The fiery furnace in the book of Daniel and the ancient Near East.

• Author: Holm, Tawny L.
• Position: Critical essay

The court tales of Daniel 1-6 are all set in the Eastern diaspora. Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, are four Jewish youths taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar to serve at his court and in the subsequent courts of various Babylonian, Median, and Persian kings. These folkloric stories were probably composed in the late Persian or Hellenistic period, and may have circulated together as a unit for a time before they were joined with the visions of Daniel, chapters 7-12, which were themselves written in around 164 B.C.E. (1) As in the case of the tales of Joseph, Esther, Ahiqar, and certain stories from Herodotus or Alf laylah wa-laylah (the Arabian Nights), the Daniel stories can be categorized loosely as court tales. (2) In the terms of W. Lee Humphreys, these can be further divided into tales of either "court conflict"--in which a courtier is disgraced or endangered, often because of a conspiracy, and is then rehabilitated--or "court contest," wherein a courtier succeeds at a task at which his or her rivals fail. (3)

In the Aramaic "court conflict" story of Daniel 3--the only one of the Daniel stories in which Daniel does not appear--his companions (here called by their Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) have risen so high in the government that they have been appointed as administrators over the province of Babylon. They are denounced by rival officials for not obeying King Nebuchadnezzar's command during a state ceremony to bow down to the colossal golden statue he has had made, and are thus condemned by Nebuchadnezzar to die in an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] a "furnace of blazing fire." This furnace is heated seven times hotter than usual so that the men who bind the three and throw them in are themselves burned to death. (4) However, after divine intervention, the three Jewish men come forth from the furnace unharmed and are promoted even further in the administration of Babylon, while Nebuchadnezzar declares it unlawful to worship any god except theirs.

As Karel van der Toorn has noted, Otto Ploger's judgment of this lively story cast many years ago is still true: "punishing by burning remains unusual." (5) Thus the search for a background to the motif of the fiery furnace has led in many directions. It is not that burning as a capital penalty in the ancient Near East was unknown--far from it. Burning as punishment for crimes can be found especially in historical inscriptions and legal documents across the Near East, and also in metaphorical references and as an eschatological punishment in specifically Israelite and Egyptian literature. (6) However, the use of a furnace in these instances is much more rarely found. In fact, the evidence seems to demonstrate that, in spite of the Mesopotamian setting of Daniel 3, the nearest parallels to the story are found in Egyptian literature, particularly in Late Egyptian or Demotic tales with a court setting from the second half of the first millennium B.C.E., in which it is courtiers who displease a king who are condemned to die in a furnace.

1. BIBLICAL AND EARLY JEWISH EVIDENCE

In the Bible one observes the following examples of a legal execution by fire: In Gen. 38: 24 burning is the suggested punishment for Tamar's presumed adultery; in Lev. 20:14 it is to be the punishment for a man who marries a mother and daughter together; and Lev. 21:9 prescribes immolation for the daughter of a priest who prostitutes herself. (7) These crimes all fall under the category of offences against a hierarchical superior (Tamar against her husband, the sexual athlete directly against God, and the priest's daughter against her father). (8) In addition, Jer. 29:22, Jeremiah's letter of prophecy, has Yahweh say that Nebuchadnezzar will roast two prophets, Ahab and Zedekiah, in the fire for false prophecy and other sins. Furthermore, John Collins also observes that "burning became the eschatological punishment par excellence in post-exilic prophecy and apocalyptic literature," citing Isa. 26:11; Dan. 7:11; 1 Enoch 18:9-16; and IQS 4:13. (9) However, none of these particular references refers to a furnace.

Another proposal has been that the author of Dan. 3 is taking literally the metaphorical use of burning in a furnace for purification or refining, as found in the biblical psalms or in other biblical descriptions of Israel's suffering in the exodus or exile. In these cases, the terms used for furnace are usually Hebrew [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] kur ( a smelting furnace), (10) or [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] tannur (a brick oven for baking), (11) in contrast to the Aramaic [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] attun of Daniel 3. (12) Karel van der Toorn prefers to cite "as an attractive solution to the tale of the fiery furnace," the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] of Deut. 4:20, 1 Kings 8:51, and Jer. 11:4, where Egypt is metaphorically reckoned an "iron blast furnace." (13) Collins, while not proposing it as a single solution, follows Dahood's translation of Ps. 21:10 to suggest that the "fiery furnace was readily imagined as an instrument of destruction": (14) The phrase [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]"you put them as into a blazing furnace," followed later by [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] "and fire will devour them," refers to what Yahweh will do to his enemies. (15)

