THE EPISTLE OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR

by David Ross

Nabunai and Daniel

Both Daniel 4's and the Epistle of Nabunai allege to be testimonies of a king of Chaldean Babylon, who is afflicted by God until he is forgiven. There are some notable differences:

These parallels, and the focus on Nabunai instead of Nebuchadnezzar, are what brought this fragment to scholarly attention. Nabu-kudurri-utzur was the destroyer of the Temple and a villain to Jews. Nabu-na'id was a villain to Babylonians, of a dynasty foreign to Babylon, who moved the capital to Teima; but he did nothing to offend the Jews. Jews wrote both Nabunai and Daniel 4. A Jewish author would be far more likely to invent a story about Nebuchadnezzar to complement or replace one about Nabunai than vice versa.

In addition, Nebuchadnezzar is made into a bestial madman. It is hard to avoid a comparison with Antiochus IV "Theos Epiphanes", God Manifest (but nicknamed "Epimanes", the Mad: Polybius 26.1, Livy 41.20). One cannot easily forget his portrayal in Edgar Allen Poe's devastating "Four Beasts In One", in which he rode a "sorry pony" at the head of a wild parade through the streets of (epi)Daphne (from Polybius 30.25, Diodorus Siculus 31.16).

The above doesn't show dependence, but it does suggest that the Prayer was the product of an earlier age.

Reconstructing Daniel's Source

The Wise Men.

To start with ideas not (yet) identified with Nabunai, Daniel 2, 4, and 5 share closely-related lists of magicians and enchanters. First, I want to establish what the Vorlage of the MT must have looked like in Theodotion's day:

Theodotion differs twice from the modern MT (and Vulgate). GZRY' / gazarhnos is flipped around KSDY' at 4:4, and the Greek for 5:15 contains gazarhnos. The former case is the only instance in any textual tradition of Daniel where the GZR does not appear at the end of its list. I would heartily agree with Meadowcroft that the Theodotionic text has erred (p. 80).

The latter case is more tricky. This verse is not represented at all in the LXX. All other texts agree that there were HKYMY' followed by 'SPY', as in 2:27. The Vulgate considers HKYMY' an adjective (sapientes magi). Only the Theodotionic text adds the gazarhnoi.

There are two possible options. One is that the original Aramaic contained HKYMY' 'SPY' GZRY', that copies subsequent to the Theodotionic translation dropped the GZRY', and that future translators didn't contract it to HKYMY', nor extend it back to the original under the influence of the Greek text. The other option is that it was the Greek translator who felt that he was extending it back to the original. The lists of enchanters elsewhere contained one member (HKYMY' or KSDY') or three or four members. This list contained two. A copyist concerned with such things would have either deleted 'SPY' - which didn't happen - or added a new member on the above example of 2:27.

Meadowcroft voted for the latter case. (p. 80) I am of the opinion that, even if the text available to the Greek lacked GZRY', the Greek chose rightly in adding it. I find it unlikely that the original Aramaic author would have written HKYMY' 'SPY' and left it alone. He would have either erased 'SPY' or filled out the list. I conclude that the original text of this document contained a list of three. GZRY' seems as good a guess as any; I will put it in brackets.

Using this against the LXX:

There are two base orders in the Hebrew-Aramaic version. One is HRTM, 'SP, MKSP, KSDY, and GZR. 2:2 - the Hebrew verse - alone uses MKSP. The rest of the list is attested in full at 4:4 and 5:11, and 2:10 and 5:7 omit the last and first members of this list, respectively. The other order is HKM, 'SP, HRTM, GZR, attested in full at 2:27. 5:15 omits at least HRTM.

The "Rosetta Stone" in this case is the Theodotionic text, backed up by LXX 2:27, which is the same as the later Greek version. The two compare nicely for Daniel 2; the only difference is sofon in 2:10, which may be attributable to carelessness.

