An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 171: Prince of Persia, Alexander the Great and some very weird dreams. Oh, and Lions (Daniel 6-10)

Daniel 6-10
Prince of Persia, Alexander the Great and some very weird dreams. Oh, and Lions.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Daniel 6

“Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee.”

King Darius sets up a group of 120 “princes and presidents” to administer to his kingdom, and Daniel is foremost amongst them. Of course, others within the administration are jealous of Daniel and they persuade Darius to issue a decree that for thirty days no man may “ask a petition” from any god or man, unless it’s to Darius himself. Darius does this, and Daniel continues worshipping God. Darius is upset, but under Persian law no decree of the king’s can be changed, which sounds like a recipe for trouble to me, and so Daniel is cast into a den of lions, and shut in overnight.

Darius is at least upset enough by this that he doesn’t eat or sleep all night, but luckily an angel “shut the lion’s mouths” and Daniel is fine. As punishment, Daniel’s accusers, and their wives and children, are fed to the lions instead, which seems like something of a cruel overkill to me. Darius issues a decree that the God of Daniel is to be shown respect throughout his realm.

I must admit, I always get this muddled with the tale of Androcles and the Lion, in which kindness is repaid. There’s no thorns in paws in this tale, which has the same structure as Daniel’s friends being put into the fiery furnace, and also crops up in a lot of saint’s lives – a punishment meted out due to jealous slander fails to take hold on the holy person, who triumphs in the end (although in a lot of saint’s lives the oppressors keep trying new punishments until one works).

Daniel 7

“In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.”

Well, the preceding chapters were straightforward morality tales, but here not only do we jump back in time to the reign of Belshazzar, but we get a dream of Daniel’s (which, interestingly, he needs help in interpreting). And what a morass of strange imagery it is. Four beasts arise from the sea – a winged lion, a bear with ribs in its mouth (?), a winged, four-headed leopard and a fourth beast, with ten horns, teeth of iron and claws of brass. As Daniel watches another horn grows on its head, that destroys three of the other horns, and then has eyes and a voice. Maybe less cheese before bed, Daniel?

The interpretation is, as you might expect, that all these beasts represent kingdoms, the fourth being the last with ten kings, but then another king will overthrow three of these. Eventually will come the “Son of man” (the only reference to that so far has been to Ezekiel) who will sit by “the Ancient of days” (which I take to mean God), “And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed”.

It’s a combination of messianic prophecy with a touch of Revelations, but, prophecy, meh. I’m sure over the centuries there have been a multitude of attempts to fit various nations into the four beasts, and I bet they’ve all sort of worked, but it’s all so vague that most interpretations are bound to fit one way or another. Perhaps what’s more use is the underlying concept that kingdoms come and go, and are often terrible things, but God outlasts them all, rather than getting bogged down in specifics.

Daniel 8

“Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.”

In the reign of Belshazzar, Daniel has a vision involving a ram and a goat. Fortunately for us, the angel Gabriel appears near the end of the chapter and explains it, and I’ll include the explanation with the description. The ram has two horns, one larger and set further back than the other; it represents the kingdoms of Media and Persia. The ram is set upon by a “he-goat” with a single large horn, the “rough goat” representing king of Grecia. Then the rough goat’s horns do weird things – first they turn into four that point in the cardinal directions, then a smaller horn grows from them that winds about all over the place (presumably pointing in the directions of conquests).

Near the end of the “kingdom of Grecia” a “king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up” who will “destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper” and, paradoxically, “by peace shall destroy many”. Intriguing stuff. I wonder if the mighty Grecian king is Alexander the Great; the stuff about destroying through peace is strange, it sounds more like something from the Wheel of Time, but I guess this kind of biblical prophecy is where Robert Jordan got the idea from, given his many other sneaky biblical parallels (not least Lews Therin and the Gates of Paaren Disen). At the end, Daniel faints and is sick, and tells us “I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it”. I’m not surprised.