Montgomery pointed out in 1927 that a legend attributed to Eupolemus (a second-century B.C.E. Jewish historian), and collected by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica 9.39.1-5, shares features with Dan. 3. (16) Eupolemus says, "Then Jonacheim [Jehoiakim?]: at this time Jeremiah the prophet prophesied. He was sent by God, and found the Jews sacrificing to a golden image, whose name was Baal. And he made known to them the misfortune to come. Jonacheim then sought to burn him alive. ..." (17) However, while the Eupolemus legend of a golden image is obviously set in the Babylonian period, there is no foreign king, the Jewish worshipers are not compelled to worship, the idol is of the Canaanite deity Baal, and it is a Judahite king rather than a Babylonian who endeavors to burn Jeremiah alive. The Eupolemus story is perhaps best explained as being inspired by the same tradition that influenced the no doubt earlier story of Dan. 3. (18)

2. MESOPOTAMIAN AND PERSIAN EVIDENCE

   Because the Daniel stories are set in the Eastern diaspora, commentators often turn to Mesopotamia for a background to the fiery furnace. Montgomery in his Daniel commentary believed the furnace "must have been similar to our common lime-kiln, with a perpendicular shaft from the top and an opening at the bottom for extracting the fused lime," and he cited oriental and Persian examples. (19) Other biblicists suggest, probably rightly, that burning of humans in ancient Mesopotamia was actually rather rare. (20) In fact, death by fire in Mesopotamia seems to be a penalty particularly suitable for crimes against a hierarchical superior (especially against a king or a god), but whether or not it was regularly applied seems impossible to know. Moreover, the textual examples of death by burning from Mesopotamia do not usually include a furnace; indeed, only two mentions of such are known to this author, and one of them is probably a simple talionic penalty without broader implications (see below). Since Mesopotamia is so often cited as the origin of the Daniel motif, however, it seems important to survey the incidences of such a penalty in Mesopotamian sources.

   In the Code of Hammurabi, there are at least three instances where burning to death is a fit punishment: (21) in law 25, in the case of someone trying to steal from a burning house; in law 110, the case of a naditu or an ugbabtu priestess who, living outside the cloister, opens or enters a tavern; (22) and in law 157, in the case of a man who lies with his mother after the death of his father. Furthermore, treason at Mari is punished by burning the traitor along with his family: (23) "Let him (the man who has thought up or knows about the plot) and his house be burnt" (ARM 3 73:15). (24) Another Mari text concerns the same punishment for an individual who accuses two others of hatching a plot against the king of Mari (ARM 28 20). (25) The two who have been accused are to undergo the river ordeal to determine their guilt in the matter. If the men come out of it alive, their accuser is to be burned in fire, but if they die in the ordeal, their houses and people will be given to their accuser.

   A Neo-Babylonian text of similar relevance concerns a person drowned in the ordeal, whose body was subsequently consumed by subaquatic fire: "When noontime arrived his corpse came back up from the river. The head was smashed. Blood flowed from the mouth, ears, and nostrils, and the skull was burning like something consumed by fire." (26) Paul-Alain Beaulieu has suggested that the suspected criminal in this case (a false accuser) was brought face-to-face under water with the unbearable aura of the Divine River of judgment--who, like other gods, had the attribute of fire. (27) This confrontation with the divine radiance in a river ordeal was thought to spare the suspect if innocent and condemn him if guilty, but in most cases the sinking criminal would have been pulled out before he actually drowned, and then given his punishment by human agency. In this case the authorities seem to understand the burnt appearance of the corpse when it is finally found to indicate that the River has not only judged the man guilty by making him sink, but has dispensed the appropriate punishment, that is, death by fire.

   The gods--especially Marduk, Nergal, and Girru--are also often said in the penalty clauses of treaties to burn enemies with fire (using Akkadian sarapu and qamu). (28) Furthermore, Neo-Assyrian penalty clauses for breaking a contract include the burning of heirs before a god (using qalu and sarapu); for instance, TCL 9 57:18, apilsu rabu ina...