But just as the real Rosetta Stone dealt with a late form of Egyptian, Daniel 2's text is later than Daniel 5's. LXX Daniel 5 differs from Daniel 2 (and Theodotion Daniel 5) in that it does not use the word magos. It also uses a word elsewhere found only in the translation of Hebrew list 2:2 - farmakos. The analogues must be used cautiously.

In the Greek, the first base order established in Daniel 2:2 is preserved for both 5:7 and 5:8. 5:7's epaoidous, farmakous, khaldaious, gazarhnous matches 5:8's epaoidoi, farmakoi, gazarhnoi with only one plus. LXX Daniel 5:7 matches its Aramaic mirror L'SPY' KSDY' WGZRY' in like manner, and the match is even closer to Majority Daniel 5:11.

The list of five mentioned above was followed, minus a deletion or two, by all verses in all recensions, barring 2:27 and the projected proto-Majority 5:15. I propose a written source for this list; the two exceptions are easily explained as a slip of the pen. In each case the scribe wanted to write HRTMY* but had been writing declensions of HKYM all night (in Daniel 2, verses 12, 13, 14, 18, and twice in 24; in Daniel 5, verses 7 and 8) and so started the list with it as well. Then he wrote 'SPYN and realized his mistake. In 2:27, he inserted the HRTMYN and finished with the usual GZRYN. In 5:15, he just skipped to GZRY'.

Also, Daniel 2:2 is alone in mixing 'SPY and MKSPY; LXX Daniel 2 uses magos and Daniel 5 farmakos. According to my "Rosetta Stone" Dan 2:2, LXX Daniel 5's translator could have read 'SPY or MKSPY in his base. If the former, then he chose to translate it in a different way than did the translator of Daniel 2:10 and was therefore a different translator. If the latter, it was the same translator, but the Aramaic parts of Dan 2 and Dan 5 came from different authors. This accords with the majority of scholarly opinion, and also has the advantage of explaining the wide extent of Hebrew Daniel 2:2 - it is a harmony of chapters 2 and 5.

Note that even this reconstructed fourfold list - HRTM, ['/MK]SP, KSDY, GZR - shows signs of being an extension. It breaks an important rule of folklore, the "Rule of Threes". This rule may be observed today in such oral folklore as urban legends, ghost stories, and of course jokes. Left to its own, Daniel would have happily employed a threefold list; it reverted it to one in 2:10, 5:8 (before the proto-MT family deleted it), 5:7 (after the LXX recension went its own way), and in at least the Theodotionic text of 5:15.

The KSDY' is the obvious standout. First, it is an ethnic designation, misused in the current context as a synonym for HKYM. Moreover, this implicit definition of Khaldaioi is not replicated throughout the book. Daniel 1:4, 3:8, 5:30, 9:1 all witness to the true sense, that of a Babylonian living under Nabu-kudurri-utzur's dynasty. Daniel 5:30-31 and 9:1 both concern "Darius the Mede" and the kingdom of "the Chaldeans"; they exist only to link chapters 5 and 9 with the rest of Daniel. Daniel 1:1-8 is also part of the editorial framework, inserted to explain how Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah might be identified with Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. As for Daniel 3: while not an editorial addition, it concerns Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, not Daniel; it probably developed independently of Daniel 2, 4, and 5. Almost everyone involved in creating Daniel knew the real meaning of "Chaldean". The parts of Daniel which do not know are restricted to the chapters 2, 4, and 5.

It must be explained why the editors of Daniel preserved the term "Chaldean" for diviner even when they knew it was wrong. Three out of the five instances of this list in the LXX, corresponding to five out of seven in other texts, contain the term KSDY'; including one of two or two of three times the list is reverted to a triad. I can only conclude the author(s) of Daniel 2, 4, and 5 found this list in a pre-Daniel document which he/they were reluctant to change.

