Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [127]
Belshazzar’s successor, called the Persian king Darius in an obvious confusion, issues a decree that all prayer should be addressed to him, mirroring what Antiochus did. When Daniel refuses to pray to “Darius,” he is thrown into a pit of lions—but emerges safely, preserved by God’s angel. In amazement, the penitent king throws his court advisers to the lions instead, along with their wives and children. They are all killed by the lions and Daniel is again elevated to a place of power in the court.
The meaning of all of these stories would have been obvious to the author’s audience. The tale of Daniel and the other brave boys refusing to defile themselves with unclean food, or bow down to idols, was a clear call to contemporary Jews to resist the Zeus-cult worship decreed by the priest Menelaus and Antiochus IV’s pretension to divinity.
In the concluding chapters, Daniel shifts from interpreting the dreams of others to having his own visions. His prophetic dreams contain many references specific to the political intrigues of the day, showing the breakup of the Alexandrian empire and demise of the Seleucids and the Egyptian Ptolemies. Several of the author’s specific predictions about the immediate future of these empires were not fulfilled, and he ends the book with words of a final consummation and resurrection of the dead when the faithful Jews would ultimately have victory.
BIBLICAL VOICES
At that time, the great prince, Michael, who stands beside the sons of your people, will appear. It will be a time of trouble, the like of which has never been since the nation came into being. At that time, your people will be rescued, all who are found inscribed in the book. Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence. And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, keep the words secret, and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will range far and wide and knowledge will increase. (Dan. 12:1-4)
Daniel certainly must have spoken to the people of his day who were confronting the possibility of the extinction of their religion. But his note of hopefulness in such a desperate moment has a timeless quality. Daniel has become the symbol of the oppressed believer, tortured for his faith. His visions of a promised time of “rescue” and “eternal life” have given hope to Jews and Christians ever since.
BETWEEN THE BOOKS
THE APOCRYPHA OR DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS
Why isn’t Hanukkah in the Bible?
With the completion of all the texts considered “divinely inspired” by the Jewish rabbis who established the “canon” of Hebrew scriptures, the Bible comes abruptly back to an old question: “Whose Bible is it?” By the standards of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as well as versions of the Old Testament that follow the order in the King James Version, there is no more to say. But if you’re reading a Douay Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, or any of several Roman Catholic Bibles, a few books have been left out. These missing books—or sections of books—often follow the “canonical” books in many Bibles, in a separate section called the Apocrypha.
The Greek word Apocrypha refers to a small group of ancient writings whose “divinely inspired” status has long been the subject of debate and controversy. The term means “things hidden away,” and there has long been some question whether that meant that these books were somehow heretical and should be hidden away. But in fact, the books of the Apocrypha were never considered secret. In Protestant Bibles, such as the King