Central Bible Study - Daniel 4

For Central Bible Study (CBS) today with the Varsity Christian fellowship, we went through Chapter 4 of the book of Daniel where King Nebuchadnezzar lost his sanity. The CBS facilitator first got us to write down whatever questions we have after reading the text for 15 minutes. From there, she split the questions into those that were about the story that was presented through the text, and those that were "outside the text", such as the author's intention in writing the story.

A girl in our discussion brought up an interesting 'out of the text' question about the change in point of view in the narrative. Daniel 4 begins with a first person voice of King Nebuchadnezzar, and then switches to a third person description of King Nebuchadnezzar losing his sanity, and back again to the first person voice of King Nebuchadnezzar acknowledging God. It raises the issue of how Daniel 4 was composed such as to give this odd feature of a vacillating point of view. According to our CBS facilitator, there are no extra-biblical sources confirming that such a circular by King Nebuchadnezzar was ever distributed. This is so despite King Nebuchadnezzar being the most well-documented king in Babylonian history

One suggestion was that Daniel had added in the part from verses 19 to 33 when writing down the account because of the lack of description in King Nebuchadnezzar's account mentioning his encounter with God during his experience. According to our CBS facilitator, King Nebuchadnezzar's acknowledgement of "the Most High" in verse 34 was not necessarily a reference to God but could refer to a god deemed most superior amongst the Pantheon of gods in the Babylonian polytheistic culture.

The CBS facilitator also said that there was no extra-biblical sources that King Nebuchadnezzar ever went mad, nor was there suggestion of a lapse in the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar by historian. The CBS facilitator said that there was information however, of a lapse in reign of another King of Babylon. She suggested the possibility that the account of Daniel 4 could have been a description of the experience of that king with a substitution of his name with that of King Nebuchadnezzar. This, she said, was a common practice of typology in Middle-Eastern cultures. Notwithstanding this dilution of history, the theological significance of the account of Daniel 4 is preserved together with the narrative flow of the book of Daniel focusing on King Nebuchadnezzar as a pivotal character. This website though, mentions about new archaeological evidences hinting at the historicity of King Nebuchadnezzar's madness - "A recently published Babylonian cuneiform text seems to shatter the silence about Nebuchadnezzar's illness. The tablet is in the British Museum, No. BM 34113 (sp 213), and was published by A. K. Grayson in 1975. Unfortunately, it is merely a fragment, and the surviving text is not as clear as we would like it to be. But the lines that may refer to the king's illness".

Another issue brought up was the purpose of the author in writing down the account, in particular, to the Israelites who were under the babylonian captivity. A hypothesis is that it is to highlight the lack of actions by King Nebuchadnezzar to improve the conditions of the Israelites after his return to sanity and his acknowledgement of the Most High. What the author was trying to do was to criticize King Nebuchadnezzar as paying lip service to the Israelites when he had obtained his sanity after acknowledging God. I don't think that the lack of description in the text necessarily suggest a lack of action by King Nebuchadnezzar to improve the condition of the Israelites. In fact, I think the contrary. King Nebuchadnezzar is presented as describing himself being restored to the throne and becoming greater than he was before. If the passage is to have theological significance about King Nebuchadnezzar becoming greater due to him acquiescing to the exhortation by the prophet Daniel for him to "renounce his sins by doing what is right, and his wickedness by being kind to the oppressed, so that it may be that his prosperity will continue", it is possible to attribute his attainment of strength and greatness at the end as due to his being improving the conditions of the Israelite captives.