I will hazard a guess as to this document. This list is invariably associated with some problem of King Nebuchadnezzar. The King calls for these four classes of magician in this time of crisis, and they always fail. It is left to Daniel to devise a solution. The document is certainly a diaspora legend like Daniel 2, 4, and 5 - no, like Daniel 4 and 5, because Daniel 2 is just a preface to Daniel 7.

The Idols.

Scholars have reconstructed Nabunai's list of idols to "silver and gold, [bronze, iron,] of wood, of stone and of clay". I concur with this. Nabunai parallels the Masoretic text of Daniel 5:23 both in using that order, and in associating these gods with Babylon. The two lists in Majority Daniel 5 (vv. 4 and 23) are expanded with "bronze, iron, wood and stone", and Nabunai's additions are expanded further, to include "clay" (although it may lack bronze and iron). Daniel 2 concerns a statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and iron-clay mix, but no stone. Majority Daniel 4's vision of the great tree unnecessarily binds the roots in "iron and bronze", shortened to "bronze" in the LXX. These passages share an original with "gold and silver" or "silver and gold", followed by bronze, iron, wood, stone, and clay.

Usually, gold is listed at the head of such lists, as it is in Daniel 2 and 5:4 (and Deut 29:17 - see here). It is odd that it is reversed in Nabunai and MT Daniel 5:23. In addition, the Theodotionic text of Daniel 5:23 diverges from the MT and its witnesses by using the "gold and silver" in the standard order, that of Daniel 5:4. The LXX text of Daniel 5 does not use this list at all, instead preferring "idols made by hands [of men]" (5:4,23).

TJ Meadowcroft thinks that the Theodotionic order of 5:23 is original, and that the proto-MT deliberately switched the "gold and silver" in 5:23. These words, says he, are a jab against Belshazzar. Where Nebuchadnezzar is consistently described in terms of gold (chapters 2, 3), concludes Meadowcroft, Daniel-as-prophet is announcing to Belshazzar that he is Babylon's "silver age". But if so I would ask, why now? I should expect to see Hesiodic metal-age ideas in Greek, not Aramaic. And I do not see such creative irony elsewhere in the post-Theodotion MT tradition.

Whoever deals with this passage must explain why the MT has an apparently-reversed order at the end and not the beginning. In the days before word processing machines, an editor would diligently change phrases at the beginning, and slack off toward the end - a phenomenon known as "editorial fatigue". If the order is standard in the beginning, and reversed in the end, one possibility is that it was reversed in his source document. Nabunai - reconstructed or not - serves as just such a source document.

Belteshazzar.

Daniel mentions that Daniel's Babylonian name was Belt(esh)azzar in all versions of 1:7, 2:26, and 10:1. The bulk of these mentions, though, is in the majority text of Daniel 4, where he is actually addressed by this name. Majority Daniel 5, which is very conscious of this preceding chapter (c.f. 5:20-21), lets slip that Daniel was one "whom the king called Belteshazzar" (5:12, my emphasis), not the whole court implied by the palace master of 1:7.

Only in Aramaic is his name distinguished from that of the Babylonian king. In Latin he is Baltazar and in Greek, Balthasar. I conclude that BLTSR or BLThSR was also found in the original, as the name the king used for the healer.

A Prayer of Nebuchadnezzar.

The LXX of Daniel 4 preserves but doesn't quote a prayer of Nebuchadnezzar in v.34: "And I prayed about my ignorance of the great God of gods"; Majority Daniel has the king merely "raise his eyes to heaven", but we know from the Aramaic Levi Document that this is a prayer-pose.

Unfortunately no such prayer is left in Daniel; the two versions don't even say explicitly to whom the king is praying. A small part may be reflected in LXX Daniel 4:37: "I confess and praise, for he is God of Gods and Lord of lords and King of kings, for he does signs and wonders / And he changes seasons and times, removes kings and sets them up". The first part is quoted in both recensions of Daniel 2:21. In order for Daniel 2 to have read it, it most likely came from Daniel 4's source.