Two detective stories against idols · Greek addition to Daniel, c. 2nd-1st century BC
Bel and the Dragon
Daniel proves that a god who eats dinner every night has priests with a trapdoor.
- 1Chapter
- 42Verses
- c. 200-100 BCEWritten
Original language: Greek (Susanna and Bel originally); Hebrew/Aramaic substrate for Prayer of Azariah
King James Version Apocrypha (1769 standardized text) · public domain
Read Bel and the Dragon
King James Version + Apocrypha (standardized 1769 text), eBible.org USFX edition of the Crosswire/eBible KJV — Public Domain — One of the three Additions to Daniel.
Plain answers first
What this book is
Bel and the Dragon is a single chapter attached to the Greek Daniel, printed in some Bibles as Daniel chapter 14. It holds two short stories and a third scene, all making one point: the gods of Babylon are not alive.
In the first, the king asks Daniel why he will not worship Bel, since the idol clearly eats the food set before it every night. Daniel says it is clay and brass and has never eaten anything. The temple is sealed, but Daniel quietly scatters ashes across the floor. In the morning the food is gone, the seal is intact, and the ashes are covered with the footprints of the priests, their wives, and their children, who have been coming in through a hidden door.
In the second, the king points to a living serpent, or dragon, that the Babylonians worship, and asks whether Daniel can call that one lifeless. Daniel asks permission and kills it without a sword, feeding it cakes made of pitch, fat, and hair until it bursts.
The crowd turns on Daniel and he is thrown to lions again, this time for six days. In the middle of it, the prophet Habakkuk is carrying stew to reapers in Judea when an angel lifts him by the hair and sets him down in Babylon to feed Daniel, then carries him home.
The piece is usually dated to the second or first century BC and comes to us in Greek.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
This chapter is not in the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel. It survives only in the Greek versions, and Jerome again marked it as absent from the Hebrew when he included it in Latin. The Reformers moved it to the apocrypha with the other additions. Rome affirmed it at Trent, and Orthodox churches read it. Christians have also long noticed that its tone is different from the rest of Daniel: it is broader, more playful, closer to folk tale than to the visions of Daniel 7-12. That difference is part of why the church's judgment about it went the way it did.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it — and how
This is Isaiah 44 and Jeremiah 10 turned into a story a child can follow. Those chapters argue that a man cuts a tree, burns half of it for warmth, and bows to the other half. Bel and the Dragon simply shows it, and lets you laugh. Behind the humor is the same claim that runs through the whole Bible: the living God is not fed by us, does not depend on us, and cannot be handled. It also preserves an early tradition of Habakkuk as a prophet with a story attached, which is worth knowing when you read his book.
One chapter, one sitting. Read Isaiah 44:9-20 first so you can hear what the story is dramatizing. Read it lightly, the way it was written. And keep the frame straight: it is a witness to how Jews under foreign rule mocked idolatry and kept their nerve, not an addition to the historical record of Daniel's life.
Doors into the text
Key moments
Verses 1-9. The king points to the nightly offerings as proof Bel is alive; Daniel laughs and takes the challenge.
Verses 10-19. The sealed temple, the secret door, and footprints of men, women, and children in the ash.
Verses 23-27. A living creature worshipped as a god is killed with a recipe, not a sword.
Verses 28-32. The crowd forces the king's hand and Daniel is thrown in for six days, seven lions waiting.
Verses 33-39. An angel moves the prophet from a field in Judea to the lions' den and back with a bowl of stew.
Verse 41. He pulls Daniel out and declares there is no other god beside the God of Daniel.
The disagreement is old — here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | not canonical; Hebrew original (if any) lost |
| anglican | apocryphal — read for example of life and instruction of manners |
| catholic | canonical (deuterocanonical; Daniel 3, 13, 14 in Vulgate) |
| protestant | non-canonical; retained in Luther's 1534 Apocrypha |
| eastern orthodox | canonical (anagignoskomena) |
| oriental orthodox | canonical |