Bel and
the Dragon 1
Cheating Priests, Exploding Dragons And A Prophet On A String.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts
(Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old
Testament Apocrypha, 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/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
Bel and
the Dragon 1
“Now the Babylons had an idol, called Bel, and there were
spent upon him every day twelve great measures of fine flour, and forty sheep,
and six vessels of wine.”
I’ll say one thing for the apocryphal texts, they’re
some of the more entertaining stories in the Bible, full of folk tale tropes,
practical wisdom and not a little bit of humour.
The chapter starts with King Cyrus inheriting his
kingdom, including Babylon, and Cyrus seems to be on good terms with the
Israelite prophet and folk hero, Daniel. He asks Daniel why he won’t worship
the god Bel, to which Daniel replies “Because
I may not worship idols made with hands, but the living God, who hath created
the heaven and the earth, and hath sovereignty over all flesh”.
But, says Cyrus, Bel’s a living god, just look at how
much he eats and drinks each day. That’s a trick, says Daniel, “O king, be not deceived: for this is but clay
within, and brass without, and did never eat or drink any thing”. Cyrus is
angry, because of course “feeding” Bel is an expensive thing so he summons the
priests of Bel and demand that they prove that Bel is real – “if ye can certify me that Bel devoureth
them, then Daniel shall die: for he hath spoken blasphemy against Bel”.
The challenge is this – that the offerings are placed
in the temple which is then closed overnight with the royal seal. If, in the
morning, the offerings have gone, then plainly Bel must have eaten them. The
priests aren’t worried because they have a secret door into the temple, and all
seventy of them plus their wives and children, are able to sneak into the
temple and eat all the offerings. Sneaky buggers!
But Daniel outwits them. He sprinkles ash around the temple,
which only he and the king know about. The next day, the offerings are gone and
the seal is still on the temple door. “Then
laughed Daniel, and held the king that he should not go in, and said, Behold
now the pavement, and mark well whose footsteps are these”. The king
summons the priests, who confess, and so they and their families are all killed
(bit harsh). Cyrus allows Daniel to destroy the statue of Bel.
Next, as all good heroes must, Daniel faces a dragon,
which it’s not clear is another good statue or actually a living thing, revered
by the Babylonians. Daniel deals with it in short shrift – “Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair,
and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the
dragon's mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder: and Daniel said, Lo, these
are the gods ye worship”. I’m sure I’ve seen this element crop up in other
dragon-slaying tales, but it escapes me for the time being.
Sadly for Daniel, the locals have had enough of him
destroying their religion and so they demand that he be thrown to the lions,
and now we seem to be back at the original tales of Daniel. But there’s an
added fun element. Meanwhile, elsewhere, Habbakuk the prophet is delivering
soup to some workers when God picks him up by the hair, takes him the lion pit
and dangles him over it so that Daniel gets the soup – “Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown, and bare him by the
hair of his head, and through the vehemency of his spirit set him in Babylon
over the den. And Habbacuc cried, saying, O Daniel, Daniel, take the dinner
which God hath sent thee.”
Of course, Daniel survives seven days unharmed in the
lions’ den (no reason is given for why the lions leave him alone, we are left
to surmise that they do so out of deference to his holy nature. I always get
this confused with Androcles, where kindness – removing a thorn from a paw - is
repaid with kindness – not mauling). When Cyrus comes to find him alive he’s so
happy he throw Daniel’s accusers to the lions. And they ate them all up, every last
one of them. That’s not actually how the last verse goes, but the style of the
story would seem to demand that kind of formulation. (It’s actually “and they were devoured in a moment before
his face” which is not that far off).
A lot to unpack in three different vignettes – the
first is a great “locked door” mystery, the second feels like the stub of
another dragon-slaying myth inserted into Daniel’s story. Both of these are
solved purely by the cunning of Daniel (much like his uncovering of the lies of
the elders in Susanna last book), and I rather like this representation of him
as a myth-buster, like an Exilic Jonathon Creek. The last chapter does include
divine intervention, albeit in a somewhat ludicrous style – the image of
Habbakuk holding a bowl of soup being lowered over down to Daniel by an angel
holding onto his hair is almost intentionally comical, which makes me think
that this whole collection of stories is meant to be equally as entertaining as
it is edifying (the messages against idol worship and keeping faith with God
are not spelled out explicitly and are kept more as subtext).
I wonder if, given that the story-telling in many of
these Apocrypha is a lot more sophisticated, this is suggestive of a later
writing date and thus the reason for doubt about their canonical inclusion.
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