The Lion's Den

Daniel McClellan (0:00)

Because if somebody just says, Antiochus IV Episodes is a bad dude, and let's hope God comes in and saves us, that's not as effective as saying, I found this text from this ancient prophet. And this ancient prophet says, don't know who this is, but there's a person who's gonna be coming who's a really bad dude, and God's going to deliver us. Injecting it with that artificial antiquity, and this notion of real prophecy provides a lot more power, a lot more authority to the text.

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (0:39)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (0:40)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (0:53)

I mean, I don't know if you should call me Dan. Maybe you should call me Belteshazzar, Beltel, Belteshazzar.

Daniel McClellan (1:01)

No, it's gotta be Yerbol.

Daniel Beecher (1:04)

What?

Daniel McClellan (1:06)

Now we watched, we watched Tommy Boy the other night. I had to show my girls.

Daniel Beecher (1:12)

Yeah, we're diving into the book that, after which you and I are both named.

Daniel McClellan (1:19)

Our namesake, yes.

Daniel Beecher (1:20)

Ostensibly.

Daniel is a book in the Bible. I don't know if you guys knew that.

Daniel McClellan (1:25)

Yeah.

Daniel Beecher (1:26)

But I assume you did.

Daniel McClellan (1:27)

You're all very smart. And I don't know if, fewer people probably knew that if you look at our old cover image for our podcast, you can see some Hebrew letters in the background. If you look in the upper right, you see the Hebrew Daniel.

Daniel Beecher (1:42)

Even on our web, on our YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube, there's like Hebrew letters sort of swirling around us. And one of them might be that name. I don't know how it's cropped.

But yeah, you chose that image specifically because we were both Daniels and that's funny.

Daniel McClellan (1:59)

We thought that would be funny. Yeah, so.

Daniel Beecher (2:01)

A little Easter egg for you, everybody.

Daniel McClellan (2:04)

Because we're 11 years old.

Daniel Beecher (2:06)

We might as well be. Anyway, yeah, so let's just dive in because we got a lot to cover.

Daniel McClellan (2:15)

Yeah.

Daniel Beecher (2:15)

You know, growing up, I'm gonna say this, Dan.

Daniel McClellan (2:18)

Same.

Daniel Beecher (2:18)

Growing up, I obviously felt some sort of connection to this book just because it was my name and it has one of the cooler stories in the Bible and that is the Lion's Den story. Daniel gets thrown into a Lion's Den. I don't want to bury the lead here, but that's kind of all I remembered from it. So when I dove back into it to prep for this segment, for this episode, I was confused.

I'm just gonna say it. This book is a mess.

They needed to employ any amount of writing skill or narrative structure or anything. It is, I have a hunch you're going to tell me a lot of interesting stuff about how this book came to be and the fact that this book, if I've learned one thing from doing this show with you for as long as we've been doing this show, it is that there is no way one person wrote this book.

Daniel McClellan (3:25)

Yeah, we're going to get into what's going on with some of the literary structure. And yeah, it's going to get weird as it so frequently does on our show. And I think with texts like Daniel, you have two different, you have a spectrum of people's awareness of Daniel. On one end, you've got the people who have sat down and read it beginning to end. And those people are messed up in the head because Daniel messes you up in the head.

On the other end, you have people who have basically heard stories from it. They're aware of a few different, sometimes proof texts, sometimes specific stories from Daniel. You know Daniel and The Lion's Den. You know Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from The Fiery Furnace and from the great poets, the Beastie Boys.

And so there's a lot of just kind of random, spotty knowledge about the book of Daniel in the zeitgeist and in the air. And that's how I think the majority of people know about Daniel, but have never sat down and read it from beginning to end, which is no small feat. That's a tall order to begin with.

Daniel Beecher (4:39)

I mean, it's not a long book, in biblical standards. By biblical standards, it's not, you know, it's, what, 12 chapters?