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

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