III. THE HISTORY OF BEL AND THE DRAGON.
I. Title and position.—This apocryphal piece, which is called by Theodotion, or in our editions of the Septuagint, Kat Apcbccuv, Bel and the Dragon, and in the Vulgate, The History of Bel and the Great Serpent, has in the Septuagint the inscription, eK A I.LP CLKOLI lila 'Iwoi.) 1K riffs 01/Xis Actor, a part of the prophecy of Habak kuk, the son of 7esus, of the tribe of Levi, and is placed at the end of Daniel, forming in the Vulgate the 14th chapter of that prophet.
2. Design and method.—The design of this piece is to shew the folly and absurdity of idolatry, and to extol the God of Israel. The method adopted to effect this is both ingenious and attractive. Cyrus, who was a devout worshipper of Bel, urged Daniel to serve this idol, and referred to the marvellous fact, that it devoured daily the enor mous sacrifice of twelve great measures of fine flour, forty sheep, and six vessels of wine (I-6) : but Daniel, knowing the deception connected there with, smiled at it (7) ; thereupon the king sum moned the priests of Bel, and demanded an expla nation from them (8-to) ; they, to satisfy him that the idol does consume the sacrifice, told the mon arch, that he should place it before Bel himself (z r-r3). Daniel, however, had ashes strewed on the pavement of the temple, and convinced Cyrus, by the impress of the footsteps upon the ashes, that the sumptuous feast prepared for Bel was con sumed in the night by the priests, their wives, and their children, who came into the temple through secret doors, and the king slew the crafty priests (14-22). As for the Dragon, who, unlike the dumb Bel, was, as Cyrus urged, a living being (23, 24), Daniel poisoned it, and then exclaimed — ' These are the gods you worship!' (25-27). The Babylonians, however, greatly enraged at the de stroyer of their god, demanded of Cyrus to sur render Daniel, whom they cast into a den wherein were seven lions (28-32). But the angel of the Lord commanded the prophet Habakkuk, in Judxa, to go to Babylon to furnish Daniel with food, and when he pleaded ignorance of the locality, the angel carried him by the hair of his head through the air to the lion's den, where he fed and comforted Daniel (36-39). After seven
days Cyrus went to the den to bewail Daniel, 'and behold Daniel was sitting !' The king then com manded that he should be taken out and all his persecutors be thrown in to be instantly devoured, and the great Cyrus openly acknowledged the great ness of the God of Israel (40-42). This story is read in the Roman Church on Ash Wednesday, and in the Anglican Church on the 23d of November.
3. Historical character and original language. —The basis of this story is evidently derived from Dan. vi. and Ezek. viii. 3, ingeniously elaborated and embellished to effect the desired end. It is not in the nature of such sacred legends to submit to the trammels of fact, or to endeavour to avoid anachronisms. That Daniel, who was of the tribe of Judah, should here be represented as a priest of the tribe of Levi ; that he should here be said to have destroyed the temple of Belus which was pulled down by Xerxes, and that the Babylonians should be described as worshippers of living ani mals, which they never were, are therefore quite in harmony with the character of these legends.
Their object is effect and not fact. The Greek of our editions of the Septuagint is the language in which this national story has been worked out by the Alexandrine embellisher to exalt the God of Abraham before the idolatrous Greeks. Various fragments of it in Aramaean and Hebrew are given in the Midrash (Bercshith Rabba, c. 68), Josippon (P. ed. Breithaupt), and in Delitzsch's work De Habacuci vita et cetate, which will shew the Babylonian and Palestinian shape of these popular traditions.