it considers the prophet Habakkuk a contemporary of Daniel (Dan 14:33). In reality, Habakkuk lived long before the invasion of the Chaldeans into Judea, since he characterizes them as a people completely unknown to his listeners (Hab 1:6-12), and depicts the invasion itself as an unlikely occurrence (Hab 1:5-6). The prophet Habakkuk is considered a younger contemporary of Isaiah, but not of Daniel. Further, it is also improbable that the defeated Babylonians would make demands on Cyrus and threaten “to kill him and his household” (Dan 14:29-30) for the slaying by Daniel of a serpent. It resembles a similar demand before Darius; but the latter was made not by the defeated but by court officials, and on the basis of “the laws of the Medes and Persians” (Dan 6:15, Yungerov, p. 288).

As for the original of the account of Bel and the Dragon, defenders of its existence in the Hebrew-Aramaic language point to one Aramaic fragment from a Jewish commentary on the book of Genesis, published in 1290 by Raymond Martini and similar in content to (Dan 14:27-41).