gone, that the king shall see the floor sieved with ne ashes. Next morning the seals are intact, but the floor shows marks of naked feet, and the secret door ie revealed by which the food has been taken away. After this the priests are pat to death and the image destroyed.
Theod. 's task was to revise LXX. In the case before us ho had a document, probably Arara., which differed in detail considerably from LXX. In vv.'* he largely transcribes LX!X ; but after that uses his own materials very freely. The chief variations between 9 and LXX are these : LXX extracts the story from a pseudepigraphic work of Uabakkuk, and introduces Daniel as ' a certain man,' 'a priest, son of Abal, a companion of the king.' 6 by attaching the story to Dn identifies him with the prophet, and makes the king to be Cj'nas, successor of Astyagea. Bel's daily allowance is in LXX, besides the flour, 4 eb°ep and 6 firkins of oil ; in 6, 40 sheep and 6 firkins of wine. The Phillipp's cylinder, i. R. 65, records that Nebuchadrezzar s daily offering was one fine ox, fish, fowl, etc., the best of oil, and the choicest wines like the waters of a river (Ball, Speaker's Apocr. ii. 352). LXX introduces in vv.'*- 1' ' honourable priests,' friends of the priest Daniel, with whose signets the doors are sealed. 6 does not. LXX says the food offered was found in the houses of the priests. 9 omits this. Wliile 9, not LXX, says that Daniel destroyed both the image and the Temple of Bel. Cf. Hdt. i. 183 ; Strabo, xvi. 1.
The Peshittft is tAkcn from 9. It« chief deviatloni from Bare ».♦ 'forty rami,' ' Ikl t/iy God' (cf. Schradcr. COT ii. 00) v.e
* B«l i« aiir« ' ; v. 1* ' Tlie king sealed it . . . with the ring of Daniel.' Wore iinportAnt, however, are the cases where it dis- cards 9, and follows LX.X, as in v. 7 'Nothing has he ever eat«n'; t.is 'lie saw all eaten which had heen offered to Bel'; while in v. 21 we have a conflate ruuling, 'consumed what was " offered to Bel " LXX, " on the table " ' B, Neuhaiier In hit Tnf/it gives a pnj*sime from Midrash Rahha de Ual>l>a, where, in Oreek-rahhinic clmrnct^rn, is found on almost vert>atim transcript of the I'eshitta as given by luiganlc. Ttie Vulg. gives a minutely aircurate tr. of 9. The Syr.-llex. in Ccriani's J/on. Sac. tt prof, follows L.XX : hut its in.irg. gives three reailingn of
• : '40 sheep' for 'four'; 'wine' for 'oil* in v.*; and the •ooount of the sieving of the floor in vM.
The Dragon. — The points common to all Jewish varietii's of this Hnggnda are a.s follows : There was in I'libylon a great drnt'on, widely revered, and fed by its worshippers. Daniel was again a non- conformist. In rejdy to the king's ex|>o9tulation8 he volunteered to kill the monster, if the king would consent, without any weapon. Permission being granted, he made a large bolus, of which pitch was the chief ingredient, and threw it down the dragon's throat ; thus causing it to hurst nnA die. Thei>opulace, enraijed, clamoured for Daniel's death. Ine king yielded, and Daniel was cast into
a den, where were 7 lions ; and he was there 6 or 7 days. On the last day Habakkuk was cooking food for his reapers, wnen an angel came and carried him and his provisions through the air (cf. Ezk 8', and Gospel according to the Hebrews, ftesch, Agrapha, 381 ff.) to the lions' den, to feed Daniel. When the king came and found Daniel alive, he magnified J", and cast the accusers into the den, where they met with instant death.
The dragon myth had a much wider circulation than that of Bel, and was much more flexible in its details. It is doubtless a Judaized version of the old Sem. myth of the destruction of the old dragon, which, terrestrial, maritime, or celestial, represents Chaos or Disorder, which was destroj'ed by the god of the present order of things. In the Bab. myth, it is Titiamat who is assailed by Bel-Merodach. Bel let loose a storm-wind * which the monster received into its mouth, and ' with violence the wind filled its belly,' and ' its belly was stricken through ' (cf. Gunkel, Schop/ung una Chaos, 320-323, and Ball in Speaker's Apocr. li. 347).
The fluidity of the myth is sho«Ti by the way in which almost every version furnishes details of its own. LXX contributes that Daniel used ' yipounds of pitch,' v." ; that the king consulted with Lis com- panions, v." ; that the lions' den was reserved for conspirators against the king, and that the lions were fed daily on the bodies of two criminals, v." ; that the mode of death was selected that Daniel might not receive burial, v." ; and that Habakkuk had with him a jug of mixed wine, v.". Vulg. closely follows 9, but, besides some smaller deviations, it appends a doxology, v.", after the manner of Dn gJs. a? Lagarde's Syr. adheres closely to 9 ; but it adds, v.", that the King came to the den ' to weep for Daniel,' and makes a brief repetition in v.". Neubauer's vers, from Midrash Rauba de Rabba, which is mostly a mere transliteration of Syr., adds one item not found elsewhere : ' and they covered the den with a stone, and sealed it with the king's ring, and with their signets,' v." : and with Walton's vers, it says, ' the angel put his hand on the head of Habakkuk.' Raymund Martini, who wrote an anti-Jewish work, Pugio F'ulei, in the 13th cent., cites Bel and the Drngon, professedly from a Midrash Major on Genesis (Neubauer's Tnbit, p. \'iii.). His text is almost an exact counterpart (only by a better scribe) of the unique MS con- taining Midrash Rabba de Rabba, except a hiatus by homoeoteleuton in v." (see Delitzsch, De Hahacuci Vita, p. 32). Another Midrash gives a condensed account of the dragon myth in Heb., but says that Daniel took straw and wrai)pcd nails in it which pierced the monster's viscera {Ilereshiih rabba, § 68 ; Del. p. 38). Josippon ben Gorion, the pseudo-Jos., the author of a mj'tho-historical work, c. A.D. 940, ascribes the death of the dragon to combs concealed in pitch ; he fixes sunset as the hour of Habakkuk's transportation, ami says that he returned ' before the reapers finished eatiug,' Del. op. cit. 40.