Daniel 9

“In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”

Daniel reads the book of Jeremiah, and perhaps calculates that the seventy years of exile are nearly up. He offers up a prayer to God, asking forgiveness on behalf of the Israelites for forsaking the covenant of Moses, and pleads for the city of Jerusalem to be restored. This section is the other side of the story to God’s anger seen in Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel; this is the human side of the argument and there’s something quite touching about Daniel’s supplication.

God evidently hears him and sends Gabriel, whom last chapter I referred to as “the angel Gabriel” although neither here nor there is he referred to as such explicitly – here he is “the man Gabriel”, but he has “come forth to give thee skill and understanding” which implies some kind of divine messenger role.

Gabriel imparts a tantalising prophecy about the rise of the Messiah. The Israelites have seventy weeks to put an end to transgression and make reconciliation. There will then be seven weeks (plus another sixty two, I guess mentioning them spoils the whole symmetry of sevens we have going on here) for the city of Jerusalem to be built until the arrival of the Messiah. I don’t quite get what the next verse means. After the sixty two weeks, the Messiah will be “cut off, but not for himself”, and the “people of the prince” will destroy the city, and there’ll be a flood. But then the next verse says that “he” (I assume still the Messiah”) will for one week (why it doesn’t say seven days to keep the pattern I don’t know) confirm the covenant, but in the middle the oblations stop “and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate”. Even checking the modern English translations of this verse I’m none the wiser, and it feels like the translators are unsure as well. This is another example of uncertain pronoun application obfuscating biblical verse – make what desolate, for example? Context suggests the temple, but consummation of what, and what’s poured upon the desolate?

Daniel 10

“In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.”

Daniel has another visitation by some kind of heavenly messenger, in the form of a man but with face like lightning, eyes like fiery lamps, arms and feet the colour of brass and a body the colour of beryl (yellow). Daniel addresses this entity as if it were God which reminds me of some earlier musings of mine on angels; that they seem to be perceived by the biblical characters not as messengers of God but as avatars of God, not separate servitor entities but God Himself in a less traumatic form than that shown to Moses.

Not a lot actually happens in this chapter – the angel tells Daniel that it’s going to impart prophecy to him, but not a lot of prophecy happens as yet. It’s an interesting account of an encounter between man and divinity, though, in terms of the physical and emotional effects that it has on Daniel. Mention is made also of a “prince Michael”, “one of the chief princes” who has remained with the Prince of Persia (here I can’t but be reminded of the classic platform game). Although there is an archangel Michael in Christian mythology, it’s not clear here if that’s what’s meant; I wonder if this is a later assumption/deduction by theologists concerning the identity of this mysterious prince Michael, or if there will be confirmation in the next couple of chapters.

Daniel 11
“And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.”

This is quite a lengthy chapter, but most of it seems to concern itself with seemingly endless back and forth struggle between a northern and southern kingdom; the context seems to suggest a civil war within the Babylonian ranks (perhaps Persia and Media at odds). There’s political marriage, battles, power gained by flattery, mention of our old friends the Moabites and Ammonites getting caught up in things, but to be honest it all seems largely pointless. There’s not a lot, that I can tell, that directly affects the destiny of the Israelites and since it’s all couched in fairly vague terms (being given as a prophecy by Gabriel) there’s not a lot of investment in what’s going on.

Daniel 12

“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.”

The end of the prophecy, and here we have the first hint of some kind of life after death according to desserts  – “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. Prior to this, excepting Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones, dead is dead and the bible hasn’t suggested the idea of reward or punishment in the afterlife, not as clearly as this that I can recall.

Daniel wants to know how long before these things come to pass. There are two answers – the very vague “it shall be for a time, times, and an half” and the precise “there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days”, which is about three and a half years. There’s that mention again of the “abomination that maketh desolate” on its way, all obscurely apocalyptic. Oh, and “Many shall be purified, and made white”. I’ll bet that verse has been used to justify some pretty unpleasant attitudes over the years.

And that’s the book of Daniel. What a mercy to have something short after the past few books. Some great stuff in the first half, it’s no wonder so many little aspects have found their way into other cultural references over the years. The latter half has the usual issues with prophecy that makes it uninteresting to read, vagueness and oblique references, but there are some humanising touches in Daniels reactions to the divine encounters.